Anna Efimova

Research Topic

Russian Imperial Policies and Homosexual Desire: Legal, Scholarly, and Popular Discourses in the Borderlands (1801–1920s)

Supervisor: Zbigniew Wojnowski and Tamar Koplatadze

Project description: My project examines the regulation of homosexuality in the borderland regions of Transcaucasia (the South Caucasus) during Russian imperial and early Soviet expansion in 1801-1920s. Specifically, I attempt to explain how and why Caucasian nationalities came to account for 80% of male sodomy convicts in the Russian empire by 1913. I am also working on the question of why the Bolsheviks criminalised male sodomy in Transcaucasian republics in the early 1920s while decriminalising male same-sex relations elsewhere in the USSR in 1922. My research at Oxford is generously supported by the Hill Foundation.

Before Oxford, I earned an MA in Gender Studies from the Central European University in Vienna (2023) and an international MA in Central and East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, jointly awarded by the University of Glasgow, the University of Tartu in Estonia, and Jagiellonian University in Poland (2021). I also hold a BA (2016) and MA (2019) in Journalism from Lomonosov Moscow State University. 

PUBLICATIONS 

“Homosexuality, Nationalism, and Imperial Anxiety in the Early 20th Century Caucasus”. The Peripheral Histories, BASEES, 2024. 

(Russian editor) “Насилие и молчание. Красная армия в Венгрии во Второй Мировой войне” (Violence and Silence. The Red Army in Hungary in World War II) by Andrea Peto. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society Vol. 272, Ibidem, 2023.

In 2025, I produced, wrote, and hosted aт award-nominated podcast on the history of female anti-war activism in Russia.