‘So-Called Gender Freedoms’: What are the Origins of Russian Transphobia?

While the Russian parliament has framed gender transition as something dangerous, newfangled and absurd, transgender healthcare has a long — if understudied — history in Russia. Russian transgender and intersex people have been legally able to change their gender since 1926, with the earliest evidence of gender transition in the USSR dating back to 1929 in Kazan. In 1972, a Latvian surgeon named Viktors Kalnbērzs carried out the first successful female-to-male sex-change operation. "Ironically, this transphobic legislation has its roots in the very place the Duma sought to reject: the West, while there’s even a Soviet legacy, if limited, of transgender healthcare," experts say.