From the work by Professor Dr. Igor S. Kon

The sexual revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Czars to Today.

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…

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In the 1920s and 1930s hundreds of American socialists, blacks seeking a society free from racism, Jews who had fled the tsarist pogroms, Russian immigrants and their children, ordinary workers and recent college graduates were fascinated by the Soviet experiment. Between 1920 and 1925 nearly 22,000 American and Canadian men, women and families moved to Russia intending to remain there (Paula Garb, “They Came to Stay: North Americans in the USSR”). These idealistic Americans who went off to the USSR to build the world of the future were quickly introduced to Russian reality – and to Russian romance.

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Before the revolution Bolsheviks had no define policy in regard to sexuality. The “sex issue” was for them mainly economic and sociopolitical and essentially boiled down to the problem of emancipating women and overcoming gender inequality. Sexuality was mentioned only in passing, especially in relation to the family.

Soviet legislation and social policy on issues of marriage and procreation in the 1920s were the most daringly progressive in the world. As early as 1918, women were accorded full equal rights with men in all and privet areas, including marriage and family relations. Women had the right…

Unfortunately, the realities of life that confronted the Bolsheviks immediately after revolution  were much more difficult than they had anticipated…

And the costs associated with the subsequent breakdown in marriage and family patterns – unwanted pregnancies, fatherless children, prostitution, the spread of venereal diseases – were great and provoked mounting concern…

Read more about the Soviet Sexual Revolution