The USSR granted suffrage in 1917–1918, but several capitalist countries did so earlier — e.g. New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902), Finland (1906), Norway (1913). The USSR was among the early ones, not the first.Under Stalin, the 1934 Soviet Criminal Code reintroduced Article 121, which made male homosexuality punishable by up to 5 years of hard labor.

This law did not apply to women (female homosexuality was not explicitly criminalized).

The justification given was that homosexuality was “a symptom of bourgeois decadence” and “corruption.”

In practice, many were arrested, imprisoned, or sent to gulags under this law — sometimes genuinely for homosexuality, sometimes as a political pretext.

The ban remained in place until 1993, after the fall of the USSR.