The whole world heard the quote of a woman from the Soviet Union during the space bridge between the USA and the USSR in the very beginning of Perestroika: “There’s no sex in the USSR!” However, if we look at this matter a little closer, we will understand that the sexual revolution took place in the Union some 50 years earlier than, say, the United States.

After the establishment of the communist regime, the sexual life has changed a lot. Here’s what one of the main idea-mongers of the new order Alexandra Collontai said, “Sexual need is a plain physiological need the satisfaction of which shouldn’t be complicated. Sexual contact doesn’t include any specific factors that would make it different from drinking a glass of water to quench one’s thirst”.

Sexual debauchery was at its full swing. There even were special communes where the members shared everything including the food, household goods, and women. The soldiers of the Red Army were encouraged with special certificates that gave them the right to “collectivize” a given number of women.

It all resulted in a sharp rise of abortions, most of the young people losing their virginity even before turning 17, and more than a half of the proletariat slept with prostitutes infected by sexually transmitted diseases! The new government was really alarmed by the state of affairs that in the middle of the 1920’s, it started proclaiming sexual discretion. In the end of the 1920’s, a new set of drastic asexual rules was established: “During the stage of socialistic buildup the proletariat should be really thrifty. It interferes with our mutual interests to let the creation energy ooze out through the sexual holes”. Only two books containing the word “sex” were published during the period from 1936 to 1961 – and these were books only available to psychiatrists. Why should we draw the people away from the development of communism? The advice from a popular 1950’s book, “Household Management”, wasn’t really sexual either: “A woman complying with the rules of hygiene should change her underwear and wash her body with soap once a week”. No one would even think about some diversity of sexual pleasures – especially the newlyweds that often lived in the same flat with their parents!

In the 1960s, during the government of N. Khrushchev, the so-called “thaw” touched not only the politics and culture but also sexual life. For instance, the article: “Sexual Morality From the Sociological Point of View” by I. S. Kon, acknowledged the human right to sexuality and recommended to use the sexual energy for the benefit of “a) labor; b) reproduction; and c) relaxation”. A Neobolshevist manifesto was published at approximately the same time. It condemned premarital sex and proposed marking and sterilization for those who had sex with foreigners.

The 1970s were marked by books under such names as: “The Psychological Hygiene of Life in Marriage” which gave a lot of advice on sex techniques. However, such books were often full of statements that would make the people of today roar with laughter: “In most cases a young man doesn’t love the woman whom he tries to engage into having a sexual affair”. “It’s not recommended to repeat sexual intercourse regularly even if a person is able and willing to”.

With the beginning of Perestroika, the country was flooded with low-rate XXX books and movies which shocked a lot of people. Nowadays, the sexual life on the Post-Soviet territory isn’t different from that in any other country of the world.

Going back to the quote we mentioned in the beginning of the article, we should note that the woman was trying to say that there wasn’t any sex on USSR television, but the wild reaction of the crowd didn’t let her finish the statement. Sure, sex was always present in the USSR – it just wasn’t the means of moneymaking.