askchapo

There's no point pretending there wasn't repression within the USSR. it was liberatory in many ways but it was a limited revolution and an imperfect system that should be criticised rightly for its failures and mistakes, and celebrated for its successes.

It wasn't like the USSR was explicitly trying to revolutionise people's views on sexuality, it's just that they didn't see the need at the time to spend the manpower targeting sexual minorities. Once the instability was over those same people probably held the same views as before.

TLDR: I would, and do, believe it.

Perhaps. But also recall the UK's treatment of Alan Turing for the same reason. There was a change in the global zeitgeist concerning homosexuality in the mid 20th century, so yeah, I can see this being mostly true.

There's probably a kernel of truth in this, but in all reality, the vast majority of the world was homophobic at the time. It doesn't excuse it, but is instead something that should (and can be and has been!) be a huge part of consideration for ML treatment of LGBTQ folks. In reality, this was an unfortunate failing of the Soviet project at the time (and many socialist projects during this period); some more analysis on why LGBTQ issues are so centric to Marxism is in this Liberation School article.

I think it was proles of the round table, where I had heard it posited that the anti-gay stuff may have been a form of infighting between upper members of the party; I can't attack you directly, but I know you have a gay son. Sort of thing.

Most of the world was massively homophobic until very recently. It's easily believable

While I think this article is written in a disingenuous manner/style the claims being made are very plausible. We're talking about a prison population essentially. Last I checked prisonremoved, hazing, suicide (etc) are still common trappings of current prison life the world-over, and verifiably in the West where prisonremoved is a common reactionary joke to this very day.

The only thing specifically being stated about the USSR is the date that homosexuality was re-criminalized; but as other users have made clear, the fact that it was temporarily decriminalized was a historic anomaly. Sure, I'd love for the USSR to have not re-criminalized it, as I'd love for the USSR to still be standing. But, when you interpret this article with proper context and awareness, it is clear that the intention of any article citing the abysmal conditions of prison populations which isolates the USSR is nothing more than a simple, demonizing hit piece.

At least they weren't beheaded or burned at the stake

Thats literally all you could hope for the vast majority of the world around the USSR's time