Closed. The Life of Homosexuals in the USSR

A KGB lieutenant who turned in his lovers to the secret police. An enthusiastic doctor who stubbornly tried to "cure" homosexuality. A Scottish communist who defended homosexuals before Stalin. The Soviet "patient zero" who contracted HIV in Tanzania. The stories of all these people, who lived in the USSR, remained in the shadows for a long time - historian Rustam Alexander sheds light on what other researchers have sidestepped.

The book "Closed" tells the story of the Soviet Union through the lives of people who officially did not exist in the socialist state: homosexuals, forced to suppress themselves or live underground due to the article against "male sex" risking imprisonment due to denunciation. From simple workers to stars of the stage - they were all locked in a hostile environment, but even in such unbearable conditions, they sought ways to survive and find happiness.