Oh, to explain
this story one must go one year back in time, when Nicolay Aleksejew first has announced his plans to perform the 2006 "Gay Parade" in Moscow. It seems that he made the mistake of starting his project without getting an "OK" from a small group of LGBT activists,publishers and businessmen in Moscow who previously regarded themselves as the only rightfull "leaders of the LGBT community in Russia". This group consists in first line out of the following persons:
- Ed Mishin, editor and owner of gay.ru and the printed magazine "Kwir",
- Ruslan Zujew, editor of gayclub.ru,
- Igor Petrov, also from gayclub.ru,
- Olga Suvorova, lesbian activist from lesbi.ru.
These four persons actively agitated against the Parade planned by Mr Alexejev, namely by issuing two manifestos (with various other semi-activists) and made everything possible to discreditate the idea of the parade and its initiator. In the 10 - 11 monthes preceeding the parade, numerous critical to vicious articles were published both on
gayclub.ru and on
gay.ru, mentioning that Mr Alexejev was receiving "grants" from mysterious western sources and sugesting he were a paid provocator. These personal insults did not remain unanswered, as Mr Alexejes's own portal
Gayrussia.ru has published several severe statements on the assumed enemies in turn. Step by step, the confrontation escalated so much that the critics were apparently not permitted to the press-conferences of Mr Alexejev etc., so I suppose that the contrahents do not speak to each other anymore.
The few commercial activities are controlled, as far as I can judge, primarily by Ed Mishin (print magazine + a shop for books, videos, lubricants) and few other individuals who are, of course, not interested in excessive PR. At least some of them must have good connections to the police, because the only one time when the popular and overpriced club "3 monkeys" was picketed by homophobes, the protesters were quickly collected by the riot police, a luck uncommon in Moscow for gay business. By the way, "3 monkeys" was the club which cancelled the party of MR Alexejev's festival just 2 h before opening - a perfect sabotage.
From all the actors, only Olga Suvorova appears suitable for any constructive activities in the future - onlike others, she did not participate in the smear rumors about the "grants" but restricted herself on criticism based on different analysis of necessary activities. She is apparently also the integrative person behind the recent
attempt to achieve a unification of russian LGBT activists. Another integrative person might be Vladimir Averin, but he belongs rather to the pro-parade faction so I don't know whether he will be invited by Ms Suvorova to join the unification efforts.
Ed Mishin seems to restict himself to commercial activities nowadays; whereas Ruslan Zujew and his staff (gayclub.ru) show a remarkable degree of profanity and unprofessionalism so far, so it is doubtfull they can be regarded as serios political acters in the near future. We shall hope that more russian gays will decide to get involved in LGBT politics and push the agenda forwards.