In 2003, we moved to Moscow. It’s a lot easier to be who I am in the capital. A year after I got to Moscow, I wrote to my mother. I really wanted to fix our relationship because when I was a kid, I had really faulted her for not divorcing my dad. I addressed all the gay stereotypes I could think of. I wrote that I’d felt the urge since I was a teen, that no one had “turned” me, that I hadn’t fallen in love with a girl who’d broken my heart, that you can’t cure it, that there haven’t been trustworthy studies determining the causes. With flawless logic, I gave her an exhaustive account. I sent the letter through the mail. Four weeks went by, but there was no reply. I called my grandmother and it turned out she didn’t know about the letter. My mother called me back five minutes later. She said that she hadn’t known what to say, but that she loved me. We both cried. Since then, we’ve been close. It’s a great joy to be accepted for who you are.
Two years ago, I lost a friend. He was found in his apartment stabbed to death. He was gay. Do you know how things like this happen? Gay men often meet each other online. There are gangs of people who come to gay men’s houses disguised as gay men, rob them, and then kill them. And the relatives don’t tell anyone because no one wants these stories circulating about them. That friend and I had a female friend in common, Sasha. She told me to be careful and stop meeting men online. I ignored her advice.
He was very good looking, and his profile on the website was pretty interesting. He came over to my house, we hung out, and then slept together. On his way out, he asked me to borrow some movies, promising to return them in a few days. He came back a week later. I let him in and went to the kitchen, where I was cooking something. Meanwhile, he let another guy in. They came up from behind me and hit me over the head with a bottle, but I didn’t fall over or pass out. I turned around and instantly understood that I might be facing death. One of them was holding a knife and the broken bottle, which he immediately shoved up against my throat, and the other one was also holding a knife. The first one was screaming that his brother was a faggot and that people like me were responsible for this, which is why I should be killed.
It’s unclear why it was my fault that someone else was gay. I tried to explain that, but it quickly became clear that there was no talking them out of it. So I just asked them not to kill me. I was bleeding hard and I thought that I was going to pass out. I begged them not to kill me. You can’t imagine how ashamed I am of myself, although they are the ones who broke into my house and almost killed me. They took everything, even my phone. They committed the crime and I’m the one who’s ashamed.
I was shivering, but I couldn’t call an ambulance. I would have had to explain what happened. I couldn’t tell anyone at work. I convinced my friends to call my coworkers and tell them that I had been attacked at a bus stop. I couldn’t go to the police, either. It would have been easy enough to find my attackers, but I didn’t have the strength to explain myself to the men in uniform. Now, I blame myself for my weakness. Those two really could kill someone if no one stops them.
When I was 13, my life was hard because I was alone. Now I’m 39, and society is still trying to put me in my place. I really hate being told how to live my life. I hate being accused of things I haven’t done. I hate being torn away from those dear to me. I can’t tolerate being persecuted.
I can stand up and say that this ends here.
A version of this interview was originally published in Afisha magazine Issue 339 (February 25, 2013). It was updated by the author and reproduced here by permission of Afisha
RUSLAN SAVOLAYNEN
“I’ve become embarrassed to tell people that I’m gay.”
With his flawless five-o’clock shadow, an intricate haircut and perm, and perfect skin, 27-year-old Ruslan Savolaynen goes to a cosmetologist to smooth out even the hint of a wrinkle. His look is completed by a Catholic cross on a considerable gold chain, Italian shoes, and an immaculately pressed suit. All of this, combined with his delicate build, makes Ruslan look like he’s from the Mediterranean rather than Russia. He would blend right into a crowd in Spain, where he is thinking of moving. However, just a few years ago he felt like he fit in perfectly well not only in Russia but also in Nashi, the Kremlin’s official youth movement.
My father is Palestinian and my mother is a Russian Finn. I spent a lot of my childhood in Jordan, where my father’s family lived. When I was ten, his grandmother came from Saudi Arabia. She was the matriarch of a large clan, and she decided that she was going to take me in and raise me. That very night, my mother and I packed our things and went back to Russia. I haven’t seen my father since. Before we moved, I didn’t even know the word gay. In Russia, I saw The Next Best Thing with Madonna on TV3 and understood that all sorts of things were possible.
My peers in Russia didn’t like me much. I was always smaller than everyone. Until tenth grade, I just couldn’t fit in; I only had one friend. These kids from the neighboring school once pushed me under a moving car. I got off with a broken leg. I’ve dealt with a lot of violence that’s given me serious health problems. After one such attack, my vision got catastrophically bad. I’ve ended up in the hospital multiple times; I’ve had six concussions. The last time it was at the XXXX Club off Zvenigorodskaya. My friends and I, one of whom was a woman, were beaten up really badly.
I had my first romantic experience in eleventh grade. I was in Nashi and we would go to Moscow for various events on a regular basis. Being a member of Nashi had a major effect on me since it put me in a new milieu where nobody knew me. I could open up and show who I was. I made friends and started acting differently. On one of our trips to Moscow, everyone went to the countryside while I ran off and went to Three Monkeys [a gay club], although I was afraid, because I’d never been to a club before. At a certain point I realize that I’ve been sitting at a little table with a young man and we’ve been talking about life for two hours. When it was almost morning, we went outside. He walked me to the station, and that was the first time I’d ever felt this feeling that I’d never felt before. The kids from the group were upset at me for ditching them. I cried a lot when I got back to St. Petersburg and I got a job so I could travel to Moscow. After that, I went to see him every week. He introduced me to his mother, which was shocking to me. Everything was fine until one day, he disappeared. He turned up again six months later, but now he was a completely different person.
I was in Nashi for three years, up until my sophomore year of college. There were different factions, a lot of opportunities for social activism, on top of demonstrations against one thing or another. I was responsible for organizing these events: rounding up members, holding promotional events at schools. Everyone knew about me. That’s what I had decided in eleventh grade: that from then on, I’d have a new life where I wouldn’t hide anything from anyone. For the most part, people were OK with it. There were those who weren’t, but, as a rule, they were always outnumbered. In the summer we would go to Lake Seliger, where they take tens of thousands of kids from all around Russia. I had long hair, I wore little shirts. You could spot me from a mile away. It so happened that I was the only visibly out gay man in a crowd of several thousand kids. Some people would even come to gawk at me.
There were tough guys who’d sidle up to me to try to change my mind, telling me I was wrong to live the way I did. But the kids I knew would chase them away. Yakemenko [Vasily Yakemenko, the leader of Nashi] once said something along the lines of what Putin has said, that he wasn’t against homosexuality but that the birth rate was dropping in our country. (I saw Putin and Medvedev, too, and shook their hands.) So there weren’t any really bad incidents there. I wasn’t the only gay kid, but the other ones were in deep hiding. The last time I went to Seliger, there were two boys there who were a couple and openly living together. A small community formed among the lesbians and one of my classmates even came out there.