It has been customary to count the sexual revolution since the mid-60s, when the hippie movement (sex, drugs and rock-n-roll) emerged in the West. However, in fact, the "rebellion of sensuality" (Lenin's term) has long been one of the foundations of statehood in the USSR. One might even say a pillar of the country of victorious socialism.
But let's see what happened in the West at that time.
New fashion, short haircuts, naked female legs and widespread passion for sports are causing a heated debate in society. The press publishes a variety of points of view on what is happening. Women's magazines show different points of view on such a dramatic change. Even the most enlightened people are sometimes indignant and speak extremely negatively.
For example, the president of a University in Florida angrily declares that short skirts and dresses are the product of the devil and his minions. Many medical journals authoritatively state that hobbies for sports, fitness, fashionable dancing can lead women to infertility.
Flapperrs (from the English flapper - "clapper", "fly swatter", "the one who claps"). In the 1920s, this was the name given to a new generation of young women in the West. They wore short skirts, boldly cut their hair, listened to jazz, and openly showed their disdain for what was called "good behavior." Against the background of respectable members of society, the flapper girls seemed vulgar and arrogant. Indeed, they wore bright makeup, did not give up alcohol, practiced free love, smoked, drove cars and trampled on all sorts of social and sexual norms.
In 1920, the term was taken as a designation for an entire generation and as a symbol of a certain life position. In his lecture testifying to the abundance of young women who lost men in the war, Dr. Murray Lesley criticized the “social type of butterfly … frivolous, half-dressed, wildly behaving, irresponsible and undisciplined, for which dancing, a new hat and a man with a private car are more expensive than fate. own country”.
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In the Soviet Republic, from the beginning of the 20s, heated discussions began about the place of love in the new, Soviet society - almost all prominent party leaders, Komsomol members, student and working youth were involved in them. An active participant in these discussions was A. M. Kollontai - a revolutionary, a member of the Bolshevik government, a supporter of Marxism and feminism by conviction. In 1923, in the magazine "Molodaya gvardiya" she published a "Letter to the working youth" under the title "Road to the winged Eros!"
Sensuality and Sexuality”were discussed at Bolshevik party congresses long before the revolution. And not only were discussed. At the III Congress of the RSDLP, Leon Trotsky was even instructed to develop a new theory of gender relations in the event of a Bolshevik victory. And Vladimir Lenin himself wrote back in 1904 that "the emancipation of the spirit of sensuality, the energy directed not at pseudo-family values, will help to throw out this clot on the cause of the victory of socialism."
German psychologist W. Reich in his work "Sexual Revolution" (1934, first edition) cites an excerpt from the correspondence between Trotsky and Lenin (1911) on this topic. Here is what Trotsky writes: “Undoubtedly, sexual oppression is the main means of enslaving man. As long as such oppression exists, there can be no talk of real freedom. The family, as a bourgeois institution, has completely outlived its usefulness. We need to talk more about this to the workers … "Lenin answered him:" … And not only the family. All prohibitions concerning sexuality must be lifted … We have a lot to learn from the suffragists: even the ban on same-sex love must be lifted."
The development of the Bolsheviks in the field of sex brought their results: with the victory of the revolution in 1917, it was possible to boldly, and most importantly, quickly, to introduce theory into practice.
Keep it up, comrades
Many of the provisions of the Bolsheviks in the field of "sexual legislation" even today look super-liberal. So, soon after the famous decrees "On Peace" and "On Land", Lenin's decrees (December 19, 1917) "On the abolition of marriage" and "On the abolition of punishment for homosexuality" (the latter - as part of the decree "On civil marriage, on children and on entry into acts of civil status "). In particular, both decrees provided a woman with "complete material, as well as sexual self-determination", introduced "the woman's right to free choice of name and place of residence." According to these decrees, "sexual union" (the second name is "marriage union") could be both easily concluded and easily dissolved.
In 1919, Batkis, the director of the Institute of Social Hygiene, stated with satisfaction: “Marriage and its dissolution have become an exclusively private matter … It can also be seen with satisfaction that the number of sexual perversions (perversions), whether it be rape, sexual abuse, etc., due to emancipation morals have been greatly reduced. " It was at this time that the theory of love as "about a glass of drunk water" appeared.
The very emancipation of morals has gone so far that it has already caused surprise throughout the world. For example, the writer Herbert Wells, who visited revolutionary Moscow at that time, later wondered how simple it was with sex in the country of victorious socialism, too simple.
The relationship model proposed by A. M. Kollontai, was largely utopian, because diverged from the realities of everyday life and the mood of the 20s. The revolutionary-minded youth was carried away by the "theory of a glass of water", which denies complex love relationships between a man and a woman as "bourgeois convention." The “glass of water theory” called for the following instincts: according to it, the citizens of the renewed world should have sex with the same simplicity and naturalness as to quench their thirst.
The central press is full of common stories: “Students look askance at those Komsomol members who refuse to have sexual intercourse with them. They see them as petty-bourgeois retrograds who cannot free themselves from outdated prejudices. The idea prevails among students that not only abstinence, but also motherhood should be treated as a bourgeois ideology …”(Pravda, May 7, 1925). “The husband of my friend asked me to spend the night with him, as his wife is sick and cannot satisfy him tonight. When I refused, he called me a stupid citizen who was unable to comprehend all the greatness of the communist doctrine …”(Pravda, May 7, 1925).
Even adolescents were affected by the proletarian sex reform. They didn’t have to repeat it twice … The exemplary GPU labor commune for the homeless in Bolshevo, created in 1924 on the personal order of Dzerzhinsky, put into practice the methods of new sexual education. There lived about a thousand juvenile offenders from 12 to 18 years old, of which about 300 were girls. Community educators welcomed “joint sexual experiences”, girls and boys lived in common barracks. In one of the reports on this commune it was written: “Sexual intercourse is developing in completely new conditions. It turns out to be impossible to insure against changing partners or starting a new relationship. But living together distracts the pupils from illegal acts and bad moods. " Alexandra Kollontai wrote with poorly hidden pride:"History has never known such a diversity of marriage relations: an indissoluble marriage with a stable family and a passing free connection nearby, secret adultery in marriage and open cohabitation of a girl with her lover, a pair marriage, a three-piece marriage, and even a complex form of marriage four."
The Chubarov affair became a textbook example of the debauchery of Soviet youth in the 1920s. The news of the gang rape of a girl, in which Komsomol members and even one candidate for the entry of the CPSU (b) took part, spread throughout the country in St. Petersburg Chubarovsky Lane. The perpetrators were tried and sent to Solovki. However, during the trial, it became clear that young people do not understand at all what their fault is. "Just think, pampered with a woman, it’s unseen!" - this is how one of the convicts answered the judge's question why he did not even try to hide his crime.
The press then wrote that such stories take place on city streets every day, and, I must say, did not lie. According to the statistics cited by A. Bunge in his article "Marriage and the Status of Women", published in Berlin in 1931, during the 1920s the number of rapes was constantly growing. Add to this the unsuccessful fight against prostitution and the catastrophic spread of sexually transmitted diseases against the background of general medical illiteracy. If the Soviet government had not legalized artificial termination of pregnancy back in 1920, for sure, the fourth item on the list would have been the huge death rate from clandestine abortions.
Culturologists argue that it was in the 1920s that the type and image that would later be called the "single mother" began to form on domestic soil. Then a joke was in vogue: freedom and equality (according to the formula of the Great French Revolution) in the Soviet republic are continued not by brotherhood, but by motherhood. In many cases, paternity was out of the question.
The launched process began to frighten in its scope; and it didn’t look very important. "Although," wrote Lenin, "I am the least gloomy ascetic, but to me the so-called new sex life seems to be a kind of good bourgeois house of tolerance." Clara Zetkin sadly quotes him in her diary: “This theory of a“glass of water”made our young people go berserk, outraged. She became the evil rock of many boys and girls. Its adherents argue that this is a Marxist theory. Thank you for such Marxism. " And the pendulum swung in the other direction. In 1924 A. Zalkind published "12 Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat." It is a code of conduct designed to streamline and tame the wave of popular sexual freedom.
MANDATE
The bearer of this, Comrade Karaseev, is given the right to socialize in the city of Yekaterinodar 10 souls of girls aged from 16 to 20 years to whom Comrade Karaseev points out. Commander-in-Chief Ivaschev.
It must be said that the authorities did not encourage such sexual robbery; they punished for the open use of their official position to the fullest extent of the revolutionary time. For example, in response to complaints from Simbirsk about the forced nationalization of women, Lenin telegraphed: “Check immediately, if it is confirmed, arrest the perpetrators, the scoundrels must be punished severely and quickly, and the entire population must be notified. Wire execution”. 1919, V. I. Lenin and the Cheka
Together a friendly family
But the situation even without abuse was, frankly, unusual: not a single power could boast of such a thing. Usually the state adheres to the family model: it is more stable, more convenient for levying taxes, forcing consumption, etc. Spicy entertainment has been loved at all times - from the unbridled debauchery of Rome during its decline to the French monarchy with its endless favorites and favorites. But it was not for everyone and it was not public. And here Russia truly turned out to be ahead of the whole planet. Komsomol communes became commonplace at that time. In such a Swedish-proletarian family, 10–12 people voluntarily lived, leading a joint household and sex life. “Separation into permanent intimate couples was not allowed: disobeying communards were deprived of this honorary title. The birth of children was not encouragedsince their upbringing could distract young communards from building a bright future. If, nevertheless, the child was born, he was sent to a boarding school. Gradually, the sexual commune spread throughout all large cities of the country”(psychologist B. Besht). Even adolescents were affected by the proletarian sex reform. They didn't have to repeat it twice …
The exemplary GPU labor commune for the homeless in Bolshevo, created in 1924 on the personal order of Dzerzhinsky, put into practice the methods of new sex education. There lived about a thousand juvenile offenders from 12 to 18 years old, of which about 300 were girls. Community educators welcomed “joint sexual experiences”, girls and boys lived in common barracks. In one of the reports on this commune it was written: “Sexual intercourse is developing in completely new conditions. It turns out to be impossible to insure against changing partners or starting a new relationship. But living together distracts the pupils from illegal acts and bad moods. Alexandra Kollontai wrote with ill-concealed pride: “History has never known such a diversity of marriage relations:inseparable marriage with a stable family and a passing free connection nearby, secret adultery in marriage and open cohabitation of a girl with her lover, a pair marriage, a marriage of three and even a complex form of marriage of four”.
Listened - decided
This policy was deliberate, and the position was worked out long before the revolution. Even Engels wrote that under socialism the family economy should become a part of social labor, and the care of children and their upbringing should become a public matter. In this regard, the family will simply die out. In 1913, Kollontai published a programmatic article "New Woman" (if I find this article, I will publish it later). The new revolutionary woman had to be independent, not to belong to her husband or parents, to be a full member of society. To do this, you need to get rid of unnecessary emotions, give up jealousy, respect the freedom of a man and his right to choose a sexual partner. "Slogans like:" Wives, be friends with your husband's lovers "or" A good wife chooses a suitable beloved for her husband, and the husband recommends his comrades to his wife "(E. Lavlinskaya. Memories. M., 1968). The article also pointed out that children born in free love should be taken care of by the state of the victorious proletariat. So that their number was still reasonable, abortion was legalized in 1920.
And drank it immediately
The ideology was proposed by the “new woman” Alexandra Kollontai in her theory of the “glass of water”. The theory denied love and reduced the relationship of men and women to a sexual need, which should find satisfaction without any "conventions", as simple as quenching thirst. Having sex is as easy as drinking a glass of water. Society responded readily, especially young people. “We see the influence on some of the poems and other rubbish that poets and other scribblers wrote that love is the decoration of personal life, and not naked reproduction, that it should be like a bright bouquet of flowers and other bald spots. Meanwhile, there is no love, but there is a physiological phenomenon of nature, and veal tenderness has absolutely nothing to do with it. " (Lunacharsky "On everyday life", 1927) In 1925with the assistance of the People's Commissar of Health Semashko, a nudist society “Down with shame” appears in Moscow. Fighting shame as a bourgeois prejudice, the participants went naked. Women only allowed themselves shoes and handbags for documents. Proletarian nudists not only took to the streets, but tried to live as usual: they went to work naked, and rested. So, they walked naked on the streets, communal families became commonplace, proletarian passion was satisfied anywhere, the law recognized multiple parenthood: if a mother lived with several men at the same time, the court could oblige each of them to pay alimony. So, they walked naked on the streets, communal families became commonplace, proletarian passion was satisfied anywhere, the law recognized multiple parenthood: if a mother lived with several men at the same time, the court could oblige each of them to pay alimony. So, they walked naked on the streets, communal families became commonplace, proletarian passion was satisfied anywhere, the law recognized multiple parenthood: if a mother lived with several men at the same time, the court could oblige each of them to pay alimony.
Enough perversions
In 1926 the cheerful society "Down with shame" was dispersed: "… boys, onlookers followed in droves in droves for the adherents of this naked order. Then the Moscow police received instructions - and the naked figures of women and men disappeared from the Moscow streets. " (From the memoirs of the writer Shalamov). The silent film "The Third Meshchanskaya (Three of Love)" 1927 - about the life of two men and one woman, based on real events, begins quite bravely, in the spirit of the theory of a glass of water, and ends rather on a condemning note. In 1929 the genre of Soviet nude in photography and painting was “closed”. Here are the first repressions: one photographer is in prison "for distributing pornography", the other is exiled, somewhat deprived of the right to professional activity. Control became stricter, freedoms narrowed. This was not only an ideological strong-willed decision, simple common sense led to this. It was clearthat the grand experiment had failed; the process turned against itself. In 1934, criminal penalties for homosexuality were reintroduced. In 1936, abortion was banned. The state took control of the untied citizens.
And what came of it
Cultural boundaries became less and less permeable, and what would later be called the "Iron Curtain" was falling. And the world around, which previously simply did not share revolutionary ideas, finally became not up to the sexual experiments of the Bolsheviks. America, having fallen into the Great Depression in 1929, was just getting back on its feet by 1933–34. She was not up to sex - neither her own, nor overseas. Old Europe lived as before and slept with anyone before, without changing her habits. But fascism was ripening in its center. In Germany, the National Socialists encouraged the genre of heroic nudity, in photographs of muscular Aryans throwing a spear and flying into the sky from a horizontal bar. In 1936, the film "Olympia" by Leni Riefenstahl was released - a hymn to the body, called upon to build a new future. But Aryan nudity did not mean permissiveness. If Russia began its revolutionary sex reform by rejecting the old,then the Aryan superman was nude according to the plan. By the beginning of the Second World War, sexual liberties were finally finished.
In 1944, a decree was adopted in the USSR on the need to register marriages and the procedure for divorce was complicated, commissions were created to which it was necessary to explain the reason for it. On the territory of Russia for a long time established what was later awarded the famous formulation "there is no sex in the USSR." And in Europe, a little away from the Second World War, people wanted to live and enjoy life. The war has shown that it is impossible to postpone carnal joys - man is mortal, and suddenly mortal. In the 50s came the sexual revolution; affordable contraception allowed sex to be just fun, not the beginning of a series of onerous obligations. As always, after some ten years, the European experience reached Russia. The Khrushchev thaw let go of the leash a little: the skirts became shorter, the colors brighter, a divorce did not always mean a career ruin,and cinema told stories about the birth of illegitimate children without much condemnation. At this time, the hippie movement was already raging in the States. Children of flowers, proclaiming their "Make love, not war", did not limit themselves in the manifestation of feelings.
Sometimes in public. Naive, they did not know that Russia had played enough of all these communes with countless lovers and common children, families with an odd number of people and ideologically easy sex forty years ago. Such a palm is a dubious reason for pride. But one way or another, this is part of the story. Today, perhaps, we should be glad that we did not have to live in 1920 and get women from the Bureau of Free Love on an order. It remains to be seen which one will be issued. And to refuse, as you remember, it was impossible.
Interesting fact
The anniversary of the decree "On the abolition of marriage" was marked by a procession of lesbians. Lenin reacted joyfully to this news: "Keep it up, comrades!"
The original Soviet "naked" were by no means their nakedness. Historically, they have been "in the stream". It was in the 1920s that nudism began to spread around the world, and societies of opponents of clothing appeared in many European countries, as well as in the USA, Canada and New Zealand. But overseas nudists wanted only health and unity with nature, while the Soviet ones justified their nakedness politically.
Here is how he describes one of the Moscow (as they would say now) shares of the society "Down with shame!" German journalist H. Knickerborger: The "Shameless" marched, stopped in the square, and one of the most vociferous of them addressed the crowd with a heated speech. Shame, he said, is the worst scourge inherited from the tsarist era. Who, he asked, did not suffer from a sense of modesty? Who hasn't cringed in fear as he exposed his body to the occasional gaze of the public? We, he shouted, have destroyed this feeling in us! Look at us, he called, and see free men and women, true proletarians, who have thrown off the shackles of symbols of bourgeois prejudices. At that moment, a detachment of angry, fully clothed young men shouted: "Fool!" attacked the meeting and dispersed it."
Having recognized the excitement caused by “shameless” people on the city streets, People's Commissar of Health Semashko made a diplomatic conclusion: the sun, air and water are our best friends, but not on the dusty metropolitan streets. Here, they say, the air temperature is not suitable, and the bacteria are above the roof … So, if you want to throw off your underwear, - on the outskirts, behind a bush, on the bank of the river - you are welcome. And let the trams and cinemas be dressed. Violators are fined.
So it was officially established that Marxism can never be naked. The nudist movement, which in the 1930s experienced a real flourishing around the world, withered in the Soviet republic.
I must say that this whole sexual revolution, as well as fashion, only affected capitals and big cities. But this does not mean that there was no sex in the province.
The further decision of the "sexual question" was tough, but logical. In the 1930s, in this area, as in any other, the "tightening of the screws" began. In 1934, an article about sodomy appears in the criminal code. In 1935, a ban on commercial erotica was issued. In 1936, a ban on abortion was announced and the freedom of divorce was limited. At the same time, the production of contraceptives almost completely stops. The number of clandestine abortions is on the rise.
The era of flappers is coming to an end in America. Despite its popularity, the flapper lifestyle did not survive the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression that followed. Cheerfulness and hedonism had no place among the economic difficulties of the 1930s.
From dawn to dusk
This is how the German psychologist Wilhelm Reich called his article, dedicated to the curtailment of the sexual revolution in the USSR.
Indeed, with the rise to power of Stalin in the late 1920s, the sexual revolution came to naught. As usual, Lenin's authority was used to justify this. More and more often they begin to quote from a conversation between Lenin and Clara Zetkin: "Although I am least of all an ascetic, but to me the so-called" new sex life "of young people - and often adults - quite often seems bourgeois, seems like a kind of bourgeois house of tolerance."
Industrialization began to demand that the individual spend his energy not on sexual entertainment, but on building communism. The "licentiousness of morals" became officially condemned. Public opinion again began to incline towards the idea that “the family is the unit of society,” and the basis of order is monogamy.
Soviet legislation did not lag behind public opinion. With the adoption of the Stalinist constitution, the decree "On the abolition of marriage" lost its force. In 1934, abortions were banned, in March of the same year, Kalinin signed a law prohibiting and punishing sexual intercourse between men. After that, mass arrests of homosexuals began in large cities of the USSR.
Sex education among young people was discontinued, and scientific work on this topic was curtailed. There came a time in the USSR when any citizen could proudly declare: "There is no sex in our country …"