Quarteera has four main areas of activity.

1. Community

We offer a meeting and exchange center for Russian-speaking and German LGBTQ* people, as well as LGBTQ* individuals with different migration backgrounds. We are creating our own community center, where we offer various counseling services (psychological, medical, and legal). We organize numerous events and meetings for the community and like-minded people.

2. Development of Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership Countries and Russia

The second area of work involves reporting on the situation of queer people in post-Soviet countries, as well as international projects for the development of civil society in the Eastern Partnership countries and Russia. Such projects have been supported by the German Federal Foreign Office since 2016.

List of implemented projects:

• 2022, Domestic violence in queer partnerships.
• 2022, Meeting of Russian-speaking parents of LGBT.
• 2021, Development of the student queer movement in Russia.
• 2020, LGBTQ* education at Russian universities.
• 2018, Meeting with Russian-speaking LGBTIQ* activists and LGBTQ*-friendly bloggers.
• 2017, Meeting with young activists from Eastern Partnership countries and Russia.
• 2016, Meeting with parents of LGBTQ* people from post-Soviet countries.

3. Art

Another area of work is the art of Russian-speaking queer people.

List of implemented projects:

• 2021, Exhibition “Hate Crimes Against LGBTIQ* in Russia”, funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
• 2020, Exhibition and panel discussion “Hate Crimes Against LGBTIQ* in Russia”, funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Educational trip “Art as a Tool of Political Education”, funded by the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum.
• 2019, Art project “Garden” by Mischa Badasyan, funded by the administration of the Treptow-Köpenick district in Berlin.

4. Political Education

An important part of our work is political education on sexual and gender diversity, especially for the Russian-speaking community in Germany.

In the first years after its founding, Quarteera began its educational work with seminars held as part of events organized by partner organizations. For example, from December 18 to 28, 2011, Quarteera conducted four three-hour workshops on the topic “Being Different: Gender and Sexuality” to reduce the level of homophobia. The seminar series took place as part of the Bahratal Youth Academy, which is held annually by the German Association of Russian-speaking Youth JunOst e.V. The target audience of the seminars was Russian-speaking youth aged 18 and older. The seminars used the following approaches: theoretical information, terminology explanation, group work, and storytelling. The master classes were conducted by a psychologist from the St. Petersburg LGBTQ* organization “Coming Out” and Quarteera activists.

In 2011-2012, a total of 11 educational events were conducted on behalf of other organizations. The main topics included: human rights, the situation of Russian-speaking LGBTQ* people in Germany, a comparative analysis of the situation of LGBTQ* people in former Soviet Union states and Germany, cultural and historical aspects of social prejudices against LGBTQ* people in former Soviet Union states.

Between 2013-2015, four educational events were conducted as part of seminars organized by other organizations.

Between 2016–2018, another 10 educational events followed. The topics included: the situation of LGBTQ* people in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries as well as in Germany; the LGBTQ* movement in modern Russia; the situation of LGBTQ* people from post-Soviet countries who have applied for refugee status; the situation of LGBTQ* people in Chechnya. Together with the Federal Association of Russian-speaking Parents (BVRE), Quarteera e.V. participated in discussions on sex education in schools and successfully held a debate (September 2018, Dresden).

Other examples of political education work include: a lecture on the Russian-speaking LGBTQ* community and Quarteera e.V. for readers of the taz newspaper (October 2016), a lecture at Ruhr University Bochum “Homosexuality in Russia” (November 2016), a lecture on the situation in Chechnya for the Left Party in Berlin (May 2017), a lecture on the situation of LGBTQ* people in Russia at the University of Oldenburg (May 2017), lectures on “Discrimination: Conditions, Occurrence, and Causes” and “Sexual and Gender Identity” for a youth exchange project from Russia (July 2017), a lecture for the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (LSVD) of Saxony-Anhalt in Magdeburg on asylum (October 2017), and a lecture on “Sexual Identity” for Russian-Ukrainian-German choir singers near Hamburg (April 2018).

In 2019, Quarteera set the goal of reducing the level of homophobia, intersex- and transphobia in the Russian-speaking part of the German population through professionalization in political education and targeted political awareness work. To achieve this goal, a cooperation project was developed between the Waldschlösschen Academy and Quarteera e.V. The project was recognized by the Federal Agency for Civic Education as a model project for the period from September 2019 to June 2022.

Marzahn Pride

In 2020, Quarteera organized the first Russian-speaking Pride, which took place in the Berlin district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, where approximately 30,000 Russian-speaking residents live. In 2022, the Marzahn Pride was held for the third time under the name PostOst Pride.

This year’s Marzahn Pride moves away from the externally assigned and restrictive term “post-Soviet” and instead uses the self-designation PostOst, because the post-Eastern community is not bound to national borders and at the same time shares a common experience of migration, (de-)integration, and anti-Slavic racism.

Quarteera Helps Ukraine

On February 24, 2022, Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine, and since then, the lives of millions of people have changed. We are among them. As one of the few large Russian-speaking LGBTQ* organizations in Germany, we recognized that we have the necessary resources to help LGBTQ* people from Ukraine. Since the first days of the war, all our efforts have been focused on this. In a very short time, we created an effective system that is based entirely on voluntary resources. We help people with travel to Berlin, finding housing, obtaining essential daily necessities, securing food, as well as providing legal and psychological counseling.

In total, since the beginning of the war, we have helped almost 300 people and 27 pets who came from Ukraine to Germany.