Mother Tongue (Родная речь) is a small exhibition at Pushkin House
in Bloomsbury Square, London, mounted in collaboration with GRAD. It consists of panels and photographs by
Yevgeniy Fiks, a Moscow-born artist living in New York, exploring Russian gay
argot. This is a secret language dating
to Soviet times, as can be seen by some of the expressions it contains. The organisers liken it to Polari, a similar
underground language in England, though Polari has a longer tradition and was spoken
by a broader group than homosexuals.
Such
language helps to establish a group identity, particularly important when under
attack by the authorities, and provides an element of secrecy when one’s sexual
preferences could be severely punished. It
is significant that use of Polari began to decline following its ‘outing’ by
Julian and Sandy, accelerating after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in
1967, whereas the Russian equivalent lasted much longer. That a form of it exists today is an index of
continuing adversity for gay people there.
Remarkably,
homosexuality was only decriminalised in Russia in 1993. The exhibition information notes how for a
couple of decades after legalisation there was slow but steady progress in the
acceptance of gay rights, but the introduction of the Gay Propaganda Law in
2013 ushered in a new period of difficulty as the political and social climate
once again became overtly homophobic.
Sadly
the slang thus still performs a function, though since the fall of the Soviet
Union it has undergone a process of internationalisation, with Anglo-American imports
diluting the Soviet-era lexicon. Fiks’s
project is therefore one of nostalgic excavation, showing the language as it
was, though in practice it has moved on.
The
exhibition falls into three parts: a video, not operational during my visit;
sheets of text listing words and phrases; and photographs of cruising spots,
‘pleshki’. The text element includes translations,
highlighting the wit and subversiveness of the coinages. They are presented in an academic manner, as
if in a classroom, a blackboard reinforcing the feeling of being in a learning
environment.
An
initial panel is devoted to grammatical constructions, presenting the slang as
bearing the same linguistic significance as any other Russian vocabulary. Terms are displayed alphabetically, the
initial letter in the sort of oversized style that might be used to help small
children remember them. Underneath each
in much smaller letters is a Russian slang expression beginning with that
letter, plus English translation, and what it means, one sheet per letter of
the alphabet (i.e. 33 sheets, 33 expressions).
Some
terms are amusing (a ‘reader’ is someone who sits in a lavatory cubicle waiting
for a partner) but there is bite here as well.
An ‘agentess’ is a gay person who betrays his or her people and, my
favourite, sexual minorities are ‘Mensheviks’.
The unsnappy in English ‘kgboonchik’ is a ‘young provocateur who is sent
to entrap gays.’ Weirdly an orgasm is a
‘grandfather clock’, while a penis is a ‘voice’. Tellingly, homosexuality itself translates as
‘storminess’ and meeting places are ‘zoos’.
A gay person who hides his or her sexual orientation is an
‘undergrounder’, suggesting an affinity to others at odds with the regime.
The
photographs are labelled with the dates between which the sites were used,
often going back to the 1920s – the end dates presumably signifying when the
authorities cracked down and meeting places moved elsewhere. Many were also tourist spots, and without the
extra information that they were employed as rendezvous points they would
simply be record shots of parks, public buildings and lavatories. No people are visible and Fiks chose overcast
days, rendering them rather forlorn-looking places. He must have talked to individuals with
knowledge of these sites’ gay histories because it was unlikely to have been
included in guidebooks, but the weakness of the exhibition is that it omits the
first-hand experiences of those who used the language, and frequented the
locations.
It
is a small show occupying one large room, and really does not justify a long
trip, but if in the vicinity of Pushkin House it is well worth taking a
look. The exhibition is free, with only
donations requested, and runs from 9 March to 11 May. An accompanying bilingual book by Fiks, with
the same name as the exhibition, is available.
