‘Why wave the flag?’: (in)visible queer activism in authoritarian Kazakhstan and Russia

ABSTRACT

Western queer politics aspires to increase the visibility of queer subjects who have been highly regulated in Kazakhstan and Russia. Drawing on three interview studies conducted in 2017 and 2018 in Kazakhstan and Russia, respectively, this article examines and compares narratives on queer activism in both countries. Our findings reveal how visibility has an ambivalent meaning for queer people in these cases. For many, public queer activism is perceived as vulnerable and risky, therefore alternative, less ‘visible’, methods of activism are preferred and deemed more useful. For example, participants in our studies mentioned using social media, signing petitions and taking part in educational initiatives as alternative forms of queer activism. The article deliberates the pursuit and applicability of representational visibility politics within queer activism in Kazakhstan and Russia’s fluctuating contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Queer activism
• LGBTQ+
• Russia
• Kazakhstan
• post-Soviet context
• invisibility
• visibility
• progressivist narrative

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the editors of this special issue, Jasmin Dall’Agnola and Cai Wilkinson, as well as to three anonymous reviewers, for their comments and constructive suggestions on how to improve this article. We also thank the Critical Gender and Sexuality Research Circle in Central Asian Societies and members of Queer Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (Q*ASEEES) for their feedback and thoughts on early versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethics statement

For Mariya Levitanus’s study, ethics approval was obtained from the ethics committee of the University of Edinburgh. For Polina Kislitsyna, ethics approval was obtained by the European University at St Petersburg. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in our studies. The participants consented to have their data submitted to the journal for publication.

Notes

1 In this article the use of ‘queer’ encompasses people who do not conform to normative sexualities and gender binary. Other terms such as ‘LGBT’, ‘LGBTQ+’, ‘gay’, ‘cisgender’ and ‘homosexual’ are used consistently with the self-identifications of participants and primary sources cited.

2 While Kazakhstan is identified in the literature as a hybrid regime that displays both democratic and non-democratic elements of governance (Cameron and Orenstein 2012), there are clear aspects of the authoritarian regime, specifically in the ability of the ruling elites to occupy and dominate the crucial discourses related to political and cultural governance (Kudaibergenova and Shin 2018).

3 All participants’ names and other identifiable details were either changed or omitted. One participant, Gulzada, chose to opt out of anonymization and requested we retain her actual name within publications.

4 Bolotnaya Square is the place in the centre of Moscow where the biggest meetings were held during the protests of 2011–12. The Field of Mars is the most popular location for demonstrations and protests in the centre of St Petersburg. The participant used the plural forms of these toponymes to encapsulate many different political protests.

5 The Zhanaozen massacre took place over the weekend of 16–17 December 2011 in western Kazakhstan’s region of Mangystau when protesters clashed with local authorities and the police during workers strike (Isaacs 2022).

6 A long robe typically made of beautiful fabrics and decorated with various ornaments and gemstones, which testified to the social status of its owner in society.

7 Terminology in relation to ethnicity is highly debated terrain Kazakhstan (e.g., Kesici 2011). In Mariya’s study she uses ‘Kazakhs’ (‘Kazakhi’) and ‘Kazakhstani’ (‘Kazakhstantsy’), the former to refer to the Kazakh ethnic group and the latter to all groups (Kazakhs as well as more than 100 other ethnic groups) who live within Kazakhstan’s territory and hold citizenship status. In Russia, the definition of Russian identity is highly debated and fluctuated with different political regimes and dominant discourses with divisions and inconsistent uses of ‘russkiĭ’ and ‘rossiĭskiĭ’ – both words meaning ‘Russian’ (see Teper 2016 for a more detailed discussion of Russian identity).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific funding.