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On the USSR and LGBTQ people: Leslie Feinberg's 'Lavender & Red'
Made reblogable by request.
mantras-in-mumbai wrote: I am a socialist and I do agree with communism don’t get me wrong, but why do you support the Soviet Union? They outlawed homosexuality and had harsh treatments against those who spoke out against the government. Plus I just wanted to say I really like this blog especially because I just saw your Bradley manning post and I saw the number at the bottom I can call to talk to the people on how to show support which I am going to call them today so thank you very much for just updating me with news

FYML replied: First, thank you for your kind words.

Second, on the issue of the Soviet Union and lgbt people, I urge you to read Leslie Feinberg’s series “Lavender and Red,” in particular the sections linked below:

6. Gender and sexuality in czarist Russia

7. Roots of Russian ‘homosexual subculture’

8. Capitalism shakes the branches

9. Naysayers pooh-pooh Bolshevik gains

10. ‘People of the moonlight’ in the dawn of revolution’

11. Soviet Union in the 1920s: Scientific, not utopian

12. 1920s Soviet Union: Rights for lesbians, transgenders, transsexuals

13. 1930s USSR: Survival with setbacks

14. 1930s Soviet Union: ‘Seismic gender shift’

15. Progress and regression: Sex and gender in 1930s USSR

In short, the Bolshevik Revolution abolished restrictions on all people based on sexuality and gender expression. Soviet Russia was the first country in the world to do so.

Under the pressure of world imperialist encirclement and internal class struggle, there were major setbacks for socialist democracy, including lgbt rights, by the mid-1930s. This did not mean that the revolution was bankrupt or not worth defending, only that it needed revitalization. 

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Zoom “Brazil: The media tries to hijack the mass rallies against the government in which hundreds of thousands people participated in the last days. We say no! Support the revolutionary forces in Brazil!”www.pcb.org.brwww.vermelho.org.brwww.pstu.org.br Via Antiimperialistische Aktion

“Brazil: The media tries to hijack the mass rallies against the government in which hundreds of thousands people participated in the last days. We say no! Support the revolutionary forces in Brazil!”
www.pcb.org.br
www.vermelho.org.br
www.pstu.org.br

Via Antiimperialistische Aktion

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Zoom June 19, 1953: Execution of political prisoners Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Pablo Picasso, untitled lithograph of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1952. 

June 19, 1953: Execution of political prisoners Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Pablo Picasso, untitled lithograph of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1952. 

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I am a socialist and I do agree with communism don't get me wrong, but why do you support the Soviet Union? They outlawed homosexuality and had harsh treatments against those who spoke out against the government. Plus I just wanted to say I really like this blog especially because I just saw your Bradley manning post and I saw the number at the bottom I can call to talk to the people on how to show support which I am going to call them today so thank you very much for just updating me with news

Asked by mantras-in-mumbai

First, thank you for your kind words.

Second, on the issue of the Soviet Union and lgbt people, I urge you to read Leslie Feinberg’s series “Lavender and Red,” in particular the sections linked below:

6. Gender and sexuality in czarist Russia

7. Roots of Russian ‘homosexual subculture’

8. Capitalism shakes the branches

9. Naysayers pooh-pooh Bolshevik gains

10. ‘People of the moonlight’ in the dawn of revolution’

11. Soviet Union in the 1920s: Scientific, not utopian

12. 1920s Soviet Union: Rights for lesbians, transgenders, transsexuals

13. 1930s USSR: Survival with setbacks

14. 1930s Soviet Union: ‘Seismic gender shift’

15. Progress and regression: Sex and gender in 1930s USSR

In short, the Bolshevik Revolution abolished restrictions on all people based on sexuality and gender expression. Soviet Russia was the first country in the world to do so.

Under the pressure of world imperialist encirclement and internal class struggle, there were major setbacks for socialist democracy, including lgbt rights, by the mid-1930s. This did not mean that the revolution was bankrupt or not worth defending, only that it needed revitalization. 

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Zoom Buffalo Pride 2013!

Buffalo Pride 2013!

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Zoom June 19, 1953: Execution of political prisoners Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Mass protest against the execution of the Rosenbergs in New York’s Union Square.

June 19, 1953: Execution of political prisoners Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Mass protest against the execution of the Rosenbergs in New York’s Union Square.

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The Rosenbergs: Cuba Remembers 60 Years of a Crime without Justice

Havana, Jun 19 (Prensa Latina) - In front of a plaque, in a modest park in this capital, a group of citizens paid tribute to the Rosenbergs, the day that marks 60 years of their execution in the United States.

They are members or convened by the Cuban Movement for Peace and the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, urging not to forget and condemn one of the most shameful acts of injustice of the Cold War.

The couple, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, were executed in the electric chair at the Sing Sing prison, on June 19, 1953.

They had been detained in the summer of 1950, on charges with espionage and revealing the secret of the atomic bomb to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Judge Kaufman, who sentenced them to death, considered that such “acts were more severe than a murder.” 

Mobilizations of millions of people who demanded clemency in different latitudes of the planet did not matter.

Neither the couple’s two children, Michael and Robert, seven and ten years old, were orphaned.

“Save the Rosenberg” became an international slogan in which scientists such as Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso agreed.

But the Rosenbergs were scapegoats of a change in the world correlation of forces, contrary to the American establishment.

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The Rosenbergs' Last Letter

From Sing Sing prison’s death row hours before their execution, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg wrote one, final letter to their young sons Robby and Michael.

June 19, 1953

Dearest Sweethearts, my most precious children,

Only this morning it looked like we might be together again after all. Now that his cannot be, I want so much for you to know all that I have come to know. 

Unfortunately, I may write only a few simple words; the rest your own lives must teach you, even as mine taught me.

At first, of course, you will grieve bitterly for us, but you will not grieve alone. That is our consolation and it must eventually be yours.

Eventually, too you must come to believe that life is worth the living. Be comforted that even now, with the end of ours slowly approaching, that we know this with a conviction that defeats the executioner!

Your lives must teach you, too, that good cannot really flourish in the midst of evil; that freedom and all the things that go to make up a truly satisfying and worthwhile life, must sometimes be purchased very dearly. Be comforted then that we were serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.

We wish we might have had the tremendous joy and gratification of living our lives out with you. Your Daddy who is with me in these last momentous hours, sends his heart and all the love that is in it for his dearest boys. Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience.

We press you close and kiss you with all our strength.

Lovingly,
DADDY AND MOMMY
JULIE AND ETHEL 

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Zoom Demonstrators at Penn Station protesting Rosenberg Sentence New York, NY- Demonstrators gather at Pennsylvania Station in New York, June 18, 1953, to prepare for a trip to Washington, where they will parade with placards in a protest against the death sentence for convicted atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 

Demonstrators at Penn Station protesting Rosenberg Sentence

New York, NY- Demonstrators gather at Pennsylvania Station in New York, June 18, 1953, to prepare for a trip to Washington, where they will parade with placards in a protest against the death sentence for convicted atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 

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Robert Meeropol: The FBI Took the Pictures

We Are Your Sons, the book my brother and I published in 1975, was translated into several languages, including Turkish.  Last year the woman who did that translation contacted me again and asked my brother and me to update the manuscript so they could publish a new edition.  We agreed, and so Turkey is now the only country in the world where you can purchase an updated version of We Are Your Sons.

Last fall, as the new edition was about to enter production, the Turkish publisher asked if I could provide him with a picture of me with my parents.  I responded that I had none.  I believe my parents did have family photographs, although they were poor people so I doubt they had a huge number.  However, when the FBI arrested my parents they also seized most of their meager personal property as evidence.  Some relatives did manage to retrieve a few items like shoes, but not photographs.  After my parents were killed the only items we received were those they had with them in their prison cells.  Many years later when we inquired about our parents’ property, the government was unable to tell us anything about what had happened to it.  It might have been destroyed, or to this day, it may languish in a few old boxes in the corner of some government warehouse.

I have a few photos salvaged from my father’s mother, Sophie Rosenberg, as well as from a couple of other relatives.  There are pictures of my brother and me, a few of our parents together, and even one of my brother riding on my father’s shoulders before I was born.  None of them show me with my mother or father, however.

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