It is usually thought that the Bolshevik crusade against sex began in the 1930s, as a part of the general process of Stalinist tightening of the screws on and suppression of the individual - and there is an element of truth in that contention. During the 1920s the USSR had allowed the existence of erotic art, sociological surveys, and biological-medical sex research. However, all of this, and particularly the "decadent" erotic art that was clearly at odds with "proletarian culture", existed and developed despite the efforts of rather than with endorsement of the Party. It was simply that, given the times, the Party was unable to ban them and had to confine itself to half measures.Nevertheless, it did combat them when it could. For example, in July 1924, a jount circular was issued by Glavlit (the censor's office) and Glavrepertkom (the Main Committee for Control over Repertories and Performance), giving the following evaluation of the fox-trot, shimmy, and other popular Western dances that Russian young people had begun to copy: "As products of Western European restaurant culture, these dances are oriented on the very basest instincts. In their niggardly, monotonous movements they are essentially a 'salon' imitation of the sex act and all manner of physiological perversion... Within the working atmosphere of the Soviet Republic's attempts to reconstruct life and sweep away rotten petit-bourgeois decadence, dancing should be quite different - exhilarating, joyful, ennobling." This was only the opening salvo. The entire history of Soviet culture, from start to finish, consists of out-and-out campaigns and mandates in which sexophobia plays a leading part.Furious attacks against erotica were an attempt to neutralize the "demoralizing" influence of the New Economic Policy (NEP). As the American historian Eric Naiman has noted, the highly publicized tales of "sexual depravity" of the mid-twnties - Pateleimon Romanov's Without Bird Cherry, Lev Gumelev's Dog Alley, Sergey Malashkin's The Moon on the Right Hand, Nikolai Borisov's Vera - "when read today, seem didactic, moralizing tracts. But in 1926 and 1927 they were attacked as immoral and slanderouse."The rising incidence of sexual crimes was also used for this purpose. For example, the 1926 gang rape in Chubarov Alley od a young woman by 26 drunken Leningrad youths, half of them Komsomol members, returning from a funeral, was deliberately made into a political sensation. The number of assailants was given in some newspapers as 40, and in the course of the trial Leningrad newspapers received a huge number of letters and petitions - over 54,000 signatures - demanding the death penalty. The word chubarovshchina came to signify not only sexual depravity, but a general "lack od ideological discipline."Bans were slapped on not only more or less straightforward, blatant eroticism but on practically everything associated with sexuality or that might be construed as hinting at it - and what, with proper effort, cannot be constructed in that spirit?In 1936, when Dmitri Shostakovich was being "worked over", one accusation made about his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was that the music naturalistically depicted the creaking of bedsprings.Accusation of eroticism and "unhealthy sexual interests" - by definition, Soviet men and women had and could have no healthy sexual interests! - were employed in just about every ideological campaign and attempt at vilification. Stalin's foremost ideological and cultural aide-decamp, Andrei Zhdanov, spoke contemptuously in 1946 of the greatest of all twentieth century Russian woman poets, Anna Akhmatova, as "half-nun and half-whore.". During the 1960s, Nikita Kruschev was sent into paroxysm of rage at the sight of a nude female body in Robert Falk's paintings.Art was merely the earliest victim of Bolshevik sexophobia... During the 1920s, the status of Soviet homosexuals was relatively tolerable... On December 17, 1933, however, the government announced the change in law, which would be compulsory in all the republics in March 1934: accordingly, muzhelozhstvo (buggery) once more became a criminal offense. An item to that effect was inserted in the criminal codes of all the Soviet Republics. According to Article 121 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, muzhelozhstvo, sexual relations between men, was punishable by deprivation of freedom for a term of up to five years, and in case involving physical force or the threat thereof, or exploitation of the victim's dependent status. or in relation to a minor, a term of up to eight years...In October 1935, the USSR law "On Responsibility for Preparing, Keeping, and Advertising Pornographic Publications, Representations, and Other Objects and for Trading in Them" was passed.Artificially induced abortion was forbidden and became criminally punishable in June 1936... Attitudes towards scientific research also altered... At the same time, the eminent Soviet psychologists Lev Vygotsky and Pavel Blonsky were writing extensively about adolescent and juvenile sexuality.All this research was deemed first unnecessary, then dangerous, and was finally prohibited in the 1930s. Some scholars vanished into the GULAGs, and their books were either destroyed or disappeared into the so called spetskhrany (special divisions of the libraries, which did not issue books for people to take home to read; one could study them only in special reading room if expressly granted permission by the KGB, or later, by various Party bodies), their work cast into oblivion since it could not be mentioned in the press. Other scholars simply kept silent or shifted into less controversial areas of study...
Sex education, of which little enough had existed, now gave way utterly to "moral education". The reasoning behind this came from none other than the most eminent of all Soviet educational theorists, Anton Makarenko. Makarenko started with some thoroughly just criticism of the physiologization of sex education, which reduces all problems to the "secret of procreation." Sex education, in Makarenko's view, should be part of a general moral upbringing, the goal of which was to teach the child to love. Yet from these laudable premises Makarenko drew the ludicrous conclusion that sexuality was a very simple matter, requiring no explanation at all...In raising his own sexological ignorance and naivety to the level of pedagogic principle, Makarenko regarded special efforts for the sexual enlightenment of children and adolescents as unnecessary and harmful...The medical authorities, like the Party ideologues, tried to convince Soviet youth that sexual activity was dangerous not only because of the possibility of disease and pregnancy but also because of the waste of energy involved. Sexual energy, if retained, collected, and directed into socially productive activities, could produce results both for the individual and for the state...If sexophobia had been only part of the official ideology, it would not have been so terrible. As time went on, the bans would certainly have lost their resilience, especielly after Stalin's death; people would have steadily ceased to to countenance them, and it would even have become fashionable to violate them. However, it was not only Party ideology that operated against eroticism, but rather the entirety of everyday experience.... the poor living conditions hampered sexual intimacy. Millions of people were forced to live for years-and many throughout their entire lives - in hostels or communal apartments, where several families shared one flat. Adult married children frequently lived in a single room with their parents. How can one talk of sexual intimacy when everything is in view and within earshot?Naturally, the situation was even worse for people attempting to engage in pre- or extramarital sex. The question of "Where?" was always the most difficult for Soviet lovers to answer... Legally as well as practically, it was impossible to rent a room in hotel with someone of the opposite sex to whom one was not married; even if this had been simple to do, there was always a dreadful shortage of rooms. One had no right at all to rent a hotel room in one's hometown, and away from home, one had to wage war with the administrators to take a guest to one's room, even in the daytime for a short period of time. Hotels stationed numerous women on each floor for one purpose only: to keep watch over the morals of their charges, making raids on them and subsequently sending reports to their places of employment. The militia (police) likewise kept an eye on parks and gardens - though the Russian climate was often cold enough to put off even the most ardent lovers...Workers and students living in dormitories - i.e., the majority of young people - were utterly shorn of any legal sexual rights. The administrators enforced a rigid sexual segregation...Segregation by sex in school dormitories was one thing; administrative meddling in one's personal life was quite another. Yet that was the Soviet state and Communist Party had been doing systematically. Restrictive passport and residency permit system were introduced in 1932. A person could live only where he or she was officially registeres, and the police found it easy to control any moving around. Furthermore, the neighbors also kept an eye on people's movement. Listening in on privet conversations and collecting denunciations and gossip were favorite pastimes of the KGB and police, and were widely used for blackmail and as a tool in dealing with anyone they did not like. Every Soviet citizen felt him or herself to be in the public view during both the Stalin and later years; and few dared protest about it. Did this hypocritical and repressive morality help to reinforce the family and promote "healthy sex"? Of course not. People sought ways to circumvent the regulations. Despite official control and vigilance, group sex flourished openly in the youth hostels and dormitories. All too common was what went on in the vacation homes and outdoor recreation centers: once out of sight of parents or spouses, many young people (and the not so young) caroused as if there were no tomorrow, fulfilling and overfulfilling the plan, making up for what was out of reach in everyday life. There was, of course, a joke about this as well: A foreign tourist returning home from a visit to the Soviet Union was asked whether the Soviets have any brothels. "Yes, they have," replied the tourist. "But for some reason they call them holiday homes."World War II caused serious dislocation of marital and family relationships and sexual morality. It tore millions of people from their homes and families and gave rise to innumerable temporary liaisons and children born out wedlock. The death of millions of men at the front made some women widows, and deprived others, still young, of the chance to find a husband and start a family. A change of such magnitude was bound to leave its imprint on the sexual behavor and moral principles of an entire generation.The GULAG system had a continuously negative effect on the family as well. Many millions of people were incarcerated in Stalin's camps and prisons...
In the late 1920s the harassment and arrests of foreigners led to a slowing down of American immigration to Russia. By 1935 the special shops for foreigners were closed and aliens were being dismissed from jobs, expelled and arrested...Though many disillusioned American expatriates went back to the United States, some of their children decided not to return, married Russians and remained in the Soviet Union, where they and their families are still living today. Those who later changed their minds and wanted to go back to America often had to struggle fo decades to obtain exit documents. Most of the Americans who heard wedding bells in Russia had no idea of the problems they could encounter as foreigners, and as foreigners with Russian spouses. Daunting legal and bureaucratic obstacles often kept mixed couples apart, for until 1946 only one or two exit visas a year were issued to Russian married to Americans.These romances were particularly intense because of the constant awareness that separation could be imminent and permanent. Once a partner returned home, days and nights of passionate encounters could be followed by weeks of total silence. Visas might not be issued, letters not delivered, phone calls interrupted...In February 1947 and edict of the Supreme Soviet forbade marriages between Soviet citizens and foreigners. Though in general the ban was strictly enforced, a few marriages were permitted.By making the law retroactive, the Soviet government exerted pressure both on planned future marriages and on Russians already married to Americans, urging them to divorce their spouses and threatening sanctions if they did not. Measures aimed at preventing and breaking up these marriages included bugging telephones, tailing individuals on the street, threats of job loss and arrest and jail sentences on trumped-up charges. A Russian wife could be forced to write a letter to newspaper Pravda repudiating her husband, denouncing the U.S., and stating her wish to remain in the motherland. Some women who refused to sign statements renouncing their husbands were sent to labor camps. The wife of an American Foreign Service officer who had been forced to leave when his term was up went out for a walk one day, and was never heard from again.Immigration to Russia resumed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when American leftists and their families began fleeing the McCarthy with hunt.
It was difficult time for people of capital intelligentsia who found themselves in provincial Russia. This is how Michael Herman, a well-known art critic, who was evacuated with his parents to Ural when he was a teenager: " During the years of war we lived near City of Perm (then renamed into City of Molotov), in the village named Black. It was darkness everywhere. There was no electricity, no radio in the village. All the women gloomy and tired looked old . The men, almost all of them were in the war. The hate towards evacuees who indiscriminately was called "yavrei" (Jews) was not Antisemitism, it was rather biological hate towards people from other world ... With time the hate of has degenerated into a condescending indifference - there was not any place to get away from each other.Mass evacuation worsened the living conditions of locals. In such circumstances the attitude of locals to evacuees was not just controversial, but indifferent or openly hostile. Often the evacuees were not allowed to use banya (sauna) and kitchen of the hosts, the wells were locked.It was repeatedly reported on the "rejection of the evacuees by locals" in the secret correspondence of local city executive committee . It was stated in one of the letters by Molotov City Executive Committee of 14 November 1942 that "the facts of the brutal attitude and lack of attention to the evacuees in many areas are becoming commonplace, the numerous facts of shortchanging of evacuees in the stores of collective farms, the issuance of bread of poor quality to evacuees, and even looting by the farmers against evacuees have been revealed". Antagonism of local residents to evacuees sharply manifested itself usually in the countrysides (there was lived 52,1% of all evacuees in the Urals villages in 1943,). But the domestic conflicts between locals and evacuees constantly took place also in the cities. The locals and evacuees very often had prejudices towards each other. "Only the rich people were able to evacuate " - such stereotype pushed provincials to raise prices for housing, firewood and food. Speculation, fantastic high cost, the actualrobbery of evacuees by locals at the flea markets is a motif in almost all diaries and memoirs...
Years of study at the academy concurred with the years of "heroic" struggle against cosmopolitanism, when newspapers were publishing anti-Semitic articles. Except a newspaper "Red Star" - the body of the military departments. I heard: when someone suggested a satirical article that would be denouncing army cosmopolitans it was refused in publishing. The news about expulsion of specialists with "unsuitable" nationalities from the different institutions came from everywhere.My journey to a new station of my job lasted about ten days revealing not only the beauty of Lake Baikal, but an obvious poverty of towns and villages. Even a giant profile of Stalin carved on the rock could not overshadow the wretchedness of life.Passing along the carriages, I, though belatedly, noticed that there was only one dominated nationality among my fellow travelers - not only officers but also graduates, mainly construction who had to arrive in Khabarovsk, Ussuriysk, Vladivostok and be given clothing, rank of lieutenant and a new assignment.The first stage of my Far Eastern service took place in the town of Spassk-Dalny. <…> Another feature of the local garrisons Been discovered in a high percentage of Jews in the military units, at headquarters and political departments. One Colonel, a chief of Spassk-Dalny Garrison had the last name that did not leave any doubt of his nationality. <…>Everything seemed to be running smoothly. The authorities emphasizing its goodwill did not annoy me and even sent its nomination of me for a higher rank. But something began to change in the beginning of the fifty-third year. I was called to a special department and questioned about my wife's parents. I did not feel any guilt and held myself independent of situation. After answering two or three questions I did not continue the conversation and went away. Scant information about the tragic events in Moscow was amortized by distance. However, news of the arrest of the doctors-killers alerted me and the rising flow of anti-Semitism in the metropolitan press did it as well. <…><…> The anti-Semitic fountain was continueing despite the statement by Ilya Ehrenburg. Its splashes came to Far Eastern frontiers. In one of the garrison hospitals was arrested a surgeon with a Jewish name: his patient, a soldiers, he died after the operation. Some of the journalists of a district newspaper hinted me whether the authorities of the political department or Military Council was interested in my personal file and somebody from Moscow emissary from Gogol Boulevard mentioned my name.It turned out that in general the anti-Semitic campaign was not going to be deployed in the Far East. But someone should be sacrificed in the name of raising spirit of fight. It is difficult to restore the sequences of events. I was invited to the meetings and I did not feel any bias. But one fine day the polite sergeants of the communications battalion came to my home and removed the telephone that was authorized according to my rank. "Next time we will take you" - grimly joked an intelligence service officer. <…>As I knew, the editor and administration of the political department tried to protect me. But the final word rested with somebody higher... However, such a word was the death of Stalin.
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