Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

“Heroic Russian rock,” Pavlov says, “wasn’t for dancing. We wanted to bring some fun into this country. We do some rap and some house and some R and B and some jazz.” MC Pavlov is part of an amalgamated Russian music based on Western ideas, yet unlike anything heard in the West. He is tall with blue eyes and a shaved head, and he is wearing a little square hat and loose-fitting rapper clothes, a few rings, and a few ethnic necklaces. “We’re not from the ’hood. We know that. We’re not interested in being political like American rap or Russian rock; we don’t want to sing about the unavailability of sausages in the shops. We rap mostly in English because rap in Russian sounds stupid. I kind of make up a language, English words and Russian grammar.”

Pavlov’s music is danceable, with strong rhythms and good mixes. He has a kind of plausible funkiness that is not often found in Russia. “I guess if we have some concerns to get across, they’re spiritual rather than political. We’re vegetarian, antiviolence, antidrugs, antidrink, into pure souls. We follow the teachings of Buddha. People from the West worry about Russian politics, but we’re not up to that yet. First teach the people to be human, then maybe you can start on politics.”

The next night, I have dinner with the Moscow painter Sergei Volkov. “To see these young people trying to imitate American rappers,” he says, “is as incredible to me as it would be to you if you went up to Harlem one day and found everyone there dressed as Ukrainian dancers and strumming on balalaikas.”

The Gay Nineties

Gay life in Russia is somewhat better than it was. Even without antisodomy laws, “only those creepy activists actually go and talk about their sexuality all over the place,” a gay friend says. “And they do it only for the attention they get from the West; activism occurs here because Westerners put Russians up to it.”

This seems to be the general view. Even celebrities who are obviously gay do not admit it in public contexts. The Petersburg artist Timur Novikov has worked on gay subjects for years. Privately, he says that part of the pleasure of homosexuality is its secrecy; interviewed on television, he denies any suggestion that he might be gay. Sergei Penkin, a pop singer who is sometimes called the Russian Boy George, has performed often in Moscow’s one gay club; but he, too, on television, says he is straight.

“I don’t want to be part of a subculture,” says Valera Katsuba, a St. Petersburg artist and photographer. “I know that’s the fashion in the West, but though I may choose to sleep mostly with gay men, that doesn’t mean I want to socialize primarily with them.”

This year, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room was published in Russia. The film Longtime Companion was shown on television, paid for by a private sponsor. “I was visiting my family in the small town in Belarus where I grew up,” says Katsuba. “And we were watching television, and suddenly this film came on. ‘Look,’ my mother said, ‘it’s about homosexuals.’ I was surprised she even knew the word. I asked her what she thought, and she said, ‘If they’re happy, it’s all right with me.’ Ten years ago, no one would have said that.”

Most people here, some straight and gay friends agree, have bigger questions on their minds. “They wonder if the Russian Federation is about to fall apart,” one offered. “Or whether the mafia is running the whole country,” said another. “They fear they will not be able to pay for food next month,” added a straight man. “Whether other men are sleeping with men—really, no one could care less.”

I spend an afternoon with Kevin Gardner, an American AIDS activist in Moscow. “There are many gay groups,” he says, “a special body of gay hearing-impaired, several gay dating services, lots of gay newspapers. You see gay personal ads even in mainstream newspapers. There’s a gay theater group, and there’s something called the Rainbow Foundation for the Social Rehabilitation of Gays and Lesbians. Pamyat”—a neofascist group—“is still very antigay, but the tide is definitely toward liberalization, at least in the big cities. And gays do come flooding into Moscow. But there’s still a lot of self-hatred, depression, and suicide.”

A friend says, “I get my sense of community elsewhere. Russians are very romantic people, but we’re not really very sexual. Intolerance drives people to suicide, but tolerance isn’t going to draw us into this Western fantasy of gay subculture and lifestyle.”

Keeping the Faith

I go to church in St. Petersburg, to Izmailovsky Cathedral, which was used as a silo by the Soviet government. It has been cleaned and restored, and services take place there again. The congregation includes a small grouping of young people. “I come for aesthetic reasons,” one tells me. “I think our Orthodox religion is very beautiful, but of course I don’t believe in it.”