"an idiot and a degenerate"

Today's bit of recovered history:

Alarmed by the passage of the new law against sodomy, Whyte wrote to Stalin directly, offering a case for why homosexuality should not be outlawed in a Communist society. In the letter, Whyte relies on a combination of Marxist-Leninist theory and scientific theories of “constitutional homosexuality”; he uses himself as an example of a homosexual who is also a good Communist. Stalin read Whyte’s letter, marked it with the words “an idiot and a degenerate,” and had it archived. When it was finally published by a Russian journal in 1993, it was with the sub-heading “Humor from the Secret Archives.”

You can read the whole letter over here. In a postcript, Mr Whyte notes that his membership of the All-Union Communist Party was on hold until its latest purge had been completed and that he had sent a copy of the letter to the comrades at OGPU. Nothing more seems to be known of him.

Comments

[dsquared]

Whatever Engels thinks, I would like to see a revival of this society:

I have no intention of defending the absurd theory that homosexuals belong to a breed of superhumans, that homosexuality and genius are synonyms, that homosexuals will, allegedly, someday take their revenge on society for their sufferings by uniting to conquer heterosexuals. "Theories" of this ilk were already condemned with considerable contempt (as they deserved to be) by Engels in his letter to Marx from June 22, 1869. In this letter, Engels writes about the "theory" advanced by a clique of German bourgeois homosexuals who had formed their own special organization. Engels characterizes this whole affair with the epithet "swinishness" (schweinerei).

[ajay]

Yes, because societies of embittered Germans intent on taking their revenge on society by conquering it are generally a laugh a minute. Do we really want to face once more the terrible threat of the gay Wehrmacht? http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2011/11/occupying-the-sugaytenland.html

[BenSix]

...perversion in the realm of normal sexual life is significantly more widespread in the capitalist countries than in the USSR...

Comrade Whyte could not have been aware of the bedroom antics of comrades Yezhov and Beria.

[dsquared]

Do we really want to face once more the terrible threat of the gay Wehrmacht?

well, every other attempt at a Keynesian stimulus has failed ...