Collegium Carolinum,
the German Historical Institute Warsaw (DHIW),
the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO),
in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts, Charles University,
cordially invite you to the fifth lecture of the Prague Histories Forum in the winter semester 2026/27:
PROF. DAN HEALEY (UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD)
Sexual Dissidence in the Soviet Union
Tuesday, 15 December 2026, 15:50–17:20
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Špork Palace, Hybernská 3, Prague 1
Room 303, attic floor
The lecture will also be available online via Zoom. Please register using the following link: https://maxweberstiftung.zoom-x.de/meeting/register/yq0DKEQFRjS4TW3N2dNDeA
How did the Soviet state regulate sexual dissidence, and how did individuals navigate, negotiate, or resist these constraints?
Dan Healey examines the overlapping legal, medical, and cultural frameworks governing homosexuality and gender nonconformity, from the Bolshevik sexual revolution through Stalinist repression and into late socialism. Drawing on archival sources, literary texts, and forensic and psychiatric records, the lecture considers the clinic, the courtroom, and the labour camp as institutions through which permissible forms of life were defined and disciplined. Alongside these mechanisms of control, it explores the possibilities of solidarity, resistance, and queer subjectivity under Soviet rule.
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Dan Healey is Emeritus Professor of Modern Russian and Soviet History at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. His research focuses on the history of sexuality, gender, and medicine in modern Russia and the Soviet Union. His books include Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, and The Gulag Doctors.
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