Observing and Performing Male Same-Sex Desire: Appropriation of Public Space in Latvia during the Second World War and Late Stalinism (1940–1953)

Abstract

The article focuses on male same-sex subculture in public space in Riga during the Second World War and late Stalinism. It analyses the performance of same-sex desire through which the public space was appropriated for male same-sex purposes. The article argues that during the period under discussion, same-sex loving men, who socialised in Riga, perceived themselves as recognisable and positive agents in urban life, thus creating the vibrant male same-sex subculture of the public sex culture. The key source of the article is a diary, whose author both observed his contemporaries performing samesex desire in public space and practiced it himself.