WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Hello. Our names are Arkadiy Serikov(left) and Michail Fedorov(right). We would like to tell your our story.

First time when a child , I met Arkadiy in a pioneer summer camp(a kind of boyscout camp in Europe and US). I quickly picked him out of the colorless bulk of kids around us. We found that there was something like twin spirit between us. I’ve never found a person who could appear to be so similar to me. Before that moment every of us thought that he was the only one of that sort in the whole world but that acquaintance turned our lives over. We were too young to realize all the spectrum of feelings we were surrounded. We became the best friends ever and swore not to get separated from each other. But the summer ended soon. Arkadiy returned back to Moscow the capital of our cruel motherland, and I went back to the small town of Dubna. Years passed and we were in active correspondence with each other, dreaming that one day we will be together again. But our fate separated us once again. Arkadiy entered the Moscow State University, the faculty of geology, and I entered the technical college to become a miner.

This was the time of the fullest flower of communism and we believed in the bright future of our country and of our relations. But Arkadiy’s parents insisted on his marriage with a girl he was not in love with. But I in my turn after ending college according to an assignment was sent to the far city of Inta to work on a coal mine. At this moment our correspondence stopped.

Arkadiy’s marriage turned out to be an unfortunate one and soon they divorced. Having graduated from the university, Arkadiy as the fates decree found himself in Inta on a search of coal-fields. There we met each other once again. This was the real gift from God. And that was the first time we realized what feelings surrounded us during our acquaintance in the pioneer camp. We started to live together. But we had to keep it in secret from people around us. At that time the homosexual relations were banned in our country. We were humiliated, stigmatized and everyone mocked at our feelings. At those times it was also criminally responsible to be a gay, and every day we lived in fear of being arrested. But even these difficulties couldn’t brake our love. But soon a coup took place in our country. It seemed to us that it would bring a new life free from prejudice. But nothing went as we expected. The country was in chaos. Some months later the coal-mine I worked in was closed. And we were forced to live in misery on tiny governmental unemployment doles. My parents died long ago, and Arkadiy’s parents separated from him having learned about our relations. We met compassion nowhere. We had little friends as most of the people in our country hate the sort of people we belong to. All we could allow is to buy a tiny house on the outskirts of the settlement of Ugolniy, not far from Inta. By the way word “ugol’” means coal in Russian. Due to unhealthy environment and regular stay in coal mine, I have serious illness of lungs. But because of new health protection reforms it is to difficult to get a treatment.

The homosexual marriages are still banned in Russia and gender switch operations are made in a very low quality. To bound our hearts together with marriage, Arkadiy must go to Thailand where there is a culture of making this sort of operations. The price of this operation is about 20 000$ and this sum of money is extremely high in the country, where the average salary is nearly 300$ per month. And after this we hope that we could get married in some European country.

But we have a slender hope. We asked one of few our friends to post this letter in the internet, as we hope that there are a lot of people with homosexual orientation in Europe and in the US, who live happily with no fear of the society they are part of. And possibly they will be able to help us, as even a single dollar is quite much in our country. We hope that there are many kind people all over the world. If you read all this and your feelings are similar to ours, please tell your family and friends about this letter.

If you send us a donation, please e-mail to us at this adress (your name and the sum) and we will post your name in our charity list wich is coming soon.

WMZ - Z708777225335
WME - E939331883133

Yours sincerely

Michail and Arkadiy.