Soviet Eros
Why was Russia unprepared for the sexual revolution.
A hundred years ago, Russia was suddenly ahead of the rest in matters of family law. The Bolsheviks, having barely come to power, has adopted many progressive laws. Civil marriage, easy divorce, women are granted equal rights with men in the family sphere, the equalization of the rights of illegitimate children, legalization of abortion and contraception, the decriminalization of homosexuality and prostitution.
Soviet Russia became the first country in the world, where he accomplished the sexual revolution.
War and sex
The first world war and the resulting collapse of the economy was one of the main reasons for not only the February and October revolutions of 1917, but the greatest changes in intimate life of inhabitants of Russia. The civil war continued this process.
War — millions of men, away from home. Professor I. H. Gelman, who in 1922, a survey of Moscow students on the topic of sexuality, noted that the former red army special attitude to this issue. One of the respondents noted that at the front there is heightened sexual arousal: “still will kill”.
Another boasted that during the war he had over 700 women, until women 60 years: “Otherwise do not feed soup”.
War is hunger.
Poverty, as a rule, the grave of all human relations. And we see how bread, for permission to push through the barrage detachment of a bag of flour the woman goes on all — gives itself.Nadezhda Krupskaya, “War and childbirth»
“Scoundrels ready to take advantage of the vulnerability of women is still a sufficient quantity, and pregnant women from people in person have not seen before. You cannot gloss over this. Poverty leads to sell, not be sold as a prostitute, which makes this fishery, and the mother of the family — often for the sake of children, for the old woman’s mother. A victim of the Sony Marmeladova became a household phenomenon only seen her sacrifice as a mere episode of the trip for bread (Krupskaya Nadezhda. War and childbirth, 1920)”.
In the era of wars and revolutions, to intimate life are easier than in peacetime:
“A man and a woman is easy, a lot easier the same, easier still go back and forth. Converged without great mental emotion, and parted without tears and pain” (Kollontai, Alexandra. Road winged Eros!, 1923).