Growing up, I always leaned towards anarchism, especially when I hit 13. I began listening to classic punk music, and doing drugs when I hit 16, to cope with all my problems. Eventually I stumbled upon a song called "People III: The Reckoning" by AJJ. The song led me to discover Pat the Bunny, a musician who sung almost religiously about communism and anarchy, and at this point I was still a junkie. me and my "friends" who were really the other druggies I hung around started listening to these songs while we shot up heroin. After a while, I started looking into communism and it made me question everything I already had to a higher degree. So I started writing my own Folk Punk songs. I became an Orthodox Marxist and discovered the original ARP in its baby stage, I joined quickly and became heavily involved with it. This led me to turn my life around by getting clean and focusing on trying to make a change in the world. With this, I also got somewhat serious about my folk punk project and have been clean since. But after the original ARP fell apart, I was heart broken and then had no reason to remain clean. However I did for the sake of my folk punk project, and then one night, I discovered someone trying to reform the ARP and I quickly joined again, in hopes that the ARP will return to its former glory.

I am a homosexual man that was born and raised in Saint Petersburg, Russia. When I was 4 years old, the Soviet Union collapsed and I remember my dad crying in the kitchen table because he had lost his job. When I was 7 years old, my mother passed away after fighting a long battle against breast cancer. The absence of a mother in my life greatly changed my life in a negative direction. My father became an alcoholic and so I had to live with my grandfather until I graduated high school. It was in high school that I realized that I realized I was gay. I had feelings for a fellow classmate of mine but I was sure that he wasn't gay. I risked it however and asked him out and surprising he agreed to dating me, I was so happy and I couldn't believe how smoothly it had all gone. I was with the love of my life and I wanted to tell this to the world, but I couldn't. My grandfather always talked said, "We should hang the homosexuals" and my friends in and out school all thought that being gay was "disgusting" and "mentally ill."

I faced a lot of discrimination in public areas when I held hands with my boyfriend. Mothers would try and avoid me when they were with their child and the elderly pushed me out of the way and gave me the look as if I was the devil. Of course there were some supportive people such as my boyfriend's parents, but they were about the only people who were supportive. I decided to come out because I knew that being gay wasn't in my control and that being gay wasn't a sin. I was with the person I loved and there is nothing wrong with that. So I told my grandfather that I was gay and my grandfather threw the nearest things he could find at me. Tissue boxes, pens, TV remotes, and slippers were some of the many things that were thrown at me. He called me a "worthless faggot" and said that he "didn't raise a faggot."

I couldn't take it anymore. It was impossible to be gay in Russia. I was going to ask my boyfriend to move with me to Canada. I wanted to go to Canada so I could get married to my boyfriend and live a better life as a homosexual man. He rejected the idea however and a few weeks later broke up with me without a real good reason.

I ended up emigrating to Canada where I reside today and I've been active in LGBTQ+ friendly organizations.