Importing hate. The Russian roots of Georgia's homophobia

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A controversial icon

The LGBT history of many countries features a kind of symbolic figure. For the United Kingdom, it could be Oscar Wilde. For the United States, it might be Rock Hudson or Ellen DeGeneres. In Georgia, the icon is not an individual person, but a type: the kinto, who today forms the logo of Tbilisi Pride.

In Georgian culture, a kinto is a small-time merchant, a barrel organ musician, a joker — a trickster by nature. “What's a kinto?” Tiflisskiy Listok wrote in 1894 (Issue 62). The answer: “A chemical compound of laziness, cheek, and cunning — the creation of the Tiflis street.” Also in 1894 (Issue 289), Listok published kinto poems with lines that translated as follows: “He’s crazy about all women / And loves their kind: / Cooks, wenches — anyone / Makes Kinto lose his mind.” So how come the kinto became a Georgian LGBT icon?

Over the past two decades, researchers have found many songs and other folklore hinting at kintos’ homosexuality. Eastern studies scholar Oleg Panfilov translated a kinto song that begins with the line: “So what's my sweet ass for if I don't offer it to my brother?” Mikhail Grigoryan quotes another kinto song: “And my wife, Annette, is a girl at night — but not anymore in the morning.” Sounds very ambiguous (although it could simply mean that the kinto's wife is much less loving in the morning).

In another song, which survives in a possibly clandestine recording from the 1950s, the kinto is supposedly singing about two admirers, Muhammad and Abdullah, saying he cannot choose between them: “I only have one heart for two, and I love you both,” the hero pleads before continuing — “One promised me a handkerchief as a token of love, and the other threatened to kill himself.”

The origin of kintos themselves is vague. Most likely, the kinto culture originated among the Armenians of Tbilisi, who, in turn, borrowed it from Persia. The kinto's attire — wide satin pants, a flat cap, and a red shawl tucked behind his belt — also references Persian culture.

Panfilov notes the long-standing Persian tradition of bacha dancers (bacha-bazi) — boys or young men who entertained other men. Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin wrote about them in his book, “From Travels in Central Asia”:

“The extremely degraded position of women is the main cause of the abnormal phenomenon that the locals call ‘batcha.’ Literally translated, ‘batcha’ means boy; but since these boys perform some other strange and, as I have said, not quite appropriate function, the word ‘batcha’ has yet another meaning that is embarrassing to explain.”

Nevertheless, Vereshchagin continues his account, describing a ‘batcha’ who was disguised as a girl and received what was essentially love confessions from his male audience.

Kinto songs were sometimes addressed to a boy, meaning the lyrical hero could be the admirer rather than the young handsome performer. At the same time, it appears that if kintos did have sex with men, it was in a passive role.

This is not uncommon in the street culture of the past: societies had not yet established the dichotomy of hetero- and homosexuality, and casual sex between two men did not necessarily mean both of them identified as gay. Typically, the active partner maintained their masculinity, as he fulfilled a “masculine” role. For passive partners, it was more complicated, and they were usually the ones facing hostility — or at least coldness from society. Kintos were already marginalized, so they had little to lose.

In contrast to Panfilov and some other experts, Anna Efimova, a researcher of the history of sexuality in the Caucasus, does not consider the kinto to be a queer figure:

“Studies on this topic are plagued by the wrong approach to analyzing historical sources. Circumstantial indicators could lead one to believe that the kintos, as a class of small-time merchants positioned quite low in the social hierarchy and working in the so-called Asian part of Tbilisi, may have been gay.”

The truth is probably more complicated. Men who spent most of their time outdoors, leading a nomadic life, could engage in sexual activity with other men. And even if only a few kintos were gay, it was enough to form a certain folklore trope. However, there is other, stronger evidence illustrating Georgia's history surrounding homosexual practices.

Eastern subtleties

Over the centuries of Georgian history, periods of autonomy alternated with periods of dependence on Persia, Mongolia, and Turkey. Although homosexuality was frowned upon in all of these cultures, sex between men was not uncommon. Ancient Georgians may have looked down on homosexuality as a “foreign vice,” and the tradition of blaming outsiders for its existence goes back at least as far as the 12th century, when David IV drove Turkic armies out of Georgia. In an effort to consolidate power, he accused his opponents of sodomy. Further on, the Council of Ruiz-Urbnis, which David convened, condemned sodomy as the “most abominable” sin.

As in Russia, homosexual relations in Georgia were censured only by the church, not by the secular government. Still, the law took homo- and bisexuality into account, but did not penalize — as though perceiving it as part of the norm. For example, if a man cheated on his wife with another man, she was allowed to demand a divorce.

In 1801, the Russian Empire annexed Georgia, and for several decades the country was governed by a 1649 Russian legal code that did not pay special attention to sodomy. It was not until Nicholas I's 1832 legislative reform outlawed homosexuality in the Russian empire, making it punishable by exile to Siberia and deprivation of all rights, that Georgian gays began to face prosecution.

Even then the authorities took into account the idea that, in the words of legal scholar Pavel Lyublinsky, “pederasty is an ‘everyday’ phenomenon” in the East.” As Lyublinsky points out, local courts were ordered to impose the minimum penalty for sodomy in the 1830s, expelling offenders to a different province for five years rather than depriving them of all rights and exiling them to Siberia. Such a sentence likely served as a means of protecting the offender from the blood feud of his lover's relatives, and the convict could even be paid an allowance if he was too poor to relocate.

To the delight of the Georgians — or perhaps at their behest — researchers of the Imperial era connected the spread of homosexuality with Islam and urban culture. In his study “On Sexual Depravity and Unnatural Sexual Intercourse in the Native Population of the Caucasus” (1906), Polish scholar Ernest Erikson argued that “the larger the city and the more Muslims it has, the more frequent are the trials for pederasty.” He also wrote that the homosexual presence in Tbilisi was most visible in Tatar neighborhoods: in shops, bazaars, and bathhouses.

The decline of the Russian Empire did see a surge in sodomy convictions in the Caucasus, particularly in Georgia. Historian Dan Healey, author of “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia,” has estimated that before World War I, half of the convictions were in the Tiflis province, mostly against Caucasians rather than ethnic Slavs. Caucasians accounted for 67-78% of the sodomy convictions in 1911-1913.

The imbalance hardly stemmed from a surge of local gay subculture. While the Russian authorities certainly looked down upon even non-violent same-sex relations, they found that the Caucasus was characterized by a higher rate of homosexual violence. Anna Efimova attributes the increase in the number of convictions to Orientalism, among other factors:

“The reason for homosexuality in the peoples who lived on the borders of the empire was thought to be lack of enlightenment and the influence of Persia, the Ottoman Empire, and Islam. In essence, gender-related and sexual norms and customs that existed in the Ottoman Empire appeared barbaric to Russians. The Orientalist discourse was based on the perception that gender roles in the Caucasus and the East in general were somewhat mixed. And it should be noted that, indeed, the East had its own gender order.”

Efimova also believes that, firstly, Russia saw itself as the only standard of sexual norms, and that it therefore bore the responsibility to re-educate other nations. Secondly, race and class played a major role: court cases show that the defendants in sodomy trials were mostly lower-class individuals or representatives of ethnic minorities — for example, merchants, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis. The church also played a role. Georgian life was marked by opposition between Christianity and Islam, and some Christian clergymen proclaimed that homosexuality was peculiar to Muslims.

In general, whereas modern-day conservatives in Russia and Georgia tend to make the claim that homosexuality was introduced by the West, historically it was largely seen as a product of Eastern influence. Since the empire saw its main mission in the Caucasus as planting its own “civilized” values, the authorities could be more consistent in monitoring sexual relations in the region and tended to explain any “vices” by the influence of a foreign culture. Nevertheless, not only Muslims engaged in same-sex relationships — whether in Tbilisi or in the wider Caucasus region.

In fact, Georgia’s homosexual subculture was neither as active nor as visible as that of St. Petersburg. But it still existed.

Baths and gardens: the geography of same-sex dates

In Tbilisi, as almost everywhere in the world, gay men cruised for sex in busy streets and parks. Among popular haunts were Ortachala Gardens and the city's first public garden — Alexander Garden, currently 9th of April Park. It is conveniently located near the capital’s Rustaveli Avenue (historically, Golovinsky Avenue) and other central streets. Toward the end of the 19th century, the garden became notorious for its kintos and sex workers. As Tiflissky Listok wrote in 1893 (Issue 188), “footmen came there to offer their dubious services.”

As in many countries, including the U.S. and Russia, public bathhouses were another center of attraction for Georgia's gays. Word of Georgian baths even reached foreign researchers. Like Erikson, Austrian scholar Bernhard Stern, in his “Geschichte der öffentlichen Sittlichkeit in Russland” (“A History of Public Morals in Russia”, 1907), attributes the presence of “comfort boys” to Eastern customs. He also notes that gay sex was so widespread in Batumi and Tbilisi that even female prostitutes “first offer sodomite, not natural coitus.”

Erikson adds:

“As for bath attendants, even in Tiflis, as in Baku and other Caucasian cities, it is far from uncommon [for them] to offer their passive services to active pederasts whom they have known for years. These bath attendants are mostly Persians and Tatars; they keep their clandestine profession in great secrecy.”

The Georgian tradition of public baths, especially in Tbilisi, was perhaps even stronger than Russian. The sulfur baths in the bath quarter of Tiflis have been a popular meeting place for casual sex since the 19th century, through the Soviet era, and even in modern times.

In these establishments, men could look more or less openly at other visitors, and if one of them understood the meaning of a special glance, the two could strike up a conversation and then find some privacy, whether at the baths or elsewhere. The very atmosphere of the baths was a turn-on for many.

In his novel “Flight over Madatov Island and Back” (translated into Russian), Aki Morchiladze describes the customs of kintos and amateur cruisers in pre-revolutionary Georgia. The novel features scenes in bathhouses, on the streets, and in gardens, including the botanical garden. Morchiladze wrote his novel in the 1990s, relying on the stories of older people who still remembered the life of early 20th-century Georgia.

New regime, old ways

Although the Bolsheviks decriminalized sodomy in several Soviet republics when they came to power, in Georgia, homosexuality remained an offense. Both consensual and forced homosexual intercourse were prohibited. In the 1922 criminal code of Soviet Georgia, “perverted satisfaction of sexual desire in the form of pederasty” by adult men was punishable by one year of imprisonment. Georgian and Azerbaijani society was seen as being markedly homosocial, so the new government in the imperial center decided to keep the tsarist law in this region.

When the USSR re-criminalized sodomy in 1934, little changed in Georgia. However, the exclusion of sex from the public discourse and the perception of homosexuality as an element of prison culture had a strong impact on Georgians as well.

Subsequently, several Soviet lawyers called for the abolition of punishment for consensual homosexual relations, but anti-sodomy articles were never removed from the criminal codes. In the 1960 Criminal Code of Soviet Georgia, sodomy with adults was punishable by up to five years of exile or imprisonment, and by up to eight years for sodomy with minors.

Sodomy charges were often used for political reasons, as in the case of prominent Tbilisi-born filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. His criticism of state censorship and defense of dissidents led to his imprisonment for five years in 1974 for “seducing men” and “organizing a den of debauchery.” While Parajanov’s bisexuality was known to the KGB, the haste and inconsistencies that characterized his trial point to political motives. Giants of cinema, from Soviet luminaries like director Andrei Tarkovsky and actor Yuri Nikulin to Italian counterparts Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, as well as Parajanov's compatriot, Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli, stood up for the filmmaker. He was released after four years of torment in a hard labor camp.

Importantly, Parajanov’s arrest and trial occurred in Soviet Ukraine, not Georgia. Some Georgians claim that homosexuality was not punished in their country, citing the case of Vakhtang Chabukiani, a famous ballet dancer whose sexuality was common knowledge. Indeed, Chabukiani was never tried or imprisoned, although he, too, experienced pressure from the authorities. Ordinary gay men were less fortunate, but little is known about their fates due to the lack of credible statistics.

“The intelligentsia of Soviet Georgia was characterized by a rather rigid distribution of gender roles,” Anna Efimova explains. “Same-sex relationships were out of the question. Anything that did not fit into this framework was immediately rejected as something that had nothing to do with the intelligentsia.”

In his article “An Unremarkable Sexual Dissident in the Georgian Soviet Republic”, Artur Klench tells the story of a doctor named Shota, who belonged to the intelligentsia but hid his orientation. To avoid drawing attention to his person, Shota never joined the Communist Party and had to turn down several promotions. As a teenager, he associated homosexuality with prison. As a medical student in 1960s Tbilisi, he read that it was a disease. These revelations took a toll on his self-esteem, but most of all, like many other gay men, Shota was afraid of rumors. His acquaintance, a doctor and teacher, accepted an important position but had to quit after a year: he cruised public restrooms and feared someone might recognize him.

No matter how much the state tried to eliminate the homosexual subculture, it never disappeared completely. Even the geography did not change much: gay men continued to come to parks, bathhouses, and public restrooms. In the USSR, a cruising location was called “pleshka” — literally translating as “bald spot,” it was probably a reference to the tradition of meeting near monuments to Vladimir Lenin, who was visibly bald. Cruising locations attracted — and still attract — people of different professions, ages, and even sexual preferences. A man who identifies as straight could come to the meeting place in search of at least some kind of partner, including a male partner.

Foreigners also came. In addition to the sulfur baths, Tbilisi’s known “pleshkas” included Akhvlediani (Perovskaya) and Sharden streets, Baratashvili and Queen Tamar bridges, the zoo, Pushkin Square, the area near the Sports Palace, and the aforementioned Alexander Garden. Even a tourist could quickly find such locations by paying attention to the graffiti in public toilets or observing groups of men who gathered in the park or garden at certain times. Cruising locations exist to this day, but visitors are less numerous because of online dating.

Visiting parks and squares and meeting others offered gay men a sense of community, however small. In her study “Homosexuality in the Urban Culture of Tbilisi,” Shorena Gabunia, former editor of the online LGBT magazine Identoba, quotes a regular of the city's cruising locations:

“We used to actively exchange news, discuss our personal and common problems, organize events. It was a place where you could come any day, confident that you would meet an understanding person, and if you were lucky, you could get more than just understanding.”

This was what the cruising culture looked like before the revolution, and it miraculously persevered through all political changes and legal restrictions. Another trait that has survived since at least the 19th century is the use of women's names as nicknames, especially by cruisers who did not want to give their real names. This practice has been observed in other countries' queer cultures for centuries.

However, not everyone appreciated the atmosphere — not to mention the risk of running into a police informant. Many gay men were more comfortable in bathhouses. Some even left their addresses or phone numbers right on the walls for meetings, apparently without fear of harassment. It was also easier to find a long-term partner in the bathhouse because outdoor cruising locations attracted mostly those looking for casual sex.

Cruisers were often married. Some considered themselves bisexual, while others had been forced to marry to escape family pressure or to ward off suspicion. The double life affected men greatly, robbing them of strong relationships with other men. For most, love life was forever limited to casual liaisons. The gay community was also plagued by internal homophobia. Since society forced them to maintain a facade of masculinity, these men could take offense if someone called them homosexuals. In their minds, gay men were effeminate, feeble, and prissy.

While Georgian gays worked hard to conceal their sexuality, jokes about Georgians nevertheless abounded in Soviet folklore, showing them as shallow but extremely affectionate. In these jokes, Georgians were mostly attracted to women, but some showed the inhabitants of Georgia at least as bisexual, if not gay.

Georgians’ sexual prowess in general was attributed to their southern temperament, but their supposed openness to relationships with people of either sex probably goes back to the 19th century. Ideas about the “prevalence” of homosexuality in the Caucasus remained in the popular subconscious, reinforced by the image of the kinto, which entered Soviet popular culture with Khanuma (1926) and other films about Georgia.

Popular jokes paint the Georgian man very much like a kinto: a sly, sneaky bon vivant who is always up for flirting. Except that he rarely trades: after all, kintos disappeared from the streets of Tbilisi precisely because the Soviet authorities considered them crooks and, like all private businessmen, detrimental to socialist society.

Kintos disappeared, jokes about Georgians gradually lost popularity, and Georgian gays, along with their country, entered a new era of independence.

A recent history of homosexuality

Georgia’s recent history of homosexuality begins in the 21st century. In 2000, the country repealed its article against sodomy and, 12 years later, even introduced a ban on discrimination against LGBT people — a rarity in the post-Soviet space.

In independent Georgia, gay men no longer faced imprisonment, and like lesbians, they began actively seeking partners on the streets, in bars, and, when the option became available, online. In 2008, Georgia fully legalized gender transition. LGBTQ+ bars opened, occasional queer films began to be released, and LGBTQ+ community organizations, such as Inclusive Foundation, emerged.

Cyberspace became a lifesaver for many queer people. They no longer had to look for kindred spirits at cruising locations or gather at the monument to Parajanov in Tbilisi. First, there were themed forums, then groups and chat rooms on social media. For a while, the Inclusive Foundation ran dedicated websites gay.ge and lesbi.ge, complementing a wide range of online resources that still exist.

At the same time, as Shorena Gabunia noted, in the 2000s many Georgian gays preferred to look for partners on Russia’s Rambler search portal, which had quite a few Georgians in the dating section who were ready to talk on Skype. Meanwhile, those who had seen the heyday of cruising complained that finding a partner in the street had become much more difficult.

While Georgia’s queer community was exploring its newfound freedom, the country divided into two political camps when it came to LGBTQ+ issues. The first camp favors rapprochement with the EU, which implies, among other things, queer empowerment. The second has chosen a conservative path centered on Orthodox Christian values and friendship with Moscow. Unsurprisingly, the second course leaves no place for LGBTQ+ rights.

The Georgian Orthodox Church has gained great influence since the country obtained independence. Yet in effect, it has actually maintained the tradition of Soviet puritanism, adding an element of national identity, which many Georgians do in fact hold dear. For centuries, the church has condemned homosexuality, even if it had no power to enforce secular punishments. As a result, many modern-day believers also see homosexuality not only as a sin but as a foreign — Western — vice.

In the public space, such sentiments surfaced on the eve of the 2003 election, when some conservatives went so far as to call for drowning homosexuals. Their presence intensified in the early 2010s with the coming to power of the Georgian Dream party, founded by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire Russian businessman of Georgian origin.

On the one hand, Ivanishvili’s party was publicly in favor of “introducing Western values” and joining the EU, while on the other hand, it tried to maintain good relations with Russia. In recent years, its policies have been much more reminiscent of Moscow’s, with the passage of foreign influence transparency laws and a ban on surrogacy for foreigners, as well as “family values” bills that discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community. If passed, these bills would outlaw gender transition and “LGBT propaganda,” among other things.

Even before these laws were considered, Georgian queer migration began, says Papuna Lomouri, manager of the country's largest LGBTQ+ organization. “They leave for European countries, mainly Belgium, because many can no longer live here.”

Social and family pressures have hardly decreased since Soviet times, and anti-LGBTQ+ forces have also taken to using the tools of civil society. The conservative agenda is strongly supported by the Alt-Info movement, created in 2019 to “counter liberal censorship.” The movement targets specifically the LGBTQ+ community: in 2021, Alt-Info members protested against Pride in Tbilisi, and in 2023 they staged a pogrom at the capital's Pride Festival. Most recently, in early August 2024, Alt-Info launched an attack on the Nudy Tales drag show. Even the secrecy of the event’s location did not help: the crowd gathered at the entrance, shouting homophobic and nationalist slogans, threw bottles, and tried to attack the venue staff. Police intervened, and the event was canceled. But the organizers continued to receive threats.

Queer events in Tbilisi have suffered from right-wing actions before. In 2012, on Anti-Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia Day (May 17), activists marched in support of LGBTQ+ people. Their rally was soon interrupted by protesters from Christian organizations, and police only intervened after a scuffle broke out. The same thing happened a year later. In 2014, Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia established a new holiday: the Day of Sanctity of Family and Respect for Parents, to be celebrated precisely on May 17.

Simply put, Georgian LGBTQ+ activists still face remarkably high levels of hostility. A 2022 international poll showed that 91.4% of Georgians find homosexuality unacceptable. That figure hasn't changed since 2009, when 91.5% of Georgia residents were revealed to share anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments.

and fight for their rights. There is still hope that discriminatory laws will not be passed. Public opinion is harder to deal with, but it too can change for the better.

For now, Georgia's LGBTQ+ community is in limbo, cautiously awaiting the fall, when legislative discussions resume and elections are held. The history of the country, including its queer history, is being written right now.

“We understand that Georgian Dream won the first battle because it approved the laws [on first reading],” Lomouri says. “If Georgian Dream stays in power, it doesn't mean that all LGBTQ+ organizations will close down, but everyone sees the October elections as a turning point. And if Georgian Dream wins, many queers will leave the country. But for now, everyone realizes that the main battle is still ahead, and there is still hope.”