A Putin-Bashing Russian Drag Queen hits the New York Stage

Six years have passed since Victor Riffel, whose drag name is Svetlana Stoli, appeared on a Manhattan stage wrapped in a Russian flag pretending to watch President Vladimir Putin on television, the Russian leader who passed homophobic laws in 2013.

It was Stoli’s initial steps into political drag, a signature that made his name in New York’s drag industry shortly after coming from Russia, seeking asylum in the U.S.

Stoli continued to clean in the imaginary room, eventually breaking into singing Lily Allen’s “F***You,” targeting the lyrics at Putin. The audience erupted in applause. He then ripped off the Russian flag, exposing the LGBTQ rainbow flag underneath. He ended the skit with another song, Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

“I was trying to change the perspective of Americans about Russian politics,” said Stoli, who identifies as male, and is called Victor when he is not performing drag. “There may be social commentary revolving around that [LGTBQ rights in Russia] but it will not be as valid as me, a Russian person, presenting it.”

Stoli recounted that day vividly as if it had just happened, as he sat at his dinner table at home in Brooklyn, looking up at a picture portrait of himself on the wall. The picture shows him wearing a tight, glittery jumpsuit, a big black wig, and brown boots as he stood with one leg up pushed against an elevator—one of his very first photo sessions in his drag career. It was at a time when he was breaking his language barriers and building a name in a competitive drag world.

He sighed as he looked at that picture, claiming it as a daily reminder of where he was when he started and where he is now, eight years in the U.S.

Stoli usually takes the stage in different situational clothing. His wig and outfit selection mostly depends on the type of performances where he changes multiple times in one show to match with certain themes such as pride month where he would be wearing a lot of rainbow outfits or Christmas where he would be wearing mostly red.

When Stoli takes the stage, “there is a bundle of energy released while he has this slight mischievous look in him, you never know exactly what is going to happen next in a show,” said Tora Dress a manager at drag bar Lucky Chengs in midtown Manhattan where Stoli has been working as a drag queen for a year.

He took his drag name from the Russian Stolichnaya vodka brand, which was also a political statement. In 2013, many gay bars in North America refused to serve Stolichnayain protesting against the Russian government’s crackdown on the LGBTQ community. That was the year Putin enacted Russia’s anti-gay propaganda laws.

It was also during that time that Stoli, who is now 30 years old, started to apply for political asylum in the U.S. and debuted his drag career. He protested the LGBTQ crackdown in Russia by combining American pop culture and queer advocacy in his performances.

Stoli had arrived in the U.S. in 2011 on a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in musical theater at Tulane University in New Orleans. He came to realize that it would be impossible to live freely in his own skin after 2013, or to have a relationship with his boyfriend in his home country.

This is when he applied for political asylum since the 2013 crackdown, fleeing Russia’s conservative political system. While there is no recent data on the number of LGBTQ asylum seekers, Elvira Brodskaya an active member in multiple Russian-LGBTQ rights groups in the U.S. estimated that there are around 400-500 people from the Russian-speaking LGBTQ community residing in New York and a thousand across the country who sought or are seeking asylum since 2013.

A 2017 statistic released by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) showed that Russian citizens applying for asylum hit a 24-year high in 2017, increasing nearly 40%, 2,664 more applications from 2016.

“The asylum-seeking process used to only take around three or four months but since 2012, the lines of Russians seeking refuge grew longer and so getting an interview took longer,” said Gleb Vakhrushev, a volunteer at the Russian-Speaking American LGBT Group who applied for asylum himself in 2008.

Some people have been waiting for around four or five years for their interviews, he added. Among those applicants was Stoli who waited for two years for his interview and was granted asylum in 2015 in New York.

While the refugee process in the U.S. was stiff and became harder after the U.S. President Donald Trump administration took power, according to Vakhrushev, the Russian government stifled its laws against LGBTQ groups in 2013 through the anti-propaganda law.

Officially known as the law aimed at “protecting children from information promoting the denial of traditional family values”, the anti-gay propaganda law bans providing children with access to any information relevant to LGBTQ communities. It also applies to the press, radio, TV, and online platforms.

“Russia became more homophobic since I moved out in 2011, but I plan to visit my home again once I become an American citizen and become protected as a gay man under American citizenship,” Stoli said.

As per his resettlement process in the U.S., Stoli adjusted gradually to the American culture. His main struggle was financial. Asylum rules bar applicants from working during the legal process, so he lived on savings and tips incurred from drag shows at the time.

Opposing Putin’s homophobic politics became Stoli’s first act in drag. He now uses drag to troll several political characters and policies. Defying many early bar owners who rejected him because he could not speak fluent English, Stoli is now able to host an entire show by himself.

On Nov. 17 of this year, Stoli hosted and performed at the Secret Room bar in midtown Manhattan. At first, it didn’t seem to be a political act. Stoli dressed up as a rabbit in reference to vibrators- female sex toys- making an entire audience of women laugh as they gave an enthusiastic round of applause.

As the hostess, Stoli took the stage dressed in a short glittery dress, a short blonde wig, and heels high enough to make him stand tall among his drag peers.

Regardless of how simple his ideas of drag could sometimes be, he never forgets to add political comments in between that leave the audience to interpret their meaning.

“I need a white American man to collect my dollars[tips],” he said pointing to a tall male in the audience wearing a black knit shirt. “What is the matter?” Stoli joked. “This is not the first time a Russian person makes an American white man doing something!”

A week before his Nov.17 show, Stoli met with three Russian friends who were visiting New York.

One has a drag career in Saint Petersburg. Stoli quizzed his friends about the political mood back home. “Not a single person told me that Trump is smart, strong or funny,” he said. Stoli and his friends blame the U.S. media for promoting Trump and Putin’s narratives, and for portraying “my people of my country as idiots who support those jerks [Putin and Trump].”

His rebellious stance against the media portrayal of Russians is one of the many notes that compose his political character. A character of expressive nature which he claims rooted back to his childhood in Russia and often brought him “unpleasant” experiences at times.

It was back in middle school when Stoli, 13 at the time, was first verbally abused for being gay. The bullying, he said, did not affect him however. “Bullying made me stronger,” he said.

“I have always been flamboyant and expressive, and I’m coming from a country that is homophobic and the school bullying was coming from that,” he said. “I used to sometimes come to school and someone would run around the hall screaming “gay.”

Describing himself as “the life of the party” in middle school despite the anti-gay slurs being thrown around, Stoli added that he enjoyed his childhood and that his mother played a role in this joy.

He recounted how supportive she was of him regardless of the fact that she was “shocked” and “upset” for a short while when he came out to her before she fully accepted him. Stoli, who did not come out as gay at that time in middle school, used to cross-dress in his plays and his mother would help him before taking the stage, assisting in putting his costumes together.

Revisiting the sense of warmth and support he felt around his mother, Stoli went back to Russia for a family visit in 2012 but little did he know that this would be the time when he would be determined not to return to Russia after an attempted attack in Moscow.

Stoli, who was then 22, was almost attacked on Moscow’s Kurskaya subway at the time when he was visiting home during a break from his master’s program.

That day, Stoli was on the subway with his ex-boyfriend when suddenly a “drunk homophobic” passenger called him anti-gay insults. The man later stood up and attempted to attack him but was stopped by other passengers and his boyfriend.

It is not uncommon in Moscow and Petersburg to be abused for sexual orientation because of the patriarchy and the toxic masculinity that is growing across Russian society, according to Brodskaya who has been abused herself before coming to the U.S. Brodskaya claimed that she was discriminated against, humiliated and physically stalked.

“There was a shooting at our windows and night visits. Police did nothing and pretended that nothing was happening,” she added.

Despite the homophobic situation in his home country, Stoli is determined to continue staging political drag in a country that grants him more sexual freedom. He has an ultimate career goal of winning an Emmy award for his drag someday.

“Drag and comedy warm my lonely soul,” Stoli said putting his hand on his chest with a warm relaxed smile on his face.