‘ Welcome to Chechnya ’
Tethered solidarity and the imperial politics of queer persecution
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21641454 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tatsiana Shchurko (0000-0001-8844-7189, University of South Florida, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2026-07-09 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Identities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1070-289X • E-ISSN: 1547-3384 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1070289x.2026.2700886 |
| OpenAlex | W7167802149 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
The persecution of LGBTQ people in Chechnya has become a prominent symbol of global queer solidarity through the documentary Welcome to Chechnya. This article argues that the film not only documents anti-LGBTQ violence but also shapes the political terms through which that violence is understood. Drawing on queer feminist and anti-imperialist scholarship, I develop the concept of ‘tethered solidarity’ to describe forms of solidarity that remain attached to liberal regimes of visibility, recognition, and rescue while leaving broader structures of power largely unexamined. Through a critical reading of the documentary, I examine how it constructs legible victims, privileges humanitarian rescue, and foregrounds spectacular violence while marginalizing the colonial histories, militarized gender regimes, and geopolitical conditions that shape contemporary Chechnya. I argue that queer persecution cannot be understood apart from Russian colonialism, authoritarian state-building, and racialized border regimes, and call for an anti-imperialistl approach to queer solidarity that extends beyond rescue towards structural transformation
Authoritarianism · Geopolitics · Persecution · Politics · Power (physics) · Queer · Solidarity · Gender, Security, and Conflict · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Soviet and Russian History
Solidarity of Strangers
Solidarity
European Others
Russia's Orient
Welcome to Chechnya, directed by David France and produced by Alice Henty, David France, Askold Kurov, and Joy A. Tomchin, 2020, 107 minutes. Russian and Chechen with English subtitles. Webpage
Queer Lovers and Hateful Others
Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands
Feminism without Borders
‘Traditional values’ and the narrative of gay rights as modernity
Prevrashenie (Transformation) of Bacha
Chechnya
Russia's Post-Communist Transformation
Imperial solidarity”
The LGBT specter in Russia
The Russian revolution and the decriminalisation of homosexuality
From Orientalism to Homonationalism
Between “ethnocide” and “genocide”
An Examination of Russian Imperialism
The Saint of Christopher Street
Queer of colour formations and translocal spaces in Europe
The politics of gender and the Soviet paradox
Spectacular Rhetorics
"The Unbearable Whiteness of the Polish Plumber and the Hungarian Peacock Dance around "Race
The EU, Human Rights, and the Russo-Chechen Conflict
You Cannot Oppress Those Who Do Not Exist
The "Real" Chechen Man
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |