To clarify the concept of “sexual revolution” “Let's turn to ancient Roman history. There was a respected matron named Lucretia, she was the daughter of a wealthy politician and the wife of a famous military leader. Her unearthly beauty was captivated by the spoiled royal son and, under the threat of weapons, took the girl by force.
Unfortunate Lucretia could not stand the shame. She told the story to her husband and stabbed herself with a dagger in front of his eyes. These sad events led to the overthrow of the royal power and the establishment of the Roman Republic.
Unbelievable, but it is a fact! Here the revolution took place after a crime on sexual grounds. But several hundred years will pass and another revolution will break out in the Roman Republic. As a result of the change in moral principles, prostitutes will roam freely around the Colosseum, and wealthy priestesses of love will pay taxes to the state treasury.
Interesting? Still would! But that is Rome, but how things were in the Russian Empire. Let's find out what important political events led to the sexual revolution in Russia.
October Revolution – Sexual Revolution
It is safe to say that there was sex in Tsarist Russia. Enlightened monarchs looked towards Europe and gladly made their own favorites. The Great Empress Catherine the Second, after her official husband, had 20 recognized favorites, relations with whom were, as they say, “in plain sight”.
There was no sexual education among the masses of the people. Ordinary men and women relied on Christian dogma, and in matters of contraception they used folk remedies.
But … the year 1917 struck!
And according to experts, the first sexual revolution in Russia occurred precisely after October revolution. Surprisingly, the young Soviet country passed bold laws, among which was the decriminalization of homosexuality.
The glass of water theory
Among the enlightened youth in the years of the establishment of Soviet power, there was a theory of the “Glass of Water”. Young people denied romantic “snot and drool”. They argued that the relationship between a man and a woman is an instinctive need, like a banal quenching of thirst. And having sex with a partner you like is as natural as drinking a glass of water in the heat.
Lenin about love …
The leader of the revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, wrote about love and marriage: “The communist system is not asceticism, but cheerfulness and cheerfulness caused by the fullness of love life.”
After the revolution in Soviet Russia, two important decrees “On the abolition of official marriage” and “On civil marriage”. The decrees considered the legalization of consensual sexual cohabitation. Spouses were considered a man and a woman living together, regardless of whether their marriage was registered by the state.
Husband and wife were considered equal marriage partners, and Lenin called the signed decrees a real “revolution in marriage”.
Freedom to the Soviet woman!
The Soviet government opened the doors of schools and universities to women. The concepts of “home” and “kitchen slavery” collapsed. Thanks to the construction of a large number of nurseries, kindergartens and schools, women were able to fully study and work.
Russian revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai became the first woman minister and ambassador of the USSR. With such high positions, she was the theorist of Russian feminism and the ideologist of the sexual revolution.
They say that Kollontai started an affair at work with the People's Commissar for Maritime Affairs Pavel Dybenko. Once, the lovers fled to the Crimea, forgetting about state affairs. Vladimir Ilyich reacted with a joke, ordering “to punish them with fidelity to each other for five years.”
Nudists of the 1920s
The Bolsheviks set themselves the task of destroying the patriarchal church order and bourgeois morality. The popularity of the “naked” movement, which flared up even before the revolution, reached a new stage in the early 1920s.
The young Soviet government did not “stifle” creative talents that glorified carnal love and the beauty of the female body. It was then that literary “hooligans” became famous – Sergei Yesenin, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Rodchenko, Ida Rubinstein, Dziga Vertov. Through literature, painting, dance and cinema, a new image of a citizen of the Soviet state was created, who was free and kept up with the times.
In the 1920s, they joked in the West – in the Soviet paradise you can walk around naked, hiding behind the newspaper “Communist”. The joke was based on true facts. Bulgakov, in his notes from 1924, reported that completely naked people with armbands “Down with shame” are wandering around in Moscow. They climbed into the tram and embarrassed the passers-by…”.
Indeed, in the mid-1920s, the “Down with Shame!” Society became very popular among young people. Demonstrations of activists took place massively and everywhere. In 1924, there was the apogee of the glory of the naked body – about 10,000 people took to the streets. The antics of the participants were gently suppressed by the police, and the People's Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko made a statement in one of the central newspapers. The minister declared that walking naked people through the streets of Soviet cities under the guise of revolutionary views is not permissible. He advised the activists of the movement to go to the sea….
The advice of Comrade People's Commissar was heard. And the next action of the followers of the “Down with Shame!” took place on the sea coast of Sevastopol. In 1928, the World League for Sexual Reforms (this organization is not an invention of Ilf and Petrov) recognized the young republic of the USSR as the standard of sexual tolerance.
Freezing sex in the 1930s
The sunset of the 20s in the Soviet country coincided with the change of power and the flourishing of a new movement of socialist puritanism. The happy faces of women and the naked bodies of chubby little ones descended from the covers of magazines. By the mid-30s, a total “freeze” of sexual issues began in the USSR.
The leader of the country, Joseph Stalin, became the ideologist of the new movement. Now sexual freedom was drastically suppressed, and cruelty, fear, persecution and violence were hidden behind the propaganda of the Soviet government.
The beautiful slogan “The family is the cell of society” was proclaimed. There was no legal prosecution for sex outside marriage and abortions, but such actions were considered deeply immoral and stigmatized by the Soviet society.
Thaw of the 80s
After the Great Patriotic War, when the male population of the country thinned out, moral principles in society have greatly weakened. This gave impetus to preparing the ground for a new sexual revolution in Soviet Russia.
In the 1980s, changes in the dogmas of the USSR were advancing brightly and rapidly. The society developed dynamically and looked towards the progressive West. The youth of the 80s wanted to be free from parental control. She frankly laughed at the “warning of mothers against mistakes and stupidities.” Girls actively mastered the secrets of make-up, radically changed their hairstyles, and the guys became more liberated in matters of courting women.
The main achievement of the thaw of the 80s was sexual education. Now young people in the USSR read books and magazines that revealed the secrets of sexual debut, premarital relations and conception control.
It was in the 80s of the last century that Russian citizens realized that sex would no longer be banned, but attraction to the opposite sex is a romantic thing and is called a beautiful word – Love!
SEX IN THE USSR: from the sexual revolution to asceticism
