Rustam Alexander is a historian, specializing in Russia and the USSR, who received his PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Red Closet: The Hidden History of Gay Oppression in the USSR (2023) and Regulating Homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956-91: A Different History (2021). His work on the history of Soviet homosexuality has been published in Slavic Review, Russian History, Europe-Asia Studies and other academic journals.