‘You can’t deny people living through hell a chance to be happy’ Three queer Russians on finding love after the Kremlin branded LGBTQ+ people ‘extremists’
While Pride Month is being celebrated around the world, LGBTQ+ people in Russia can’t safely meet, let alone live openly. The Russian government’s crackdown on queer people has been escalating for years. Even so, those inside the country are still finding ways to connect and build relationships. Meduza spoke with three LGBTQ+ Russians who have carved out space for love in a country that denies their existence.
Valeria
22 years old, central Russia
I was tired of going on strange dates with people who had already made peace with everything happening around us. I’d pretty much given up on finding a reasonable partner. I’m not going to settle for someone indifferent, someone who responds to every new ban, police raid, or arrest with: “There’s nothing we can do. Let’s just not think about it.” Or worse: “So what if they’re raiding gay clubs? Who needs them anyway? Keep your head down and everything will be fine.”
I don’t see the point of getting into a relationship that doesn’t meet your standards. You shouldn’t have to twist yourself into something you’re not. If your person hasn’t come along yet, maybe it’s just not the right time or place — they’ll show up eventually. And if they don’t, maybe you didn’t need them after all. At some point, I let it go. I figured, if I’m not in a relationship, maybe I don’t need to be.
Then one day, my glitchy VPN finally connected, and for the first time in ages, I opened a dating app. I liked just one profile — and we matched. Later, Liza told me she’d been about to delete the app entirely but decided to give it one last shot, not expecting anything to come of it.
For our first date, I took Liza to a secret spot where no one would stare at us. By the second date, she was already asking if we could be together. She invited me over, made us matching bracelets, and put on a Girl in Red record — the queerest moment of my life.
After that, it was like those lesbian relationship memes — two weeks are like six months. So these six months we’ve been together might as well be a few years. We’re planning to move in together and trying to make good memories. We built a bookshelf, love walking Liza’s dog — who now has a “parent number two” — take day trips to old estates outside Moscow, and go to secret parties.
Liza is a rare kind of person. I’ve never met anyone like her. She’s kind and thoughtful, and she treats people warmly from the start — except, maybe, for those who hate us on a state level. This is my first serious relationship with a woman. And the fact that it’s happening now, under these conditions, makes it feel especially precious and fragile. These days, every time a queer person steps outside, it’s a political act.
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We have to protect ourselves and each other. We have a set of rules. We hold hands in the street but let go when we enter the metro or see police. Kissing in public feels weird to me regardless of your sexual orientation, so that’s not an issue. Before every party, we go through a little ritual of weighing the risks: what’s the chance they’ll raid the place tonight? And yet, somehow, for the first time, I feel safe. Liza gives me the strength not to make moral compromises, to stand firm under pressure, to keep going when it feels like the world either hates you or objectifies you.
Not being able to fully be yourself is deeply demoralizing. But I’m just as angry when people say all the “normal queers” have left. It’s absurd that we still have to explain the obvious, but not everyone can leave. Some have elderly parents. Some don’t have the money or the strength. Liza and I talk about moving somewhere we wouldn’t be afraid to hold hands. But leaving without money or job prospects is terrifying.
People who’ve left the country say that those who stayed support the regime and deserve the repression. And people who’ve stayed fight among themselves. Some who’ve stopped going to clubs lash out at those who still go — and vice versa. I once heard a gay man say about another: “He wears makeup, he provokes them — of course he got beaten up. I don’t wear makeup. I’m a normal gay guy. Nothing will happen to me.”
There’s no such thing as a single, unified “LGBT movement” — never has been, and never could be. But this divide between “the right kind” and “the wrong kind,” between those who left and those who stayed — that needs to end.
You can’t deny people living through hell a chance to be happy. If you can find community, the apocalypse eases up a little. That doesn’t mean burying your head in the sand or giving in. On the contrary, it’s important to keep resisting however you can — even just refusing to go numb, making an effort to connect with others. Not shutting yourself away, but finding your people, even when it feels impossibly hard.
Tanya
36 years old, Moscow
My relationship with Alla started with a heated argument at Paros, an iconic Moscow café where the food is terrible but, as they say, authentic. I didn’t know Alla personally — I’d followed her Telegram channel for years — and at some point I suggested we meet. I wanted to make a documentary about migration, which happens to be one of her areas of expertise.
That meeting at Paros was supposed to be our last — we really didn’t like each other, and we ended up arguing about the concept of “Russianness” and how arbitrary it is. I think I came across as narrow-minded and conservative. A few days later, she messaged me something like, “You’re clearly smart, but you say the most racist, idiotic things.” And then she added, basically, that we could talk about it. So we started talking. We’ve now been together for a year and a half. And we’re still talking — sometimes just as intensely.
It’s thanks to Alla that I’ve felt grounded here in Russia for the past year and a half, even though everything around us seems designed to push us out. Outside our window, paranoia keeps growing, people are returning from the war, and everyday life feels increasingly hostile. But I have a home, I have support, and for the first time in my life, not just a partner who’s my intellectual equal, but someone I look up to. It’s a bit of a dissociative feeling — happiness in the time of a plague.
The space for meeting people and building a queer and lesbian community in Russia has shrunk dramatically. We’ve been effectively stripped of the right to speak out. And it’s not just the repressive laws inside Russia — local queer communities have also been cut off from foreign grants intended to shed light on the reality of their situation. When those grants are awarded at all, they tend to go to high-profile gay people who left Russia long ago — or more often, to people with no real connection to the community.
For example, I still can’t understand why no one seems bothered that an exhibition about queer Russians in Berlin is being curated by Anna Narinskaya, who — at least based on her public persona — has no connection to queer identity. Before 2022, I wrote and filmed extensively about queer life. Now I can’t. I’ve removed my name from all my old work. It’s no longer possible to write about queer issues for outlets still operating in Russia — and those based abroad, including my former employers, have drastically cut their freelance budgets.
In Russian-language media, queer people have been portrayed for years only as “victims of the regime” — but not as people with identities of their own. Or rather, they’re given just one identity, imposed from the outside: if you’re queer, you must be a liberal, anti-Putin, and probably secular. For much of the Russian-speaking intelligentsia, the idea that someone could be both queer and Muslim, or queer and conservative, just doesn’t compute. Their thinking rarely goes beyond the narrow, colonial frameworks Western politicians imposed a century ago.
Does that outrage me? Not really anymore — there are more urgent things right now. But it still leaves a low-grade frustration and a desire to distance myself from the people who keep pushing that narrative.
Most people still don’t understand what LGBTQ+ discrimination actually looks like in Russia. Even now, straight friends, including people I’ve known since childhood and who consider themselves progressive, ask Alla and me things like, “But really, who’s oppressing you? No one’s killing you. You can live like everyone else.” The kind of homophobia I hate most is ignorance.
There’s also this idiotic idea that repression and outside pressure somehow strengthen relationships. In the same vein, people liked to claim that Soviet cinema was great because of censorship. But Soviet cinema, for all its greatness, was infantilized and truncated. Thousands of names were erased. Hundreds of films were wiped away, left to die on shelves, or never made. The same thing happens in human relationships.
We talk constantly about safety. Alla’s usually the one to bring it up. I’ve grown used to external hostility — I’ve been out as a lesbian since I was about 19. But we regularly have to set limits: no touching in public, no hand-holding, no sitting too close, no kissing — not even on the cheek. Kissing on the lips in public was never on the table. But constantly shifting between modes — “we’re at home,” “we’re with friends,” “we’re in the metro” — short-circuits something in you. We try to behave in ways that won’t draw attention, to stay invisible. It sounds terrible. And it works with varying degrees of success.
We’ve talked about leaving, but we don’t have a concrete plan or clear prospects, and the idea of ending up broke in a foreign country is terrifying. In most ways, though, we live like everyone else. We go for walks, watch movies, cook, go to the gym. […] What we’re missing most right now is a circle of queer friends. We dream of having a home together. Of jobs where we can speak freely. Of even a shred of stability. Of safety. But of course, there’s no point in even dreaming about that in the coming years.
Maxim
30 years old, central Russia
When the mobilization started, I went to Australia in an attempt to save my previous relationship. I didn’t actually want to leave, but my boyfriend Anton — who I’d been with for three years by September 2022 — was terrified of being drafted and convinced me to flee with him to Sydney. He pulled everything together fast: found a student visa option, gathered the paperwork, and planned the move.
Australia sounds great on paper. But once I was there, I realized pretty quickly just how deeply I was tied to Russia — mentally and socially. I felt out of place in a lot of ways. Funny as it sounds, I felt especially uncomfortable in Sydney’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Elderly, homeless trans people walking around naked — it was a cultural shock for me. Looking back, I can see that, like many gay men, I had some internalized transphobia. And that transphobia was tied up with internalized homophobia — a rejection of anything that strays too far from the familiar masculine image. At the time, I just couldn’t connect with this new version of queer culture. I felt like an outsider — not just in the country, but even within the community that was supposed to be mine.
I missed my friends and parents terribly and fell into a depression, even though from the outside things looked fine. We were settled — we rented a decent apartment, bought a TV and a PlayStation, went out to parties. By immigrant standards, we were doing great. I was getting a thousand dollars a month — nothing by Australian standards. Anton was still working remotely for Russian companies and was basically supporting us. I hated being financially dependent, but I didn’t know how to change it. To work in my field in Australia, I’d have to retrain for years. I didn’t want to start something new — maybe out of pride, maybe out of fear of wasting time. So I just sat there, frozen, thinking, Are we really staying in Sydney? Is this actually our life now?
I told him I felt miserable. He said, “For heaven’s sake, you’re in Australia — enjoy it!” That’s when I realized: I left to be with Anton, and he left to be in Australia. In the end, I bought a ticket back to Moscow. Anton said, “Well, okay — if that’s what you want.” We cried, and I flew home.
When I got back to Russia, I was euphoric. Friends, family, gay bars, techno parties — Hornet still worked without a VPN — hookups and dates were easy. As gay men fled Moscow, good-looking guys from all over Russia moved in to take their place. Freedom! Not total freedom, of course, but enough. Every gay guy has his own little “gay lobby” — a micro-environment where you can feel safe.
At some point, though, it hit me — I got depressed thinking I’d wasted all that time abroad, both personally and professionally. I was angry at Anton. I felt like I needed to prove to myself that I could live a full life here in Russia. But when I met Gera, the anxiety disappeared.
As it often happens, we got to know each other after some wild sex. And it got serious fast — there we were, lying naked, and he was showing me photos of his family, telling me he’d been married, that he has a daughter. That his ex knew he was gay and had no problem with it — it didn’t stop him from being a dad. That he’d tell his daughter about his sexual orientation when she’s older, but for now it’s too soon. He hadn’t told his mom either — she was a stern Siberian witch. She wouldn’t disown him, but she probably wouldn’t understand at first — and most of all, she’d worry. Gera didn’t see anything tragic in not being able to come out.
He turned out to be so unexpectedly open. I think it was the first time I’d ever talked so honestly about plans, values, preferences — not just sex, but food, even. And to me, Gera was like Apollo, I felt like he was out of my league. I thought, That’s it — he’s mine. I stayed the night, and in the morning he made me his signature syrniki, just to rope me in. It worked.
We moved in together pretty quickly — mostly out of necessity. Gera’s landlord raised his rent by around 40 percent. I suggested he move in with me. The early days of living together weren’t easy. I still felt vulnerable after Australia — it was hard to relax, hard to trust. Now we’re in couples therapy — our therapist is a lesbian, by the way. Sometimes it’s funny to walk out of the office and imagine what the next clients must think of us. Do they assume we’re business partners settling a dispute? There’s always a bit of paranoia — and not without reason. Once, a teenage boy stopped near us on the street and said, “If you’re not gay, stand still.” We just kept walking. We weren’t scared, just angry.
That was after the law passed [labeling the non-existent “international LGBT movement” as extremist]. Even before that, we weren’t especially affectionate in public, but now even something as small as a touch feels risky. Sometimes I’ll say to Gera, “I want to kiss you right now.” But I almost never do — only when we’re out in the woods, where no one’s around. We’ll hug, but quickly, carefully. Still, we don’t feel that frustrated — we can wait till we’re at home. But the bitterness lingers. When we see straight couples kissing, we think, Just imagine if someone banned them.
Honestly, these days, I feel worse for gay people in the U.S. than for us. They actually had rights — especially under Biden. And now it feels like everyone, from politicians to big corporations, has at best stopped caring or is outright telling them to stay quiet. When you have something to lose, loss hits harder. We’ve always lived in a kind of dimmed state, pushed to the margins of society.
Of course, the sense that you’re somehow broken has gotten stronger lately. But like my dad says, that process started long ago. Everyone in Russia knows gay people exist, and that we’re not going anywhere. Over time, more and more people will come to accept that. The war will end, and there’ll be liberalization — first they’ll make a deal to sell gas to Europe, and maybe then they’ll repeal the homophobic laws. My dad’s made his peace with it. At first he called Gera and me “friends.” Now he says he’s glad I have “my person.”
I introduced Gera to my parents on my birthday. We were all at a restaurant, and Gera came too — with a bouquet of flowers. I thought they were for my mom. But they were for me. He was the first man to ever give me flowers. And no one batted an eye. At first, maybe they glanced around — but after the second bottle of champagne, no one cared.
