Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the late imperial St. Petersburg's queer milieu, which has remained largely obscure, although significant scholarly attention has been paid to past and present efforts to explicitly regulate homosexuality in Russia. The chapter explains that the period covered in this book begins in 1879, two years before the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, whose reforms ushered in an era of unprecedented population growth and modernization, but whose death supported the preservation of substantial leeway in state surveillance and arbitrary administrative repression. The book opens with the introduction of bathhouse reforms in 1879–1881, which targeted one of the city's premier spaces for homosexual sex and socialization. It ends in 1914, when the city became thoroughly militarized before entering its tumultuous revolutionary phase, during which it ceased to be the nation's capital and lost its dominant economic and cultural role, along with much of its population. The chapter explains that the book focuses on the negotiation between queer men and municipal authorities of spatial patterns of movement and encounter in the historical city.