I think the article you linked gives an ok overview of the changes between between the October Revolution in 1917 to Stalin's rise to power in the late 1920s. The Russian far left really didn't have a concrete view of what we would now call LGBT issues before the October Revolution and was really kinda all over the place in terms of acceptance. Anarchist Alexander Berkman when he was imprisoned by the Czarist regime said, “The panegyrics of boy-love are deeply offensive to my instincts. The very thought of the unnatural practices revolts and disgusts me.” His increasing exposure and from influence from Emma Goldman who was was very much in favour of gay rights did cause him to substantially change his views later admittedly though.

In terms of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and later the Bolsheviks there never really was a complete position on the issue. The Russian far left really in this period (late 19th century to 1917) was very much not the head of the international left or the party to follow, the German SPD was. The SPD did push for the legalization of homosexuality but in a very mixed way there was support for its legalization in terms of it being recognized as legitimate and that there was nothing wrong with it, but also by some as more of disorder that some people had that they shouldn't be punished for because it was unfair. The article you linked to discusses this in the Marxism: The Flawed Legacy section (an example of Bebel's advocacy for its repeal) . The early period of Soviet power kind of mirrored this position and you see extremely varying positions floating around depending on who you look at. In terms of legalization after the October the issue is kind of complicated. By 1918 they banned the use of all Czarist laws which included the punishment for homosexuality, but if you want to be very nit picky also technically legalized murder at least theoretically. To combat this the government issued multiple direct decrees to vaguely form a legal system. Homosexuality was not made directly illegal and kind of existed in a weird grey space that really depended on local law enforcement opinions. So some people were realistically tried for it but accused of other crimes and could be imprisoned for it. To make things more confusing this is at the same point that Georgy Chicherin (an openly gay man) was appointed by Lenin as the head of foreign affairs for the Soviet Union, a position he held from 1918 to 1930.

To try to create an actually coherent legal system the People's Commissariat for Justice was tasked with creating an actual legal code that was work on from 1920 to 1921 and finally ratified on June 1, 1922. The new legal code did not outlaw homosexuality in the Russian or Ukrainian Soviet Republics but did outlaw it in the majority Muslim central Asian republics. The reason stated was that their existed a culture of more or less child/teenage prostitution under the bacha bazi system. During the period of debate the over the penal system Psychologist Vladimir Bekhterev in 1921 at a trial of homosexuals said, "the public demonstration of such impulses might attract unstable people into the ambit of perversion. The introduction of homosexual tastes and activities to the broad public…is socially harmful and cannot be permitted. The creation of clubs or dens for such purposes must be punished under the criminal law." Bekhterev wasn't obviously a die hard Bolshevik but he does represent the section that believed homosexuality was bourgeois or unnatural and something that the wealthy and decadent do and the Czarist regime allowed or partook in. But, again at the same the Soviets sent delegates to world conferences that support the complete legalization and normalization of homosexuality and participated in the German Institution for Sexual Science. This also included advocacy for transgender issues. Pytor Gannushkin for example said that he was was constantly asked about the possibility of sexual reassignment surgeries. Nikolai Koltsov in 1927 said, "Of course, there is no intermediate sex, but rather an infinite quantity of intermediate sexes."

The 1926 update of the 1922 Penal Code also did not criminalize homosexuality, but the maneuvering of Stalin to come to absolute power was already well underway at this point. Stalin used the more socially conservative wing of the party to push out his appoints and with this homosexuality increasingly came under attack again. For instance the first version of the 1930 Soviet Great Encyclopedia supported Magnus Hirschfeld's position on homosexual legalization and acceptance by saying, " Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest". The second edition though said this, "The origin of Homosexualism is linked to everyday social conditions; for the overwhelming majority of people indulging in Homosexualism, these perversions stop as soon as the person finds himself in a favorable social environment.... In Soviet society with its healthy mores, Homosexualism as a sexual perversion is considered shameful and criminal. Soviet criminal legislation regards Homosexualism as punishable with the exception of those instances where Homosexualism is a manifestation of marked psychic disorder." In March 1934 homosexuality was again criminalized with Article 121 of the Penal Code after multiple political opponents of Stalin had been accused of some kind of sex related crime. This was part of a wider social convservitization of Soviet society that redefined gender and sexual roles in the Soviet Union to something traditional such as the creation of the ideal Soviet Man and Woman who worked equally but effectively maintained traditional gender roles. Its also important to view this as part of the build up to the Great Purges that would begin 1936. Stalin was slowly taking out opponents by whatever way available and definitely had some opportunistic trappings to it.

So ,no, there was never a really a secret fascist gay movement in the USSR (lol). Stalin and his allies used it as part of an opportunistic way to defeat political opponents by playing on the public's and party's uneasiness with homosexuality and other more radical social ideas advanced by some sections of the party. They instead of the just calling them remnants of Czarists society just re-framed it as fascist infiltration and people who had been degenerated by capitalist influence.

Follow up question: to what extent was Gorky's view shared/influential with leading Soviet political figures?

I see you have received a plenty of excellent and very detailed replies on the attitudes towards homosexualism in the USSR, but none on Maxim Gorky.

He is a tragic figure; he used to be the major social writer of the Tsar era (respected by Lenin as such), but after the revolution he found himself exiled and without a readership, which forced him to return and to take on the questionable role of the court writer to the Stalin regime.

In the Gulag Archipelago Solzhenytsin describes Gorky's purported visit to the Solovki Labour Camp, which includes the prisoners reading newspapers upside down and a boy telling him the truth about the harrowing conditions. And then the boy gets shot, but Gorky describes the conditions as wonderful anyway.

Solzhenitsyn being Solzhenitsyn, he might as well be exaggering a little here (or making shit up) but you do get the drift: Gorky was a Stalin era conservative with everything that this standpoint implies. On the other hand he was attempting to improve the regime by arranging cultural events together with the Western intellectuals (such as H.G.Wells); he was attempting to get Stalin concerned about his image in a liberal-minded public that he couldn't terrorize.

Well, in his Pravda article from 1934 Gorky didn't actually say that. He's quoting it as a sarcastic opinion you would hear now and then on the new law against the homosexuals. He still supports the law because "the cultural filth" constantly generated in capitalism would render the proletarian youth more susceptible to fascist ideas.

What's interesting is the antifascist "International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture" in Paris the year after did include André Breton assaulting the Soviet writer Ehrenburg for a homophobic remark. This was evidently an issue neither the Western Left nor the Soviet Bureaucracy was willing to compromise on.