Jewish Sexual Revolution of 1917

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It is customary to count the sexual revolution since the mid-60s, when the hippie movement (sex, drugs and rock-n-roll) arose 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, the pillar of the country of victorious socialism.

Correspondence on intimate topics

"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."

The German psychologist W. Reich in his work "Sexual Revolution" (1934, first edition) cites an excerpt from the correspondence between Trotsky and Lenin (1911) devoted to 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 true 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, shortly 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" were issued (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 women 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 terminated.

In 1919, the director of the Institute of Social Hygiene, Batkis, 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), be it 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 same 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.

Along with the revolutionary dates, other holidays were celebrated on a grand scale in the USSR. So, in Petrograd on December 19, 1918, the anniversary of the decree "On the abolition of marriage" was celebrated with a procession of lesbians. Trotsky claims in his memoirs that Lenin reacted joyfully to this news: "Keep it up, comrades!" At the same procession they carried posters “Down with shame”. This appeal finally came into widespread use in June 1918, when several hundred representatives of both sexes walked through the center of Petrograd completely naked.

The land of victorious sex

The change in the relationship between the sexes at this time was pervasive. For example, in the event of a break in family relations with children, alimony was paid only for six months and only if one of the partners was unemployed or disabled. Legislation on sex in the post-revolutionary years has been constantly evolving, updated, supplemented. So, Alexandra Kollontai, one of the developers of the "Marriage Code", wrote: "The longer the sexual crisis lasts, the more chronic it becomes." And then he adds: “Sexual clearance in schools should start from 12-13 years old. Otherwise, we will increasingly face such excesses as, for example, early pregnancy. It is not uncommon when this age (of childbearing) is 14 years old today."

And the Bolshevik government is issuing directives to the regions on the introduction of sex education in schools. But this undertaking runs up against obstacles: "inertness of thinking" in the outback of Russia and a lack of qualified sexologists and teachers. If the first obstacle was really problematic to cope with, then the second - the shortage of sex teachers - is quite within our power. Sexologists came to Russia from abroad, especially from Germany. For example, from 1919 to 1925, about 300 such specialists from abroad arrived in the USSR. For example, a sexologist, a German woman Halle Fanina recalled: “The USSR in 1925 really appeared before me as something fantastic. That's where the room for work is! The whole world, and especially Germany, should be jealous of what happened here. Applied sexology and psychology have advanced so much that there will be enough material for their study for several years. " By the way, the USSR was the first country in the world where the theories of Sigmund Freud were officially recognized.

At the same time, discussions about the pros and cons of free love do not cease. Interesting were the arguments of a certain party worker Markov at the conference “On Social Hygiene” in 1924: “I warn you that a colossal disaster is approaching us in the sense that we have misunderstood the concept of“free love”. As a result, it turned out that from this free love the communists have done the kids … If the war gave us a lot of disabled people, then the misunderstood free love will reward us with even bigger monsters."

But such arguments for the time being drowned in the general chorus of approving voices. In the USSR, books and brochures on this topic are published in millions of copies (the most sold out brochure in 1925 is by a certain Jenchmian "Sexual Reflexes"). Seminars are held. The themes of one of them were, for example, the following: “1) Is the sexuality of a child natural? 2) How should we understand and regulate the attitude of child sexuality to work? " There are discussions in the press that "children used to play in the Red Army, but now there are worse games, namely, sexual ones."

The early 1920s also saw a sharp upsurge in illegitimate childbirths. So, a party worker Lysenko from Moscow cites figures from which it is clear that in the capital in 1923 at least half of the babies were born out of wedlock. The family itself as a “social unit” is replaced by the concept of “couple” (today such cohabitation is commonly called “civil marriage”). In 1924, according to Zeitlin, an employee of Trotsky's apparatus, "in large cities" couples "in comparison with families make up the majority."

At the same time, the question of contraception is widely raised. Abortion is encouraged as it "liberates the woman." Condom production is increasing several times compared to the pre-revolutionary level. Academician Pavlov is conducting sterilization experiments on dogs, hoping to transfer their results to Soviet people in the future. Many charlatans from science are modeling new contraceptives, artificial insemination for women, pills to increase potency.

As mentioned above, the directives "on social hygiene" came down from Moscow "at the discretion of the workers."That is, in the provinces, the authorities had to decide for themselves what kind of sexual policy to pursue. Their solution was often quite interesting …

For example, in Ryazan province, the authorities in 1918 issued a decree "On the nationalization of women", and in Tambov in 1919 - "On the distribution of women." In Vologda, the following provisions were implemented: “Every member of the Komsomol, a workers' school or another student who has received an offer from a Komsomol or a worker to have sex, must fulfill it. Otherwise, she does not deserve the title of a proletarian student."

The prototype of the Swedish family

But, of course, the sexual revolution was most fully and vividly embodied in both capitals of socialist Russia - in Moscow and Petrograd. We are used to thinking that the "Swedish family", i.e. cohabitation of many persons of both sexes is a purely Swedish invention. It turns out that this invention is ours, purely Russian.

The already mentioned Batkis in 1923 wrote in his brochure "The Sexual Revolution in the Soviet Union": freedom of relations should help them in this. " The reasoning was that since marriage is a relic of the bourgeois past, the Komsomol commune is the family of the future.

Komsomol communes were commonplace at that time. On a voluntary basis, 10-12 persons of both sexes usually lived in such a “family”. As in the current "Swedish family", in such a collective there was a joint household and sex life. Here is what our contemporary psychologist Boris Besht writes about this: “Separation into permanent intimate couples was not allowed: disobeying communards were deprived of this honorary title. Unlike the Swedish counterpart, the birth of children was not welcomed, since their upbringing could distract young communards from building a bright future. If, nevertheless, a child was born, he was sent to a boarding school … Gradually, sexual communality spread throughout all the major cities of the country. " It even got to the point that, for example, in the commune of the State Library in Moscow, communards were provided not only with the same coats and shoes, but also … underwear.

In this sense, the labor commune of the GPU for the homeless in Bolshevo, created in 1924 on the personal order of Dzerzhinsky, was considered exemplary. It numbered about 1,000 juvenile criminals 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. One of the reports on this commune wrote: “Sexual intercourse is developing in completely new conditions. The team complicates the relationship of the individual with other people so much that it turns out to be impossible to insure against a change of partner or the beginning of a new relationship. At the same time, living together distracts pupils from illegal acts and bad moods. " Thus, we can say that the commune in Bolshevo was (and remains) the largest "Swedish family" in history. By the way, a similar practice existed in other orphanages and even in pioneer camps.

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 coming 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 Klara 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 the construction of 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, abortion was 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.

Sexual education among young people was discontinued, and scientific work on this topic was curtailed.