1920s saw developments in serious Soviet research on sexuality in general, sometimes in support of the progressive idea of homosexuality as a natural part of human sexuality, such as the work of Dr. Batkis prior to 1928. Such delegations and research were sent and authorised and supported by the People's Commissariat for Health under Commissar Semashko. However, in the late 1920s and early 1930s Soviet policy and attitudes on homosexuality and homosexual rights changed, alongside wider social backlashes against homosexual rights in general in the USSR. Along with increased repression of political dissidents and non-Russian nationalities under Stalin, LGBT themes and issues faced increasing official government censorship and a uniformly harsher policy across the entire Soviet Union. Homosexuality was officially labelled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s (specifically over a period from 1927 to 1930). In this climate, Commissar Semashko reduced his support for homosexual rights and Dr. Batkis and other sexual researchers repudiated (in 1928) their own earlier scientific reports of homosexuality as a natural human sexuality. This followed earlier Soviet tendencies in sections of the medical and health communities, even in the early 1920s, to classify homosexuality, if not as a crime, then as an example of mental or physical illness. Earlier examples of this type of hardening Soviet attitude towards homosexuality include the 1923 report from the People's Commissariat for Health entitled The Sexual Life of Contemporary Youth, authored by Izrail Gel'man, which stated: "Science has now established, with precision that excludes all doubt, that homosexuality is not ill will or crime but sickness. The world of a female or male homosexual is perverted, it is alien to the normal sexual attraction that exists in a normal person". The official stance from the late 1920s could be summarised in an article of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1930 written by medical expert Sereisky (based on a report written in the 1920s): Soviet legislation does not recognise so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest —Sereisky, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1930, p. 593 LGBT history under Stalin: 1933–1953 In 1933, the Soviet government under Stalin recriminalised sex between men. On 7 March 1934, Article 121 was added to the criminal code for the entire Soviet Union that expressly prohibited only male