Sasha...

Sasha Soltadow, choked by the bureaucracy, in his Special Broadcasting Service editing booth, mid 1980s

In 1983, before homosexuality was legalised in New South Wales, the Oxford Street gay bar, Club 80 was raided by police. There was a shocked reaction from people who frequented the bars and saunas. Sasha Soldatow produced a pamphlet that was critical of the response. It provides an important historical analysis of the early history of the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras, and the pursuit of the gay dollar to the detriment of the development of sexual politics which broadly challenges the power relationships in society. You can read What Is This Gay Community Shit? here on Takver's site. (It includes Sasha's commentary on the pamphlet from 2001.)

Takver, who first met Sasha in 1974, last saw him at an Anarchist and Autonomist Gathering at Melbourne University in 2001. Over several months during that year they worked on updating notes on the pamphlet and on Sasha's biographical material on the neglected Australian poet Harry Hooton, whose Poet of the 21st Century : Collected Poems Sasha edited for Angus & Robertson publishers in 1990.


       'Be realistic – demand the impossible'. Slogan from walls of the Sorbonne, Paris, May 1968

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