Sexual Revolution in Russia

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Russian

In an extraordinary look at the current sexual scene in Russia, pioneer Russian sexologist Kon finds that the long-desired sexual liberation that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet regime has been transformed into commercialized, trivialized or debased sexuality. He reports an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, the world's highest abortion rates, widespread sexual ignorance, an alarming increase in rape and sexual violence, strong homophobia and gay-bashing (homosexuality was a criminal offense in Russia until mid-1993). Chief researcher at Moscow's Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Kon argues compellingly that eros, driven underground by the bolsheviks' puritanical crusade of the 1930s, became vulgarized and charged with aggression, and has never fully recovered. He traces the contemporary lack of sexual sophistication to the legacy of pre-revolutionary Russian village life, where marrying for love was virtually unknown. This enlightening, compassionate study lifts the veil off a hitherto taboo topic and offers numerous telling asides about the hardships of the Russian people under various regimes.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Kon started his academic career with degrees in history and philosophy. He reached his present eminence as Russia's foremost sexologist (something he reluctantly admits) through his work in ethnography and anthropology, and his books remain the only nonmedical books on sex available in Russia. From the furtive character of nineteenth-century Russian erotica (overlaid with peasant prudery and reflecting attitudes then prevalent throughout Europe) to the brief explosion of liberalism after the revolution to the gray puritanism of the Soviets, Russian states have done their best to eliminate sex as a subject for public discourse. Kon has done a yeoman's job in pulling together information from many disparate and sometimes sketchy sources to provide a history of sexual attitudes and behavior in Russia in the twentieth century. Although he apologizes for intruding personal anecdotal evidence into a scholarly work, these supposed intrusions add an engaging human dimension to the data. Dennis Winters