ABSTRACT
Interaction between Soviet gay men and lesbians had to be secretive and often anonymous in character. The ties of fraternity between homosexuals in the former Soviet Union were simply not strong enough to support—or even to inspire—the development of social institutions around their common category membership. Soviet gay men and lesbians did experience a sense of fraternity with one another when they met or crossed paths, but the social-legal environment in which they lived prevented them from forming stronger and broader group-level bonds. Community is a state of existence that includes the aspects of fraternity but also goes further to embrace the group and group-identity to such an extent that individual members are motivated to create group-level institutions for organizing their interactions and to purposefully create social roles and guidelines for their joint behavior.
