Authorities claimed that homosexuality was the result of bourgeois Western and German fascist influence, and the official Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article which ended with the slogan: “Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear!”
From the beginning of 1934, gay men began to be arrested in large numbers in major Russian cities and sent to the gulags. One prisoner, Valery Klimov, wrote about the treatment gay detainees received:
“there were about 10 occasions when gays were murdered before my eyes. One was beaten to death in a prison in Sverdlovsk. There were 100 men in our cell; three or four raped him every day and then chucked him under the bunks. It was bestial, a nightmare. Once 10 of them raped him and then jumped on his head. I nearly went mad there; my hair turned grey. That’s how people lose their sanity; many never recover even after they leave.”
While lesbianism was never prohibited, and some masculine lesbians were valued in the military, many lesbians did still suffer persecution such as termination of studies or jobs, bullying, threats to remove custody of their children or being committed to psychiatric facilities.
The world fucking sucked back then. The UK chemically castrated Alan Turing later than this, resulting in his suicide. This practice continued into the 1960s.
Fuck me in the western world Gay Marriage didn’t get widely legalized until around 10-20 years ago. It wasn’t long before that that being gay was itself a crime. Homosexuality was decriminalized in Ireland for example in 1993. They were still convicting people of Homosexuality up until the end too with 32 convictions in 1990-1993. (Source)