As part of our Sochi Campaign feature, we set out to find the voices of the very people most affected by the recent laws enacted in Russia. What follows is an excerpt from the forthcoming book Gay Propaganda (OR Books), a collection of stories and testimonials, edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon, that offer a glimpse into the lives, loves, and politics of LGBT Russians.
OLGA & IRINA
Olga and Irina met and fell in love when they were 19. Three years later they broke up because, according to them, they didn’t have the courage to stay together. Twenty-two years later, Olga works for an organization that provides emergency assistance to pregnant women in critical situations, and Irina is a painter and graphic artist. They now live together, with their children, and regret having lost so much time living apart.
IRINA
I was born in a small town in Siberia. I never went to art school, but I’d always wanted to be an artist, even though my parents told me, “You’ll never be an artist.” When I was 19, I decided that if I couldn’t be an artist, I would study to become something else close to my heart. I chose literature. I went to Leningrad to apply to the philology faculty of the university. It turned out that I needed to take a history exam, so I tore off a flier for preparatory history classes.
One day—it was June 1991—I was walking down Ligovsky Prospekt, going to the address from the flier, when suddenly, it happened.
Ahead of me, I saw a pink dress. It seemed insane: the pink against the grey backdrop of the Soviet Union. I only saw her silhouette, delicate and distinct. Everything was grey except the sun and this pink dress. I walked along and thought, “Where is she going?” I needed to do something, but I didn’t know what, so I just followed her.
It turned out we were going to the same place, to the same class. We found ourselves in the foyer of an old St. Petersburg building with a grand staircase. I remember how, as she was going up the stairs, she turned around and looked at me. At that moment, I knew that I would never lose her.
Later, when I was coming home on the commuter train, I suddenly realized with horror that I hadn’t gotten her phone number. Then, she didn’t show up to several of the lessons.
OLGA
One day, I was walking down Ligovsky and I saw Irina coming toward me. I noticed her from afar and broke out in a smile, wondering if she’d notice me. When I saw that she wouldn’t, I had to get in her way. She didn’t see me until she was right in front of me.
IRINA
I was very happy to run into her. The first thing I said was, “Give me your phone number.”
OLGA
Then we saw each other again at the class. When we came out, I thought that I needed to woo her somehow, so I said, “Let’s go get some ice cream.” I don’t eat ice cream, but I thought that when you’re wooing someone, you should always offer them ice cream. So we got some and went on a walk.
IRINA
She had such expressive eyes. They were enough to knock you off your feet. I was so in love with her. Olga seemed to be the kind of woman you had to marry, whom you could never hurt. I was very afraid that I would hurt her. I was scared to get close to her.
OLGA
Ira was the first woman I’d ever fallen in love with. At first, I didn’t think it was love. I just felt like I had to be with this person all the time. The world changed when I was with Ira.
We hid our relationship from everyone except our closest friends. My parents suspected we were together, but tried to pretend that they didn’t see anything. On the other hand, they put a lot of pressure on us to stop seeing each other. My parents would tell me that Ira was a bad person and that she would never teach me anything good.
IRINA
Everything was complicated. My parents had their suspicions. My mother hated Olga and told me so outright. However, it’s probably not worth it to blame our parents for everything. We were the ones who couldn’t deal with it.
OLGA
We couldn’t live our lives. We were raised to believe that we owed things to everyone, most of all to our parents. We couldn’t be ourselves. We needed to fit in with the rest of the world.
During her second year of university, Ira gave birth to Daniel. She was 21. We were together, but couldn’t seem to figure out our relationship. Ira went away on holiday, and when she came back, she was pregnant. This was probably her trying to be “normal,” like everyone else.
IRINA
If I hadn’t been with Olga, most likely, I would have never had Daniel.
OLGA
I was adopted from an orphanage. I have a very special relationship to children. I’d always wanted them. I had to fight with Ira’s parents, who wanted her to get an abortion. Ira gave birth and we lived together for another year.
IRINA
It was incredibly hard. She really wanted a child, but I didn’t think that we could have one together. I was afraid that she would be unhappy and end up hating me. I left because I was afraid of the responsibility and had decided that she needed to understand herself and get her bearings.
Six months after I left St. Petersburg for Moscow, I found myself on the windowsill. At the last minute, I turned around and saw Daniel, who could barely stand on his own at that time. He was looking directly at me. At that moment, I changed my mind, and dragged myself back into my room.
OLGA
I was upset for a long time after Ira moved away to Moscow. But I really wanted children, and I didn’t know any other way to have them other than getting married and giving birth. Today I see that there were a lot of other options and I could have done it some other way. About a year after Ira left, I got married to a guy from my class and had a daughter with him. Our marriage was pretty weird. We both led separate lives.
IRINA
I really missed the time we had spent together. When I was 32, I understood that I couldn’t stop dreaming about her, it was pathological. Her eyes, and the most beautiful hands in the world. My dreams told me that I was at a dead end, that I had done everything wrong, that I was ruining my own life.
One day I understood that I simply had to see her. This was about ten years ago. There was a big Rembrandt retrospective at the Hermitage so I decided to go to St. Petersburg. I called her early one morning and asked her to come outside. It was like the day we met all over again.
I remember that we were walking somewhere and then we realized we were lost. Something magic was in the air and I think we both understood that it was happening to us again. In the evening, she came to the train station to send me off to Moscow. While we were talking on the platform, I understood she also regretted the way things stood, that we weren’t living together when we should have been. But she was a married woman and she didn’t expect or ask anything of me.
OLGA
By the time Ira got in touch with me again, I was already well aware that my marriage was meaningless. When we saw each other, it became completely clear to me that I no longer wanted this weird life. But I didn’t want to tell Ira that I was getting a divorce. I thought that I needed to get out of that relationship before starting a new one. After I finalized my divorce, I called her and told her. A few months later, we saw each other again.
IRINA
I was afraid that I’d stop drawing because she’d take over and I’d lose my mind. The opposite happened: I had an artistic breakthrough. It was as though all of the pieces of the puzzle had come together and now everything was finally in the right place.
We couldn’t live together for a long time because our children went to school in different cities and we had to split our time. Every two or three weeks, we would travel between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Daniel graduated from high school in Moscow and enrolled in a university in St. Petersburg in 2010, and then we were finally able to start living together.
OLGA
Today, we live in St. Petersburg with my daughter, Christina. Daniel lives in the dorms but comes over all the time. Our children get along very well, they consider themselves brother and sister, and they constantly come to each other’s defense if one of them is arguing with us.
IRINA
Children need to grow up in a loving environment. It’s a shame that our children missed out on so much of it. We’d gone about our lives idiotically. But we are very happy that we were able to find the strength and take the chance to try again.
OLGA
You’re not always prepared for so much feeling. It’s overwhelming. Everyone dreams of love. Everyone dreams of meeting their soul mate. But when it comes, it can be hard to deal with such a huge emotion.
IRINA
Everything that makes it clear that we need to leave this country already happened a long time ago. It’s scary to walk down the street. The aggression is through the roof. On June 29, we went to an officially sanctioned gay pride event on the Field of Mars [a large park in the center of St. Petersburg] and ended up in a police transport van. We were pelted with rocks. One hit me in the stomach.
OLGA
Ira told me, “Don’t look down at your feet. Look into the sky. That way, you can see where the rocks are going.”
IRINA
What country are we living in and in what year, when priests bless half-drunk nationalists that pelt people with rocks while the police look on and then load us into police cars? People break bottles on us. We got cut and covered ourselves with our pride posters. When we got out of the police station and got on the subway, I had the clear sensation that we are aliens here.
OLGA
We need to protest and fight, but there is no sense that it will make anything better. At the same time, we know that we only have one life to live and we want to live it in peace, to walk down the street, be happy, and not be afraid that a rock is going to come flying at us.
—As told to Masha Charnay