Refugee Chronicles: excerpt from the diary with an introduction

Abstract

The following text is an excerpt from The Refugee Chronicles, a fictional diary written by Evgeny Shtorn, poet and activist, from his experience of seeking asylum. Shtorn had to flee Russia due to the government’s hostile policies toward both queer sexualities and political dissent right after he was interviewed by the Russian secret police FSB in 2018. The run for life and liberty brought him to the utmost end of Western Europe, Ireland. Shtorn’s experience of claiming asylum made him question clear cut boundaries between the West and the East along the lines of guarantees and protections of human rights. He also noted how queer sexuality plays a specific role in the asylum application process as a protected and even desired ground for granting refugee status. His experience of a lengthy stay in the dormitory for asylum seekers converted into a book-length, semi-fictional chronicle was published by an independent press, Poryadok Slov, in St. Petersburg, Russia. The book is full of queries, ambiguities, and doubts that surround the issues of queerness, migration, and the politics of human rights. The following chapter is introduced with a short pre-word by a scholar of sexuality studies Alexander Kondakov who offers a brief contextualization and conceptualization of The Refugee Chronicles.

Keywords:

• LGBTQ
• Russia
• refugee
• asylum seeking process
• Ireland

Acknowledgements

The excerpt from The Refugee Chronicles is translated into English from Russian by Bela Shayevich. Readers will note that people are referred to as their nationality. This is because in the confines of a refugee camp, nationality becomes a person’s identity, even though the people there are fleeing their country of origin. This should not be read as what the author of The Chronicles believes, but rather as a description of how refugee life actually played out in the confines of a dormitory in Ireland. The authors would like thank journal editors and reviewers for their immensely helpful suggestions and changes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The full book (Shtorn, 2020a) is published in Russian with the support of Heinrich Boell Stiftung which was designated an “undesirable organisation” in Russia. This made the book unavailable on the Russian territory.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Evgeny Shtorn

Evgeny Shtorn is a PhD candidate in the University of Helsinki. He is a writer, activist, and researcher. Shtorn was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. He grew up there when Kazakhstan became independent. At the age of 18 in the early 2000s, Shtorn moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, for his studies. There he got gradually engaged with various civil society organizations from a social research center to LGBT groups and to historical memory organizations. Due to this work, he was forced to leave Russia in 2018. In 2019, he was granted international protection in the Republic of Ireland. Evgeny’s writing has been published in academic journals, anthologies, and new media outlets in Russia, Spain, Germany, and Ireland. As an activist, he has been involved in human rights and LGBT advocacy for almost two decades. He is a co-founder of Queer Diaspora Ireland, an initiative that supports LGBT refugees. In 2020, in recognition of his efforts Shtorn was awarded the GALAs Person of the Year by the National LGBT Federation of Ireland (NXF).

Alexander Sasha Kondakov

Alexander Sasha Kondakov, PhD, is an assistant professor at the School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Ireland. His international experience includes holding positions in the University of Helsinki’s major research center in Russian and Eurasian studies, Aleksanteri Institute, as well as research jobs at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. Alexander studied sociology of law at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Spain. He pioneered queer theory classes in Russia at the European University at St. Petersburg. Kondakov’s work is primarily focused on law and sexuality studies, more specifically on queer criminology. His latest research on violence against LGBTQ people in Russia has gotten attention in the international and Russian media. Kondakov published a book Violent Affections which traces new forms of neo-disciplinary power and how it plays out in violent acts against LGBTQ people. The book is open access.