until 1999. Soviet Article 121 was often commonly used to extend prison sentences and to control dissidents. Among those imprisoned were the well-known film director Sergei Paradjanov and the poet Gennady Trifonov. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's administration in the late 1980s, the first gay organization came into being. The Moscow Gay & Lesbian Alliance was headed by Yevgeniya Debryanskaya and Roman Kalinin, who became the editor of the first officially registered gay newspaper, Tema. The fall of the USSR accelerated the progress of the gay movement in Russia. Gay publications and plays appeared. In 1993, a new Russian Criminal Code was signed, without Article 121. Men who had been imprisoned began to be released. Muscovite Rus' and Tsardom of Russia The Austrian royal councilor Sigismund von Herberstein described in his report Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii (Notes on Muscovite Affairs) his observations during his travels in Moscow in 1517 and 1526. He stated that homosexuality was prevalent among all social classes. The English poet George Turberville who visited Moscow in 1568 when Ivan IV ruled Russia during a bloody phase, was not shocked by the carnage, but about the open homosexuality of the Russian peasants. Adam Olearius also reported that homosexuality among men existed on all levels of society and was not treated as a crime. There are also reports of homosexual relationships between women. Russian Empire Prior to Tsarist policy, homosexuality and cross-dressing were punished by religious authorities or militias. Ivan the Terrible was accused of being homosexual in an attempt to discredit him. When Tsar False Dmitry I was overthrown, his broken body was dragged through the streets by his genitals alongside his reputed male lover. In 1716, Tsar Peter the Great enacted a ban on male homosexuality in the armed forces. The prohibition on sodomy was part of a larger reform movement designed to modernize Russia and efforts to extend a similar ban to the civilian population were rejected until 1835. In 1832, Tsar Nicholas I added Article 995 which outlawed muzhelozhstvo. While this could have created a ban on all forms of private adult voluntary homosexual behavior, the courts tended to limit its interpretation to anal sex between men, thus making private acts of oral sex between consenting men legal. The law did not explicitly address female homosexuality or cross-dressing, although both behaviors were considered to be equally immoral and may have been punished under other laws (similar to