The 1990s in Russia became a special historical period, a conditional liminal phase that determined the transition from the socialist regime to the authoritarian political system of modern Russia. This period is replete with a large number of sources: official archival data, video and photographic materials, media publications, personal narratives. However, the unique experience of representatives of certain social groups is not reflected and not analyzed in the memory of this period, since these communities are marginalized within Russian society. In this case, for the analysis of their life during the transit period, identifying adaptation practices and the struggle to normalize their identity in the conditions of emerging freedom, private archival collections become of great importance. One of these archives is the private “Archive of Lesbians and Gays” (Moscow). The collection of the archive has been carried out by activists and people involved in the community since the early 1990s. The archive includes more than 1,000 books on gender issues, about 160 copies of newspapers and magazines published by LGBT organizations and activists, as well as more than 1,500 fragments of publications from other press that cover the situation of the queer community during the transition period. The archive provides access to the discourse created by members of a previously marginalized community in the 1990s, which allows us to analyze how the discursive space of talking about stigmatized identities changed during the transition period. To demonstrate the research potential of the Archive, a sample of 115 newspapers and magazines was selected from the press represented in it, the materials of which were analyzed using discourse analysis. As a result, the key points and discursive strategies of press authors were established, forming their own discourse, and situations of confrontation, conflict and borrowing of discourses were emphasized.