Coming out in Minsk
The start of this year was an important moment in the socio-political history of Belarus. In late December 2017 a local feminist and anti-discriminatory group of activists called MAKEOUT published a unique LGBT magazine in Belarus. The journal bears the same name as the organisation and was already presented to the public in Minsk. Its content is a summary of the last 20 years of the Belarusian LGBT movement.
Why I am writing about this magazine here and why should we regard it as something significant? First and foremost, MAKEOUT is a professionally-printed publication which deals with a very sensitive topic, especially in a socially conservative post-Soviet country. When considering the regional context it is also quite remarkable that the publication does not come from Russia or Ukraine, but from Belarus, a country that was the least likely to allow such a publication, mainly because of the amount of negatives stereotypes and attitudes towards non-heterosexuals that still exist there. Against these odds, MAKEOUT has succeeded in creating something without precedence.
February 26, 2018 -
Maxim Rust
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Issue 2 2018MagazineStories and ideas
Image by Artur Motolyanets
The activists have published the very first LGBT magazine in the whole post-Soviet space that was funded with online donations. Second, the layout of the magazine is praiseworthy. When holding a hard copy in your hands, you really get the impression that you are reading something which could have been produced in New York or Berlin, not Minsk. This particular quality, although clearly less important than the content of the magazine, is telling. MAKEOUT meets the standard of a western publication.
Lastly, the content includes both archival material and other topics that receive less frequent attention. The magazine is divided into thematic sections: gender, body, puberty, family, violence and archives. Each section includes essays, academic and non-academic texts, interviews and memoirs.
Tolerant but traditional
Starting with the first section, the reader can learn about gender issues and the situation in Belarus. Quite interesting in this regard is a piece dealing with modern masculinity. It offers an insight into today’s post-Soviet macho stereotype. The author, Tony Lashden, writes: “In a patriarchal system, violence emerges as an instrument of upholding power and at the same time legitimising its use by specific groups and individuals… Homophobia and sexism emerge as a response to the fear of being accused of not performing one’s own role correctly. The fear to appear not manly enough and undermine others’ confidence in one’s masculinity makes men resort to violence.”
Other texts focus on gender stereotypes in advertisements, their effects on the self-image of young people and monetising appearances. In the section dedicated to family and puberty, we learn of the different challenges that the Belarusian non-heterosexual youth faces. We can find their testimonies, like that of Danila who talks about the relationship with her father: “Today he’s already calling me a woman-like parasite creature who has no right to live. My place is in the cattle mortuary, not among living people. Not even the homeless in the streets would want me.”
It is a poignant vision of a society that views itself as tolerant, emancipated and free of stereotypes. Yet it is still stuck in a paradigm that is deeply rooted in patriarchate and traditional values. It is equally intriguing to read the memoirs and conversations of Belarusian same sex couples living in informal relationships and who live in constant fear. “You’ve gotten masks in your wardrobe instead of clothes: you wear one mask when you go to work, another for your parents, a third for a friend, and so on. Sometimes you get so lost in what you say to whom that you catch yourself lying and it hurts awfully,” says Andrey, who lives together with his boyfriend of four years, in an interview with Katerina Zykova.
A lot of space in the magazine is reserved for questions concerning violence and rape, which are the two crimes most often directed against members of the LGBT community in Belarus. One of the most moving pieces titled “Pi case” covers the murder of Mikhail Pishchevski in 2014. Pishchevski was severely beaten after he left a nightclub and was in a comma for several months before passing away. The case shocked the Belarusian public. The authorities classified the crime as hooliganism even though it had all the markings of a homophobic hate crime.
Archives of untold stories
Another valuable section of the magazine deals with archival material. Thanks to the interviews with some of the pioneers of the Belarusian LGBT movement, the reader can learn about how it was formed and where its activism is heading now. “Every gay rights movement mirrors the general picture of what’s happening in society. Women do not participate in Belarusian politics, they sit at home, and it’s the same with lesbians. There is no civil society in Belarus, so there is no gay community either…” remarks Edward Tarletsky, Belarus’s first gay rights activist, in an interview with Vika Biran.
The first LGBT newspapers in Belarus are also featured in the journal, and it includes those that were released underground as samizdat in the last two decades. The section further includes pictures and stories of the first Belarusian gay pride parade (yes, they had one, even in Lukashenka land!) that went through the streets of Minsk in September 2001. Finally, there is a map of LGBT Minsk, with the most important places clearly marked.
When considering Belarus today, one might ask the following: How is it possible to publish such a magazine in a country often referred to as Europe’s last dictatorship? It turns out that in the era of the internet and crowd-funding anything is possible. Thus, just like their peers in the West, activists have raised the necessary funds online – a remarkable feat given the context in which they operate. Admittedly, this has been the only example of successful fundraising campaign for an LGBT publication in modern Belarusian history.
Without a doubt, the very first edition of MAKEOUT – which consist of 320 pages – should be of interest not only to readers of LGBT literature but also to scholars of Belarus. It is through this publication that we can gain a unique, albeit from a different angle, insight into the state of Belarusian society. The pieces here do not offer straight-forward political analysis – besides, aren’t we tired of an overproduction of political analyses of Belarus? Yet, how else should we call this type activism, if not political, in such a place as Belarus?
Lastly, it is important to note that the magazine is bilingual: the articles are published in both Belarusian and Russian. Yet for the western reader, the content is also available in English. Under each article there is a QR code which links to the text’s English-language version online.
Translated by Daniel Gleichgewicht
Maxim Rust is a Belarusian political scientist and currently a fellow at the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. His research interests include political elites and the transformation processes in the post-Soviet space.
