This volume redefines the history of queer life in Central and Eastern Europe outside the USSR by uncovering how individuals and communities navigated repression, surveillance, and marginalization from the post-World War II era to early post-socialism.


Moving beyond legal and political narratives, Queer Urban Underworlds in European State Socialism reveals the hidden networks, informal spaces, and subcultures that shaped queer survival and resistance. Through archival research, oral histories, and underground media analysis, it challenges Cold War binaries of repression and liberation, demonstrating how queer agency actively shaped spaces of sociability, self-expression, and defiance within socialist societies.