‘Bullied, beaten up, killed’: Armenia’s drag queens risk it all for the stage
Kal BERJIKIAN
Renée BERTINI
Hundreds of people gathered at a club in the heart of the Armenian capital Yerevan for an underground drag show in mid-June.
Due to security concerns, details about the Pride Month event spread through word of mouth or private Instagram stories.
Previous bars have closed their doors because of repeated police raids, and a queer club was firebombed in 2012.
“Drag is more political in Armenia because, honestly, we have to be,” said Leo, one of the main organizers of the event.
“It’s all about survival, and it’s all just about living – surviving, but also thriving.”
Despite fears of violence, this underground scene has been growing in recent years – fuelled, in part, by Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
‘It scared me back into the closet’
Armenia often ranks poorly
The former Soviet country is listed near the bottom of ILGA-Europe’s rainbow map, which ranks European countries annually based on their legal protections for queer communities.
ILGA-Europe ranked Armenia 45th this year on its list of 49 countries – just four spots above Russia in last place. Nevertheless, there has been steady improvement since the Ukraine war began in 2022, when Armenia tied with Russia in 47th place.
In 2023, Adriana, a 28-year-old trans woman, was brutally murdered at her home, and her Yerevan apartment was set on fire.
In 2018, a mob of more than 30 people attacked nine members of the LGBTQ community in the village of Shurnukh in southeastern Armenia. Some of the people attacked were activists and employees of Pink Armenia, the country’s largest LGBTQ organization.
The DIY club, a queer venue, was firebombed in 2012 after its owner Armine Oganezova was interviewed at a Pride parade in Turkey. She fled the country after being harassed and threatened, eventually moving to Sweden.
News of the attack spread far and wide.
“It scared me back into the closet … real fucking bad,” said Leo, one of the main forces behind the country’s drag scene.
“’Cause when you hear about … a queer place being bombed, attacked, then you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I’m never coming out.’ ‘Cause then they will kill me.”
Despite this fear, the drag scene is thriving in Yerevan.
The 28-year-old was first introduced to drag 10 years ago, when a friend working at Pink Armenia told him the organization was putting on an event.
After that first show, “something switched in me”, he said.
“I felt like, well, this is what I’m supposed to do,” saying all the abuse he had witnessed since his youth, including members of the community “being bullied, beaten up, killed … was for this”.
‘I left Russia against my will’
Attitudes in Armenia have shifted since then – in part due to the arrival of tens of thousands of Russians.
The number of Russians who have left their country since the start of the war in Ukraine is difficult to gauge. A 2024 Stanford University publication estimated it at between 500,000 and 1 million, calling it Russia’s “largest wave of emigration since 1917”, during World War I.
Many were fleeing Moscow’s partial military mobilization and Western economic sanctions, while others were political or queer refugees who left the country after Russia introduced more draconian anti-LGBTQ laws.
Tens of thousands of them eventually moved to Armenia, according to Aleksandr Gevorkyan, a professor of economics at St John’s University in the United States. But he added that the exact number is hard to verify.
While Yerevan’s figures put the number at around 100,000, Gevorkyan said many Russians subsequently left for other countries while between 35,000 and 55,000 stayed in Armenia.
Yerevan is part of the Eurasian Economic Union, and Russians can move to Armenia without visas – making it an easy landing for underprivileged people trying to flee the country.
Molly was one of them. The 26-year-old was a drag queen in Russia before the war in Ukraine.
She left the country after Russia banned the non-existent “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist” organization, resulting in the bar where she performed being raided by police.
“We knew in about a week that something would happen, because raids had also begun in all other cities,” she said.
“We hired additional security,
Molly was hosting an event when she noticed a man with a machine gun in the crowd. Because she was on stage at the time, the men raiding the event were able to tackle and detain her.
Some of the people arrested are still facing legal proceedings more than two years later.
Molly was initially released. But she fled Russia after her lawyer told her that she could still face charges.
According to Leo, the arrival of Russians like Molly has made it more socially acceptable to be visibly queer in public.
Many of the new arrivals embrace styles that Armenians once associated with the queer community, like brightly colored hair or men wearing clothing that “maybe looks like it’s from [the] female section”.
Leo said Armenians saw this, and it “clicked” that such things don’t necessarily mean someone is gay. However, tolerance still has its limits.
“It’s okay if you’re Russian, but if you are Armenian and you’re doing it, you’re bringing shame to your people,” he said.
According to Mamikon Hovsepyan, the former head of Pink Armenia, some of the Russian arrivals tried to create their own LGBTQ clubs and events.
But the community complained about the lack of security, he said.
“The door was just open. Sometimes people are getting attacked when visiting those locations.”
‘People are losing their housing’
Portal – one of the bars where Leo regularly performed – was created after the start of the war in Ukraine, opening its doors in October 2023 before shutting down just eight months later.
Despite shifts in attitude, the bar was not safe from police violence, according to its owner, Mari Muradyan, 31. The venue’s neighbors called the police after they saw a drag queen visiting from Georgia standing outside the club wearing high heels.
“They thought that strange people were coming [to the venue],” she said. “Guys in skirts are strange in Armenia.”
“For them, it is all perversion, you know. At some point, they just did everything to close the club.”
The police raided the club and arrested two men, who were later released. While drag is not illegal in Armenia, the country’s police often raid bars hosting the events under the pretext of looking for drugs, according to both Muradyan and Leo.
Muradyan eventually closed the bar after the police told her to do so. She has since fled the country, moving to the Netherlands to be with her wife.
The demographic shift in Armenia has been a double-edged sword, according to Hovsepyan.
While he agreed with Leo that attitudes have shifted, he stressed that the economic situation remains challenging, notably with regard to rising prices.
“People are losing their housing because it’s getting expensive,” Hovsepyan said.
Landlords prefer to rent to Russians – who have more ready cash – instead of locals, while prices have risen by three or four times.
“Rents saw sharp increases in the second half of 2022 and early 2023,” Gevorkyan said, when the first Russian wave arrived after the start of the war. Prices have since dropped slightly.
One consequence of the increased cost of living, according to Leo, is that young people can no longer afford to move out of their homes, causing a spike in domestic violence.
Pink Armenia recorded 22 domestic violence cases in 2023, up from just 10 in 2022. That number rose to 38 in 2024.
The NGO says the actual figure is likely much higher, as many cases are never reported.
Some young people are being outed due to the increasing visibility of the LGBTQ community, leading some parents to “recognize” certain behaviors in their kids, said Hasmik Petrosyan, a lawyer and human rights activist who works with Pink Armenia.
‘People love us’
Despite the challenges, the marked shift in what is socially acceptable has created an environment for drag to thrive in Yerevan.
“We are truly, I think, being looked at in the community as stars, you know … we are respected, and we demand respect now,” said Leo.
“People love us,” he said. Some 250 people come to the drag balls on the “worst night”, and sometimes the crowd can surpass 450.
This was clear at an underground Pride event in Yerevan on June 13. Crowds danced on the stage during intermission at a venue covered with Pride flags.
But the fear of the police was still present despite how much things have changed, and halfway through the event, the performers cancelled the show in fear that the authorities would show up after a drag queen fainted.
Outside the venue, a group of men harassed attendees once they realized the nature of the event. One drag queen was followed home by a man carrying a knife but was unharmed, Leo said.
Despite all of this, Leo was hopeful about the future of the drag scene in Armenia. “If anything”, he said, “I think this is going to make us even stronger.”
“I think now … we have a much better understanding of how much this is needed, because you can’t be scared and stay at home and in the closet all the time.”
“You also have to be brave, and you have to live your truth.”
