The Diary of Pyotr Medvedev, a Bisexual Moscow Merchant, 1854–1863

Information about intimate life in the 19th-century Russian Empire was left primarily by nobles. The diary of Pyotr Vasilyevich Medvedev, a Moscow merchant of the third guild, is a rare exception. From 1854 to 1863, he recorded his thoughts on faith, marriage, the body, desire, and sexual experience – with both men and women. This is the voice of someone outside the elite: a former peasant, a small entrepreneur, a resident of Moscow during the era of the Great Reforms.

The diary is kept in the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow.

Who Was Pyotr Medvedev

Medvedev came from a Russian Orthodox peasant family, presumably from the village of Surmino in Dmitrov district, Moscow province. He received no formal education – he learned to read and write only enough to conduct business.

“Yesterday I sat at home all day, there is nothing to do in the city […] I wrote letters to friends, and made a heap of grammatical mistakes in them; it is a great pity that I did not study grammar in my youth – how useful it would be now, given my passion for writing.”

— April 6, 1854

In trade, he rose to the rank of a third-guild merchant – by the standards of the empire, a small entrepreneur. He lived in Moscow, first in the Semyonovskoye district, then in the Bely Gorod (White City) area. He spent his free time on walks, reading, and the theater. In his own words, he loved “reading books, listening to singing and music, the theater, and in summer – nature, travel, and walks.”

His diary reveals a deeply religious, impressionable, and emotionally unstable man. He was easily irritated and then struggled to recover for days.

“How I suffer from my character – in a moment I fly into a temper, and for a week I cannot return to a normal state.”

— July 29, 1855

At the same time, he considered himself kind and warm-hearted – and regretted being unable to show it.

Marriage and Family Conflict

Medvedev married at the age of 30, in 1851, to the daughter of a well-to-do Moscow merchant – Serafima Petrovna Lanina. It was a marriage of convenience. Medvedev was counting on a dowry and on strengthening his connections. Married life proved hard: neither love nor mutual understanding arose between them.

“Lord! I am a worm, not a man, and I have sinned greatly before Thee; it is bitter, so bitter. Why do I suffer so since I married? I see not a single happy day. Malice and quarrels happen daily in my household. Mother, sister, wife – it is simply hell. What am I to do, Lord!”

— March 23, 1854

An additional source of suffering was his wife’s infertility, while Medvedev himself wanted children:

“I am childless, and thus the line of my father will end, and the grief of the patriarch Abraham who grieved over his childlessness is known to me […] Bitter, sad. But may God’s will be done.”

— October 1, 1856

In his diary, he describes his wife with constant hostility – as a “stuffed fool” without education or taste, capricious and prone to quarrels. The conflicts reached physical violence. Medvedev beat his wife and immediately repented:

“I resolved, for certain insolent words, to punish my wife […] I gave her several slaps and blows, to which she answered with abuse and shouting, and even dared to strike me as well […] and more blows with a lestovka [leather prayer beads] and fists; the scene was most terrible […] Thinking it all over, my heart sank, and for more than an hour I wept bitterly.”

— March 23, 1854

Later he noted that he had given up violence:

“Sometimes, in hours of irritability, one even fought, by way of instruction; now the years have passed – I no longer lay a finger on that blockhead in human form.”

— March 29, 1861

After such episodes, he could take to his bed for days, unable to work or pray. The diary makes clear that intimate life within the marriage did not cease but became purely formal.

“The time has come […] not out of desire, not out of passion, but just as a matter of habit the act of copulation takes place.”

— January 31, 1859

Later Serafima began cheating on him. One episode led to a major scandal. Medvedev’s nephew, Alexander Biryukov, who lived with them, confessed to an affair with his wife:

“He sincerely and in every detail confessed the sin of repeated incest […] And I took all of this to heart, but I did not allow myself punishments and other outrageous scenes, abuse, or reproaches.”

— August 6, 1861

In the religious logic of the time, a sexual relationship between a wife and her husband’s relative could be perceived as a form of forbidden kinship through marriage – which is why Medvedev calls what happened “incest.” Two years later, he did beat the nephew with a stick in front of workers – drawing blood and leaving bruises – and then wept bitterly over it himself.

Medvedev did not dare divorce. Divorce in the Russia of that time required a church ruling and serious grounds. His wife had higher status and connections, and Medvedev himself, as a deeply religious man, was inclined to see his fate as punishment for his sins.

His idea of an ideal marriage was romantic: spouses should love each other and be close in age – partners rather than a boss and a subordinate.

Admiration for Men

Even before the diary contains entries about sexual contact with men, Medvedev records his attraction to male beauty – with a frankness unusual for his milieu and era.

One of the first diary entries, dated January 9, 1854, is a rapturous description of young men on Moscow’s streets:

“So often I meet in this white-stoned city young men of angelic countenance, eyes with a languishing look, with a sweet little mouth, lips that beg for a kiss, and a delicate down on their cheeks […] you look at such people and cannot admire enough – how well-proportioned everything is: arms, legs, teeth, and chest, and every form, gait, movement, and especially when unclothed, and this beauty of nature. The perfection of man always captivates me with its grace.”

— January 9, 1854

He would befriend handsome young men, and these acquaintances took on an emotional character for him. About meeting Alexander Ivanovich Smirnov, he wrote:

“I became briefly acquainted with Alexander Ivanovich Smirnov, that fine young man whom I have always admired; we spent the whole evening together, and it turned out he has a kind and open heart – it would be very pleasant to grow closer to him.”

— May 31, 1854

A week later, at his sister-in-law’s wedding, they again spent the whole evening together: “Once again I was with Alexander Ivanovich Smirnov; we spent the evening pleasantly, talking openly with one another.” Smirnov shared his view of the “inequality of marriage” – for Medvedev, this confirmed their closeness.

He also took pleasure in Easter kisses. About the custom of kissing in the Easter greeting, he wrote:

“It is well established in Holy Rus’ to kiss when exchanging Easter greetings; there is thought in it, and pleasure, and unity, everything is there.”

— April 11, 1854

And in an entry of March 24, 1858, he described kissing “according to custom” with “A. G. Gusarev and S. A. Mozhukhin, handsome young men whom I dearly love,” after which they drank tea in a tavern.

By 1861 the entries had become more candid. Medvedev confessed that youth “completely enchants” him:

“Youth completely enchants me; it is a marvelous thing – handsome, merry, nimble, and behaves properly, yet lives with the heedlessness of youth.”

— March 4, 1861

And three months later:

“Young men terribly disturb me by their bearing, their deftness; and by their freshness, beauty, and youth they bring me to utter disappointment in myself.”

— June 7, 1861

Bathing became an aesthetic experience for him:

“What a delight bathing is, what freshness, young company, and the pleasure of seeing a person in all of nature’s beauty – every form, every movement – simply a delight. One’s imagination returns to the sculptural times of Greece. Here would be models for statues; when we admire beauty, grace, and form in marble and on canvas – then what must it be to admire, in the flesh, a fine young man in all his beauty and freshness, with muscles in motion, with the living color of the body.”

— June 8, 1861

In one entry, Medvedev linked his city strolls to this feeling:

“At Yegorov’s I make new acquaintances […] I admire the young men and am carried away by the long-gone past, and they show affinity toward me.”

— June 17, 1859

This attraction to the male body and male beauty was a constant backdrop of Medvedev’s life – and over time it passed into sexual practice.

Homosexual Relations

Three years into his difficult marriage, Medvedev, in his own words, had “resolved to act according to his desires and inclinations” and to “give free rein to his passions.” In an entry of July 2, 1854, he was already describing a nighttime adventure with a prostitute on Trubnoy Boulevard – and there, looking back, explained what had happened:

“In my youth, my poetic disposition and Platonic love found no sympathy […] and when everything began to die out – love and poetry alike – passions began to rage in me.”

— July 2, 1854

From that point on, he entered into liaisons with both women and men – most often while drunk, in taverns or on the street.

He rarely resorted to paid sex with women. He did not take a mistress – for religious reasons. In his Orthodox moral scale, a relationship with a mistress was a grave sin of adultery. Sex with his wife during a fast, masturbation, sex with a prostitute, or same-sex contact – all of these he considered sins of a lesser order.

Episodes with men appear especially frequently in the diary from 1861 onward. Medvedev candidly described both his desires and the circumstances of each encounter.

One of his regular partners was Alexander Petrovich Zamkov – a man from the same merchant and petty-bourgeois milieu whom Medvedev met at festivities and in taverns. Medvedev called him “a passionate hunter of carnal pleasure” – just as he called himself:

“I ran into Alexander Petrovich Zamkov; we agreed to sit a while in the rooms at Pechkin’s tavern. We know what that ‘a while’ means! […] we drank vodka, talked, and afterward – in the rooms, onanism, and in the baths, kulism [from Latin culus – ‘ass’] […] We had not seen each other for a long time […] but whenever we meet, we always do something; we are both passionate hunters of carnal pleasure.”

— November 15, 1861

With Zamkov, Medvedev also practiced what he called “double malakia” – his term for mutual masturbation. Medvedev felt not only physical but emotional attraction toward him:

“I have a strong heartfelt attraction to Sasha. He is of fine appearance and character, and a kind soul. I often daydream, losing myself in thoughts of him […] and with him I am ready for anything.”

— March 4, 1861

The morning after the meeting with Zamkov at Pechkin’s tavern, Medvedev wrote:

“Pain in the head, pain in the limbs, pain in the heart too, and pain in the conscience; truly, what vileness.”

— November 16, 1861

But he immediately added his customary explanation:

“And the whole cause is my unhappy marriage; had I found what I had hoped for and had my married life been more loving, this would never have happened and I would have been the best of men.”

— November 16, 1861

Among Medvedev’s possible partners was also the Armenian Ivan Moiseyevich Dalmazov – a twenty-five-year-old native of the town of Gori, living in Moscow and studying music and languages. On November 8, 1861, Medvedev dropped in on his room at the Voronezh podvorie (a lodging courtyard), where the setting impressed him: “Books, expensive paintings, furniture, flowers, two pianos.” Dalmazov treated him to vodka, played the piano – and then:

“The vodka did its work; mutual onanism began to stir in our thoughts, we played, tussled, and nothing more.”

— November 8, 1861

Medvedev also entered into intimate relations with friends. At the end of May 1861, after a stroll and drinks with Kozma (Kuzma) Finogenovich Sidorov – a married friend from his own circle:

“Kuzma got carried away and drew me into the bedrooms […] Strangely, how to explain it?”

— May 29, 1861

Medvedev noted that Kozma was a married man with a “pretty young wife” – and that Kozma himself had initiated the contact.

After a quarrel with his wife on the Feast of the Ascension, Medvedev went with his friend Sinitsyn to Ostankino. In the diary he described a mounting desire:

“In me there formed a desire to drink and give myself to debauchery; with strong passions there came an anxious desire to have a woman or a man for onanism, kulism, whatever you like […] the habit of lust and shameful debauchery reigned in me.”

— June 1, 1861

In the Ostankino gardens, classical sculptures aroused him:

“Apollo Belvedere, in all his sculptural beauty, standing on the hill, and the caryatids with bare shoulders, and the voluptuous figure of the Rape of Proserpina […] all were examined in detail, which stirred my ardent blood all the more.”

— June 1, 1861

Sinitsyn at first refused “sensual pleasure” and suggested looking for “camellias” – prostitutes (the word alludes to the image of the courtesan from “The Lady of the Camellias,” widespread in 19th-century European culture). They found no prostitutes. Medvedev wrote that in his desperation he even “prayed” to the devil – and yet:

“Suddenly a mad thought struck the drunken head of my companion […] he cried out ‘Let us f— each other’ […] without any urging or desire on my part […] senselessly, insensibly, we fell upon the ground and for a long time tried in vain, by means of mutual onanism, to produce sensual pleasure, but without success.”

— June 1, 1861

The next morning, “dirty, all covered in mud and nausea,” Medvedev wrote a bitter self-accusation:

“So I am a fine goose. At my age, in my position, to do such filthy things – and to unwittingly drag others, by the force of lustful talk, into onanism.”

— June 1, 1861

By Medvedev’s own sense, his behavior also influenced those around him: people who had never before participated in such practices began to propose them of their own accord.

Cab Drivers and the 18-Year-Old “Favorite”

A constant feature of Medvedev’s sexual life was casual contact with young cab drivers. He himself described it as a habit:

“For some time a passion has taken hold in me to choose younger cab drivers, with whom I joke on the way, and try to take roundabout advantage of mutual onanism, which almost always succeeds with the help of half a ruble or 30 kopecks, and there have even been those who agree just for the pleasure of it. Up to five times that month – however strong this ruinous passion is among us.”

— November 2, 1861

One of his regular partners was an 18-year-old youth who lived in Medvedev’s house – likely a hired servant. Medvedev stresses that the young man was already “developed” – meaning not a child – but still sees a moral problem in the situation:

“But why am I training a young boy (though, indeed, a developed one)? […] Three more times, even in the previous apartment, I had with him a lustful encounter of mutual onanism; he is a little timid, but it seems he too enjoys it.”

— August 1, 1861

In the diary, this youth is called a “favorite.” A week later, after a ball in the Sokolniki Grove, Medvedev described the night:

“Electrified by lustful imaginings – it is midnight, and I cannot sleep; where to find satisfaction. My wife has gone to her father’s; poor as she is, she is at least my own, not bought, and buying is not in my character or habit. […] Cheap and close at hand – manual onanism? Dry and not warm. But the devil or his wiles push my thoughts and desire toward the 18-year-old favorite […] And so, for the sixth time – mutual onanism.”

— August 8, 1861

In this passage, the logic of choice is telling: his wife is away, he does not want to pay for a prostitute, self-gratification does not satisfy him – and so he turns to the youth living in his house. Medvedev makes no attempt to hide that the initiative was his.

Repentance and the Inner Cycle

Every episode was followed by repentance. Medvedev did not justify his homosexual practices – he continued to consider them sinful. But not sin of the highest order: in his personal hierarchy, adultery (taking a mistress) was worse.

“Of course, the sensation is pleasant, sweet, passionate – but it is all momentary. What it will be like to pay afterward – for all of this, in life through one’s deeds and health, and after death through hell and judgment […] Sinful against God; shameful before people; painful to the conscience before oneself.”

— August 8, 1861

The next morning he described his ritual of repentance:

“Rising in the morning, I felt sorry for the good disposition of my soul […] in a solitary room, alone, with no one at home, I read in a prayerful posture […] the prayers for defilement and canons of repentance to the Lord and the Mother of God, breathing with tears of contrition.”

— August 9, 1861

Medvedev’s life became a repeating cycle: transgression – repentance – prayer – a new transgression. He was aware of this:

“However, I am utterly losing myself morally; a kind of hardening has seized me, and I very often, without purpose or intent, give myself over to the vilest vices. It is as though some foul feeling pursues me, something like despair […] I have become more an automaton than a man. I act so – without reason, will, or heart.”

— November 20, 1861

In the same entry – a formula that succinctly conveys the whole cycle:

“With a cab driver – onanism, and meanwhile […] afterward I went in to vespers. Fine goose that I am.”

— November 20, 1861

At times he managed not to give in. On November 5, 1861, after drinking with friends, he admitted in the diary:

“Whenever I have been drinking, I always intend onanism or something else. But, thanks be to God, I got up for matins, heard them and the early liturgy […] and afterward worked in the office, with my hands and my head, as I had not worked for a long time.”

— November 5, 1861

Characteristically, Medvedev was proud that he was “keeping himself from adultery” with women. When his married friends – Komarov and Bogdanov – went to mistresses and prostitutes, he watched and recorded it disapprovingly. On November 10, 1861, coming to Dalmazov’s room, Medvedev found Pyotr Bogdanov – a married acquaintance who by then already had a son – behind a screen “on a rendezvous” with a woman. Medvedev left:

“Conscious of moral strength in myself, because he was ashamed to show himself to me.”

— November 10, 1861

Vasily Komarov – a merchant from Medvedev’s circle, father of ten children – meanwhile was practically living with the Malchugin sisters (singers visited by Moscow merchants), spending money on wine and suppers. Of him Medvedev wrote: “Fine goose. He says, I love, I sin.”

On November 25, 1861, Medvedev found himself with Sidorov and his mistress at the Suzdal podvorie – a place that, in his words, “serves as a place of public cultivation in matters of sensual pleasure.” The entry ends briefly:

“Well, I really have sunk to first-rate nastiness.”

— November 25, 1861

Self-Explanation: An Unhappy Marriage as the Cause

Medvedev consistently explained his behavior by his unhappy marriage. For him this was not an excuse, but a sincere attempt to understand himself:

“Who would recognize me now among my former acquaintances – that youth, that faster, that virgin, that man of prayer, that modest and in every way exemplary young man. Who would recognize me? Ten years of loveless, discordant marriage – and I became an immoderate libertine and debauchee.”

— June 1, 1861

And further:

“Oh, I am wretched, and it is all – I am a victim of my foolish, reckless marriage. Were it not for this stuffed fool, my companion, I would long ago have been enjoying happiness, love, and a good place in society.”

— June 1, 1861

This logic recurs throughout the diary. Each episode – with Zamkov, with a cab driver, with the “favorite” – brings him back to the same conclusion: the marriage is to blame, not he himself. At the same time, Medvedev does not notice the contradiction: attraction to men appears in the diary earlier than complaints about “debauchery,” and is described as an independent feeling rather than a consequence of an unhappy marriage.

Political Views

Medvedev was an Orthodox monarchist and a Slavophile. He supported the Tsar’s authority, valued Orthodoxy, and believed Russia should develop on the basis of its own traditions. He criticized Peter the Great for cruelty:

“Now those were martyrs to their ideas – and Peter I was something, too. Such a degree of cruelty. One’s hair stands on end from the tortures and torments.”

— November 21, 1861

Medvedev despised the police. After dealing with them on a business matter, he wrote:

“These officials are living sharks. It is not that they seek justice – for money they are ready to do anything […] they trample conscience, shame, and the law daily, and yet they receive awards, ranks, and salaries from the government as well-intentioned guardians of order […] while they themselves are nothing but thieves and robbers.”

— January 9, 1859

On March 5, 1861, the Emancipation Manifesto abolishing serfdom was proclaimed. Medvedev described the event in detail. He learned about it by chance, having overslept the morning service – his cook told him that “a soldier had brought some sort of newspapers.” He could not read the document because of its convoluted legal language, but he broke into tears: “Tears streamed from my eyes and I only kept saying ‘Lord, glory to Thee.’” Unwashed, in his nightshirt, in galoshes without boots, he ran to the Church of the Epiphany.

Medvedev assessed the people’s reaction with sobriety: there was no elation; the legal language baffled everyone. Armed patrols in the taverns “took away the last part of the joy.” “Is it pleasant to express joy and merriment under bayonets?” he asked.

The Diary as a Source for the History of Sexuality

Medvedev’s diary is a rare source for the history of same-sex practices in a milieu that historians of sexuality know less well than others: among urban merchants and petty townspeople in the mid-19th century. Noble memoirs and court cases have been studied better; peasant sexual life has been described in part by ethnographers – but the commercial estate left very few testimonies about its intimate life.

At the same time, the diary shows that Medvedev was not an exception in his surroundings. His partners came from the same circle: Zamkov, his married friend Kozma Sidorov, Sinitsyn, the Armenian Dalmazov. Young cab drivers agreed for half a ruble or of their own accord. Medvedev was not drawing people into something unfamiliar to them – he was acting in a milieu where such practices were available and did not provoke horror, though they were condemned.

Alcohol played the role of a universal intermediary in these episodes. Nearly every sexual contact described in the diary began with drinking. Medvedev himself admitted: “Whenever I have been drinking, I always intend onanism or something else.” Vodka removed the inner prohibition and allowed him to move from “lustful tales” to action.

For the history of sexuality, the way Medvedev described his experience is also important. He did not use medical categories. In his diary there are no words like “sodomy” or “buggery” in the legal sense – only “onanism,” “kulism,” “malakia,” and “carnal pleasure.” This is the language of church repentance.

Finally, the diary lacks any notion of sexual identity. Medvedev did not call himself either a “sodomite” or any other word denoting a type of person. He described desires and acts, not belonging to a category. His attraction to men coexisted with attraction to women, and he did not see a contradiction in that – only sin. Such a view is characteristic of the era before the medicalization of sexuality, when same-sex practices had not yet turned into the sign of a separate “type of personality.”

A Life Between Sin and Freedom

In Medvedev’s diary, two orders collide: strict religious morality and a growing desire for personal freedom, at least within the bounds of private life. Medvedev keeps coming up against the same question: where does the right of society and the state to control a person end, and where does the domain of the personal begin.

By the end of the diary, Medvedev appears as a man who has lost on both sides – the religious and the sensual. He found neither peace in faith nor joy in pleasure. The last entry, from the summer of 1862, sounds weary:

“I have lived so many years, and what have I done for myself, for society, for my country? […] What have I lived? I vegetated. What have I done? I have been a burden to myself and to others – I lived, I suffered, and I imposed on others. […] But to live, to breathe in Thy world a while longer – that I still very much want, by Thy mercy. Have mercy on me.”

— July 16, 1862

Medvedev’s wife, Serafima, died on August 21, 1864. What became of Medvedev himself is unknown. The diary breaks off.

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