Quoted By:
After the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks first came to power, many laws were abolished altogether, including those that criminalized homosexuality. Neither the Criminal Code of 1922 nor that of 1926 contained any articles concerning homosexuals. The framers obviously thought that homosexuality was a class-related phenomenon, and that it would disappear with the former regime. When homosexuality failed to disappear, a 1934 government resolution recriminalized it, stipulating five to eight years of imprisonment whether the acts were forced or voluntary. On February 2, 1940 Nikolai Yezhov (Chairman of the NKVD (Soviet Secrete Police) during 1936-1938) was tried (for being homosexual and practicing sodomy) behind closed doors and sentenced to death, to be shot the following night. Stalin decided to make an attempt of liquidation of male homosexuals in the Soviet Union. It is almost impossible to find out how many homosexuals were persecuted in the Soviet Union during 1938-1944. Many of homosexuals were executed as "enemies of the people." This is a famous vintage image depicting how the Soviet Union Secret Police officer was shooting two homosexual men. You can see that those men were wearing the white girls' underwear. Apparently this execution was in 1944. Wearing women's panties was common for homosexuals in the Soviet Union at that time to show someone's particular sexual orientation to a potential sexual partner.
