Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow (149 - 1533), Russian Prince

b. 25 March, 1479

d.  3  Dec, 1533 

r. 1505 to 1533

Grand Prince Vasily III(also spelled Basil) Ivanovich, Ivan III's son, came to the Russian throne in 1505, and greatly strengthened the monarchy, consolidatingd the numerous independent Russian principalities into a united Muscovite state by annexing Pskov (1510), Smolensk (1514) in a war with Sigismund I of Poland and Lithuania, Ryazan (1517), Starodub and Novgorod-Seversk by 1523.

Vasily was homosexual throughout his life. He went to the extent of announcing this fact to other gay men of his time by shaving off his beard when his twenty-year marriage to his first wife was terminated--being beardless was a sort of gay password at the time. 

During Vasily's second marriage, he was able to perform his conjugal duties only when an officer of his guard joined him and his wife in bed in the nude. 

After his death in 1533, he was succeeded by his better known son, Ivan III, who is also of queer interest, for his fondness for close male friends in female dress.  

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Vasily III (Matt & Andrej Komasky)

Boris Godunov, Russian Czar 1598 to 1605.

b. c. 1551
d.  23 April 1605
r,  1598 - 1605

Opera lovers will be familiar with the name and supposed story of Boris Godunov, but this version is a distortion of history by Russian propagandists. What will be of interest to gay men, is a claim by Matt & Andrej Kowalsky that before achieving the throne himself, Godunov used to fellate the young czarevich Dimitri, the younger brother of Czar Fyodor. However, they do not provide  a source for this claim, which I have not been able to corroborate elsewhere, except for a similar one-line claim at the Gay Russian Hall of Fame:

Politician and ruler; regent of Russia from 1584 to 1598, he became Czar in 1598, when he was elected after the death of Fyodor, son of Ivan the Terrible. Godunov's rule was marked by a strenghtenin of the Russian church, but also the beginning of the "Time of Troubles", a period of instability. 

While regent he loved to fellate the child czarevich Dmitri, the younger brother of Fyodor, who died in 1591, by cutting his own throat during an epilectic fit.Boris died during a revolt led by one who professed to be Dmitri, and therefore the rightful czar. The apocryphal legend of Boris Godunov killing the true Dmitri to gain the throne was fostered by Russian historians anxious to discredit Boris, who was not descended from any of the main ruling families, as being outside the true line of Russian czars. This legend forms the basis of Pushkin's play Boris Godunov (1831) and Mussorgsky's opera of the same name (1874).

Matt & Andrej Kowalsky

Politician and ruler; regent of Russia (1584-1598); tsar of Russia (1598-1605); fellated and murdered 8-year-old tsarevich Dmitri.

Gay Russian Hall of Fame