Queer Encounters with Communist Power : Non-Heterosexual Lives and the State in Czechoslovakia, 1948-1989

Vera Sokolová

In the repressive context of East European Communist regimes, how did young girls and boys come to realize their sexuality? What did they do with that self-awareness--and later on, as adults, what strategies did they employ in their dealings with the regime? Queer Encounters with Communist Power answers these questions as it interweaves a queer oral history project with meticulous, original research into the discourse on homosexuality and transsexuality in Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. Contrary to expectations, the book reveals that despite the Czechoslovak Communist regime's brutality in many areas of life, the state did not carry out a hateful or seditious campaign against homosexual and non-heterosexual people. Rather, the official state sexology offices functioned from the late 1970s onward as essentially the first gay clubs in socialist Czechoslovakia.