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It took place in a corner, into which it was difficult to see from the spy-hole, but in full view of everybody in the cell. It surprised no one and I pretended not to be surprised by it. There were many other instances while I was in that cell; it was always the same boys who played the passive partner. They were treated like pariahs, were not allowed to drink from the common cup, and were the objects of humiliation.¹⁴

Curiously, lesbianism in the camps was more open, or at least it is more frequently described. Among the women criminals, it was also heavily ritualized. Lesbians were referred to by the Russian neutral pronoun, ono, and they divided themselves into more feminine “mares” and more masculine “husbands.” The former were sometimes “genuine slaves,” according to one account, cleaning and caring for their “husbands.” The latter took on male nicknames, and almost always smoked.¹⁵ They spoke openly about lesbianism, even sang songs about it

O thank you Stalin You’ve made of me a baronness I am both a cow and a bull A woman and a man.¹⁶

They also identified themselves by what they wore, and by their behavior. One Polish woman wrote later that

Pairs of such women are known to everybody, and they make no attempt to conceal their habits. Those who play the part of the man are generally dressed in men’s clothes, their hair is short and they hold their hands in their pockets. When such a pair of lovers are suddenly seized by a wave of passion, they jump up from their seats, leave their sewing machines, and chase after each other, then amid frantic kisses they fall to the ground. ¹⁷

Valery Frid writes of criminal women prisoners who, dressed as men, passed themselves off as hermaphrodites. One was “short-haired, pretty, in officer’s trousers”; another did seem to have a genuine genital deformation.¹⁸ Another prisoner described lesbian “rape”: she witnessed one lesbian pair chase a “modest, quiet girl” beneath the bunks, where they broke her hymen.¹⁹ In intellectual circles, lesbianism seems to have been less kindly regarded. One ex–political prisoner remembered it as “a most revolting practice.”²⁰ Still, although it was usually more hidden among politicals, it did exist among them too, often occurring among women who had husbands and children in freedom. Susanna Pechora told me that in Minlag, a largely political camp, lesbian relationships “helped some people to survive.”²¹

Whether voluntary or forced, homosexual or heterosexual, most sexual relationships in the camps shared in the generally brutal atmosphere. Of necessity, they were conducted with an openness that many prisoners found shocking. Couples would “crawl under the barbed wire and make love next to the toilet, on the ground,” one former prisoner told me.²² “A multiple bunk curtained off with rags from the neighboring women was a classic camp scene,” wrote Solzhenitsyn. ²³ Isaak Filshtinsky once awoke in the middle of the night and found a woman lying in the bed next to his. She had snuck over the wall to make love to the camp cook: “Other than myself, no one had slept that night, but with rapt attention listened to the proceedings.”²⁴ Hava Volovich wrote that “things that a free person might have thought about a hundred times before doing happened here as simply as they would between stray cats.”²⁵ Another prisoner remembered that love, particularly among the thieves, was “animal-like.”²⁶