Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories

RUSLAN SAVOLAYNEN “I’ve become embarrassed to tell people that I’m gay.”

With his flawless five-o’clock shadow, an intricate haircut and perm, and perfect skin, 27-year-old Ruslan Savolaynen goes to a cosmetologist to smooth out even the hint of a wrinkle. His look is completed by a Catholic cross on a considerable gold chain, Italian shoes, and an immaculately pressed suit. All of this, combined with his delicate build, makes Ruslan look like he’s from the Mediterranean rather than Russia. He would blend right into a crowd in Spain, where he is thinking of moving. However, just a few years ago he felt like he fit in perfectly well not only in Russia but also in Nashi, the Kremlin’s official youth movement.

My father is Palestinian and my mother is a Russian Finn. I spent a lot of my childhood in Jordan, where my father’s family lived. When I was ten, his grandmother came from Saudi Arabia. She was the matriarch of a large clan, and she decided that she was going to take me in and raise me. That very night, my mother and I packed our things and went back to Russia. I haven’t seen my father since. Before we moved, I didn’t even know the word gay. In Russia, I saw The Next Best Thing with Madonna on TV3 and understood that all sorts of things were possible.

My peers in Russia didn’t like me much. I was always smaller than everyone. Until tenth grade, I just couldn’t fit in; I only had one friend. These kids from the neighboring school once pushed me under a moving car. I got off with a broken leg. I’ve dealt with a lot of violence that’s given me serious health problems. After one such attack, my vision got catastrophically bad. I’ve ended up in the hospital multiple times; I’ve had six concussions. The last time it was at the XXXX Club off Zvenigorodskaya. My friends and I, one of whom was a woman, were beaten up really badly.

I had my first romantic experience in eleventh grade. I was in Nashi and we would go to Moscow for various events on a regular basis. Being a member of Nashi had a major effect on me since it put me in a new milieu where nobody knew me. I could open up and show who I was. I made friends and started acting differently. On one of our trips to Moscow, everyone went to the countryside while I ran off and went to Three Monkeys [a gay club], although I was afraid, because I’d never been to a club before. At a certain point I realize that I’ve been sitting at a little table with a young man and we’ve been talking about life for two hours. When it was almost morning, we went outside. He walked me to the station, and that was the first time I’d ever felt this feeling that I’d never felt before. The kids from the group were upset at me for ditching them. I cried a lot when I got back to St. Petersburg and I got a job so I could travel to Moscow. After that, I went to see him every week. He introduced me to his mother, which was shocking to me. Everything was fine until one day, he disappeared. He turned up again six months later, but now he was a completely different person.

I was in Nashi for three years, up until my sophomore year of college. There were different factions, a lot of opportunities for social activism, on top of demonstrations against one thing or another. I was responsible for organizing these events: rounding up members, holding promotional events at schools. Everyone knew about me. That’s what I had decided in eleventh grade: that from then on, I’d have a new life where I wouldn’t hide anything from anyone. For the most part, people were OK with it. There were those who weren’t, but, as a rule, they were always outnumbered. In the summer we would go to Lake Seliger, where they take tens of thousands of kids from all around Russia. I had long hair, I wore little shirts. You could spot me from a mile away. It so happened that I was the only visibly out gay man in a crowd of several thousand kids. Some people would even come to gawk at me.

There were tough guys who’d sidle up to me to try to change my mind, telling me I was wrong to live the way I did. But the kids I knew would chase them away. Yakemenko [Vasily Yakemenko, the leader of Nashi] once said something along the lines of what Putin has said, that he wasn’t against homosexuality but that the birth rate was dropping in our country. (I saw Putin and Medvedev, too, and shook their hands.) So there weren’t any really bad incidents there. I wasn’t the only gay kid, but the other ones were in deep hiding. The last time I went to Seliger, there were two boys there who were a couple and openly living together. A small community formed among the lesbians and one of my classmates even came out there.

I have two older brothers and it’s like we’re from different worlds. For them all of this is bizarre and disgusting. Whenever they’re drunk, they start in on me, “Faggot! How could you!” It’s never gotten physical. They find ways to overcome their feelings. My mother is fine with it. I don’t know why. She even went to Central Station, the gay club, for her birthday once. She really empathizes with transsexuals. Whenever she sees them on TV, she’s on the verge of tears.

I had tried to hide my sexual orientation. There was a time when I did drag performances at clubs. Naturally, I kept my wardrobe in my closet. When my mother asked me about the costumes, I tried to tell her they belonged to my stripper friend who was keeping them here because she couldn’t keep them at home. She saw through me, of course.

On Sundays I go to the Catholic Church. I became a Catholic four years ago, after I left Nashi. A guy took me to the church and it made things easier for me. I met people who are a lot less judgmental about everything. Pastors openly tell me that they don’t believe in what I do, and they try to re-educate me, but when they see that it’s pointless, they accept me as I am. There are a lot of gay people in the Catholic Church. Although they take a pretty hard line stand against it, a lot of gay people go there. Some go because they are trying to fight their homosexuality. The guy who took me there is trying to root it out of himself. He’s gone into the seminary to become a priest. There are a lot people like him. For them, Catholicism is a weapon against being gay. For me, it was a place where I found understanding, shelter, and peace. Several weeks ago, I even became the godfather to a friend’s daughter.

I’ve noticed that over the past six months, I’ve become embarrassed to tell people I’m gay, even though I haven’t hidden it since high school. I decided that if people from the LGBT community didn’t hide, it would change perceptions of homosexuality. If you put yourself in the position of the humiliated and insulted, other people will use this against you. But there is progress. If not for this situation, we wouldn’t be having these conversations and everything would be just as it was. Thank you, Duma deputies. You provided a good impetus for public discourse.

A version of this interview was originally published in Afisha magazine Issue 339 (February 25, 2013). It was updated by the author and reproduced here by permission of Afisha