ABSTRACT
Seen from the perspective of scholars of both comparative politics and Eastern Europe, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) politics and gay rights are particularly instructive as lenses for considering the region’s development since the epochal changes of 1989. The following is a list of just some of the broader questions that this issue touches on. How liberal are post-communist democracies really? Is robust rights activism possible in weak civil societies? How much influence do transnational institutions such as the European Union, which has come to be seen as a promoter of gay rights, really wield? How much like the rest of Europe has post-communist Europe become? What is the role of religion in post-communist politics? We could go on, but the point is clear: the question of LGBT rights brings each of these questions, which have purchase across a range of social and political issues in the region’s development since the fall of communism, into sharp focus. One might also point out, of course, that problems of majority-minority relations have historically very closely linked with the region’s democratic development – most dramatically in the interwar period. 1 In this chapter, I seek not to answer these questions but to provide a brief orientation as to how the scholarship on LGBT politics in post-communist Europe has evolved over the course of grappling with them.
