Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sex in the
Soviet Union
Dr Mikhail Stern
and
Dr August Stern
Translated from the French by
Marc E. Heine
w. H. ALLEN LONDON
A Howard & Wyndham Company
1981
Copyright
0 491 02743 5
Contents
In trod uction
The land of clandestine sex
Part One
The Soviet regime and sexuality
1
2
19
23
Part Two
The family, marriage and the couple
1
2
3
4
5
6
45
51
62
66
78
88
106
Part Three
Prohibited practices
1
3
4
5
6
7
8
What is normal ?
Masturbation
Exhibitionism and voyeurism
Sexual intercourse in public places
Eroticism and pornography
Prostitution
Sex crimes
Homosexuality
123
125
137
146
IS
160
169
176
Part Four
Nationality, class and sexuality
1
2
3
4
1 85
192
199
24
Conclusion
Revolution or catastrophe ?
217
Appendix
Octobriana : an example of erotic samizdat
221
Introduction
The land of clandestine sex
10
II
12
15
Part One
bed. But for those who survived this ghastly period the effects
of the noctutnal arrests have been traumatie and their historieal
significance cannot be overestimated. In those years the popu
lation was possessed by fear, a basie emotion common to aIl.
Fear not only caused tragedies of a psychologieal nature in
millions of people but for a great number of them, it also led
to serious sexual problems. Fear is the enemy of sex. To prove
this, it is enough to try to make love when a jealous wife is
beating on the door. But one can have it out with a wife;
one can even keep the door shut or escape through the window
with one's mistress. But there was no escaping the NKVD,
and no explanations were possible. The knocking on the door
meant that one had to open it-for the last time.
Let us return to' the story of Andrii and Elena. Andrii was
arrested in 1 938, on the night of 20 April, 'Hitler's birthday,' as
he liked to joke later. Not long after, he was sentenced to
twenty years in a labour camp; but in 1 941, when Russia
joined the war, he was sent to the front in a special battalion of
'criminals' and 'enemies of the people'. He told me that aU his
companions perished, but that he was only wounded and, for
obscure bureaucratie reasons or very possibly owing to the
chaos of the war, he was not sent back to the camp, but re
turned home-minus an arm, but basieaUy safe and sound.
But really safe and sound ? At the time of his marriage to Elena,
Andrii had been a perfectly normal man sexually. On his
return, he was unable to rid himself of his fears at night : the
slightest noise in the street plunged him into veritable par
oxysms of anxiety : 'They are coming to get me aga in.' Some
times he would get up and creep up to the window to look out
into the street. Seeing nobody, he would go back to bed. But
once more he would feel his throat tighten with fear. His wife
was understanding, making him feel that she still loved him as
mu ch as before. But in spite of a very strong sense of desire,
the fear whieh dominated him made him impotent.
Years passed without the slightest improvement. When 1 met
Andrii in 1950, he could recaU aIl the details of the six or seven
occasions on which he had had sexual relations with his wife
during this entire time. Andrii was about to offer his wife her
freedom, despite his love for her. 1 did not believe that Elena
would have accepted this generous gesture : she was prepared
to sacrifice her sex life for her love.
A series of hypnosis sessions yielded no results. 1 despaired
20
of being able to help these people who had been ruined by the
system. 1 advised Andrii to give up sleeping in the same
bed as his wife, to go away for a week or two, and then to try
once more to have intercourse with her, but this time during
the day, something which is quite unusual in the Soviet
Union.
1 cannot remember how this idea came to me; perhaps 1
had already grasped the whole significance of this knock-on
the-door syndrome; perhaps it was intuition. But 1 shall never
forget when Elena and Andrii came to see me with a bottle of
vodka and an enormous cake. Both of them wept openly and
we embraced each other. This was in 1952, and in Moscow
the Doctors' Plot, a new purge prepared by Stalin, was making
news headlines, but it was as if we were protesting: 'No! We
will remain human beings! We will live! We will not renounce
love! '
It is not by chance that 1 begin my book with a reflection
on the consequences the violence of the regime has had on Soviet
sex life. It is the intrusion of the regime into the intimacy of the
conjugal life of ordinary men and women which forces this upon
me.
The twentieth century has taught us that aIl societies, all
social and political regimes, have their sexual taboos and rules
of conduct, imposed on their members with greater or lesser
success-in short, ideological and moral codes which become
part of the collective conscience. People have distanced them
selves from the purely biological functions of sexuality and
very often do not realise the profound links between the
elementary forms of sexual activity, erotic sentiment and
orgasm on the one hand, and the history of society and of
each nation on the other. It is now generally understood that
so-called primitive societies, far from indulging in the unbridled
promiscuity once ascribed to them, observe very rigid laws
governing family relationships and incest.
The Soviet regime, which aspires to total control of the
individual's behaviour and even his thoughts, cannot remain
indifferent to sex. Lenin wrote to Inessa Armand, his platonic
friend, that 'as for the question of love, the whole problem is
in the objective logic of c1ass relations'. Like it or not, love in
the USSR belongs to the public dom1in: the family must be
Communist, the woman liberated in the Soviet manner; homo
sexuality has been illegal since 1934.
21
22
Make
way
for Eros!
Here one sees that free love is often anything but feminist
and operates to the advantage of only one of the parties in
volved. An extraordinary text, but one that is very revealing
of the period and of the thinking of certain circles in the
Communist Party, proposed a 'socialisation of women'. This
was a 'decree' (cited by A. G. Kharchev in Marriage and che
Farnily in che USSR, Moscow, 1964) issued by a Soviet citizen
25
the 1920S were also a period when there was a craze for psycho
analysis. Even before the War, it had already been taken up in
certain intellectual and medical circles. A psychoanalytical
association was founded in Moscow in 1921. Vera Schmidt
attempted to bring up children according to principles which
she derived from Freud. Other associations were founded in
Kiev, Odessa, Rostov .. .
27
29
30
The local commissars, those rural Don Juans (as the Teacher's
Journal of 4 December 1926 calls them), compelled young
schoolmistresses newIy arrived in their village to cohabit with
them, under threat of administrative sanctions.
Nor should we lose sight of what was an essential part of the
background to tbis period: the state of anarchy which pre
vailed after the war. The civil war had ravaged entire districts,
causing millions of deaths. Pogroms, devastation, rape, and all
manner of violence had become commonplace. During the great
famine of 1921-22, sorne inhabitants of the Volga region were
reduced to eating children. The number of young vagrants,
abandoned children, orphans, refugees and juvenile delin
quents amounted to between seven and nine million in 1922.
It was that which truly shattered the traditional family-that
was the real revolution-much more effectively than all the
fashionable trends. In the course of the civil war, chaos reigned,
a state of barbarism which spared no one.
There were innumerable cases of rape and sexual violence,
which led to scandaIs, trials, and ideological discussions con
ducted by th authorities. There was a gang rape of a school
girl at Chelyabinsk, in 1926, by a number of her classmates
(Teacher's Journal, 26 June 1926). A group of seven men,
including several Communists, went on trial for the rape of
two women-an affair that gave rise to the expression 'Chubarov
moraIs', after the name of the street where the rape was com
mited (Prvda of Leningrad, 17 December 1926). As the
newspaper article stresses, this episode seems typical of current
moral attitudes. Had Mayakovsky himself not written:
'1 shaH ravish
33
'The so-called 'new sex life' of young people and adults seems
very ofcen petit bourgeois, a variety of th\! good oid bourgeois
brothe!.
Lenin's own private life is not notable for its eroticism. AlI
his attention and energies were monopolised by the desire to
hammer his party into shape. This obsession consumed his
days and his nights. Like Chernyshevsky's hero, whom he
admired, he had no time for sentiment or the desires of the
flesh. Everything he ate and drank, his c!othes, his daily life,
served only to keep him at his best for the good of the cause.
The pleasures of the body were banished : everything had to
serve the Revolution.
We know of only two women in Lenin's life : his wife
Krupskaya and his friend Inessa Armand, who died in 1920.
At present the Soviets are taking pains to cover up his re1ation
ship with Inessa Armand although this romance, which was
pure1y platonic, was perhaps the only human and truly moral
chapter in his life. He had no children. The only fruits of his
militant marriage to Krupskaya were the mythical ideas which
they shared regarding a Communist paradise.
1 do not know how historians will judge Lenin, but his be
haviour from a doctor's point of view, particularly his gestures
and physiognomy, suggest to me that the Communist giant
was a sexual pygmy. The impotence fairly generally attributed
to him in the USSR is perhaps not entirely fanciful. Compar
ing Lenin's 'case' with the countless cases of impotence which
1 have had to treat, a number of common traits emerge : very
energetic gesticulations when speaking-a form of compen34
35
Stalinist virtue
(per 1,000)
1913
45 5
1920 = 3 1.2
1925 - 447
1926 - 44.0
(per 1,000)
1930
392
1940 - 3 1.2
1950 - 267
Part Two
(per 1,000)
1968 = 17.2
1969 = 17.0
1970 = 17-4
1974 = 18.0
45
47
lost its noblest meaning. The man of the house is either a capri
cious child, never satisfied, or else a "roaring lion", who ill-treats
his wife for peccadilloes. C . . . ) My friends aIl complain of trus, with
rare exceptions. Each one says that it is easier to raise two children
than to get her husband to do anything . . . C ) Only one of my
friends can boast of having a husband who is capable of doing odd
jobs about the house. AlI the others, including myself, are obliged
to wield the hammer and the drill ourselves. One friend tells me
that if the lift is out of order, her husband becomes irritable : "What
are you waiting for? Why don't you call the electrician ? " If the
sink is broken, it's the same story : "I1's two days now, and you
haven't telephoned someone about it." He would never dream of
telephoning himself . . . What do you call trus ? Childishness, laziness,
meanness, irresponsibility ? l don't know, but it seems to me that
husbands are losing the right to call themselves head of the family . . .'
three times, had lived with a dozen men, had had over ten
abortions and at the same time claimed to be living a perfectly
normal life. A typical case, 1 should say, and 1 cite it not to
pass any moral judgement, but to show that in the USSR a
profound upheaval has taken place at the heart of the family
microcosm.
50
53
may seem ridiculous : one might say that there are as many
reasons as there are divorces. Still, Soviet sociologists have
been brooding over the question, doubtless with a view to
limiting what is considered to have reached almost pla gue
proportions. As 1 have said, the reasons given do not neces
sarily correspond to the real motives, but are those which
make the divorce easier, such as the master formula, 'incompati
bility'. However, certain statistics are of particular interest.
For example, 40 per cent of divorces are the result of scenes
or disputes with the parents of the other spouse. As we know,
many couples live with their parents : the persistence of tradi
tional structures, yes, but also the break-up of the family, since
their living together hardly seems harmonious. Mother-in-Iaw
and son-in-Iaw are not always good housemates.
This brings us to the material living conditions of the
couple, and above aIl to housing. In 1965, according to
Kharchev, a Soviet sociologist, 31.7 per cent of divorcs had
no accommodation of their own, but lived with their parents,
in a hostel, etc.; 63.2 per cent lived in a communal fiat. In
other words, 95 per cent of them did not have satisfactory
housing. In 1977, 79 per cent of divorcs still did not have a
fiat at the time of their marriage. The situation requires no
comment. The housing crisis, although less acute than before,
nevertheless remains grave, and can le ad to an unexpected out
come to divorce. Often the divorced couple continue to live
in the same room, separated by a fol ding screen. By force of
circumstance, one fine day they may even conc1ude a 'non
aggression pact' and continue to have sex together. The painter
Semenov of Leningrad went through aIl these stages of break-up
and reconciliation. His passion for the models who posed for
him drove him periodicaIly to divorce, but as he never man
'
aged to get a place of his own, he always remarried the same
woman. Tired of the expense occasioned by their divorces and
the periodic purchase of fol ding screens, the couple now live
together in great accord. For once, the housing crisis has
successfuIly contributed to strengthening the bonds of mar
riage !
Among other reasons for divorce, 1 shaIl mention sexual
problems (the subj ect of a later chapter), 'loss of affection',
adultery of course, the imprisonment of one of the partners
(generally the husband), alcoholism and ill-treatment. The
battered wife is still a very common phenomenon; however,
60
6 7,000 divorces
270,000
679,000
1975
1976
7 83,000
86 1,000
61
62
66
68
wards. When the patient came to see me, she had become
positively frigid : the shock of being surprised in a shameful
activity, the traumatism caused by the beating, and her sense
of guilt were so emotionally disturbing that even masturba
tion became ineffective. This unfortunate person, who had
previously been perfectly normal, was now an incurable sexual
invalid. This is a classic case, which weil indicates the state
of sexual inferiority to which the S oviet woman is confined. It
also reveals the mixture of falsehood, ignorance and brutality
which poisons relations between the sexes.
If the female orgasm is hardly recognised, this is naturally
not the case with the man. Masculine sexality is the worthy
complement of feminine passivity : it is a show of strength. The
man does not try to make love or seek amorous pleasure; he
attempts to demonstrate that he is powerful. Naturally this
kind of demonstration is not peculiar to the Soviets, but what
is peculiar to them is the element of acting, of falsehood, which
characterises ail their social a ttitudes. And perhaps also, beyond
the outward appearances, there is a deeper, more insidious
sentiment: as the Soviet man is nothing in his public life, he
is compelled to seek compensation elsewhere and to try to
prove in his own eyes, and even more in his wife's, that he is
somebody. Under the macho exterior the man frequently con
ceals a lack of confidence; an inferiority complex.
1 have been able to observe this personaily in the hundreds
of patients 1 have seen who have complained of having an
insufficiently developed penis. These cases were so common,
and the patients' statements so similar, that the atrophied
penis complex became as commonplace for me as influenza
is for a general practitioner. It was always a question of the
male fearing that he was unable to prove his virility.
ln many of these cases, this show of force can easily turn
into overt aggressiveness. Even if the woman feels desire, she
must simulate resistance. 1 have known an extreme case of
this type, a prisoner in the camp where 1 was confined told
me that he was unable to have sexual intercourse unless his
partner pretended to resist. If she did not herself gues s what
she had to do, he created the sort of conditions where she
would genuinely be driven to resist. The last session of this
type had brought him into the prisoner's dock, and then to the
camp.
The woman who resists is such a common sexual model
hide and is not afraid of people looking into his priva te life.'
This is incredibly ruthless blackmail. Every collectivity -un
doubtedly exercises moral pressure on its members ; but at
least they have a priva te life, a certain unsupervised area of
their existence where the y may escape the attention of others.
The Soviet regime has strived hard to reduce this area to a
banality (since everyone is happy and respectable, there is
nothing to hide), and now the moral pressure of the crowd,
which has become second nature to the Soviet people, pursues
lovers into the smallest gateway.
Soviet humour, that eternal antidote, has portrayed this
social pressure in the following form : a militiaman catches a
couple kissing in a Moscow street. He rushes towards them,
shouting :
'Where did you learn such filth ? '
'From Maupassant.'
'Sergeant ! Find me this Maupassant immediately and bring
him ta me at the station ! '
The devaluation of love and the importance of friendship
One day a Soviet sociologist named Kolbanovsky delivered a
lecture in Moscow. At the end he was asked : 'How many times
in this life can a man be in love ? ' The professor replied :
'Everyone can love man y, man y people. An unlimited num
ber . . . ' Silence. 'Naturally 1 am not speaking of physical love !
Everyone may love whom he wishes, with the exception of
enemies of our system.' This sentence admirably epitomises
the relentless attempt to assassinate love in the US SR. Not
. only is love reserved for the faithful, but at the same time it
assumes a different meaning : true love is that which embraces
aIl good Soviet citizens (sexless persons) and definitely not
just one or several men, one or several women. In other words
it is no longer a question of love.
To be in love, it is not necessary to have read Romeo and
1uliet or Petrarch's Sonnets. But imagine a country where the
model of great lovers that one studies at school is the militant
couple Lenin and Krupskaya. Such is the US SR. There is
something worse than the absence of cultural models and that
is false models, whlch everyone recognises as fabricated and
artificial. Since the Stalinist campaign ta de-erotise love, it has
not re-emerged from its ruins inta what one may derisively
term official Soviet 'culture'. There are no love songs, except
74
frequency
every day
twice a week
once a week
once a month
77
Sexual licence
towards women
is the
is in
. . . ' CV.
Suk
and 3 8 per cent had aIready done so with several men. Finally,
of the growing number of mothers giving birth, nearly 5 0 per
cent were under twenty.
To evaluate the importance of the phenomenon, one would
have to be able to compare these figures with those from the
S talinist period, which are obviously unavoidable for reasons
of puritanism. But the most important transformation in this
a rea is perhaps the evolution of ideas, which is openly affirmed
even in a country where public speech is so strictly cO'n trolled.
Pre-marital sex is more and more considered a normal prac
tice. An unpublished survey has shown tha t in Moscow it was
difficult to find a young woman who had not already had
sexual relations. Of . the women interviewed 66 per cent ap
proved of such relations; the others were indifferent. A larger
survey conducted amongst s tudents, showed that 53 per cent
of the men and 38 per cent of the girls approved of pre-marital
sex; 16 and 27 per cent respectively disapproved; the rest were
indifferent.
An this tallies with my own experience. Formerly a girl of
twenty was supposed to be a virgin and most often was. Dur
ing the post-war period girls began to have sexual experiences
at an ever earlier age. At present in schools, particularly tech
nical schools, girls lose their virginity at fourteen, thirteen and
even twelve years of age. A mother and father brought me their
daughters, aged nine or ten, both of whom had already had
sexual relations. These children had a precocious sex life, but
the phenomenon was not pathological, as in the case reported
by my colleague Khodzhinov from Kharkov; of a little girl
pregnant at the age of six. The increasingly young age at which
sex Iife begins certainly has a partly biological origin. The
youth of today attain the age of maturity sooner, both physi
cany and mentaIly. But the essential point is the profound
change in thinking, noticeable today at the most everyday
level. For example, up to the 1 960s there were unwritten rules
for meetings between young people of the opposite sexes. The
day the y first met was marked, if everything went weIl, by a
visit to the cinema. A friendly kiss crowned their second
meeting. At the third meeting one might embrace the girl. It
was only later that things could go further, whereas now one
evening often suffices fo::' the young people blithely to break
the sexual barrier. Naturally the chief victim of this change
of mentality is the idea that the girl's virginity represents
91
'Y-y-y-y-yes.'
'Then what do you do to satisfy it ? '
,
"
The response to a11 this is, as 1 have said, either pure and
simple ignorance of the acts, coupled with general resignation,
or an attempt to intimidate the young by exaggerating the dan
gers involved and the threat of social chaos entailed. Good
sense would demand, to begin with, the e stablishment of mini94
ail girls my age. 1 met a boy in the South. 1 didn't love him, he
didn't attract me, but the irreparable has happened.'
Then the girl asks if she should take the boy to court :
'1 don't want to make it easy for such scoundrels . . . It w a s a
real swindle, an abuse of confidence, a crime, a crying shame if
you like.'
Reading between the lines a11 the blame lies with boys who
do not know how to control themselves and do not have a
chivalrous attitude. As for the girls, they ought to he more
careful and heware of philanders. One might expect a Russian
peasant woman to think in this way. In the columns of a j our
nal which hoasts of educating youth, the ide a requires no com
mentary.
Under these conditions, it is not surprising that the attitude .
of youth towards sexuality is often cynical. The survey of
Odessa students which 1 have already cited revealed that they
had, as it were, a 'practical' attitude towards sex : for them,
love is merely a physical need which should he satisfied with
out sentiment. In short, this is the glass-of-water theory
springing up again, but this time in a more plebian fashion,
directed a gainst the regjme and not following its le ad as in the
1 920S. There is an e1ement of bravado here , of revoIt against
the moral pla titudes heaped on young people from the very
fust lessons at nursery school.
95
'And what about Romeo and Juliet? How oid were they? '
1 shaH conclude b y citing a discussion which tock place in
1 969 in the columns of Komsomolskaya Pravda. This news
paper had launched a campaign to check moral laxity and
published an article by the writer Lev Kassil, an author of
books for children and young people. The following is an
excerpt.
'Girls reach physical maturity sooner than young men C
) But
adolescent boys are subject to certain imperative urges sooner than
Kassil does not use 'dirty ' words like 'sex', preferring instead
expressions of the type : 'certain urges', etc. It was perhaps
the relatively hum an tone of this article that brought Kassil
more th an 1,500 letters in reply, sent in from every region of
the US SR. S orne of the letters quoted by the newspaper took
the opposite view ta the one developed in the article.
A girl from Tbilisi w ote as foHow s :
'1 do not quite understand why for sorne time now honour and
virginity have been identified in the narrow, physical, sense of the
word. And what i s really incomprehensible to me i s how people
can determine the earliest permissible occasion for the first kiss !
Who has studied this question and who has arrived at so peremp
tory a decision ? Do you not feel that clichs of this kind are meant
for robots, whose feelings and their timing may be programmed ? '
Extra-marital sexuality
Adultery is as old as the world and far be it from me to present
it as a unique feature of the USSR. 1 shall be brief in this
regard and shall stick to those aspects which seem to me con
nected with the subject which interests me : the de gradation of
marriage and the appearance of a new mentality in sexual
matters.
As with pre-marital sex, it is impos sible without statistics to
evaluate the quantitative importance of the phenomenon. There
is one piece of data, however : in the U S S R in 1 977 there were
1 ,500,000 more married women than married men ! S uch a
disparity requires explanation. S oviet sociologists assert that
there are unmarried mothers who, at the time of the census,
declare themselves to be married. In fact a 46-year-old woman
living in the town of Sverdlovsk wrote to the Literary Gazette :
'When a11 is said and done, 1 am not a single woman. 1 do not feel
single because 1 have a son.'
In other words the mother feels that she has a family even
if she is unmarried-motherhood has priority over marriage.
But 1 believe that the principal cause of the statistical dis
crepancy lies elsewhere : sorne women say they are married in
good faith, without really being so; in particular, there exist
99
what are called in the USSR migra tory husbands, who have
several families and are in fact polygamous.
These data would indicate a disequilibrium between the
sexes in keeping with tradition : the adulterous woman is a
criminal, whereas the man may allow himself escapades with
no consequences. This is a feature of the past which persists,
and in Russian and Ukrainian villages one still finds resigned
peasant women, conscious and consenting victims of the in
fidelity of men.
Traditional, likewise, are the crimes of jealousy, which are
of c ourse no more original than those committed anywhere in
the world. More interesting are those phenomena which
indicate a change in the concept of adultery. Here, for example,
is a news item about an event which took place on the out
skirts of Pskov : a woman had gone to see her husband and
told him honestly that she was having an affair, but that she
did not know what to do, because she loved her husband as
weIl. The latter lost no time in reflection, seized a bottle, broke
it and drove a piece of it into his wife's throat, which earned
him a prison sentence. His reaction was 'traditional', whereas
the behaviour of his wife, for whom adultery was no longer a
shameful crime to be concealed, represented a new line of
reasoning.
It is this contrast, this duality, which the USSR is experienc
ing at present. After the war, in a republic like Turkmenia, in
Central Asia, an unfaithful wife might still be buried in the
sand up to her nose, to prevent her from crying out. 1 myself
witnessed such a scene in 1 944. By contrast, in the intellectual
milieux of the big cities it is sometimes considered good form
to practise 'civilise d' adultery : the husband and wife are free
and have no need to conceal their actions. Until quite recently
the woman had to be passionately involved before committing
an infidelity. Now, in the milieux which 1 have mentioned,
and even amongst the masses, the woman may deceive her
husband out of mere curiosity, or under the sway of momentary
sexual desire. Here again we find that cynicism, that purely
physiological concept of love, which is so widespread amongst
young people.
It is the change of mentality which has seemed to me
essential; it is beyond doubt that extra-marital sex is practised
more than in the past, and what was once considered a guilty
act committed in secret is now not far from being considered by
100
101
morais become freer and freer, the official moral norm itself
always refers back to Stalinist dogma. The person 'guilty' of
adultery is considered 'moraIly unstable' and therefore in need
of re-education. For example, he or she becomes unworthy to
travel abroad, etc. When in the USSR one wants to harm some
one, the easiest way is to cast aspersions on him; and as
aspersions of a political nature are inappropriate for the mass
of the population, one has recourse to gossip of a sexual nature:
who has slept with whom. Nothing is more effective than a
good anouymous letter to the Party or the IZomsomol, de
scribing the moral profiigacy of one's enemy, in order to shat
ter his career or at least cause him serious difficulties.
1 shaIl cite as an example the National Institute of Research in
Marine Geology, in Riga. This institute was regularly con
tracted to prospect for oil abroad: in Bulgaria, Cuba, India,
etc. Before each trip, when the participants of the expedition
were being selected, the institute became the scene of a pitched
battle for the available places. The Party committee spent
entire days reading the abundant correspondence which it
received, aIl sorts of anaymous letters providing details of the
intimate relations, debauchery and perversions of feIlow
workers at the institute. Such and such a department head was
no longer the nice boy everybody knew so weIl, but a dangerous
and perverted homosexual. That shy little operator Galia has
copulated with more than half the institute and-the height of
indecency-she did it on the beach. Lastly, a very peaceful
husband was transformed into a sex maniac: it appeared he
painted his testicles with green paint. The unfortunate man
had to provide a medical certificate in order to participate in
the expedition: in fact he had no testicles, for they had not
dropped. This atmosphere weIl refiects the climate which
reigns in the Soviet Union. Aspersions and gossip have always
existed and will perhaps always exist; when they assume such
proportions, they become an extremely pernicious social ill.
Moreover, they reveal at the same time a debasement of former
moral norms, obvious sexual frustration and the impossibility
of a genuine liberalisation of morals. Morality is no longer the
affirmation of an ideal of life together with the rules, even
constricting rules, attached to it: it is a means of destruction,
sanctioning the perverse satisfaction of suppressed desires. For
Soviet sexual life to become healthier, it must rid itself of this
poison.
I02
103
14
105
Sex education
The bewildering ignorance of Soviet people concerning matters
of sex affects young people as weil as adults. The explanation
lies not only in the absence of State-organised sex education;
the silence, shame and malaise which surround these questioris
make sexuality a generally neglected, misunderstood, even in
significant field.
1 could cite endless examples of this ignorance. A student,
Olya Polozova, found in her mother's wardrobe sorne soluble
contraceptive cachets, which she decided to use. She became
pregnant on three occasions, the whole time asserting that she
had used these cachets. Af ter the third abortion she came down
with a grave inflammation of the neck of the uterus and there
was even the danger of a tumour. It was only when she was
brought to me for treatment that 1 discovered the whole story.
Instead of introducing the cachets into the vagina, the girl had
quite simply swallowed them. What is revealing in this story
is not so much my patient's initial error, an error which is
always possible, but the fact that it required three abortions
and serious complications for it to be discovered: this is a
106
3 per cent a teacher. As for the press, books and the media in
general, their role is virtually nil.
This ignorance affects even adults, including individuais
married for decades. Here we are truly touching on the bur
lesque, and 1 mention only one particularly striking example
of which 1 have direct knowledge. The director of a village
club, who was married, was no more developed sexually than
a little boy of five. When 1 began to explain his condition to
him, he replied: 'But 1 have a child you know.' He seemed so
convinced of his paternity that 1 refrained from dissuading
him and from questioning him about relations between his
wife and his neighbours. Moreover, his case was in no way
unique: 1 can count by the hundreds men afflicted with insuffi
cient development.
17
109
III
joie de vivre
and ardour, which ought likewise to give birth to a full love life.
Our chief aid will not be sexology or the study of sexual pathology . . .
We need prophylaxis. We want millions of healthy families who
know nothing of pathology.'
1 13
Ils
The future will tell us if the situation will one day improve;
at present, there is hardly more 'liberalisation' in the area of
sex education than in culture or the economy.
have never been tested, and that they may lead to the birth of
mentally retarded children, grave illnesses or death. It is mainly
the Pill that is discussed, and the Soviet citizen is often inclined
to believe this kind of nonsense, because he does not realise
that it is once more a matter of lies with an ideological and
political basis.
In spite of this, what are the contraceptive methods existing
in the USSR? There are, above aIl, male condoms. It is a sign
of the lack of interest which surrounds these questions and
also of technological inadequacies, that these condoms are ex
tremely thick. Their dimensions are often preposterous: either
too long or too short. They are produced by the Bakovka
factory, not far from Moscow. Men are hardly very inclined to
wear them, even if they are very much in favour of contracep
tion, for these 'rubbers', their feel and odour, are very dis
agreeable, because of the talc with which they are covered. A
more serious matter is that in spite of their thickness, the
condoms are not very strong and tear very easily. Sorne men
adopt the habit of wearing two or three at a time, which, as
may easily be imagined, adds no additional charm to sexual
intercourse. But not even these precautions offer any guarantee.
The wife of one of my patients suffered from diabetes and was
strictly forbidden to become pregnant. Her husband used
four condoms each time. As the couple were not rich, they
decided to cut their expenses by re-using the condoms. It was
a fatal error: the mere fact of washing and drying them
sufficed to make them ineffective, so poor was the quality of
the rubber.
Sorne couples succeed in procuring condoms made in the
West, most often on the black market, thanks to foreign tour
ists or Soviet employees who bring them back home with
them. Their price is therefore five to ten times higher than
local condoms. When Soviets have become accustomed to
using them, they experience the greatest repugnance in re
turning to local condoms. One of my patients became com
plete1y frigid because her husband had gone back to using
Soviet 'rubbers'. Another was unable to be1ieve that condoms
made in the West were sold hermetically sealed and dipped
in special liquid. In the USSR they are simply wrapped in
poor-quality paper or cellophane pierced with holes. They are,
moreover, of a very unpleasant whitish colour.
As a result of news coverage and foreign contacts, the Soviets
1 17
120
Part Three
Prohibited practices
What is normal?
three years.
The corruption of minors : maximum, six years.
Sexual perversions : maximum, thr,ee years.
Pederasty : maximum, eight years.
Masturbation
125
128
She
13 2
that way and, as a result, lost all interest in parmers who did not
share her penchant. She began to have systematic recourse to
anal masturbation and later became a lesbian.
If the practice of mastur bation is protracted, if it is repressed,
or at least if its perpetrator is seriously inhibited, it tends to
assume extravagant forms. A girl was brought to a Leningrad
clinic in an ambulance. Her vagina was seriously injured by
splinters of glass. The doctors began to question her as to the
origin of these splinters, which extended to the neck of the
uterus, but her only reply was to beg them to tell her whether
she was going to die. In fact she had used a cylinder-shaped
Czech light bulb as a kind of artificial phallus. During one
masturbation session she had not noticed that the bulb was
cracked, and it broke while she was using it. Fortunately the
bulb was not switched on at the time, for the girl also had the
habit of turning it on to warm it and to increase her feelings
of pleasure.
Or take the case of a Vinnitsa schoolgirl, who had read in
popular technical journals detailed reports of the experiments
of an English scientist, James Olds. The latter had worked with
rats, attaching eIectrodes to their brains. During his experiments
he had discovered the rat's 'centres of pleasure' and had in
vented a system whereby the animal could, by pressing a lever,
pass a weak current through its brain, enabling it to 'give itself
pleasure'. The result was that the rat began to press the lever
up to seven thousand rimes an hour, leading to total exhaus
tion. While her parents were away on holiday, Sveta, a girl of
twelve, fixed up an electric circuit which she connected to her
clitoris and had long sessions experiencing the joys of elec
tricity.
Wh en her parents returned from their holiday, the little girl
told them very proudly of her scientific experiments : she quite
simply saw herself as Olds' disciple. The parents, flabbergasted,
noticed that their daughter had lost seven kilos and hastened to
bring her to me. The therapy was not difficult, once she had
dismantled her electrical apparatus and ceased to frequent the
Pioneers' Palace and its Handicrafts Club. It was harder to get .
her to regain the weight she had lost. A year later l was happy
to learn that the girl was continuing to show scientific talent and
had been adm.itted to the school of pp-ysics and mathematics
for gifted children at Novosibirsk, which selects chiId prodigies
from aU over the Soviet Union.
If the last case testifies to a harmless spirit of invention, 1
133
have known others, on the other hand, which reveal a sick ima
gination sometimes verging on sadi sm. S uch was the case of
a boy of fourteen, whose family was completely 'normal'. The
masturbation sessions in which he indulged followed a definite
rituaI. First he caught one of the stray cats that abound in
the provinces. Then he took it into a shed and, petting it all the
the while, fixed it to the wall with nails and string, thus cruci
fying the cat. Then he stabbed it in the he art and began mas
turbating immediately following the animal's rapid death. The
knife generally remained embedded in the wall, so strong was
the boy's blow. The sadistic child masturbated to the point of
ejaculation, enjoying the sight of the dead cat losing its blood .
Then he would take ' the animal down and throw it behind the
shed, wash the knife and then use it as a bookmark. The book
he was reading at the time was The Three Musketeers. There
was an entire cemetery of cats behind the shed : nearly thirty
animaIs. In the shed itself there was a pool of dried blood and,
beside it on a bench, Dumas' novel, with the knife between its
p ages.
Here, we are no longer dealing with forbidden p,ractices, but
with straightforward pathological behaviour. Most of the time
child and adolescent masturbation is j ust a sign of an awaken
ing to sex, which, though it may provoke horrified reactions in
in Soviet society, is nonetheless, quite naturaI. If it assumes
strange and sometimes disquieting forms, it is precisely be
cause of the ban on it. A phenomenon, even an aberrant one,
may be a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. A teacher
from the institute of steel and alloys at Vinnitsa told me that
during courses on the history of the Communist Party, the
students seated in the back rows secretly masturbated. It must
b e said that this obligatory instruction, which is nothing but
pure propaganda and a falsification of history, is rejected by aIl
the students, who undergo it unwillingly and are unable to
escape it. Of course masturbating in a lectureroom may seem
rather silly. But one must imagine the torture represented by
these courses, infticted several times a week over five or six
years, with neither the lecturer nor the audience believing a
single insidious word of what is said.
What is the importance of masturbation amongst adults ? Of
the patients whom 1 have been able to question, 15 to 20 per
cent of the men and 60 ta 70 per cent of the women resorted
to onanism either regularly or intermittently. For 15 per cent
134
137
138
understo.o.d poorly until then. What we o.ften take fo.r a case o.f
primary impo.tence o.r frigidity is o.ften no.t that in reality. The
functio.n o.f o.rgasm manifests itself in spite o.f everything, so.me
times under an 'abno.rmal' guise, but o.ccasio.nally with an in
tensity lar superio.r to. that 'no.rmally' experienced.
This leads me to. mentio.n a case o.f perio.dic, seco.ndary im
po.tence. The patient was an exhibitio.nist who. required an ex
ternal presence while he had relatio.ns with his wife. It mattered
lite whether it was a man o.r a wo.man who. spied o.n him :
142
l can give is from the record of my trial, which has been pub
lished in the West. The same obscene refrain, the same charge
recurred unceasingly : l forced adolescents to undress in their
mother's presence ! 'Undressing the son in his mother's presence
'
and showing the latter the boy s sexual organs . . . ' : the prose
cutor used this formula to begin a good number of his indict
ments. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of the trial :
JUDGE You were really embarrassed when your son was un
dressed in front of you ?
WITNESS N o , it was undoubtedly necessary.
JUDGE But still, it was disagreeable for you that your son should
143
"
the woman's body with their eyes. 1 do not know what the
144
who suffered from a neurotic fear of the male sex organ. During
the sexual act her hands were seized by convulsions, so great
was her fear of touching her partner's penis. N aturally the girl
was completely frigide
1 45
one minute before, had held bis penis. In reply he was coarsely
insuIted and, what is more, accused of immorality. In fact what
is sought is anonymity, a parmer whom one may possibly not
even see.
It is for tbis reason that public transport may constitute a
magne t, as though it were a place of pleasure and debauchery.
In 1967 a 36-year-old painter came to see me and implored me
to save her from 'madness'. She rhought she was losing her mind
because she was always seized by an irresistible sexual desire
when in trams. It was so powerful that she was incapable of
controlling it and feIt ready to throw herself at men, often
acbieving orgasm without any other stimulation. At the same
time, more often than not, she feIt no desire in bed. Her visits
to my surgery yielded only slight results. The patient had to
give up travelling by public transport. 1 eventually sent her to
a psychiatrist colleague.
If sorne women use the 'mezzanine' of buses to have sexuaI
intercourse with unknown men, others use it for exhibitionist
purposes. One of my colleagues in Odessa told me about a
schoolgirl aged fifteen who wore short skirts and no underwear,
and sat on one of the raised seats, boldly spreading her legs. One
day she was so preoccupied by her game that she failed to
notice that one of the 'spectators' was a friend of her parents,
who went and told them about her activities. As good Soviet
citizens, the parents could think of nothing better than to report
her story to her school, proving that for them their daughter's
upbringing was a matter for her school and the State. The
teachers passed the information to the police, the police to the
law court, and a few years later the girl was banished from
town and exiled for parasitisme
In trains it is essentially exhibitionists, rapists and 'inventors'
who operate. The fust have already been mentioned, the second
are the subject of a subsequent chapter, and the 'inventors', as
they are called, are people who use their feet for mutual mas
turbation. When a man is seated opposite a woman in a full
compartment, they coyer their legs with coats, or take advan
tage of reduced lighting, and slip their feet between each other's
legs.
Sexual acts often take place in the lavatories, in chance en
counters, .especially on long runs, like Moscow-Vladivostok and
Moscow-Novosibirsk, which may take a week. The female at
tendants, whose j ob it is to prepare the beds, check the tickets,
14 8
offer tea, etc., often have to worry about attacks from male
passengers. One patient who worked as an attendant told me
that she and her chums had fashioned a modern Soviet version
of the medieval chastity belt. 1t consisted of two leather triangles
solidly sewn into the woman's tights, the purpose being to pro
tect her from attacks both from the front and behind.
Another public place which is very favourable for cuddling
-and very characteristic of Soviet life-is the queue. As we
know, the Soviets spend endless time queueing : to buy bread,
c1othes, vodka. Endured with resignation with absolutely noth
ing to do, the queues have in the end become an essential
feature of Soviet life. Whether it is the consequence of boredom
due to he often interminable waiting, or of the sexual habits
of certain individuals, what is important here is, once again,
anonymity : those who indulge in caresses in the queues have
very litde ned to strike up an acquaintance, to speak, or to
charm. One queues up, one buys what one needs and, in addi
tion, one gives oneself a little pleasure. In Moscow these
activities also take place in the big GUM department store in
Red Square, which is even regularly watched by special patrols.
S ome, seized in the act, are not handed over to the police but
taken to the food department on the ground floor, where they
have the possibility of redeeming themselves with a bottle of
vodka.
Other public places do not lend themselves to sexual en
counters as there is a danger of losing one's anonymity.
1 49
15
151
in Soviet cinema. But this work has long been banned in the
USSR, and it was only by accident that a copy of this film
was shown at Cannes, where it was hailed as a chef-d'oeuvre.
In The Mirror, also by Tarkovsky, the heroine is shown under
the shower : this nude scene, which lasts only a brief instant,
would be noteworthy to a Soviet spectator, although his Western
counterparts have doubtless scarcely noticed it.
Soviet producers are not totally unconcerned about com
mercial considerations : in general people rarely go to see Rus
sian films unless they offer the attraction of forbidden fruit; they
prefer foreign productions, even mediocre ones. So sorne Soviet
films follow Western recipes, at the same time taking pains to
make them acceptable to the censors. As for foreign films, the
censors unashamedly have no mercy on them either. When the
French film Un homme et une femme, which features a very
discreet love scene, appeared on Soviet screens, it took the
female members of the audience by storm.
Western films, even the mos! commercial and conventional,
are like breaths of fresh air in the Soviet Union. They give an
impression of great freedom of expression in comparison with
our own productions, which are always formaI, artificial and
stamped with an official seai. The few kisses or marital infideli
ties, like the ve'iled and rare allusions to the Stalinist past
which have been allowed to fil - t er through
cinema, these substitutions for eroticism and the spirit of
liberty, are a wink to the audience, a way of saying : 'See how
liberated we are ! '
The majority of Soviets react to nudity in an unhealthy and
puritanical manner. One of my colleagues, the director of a
clinic in the Caucasus, owned a very valuable antique; a dock
whose face was supported by a nude child. But angels have no
sex : my colleague castrated the bronze statue by cutting off the
sexual organs and crudely filing the spot where they had been.
He did this so that his family would not be 'corrupted'. When
l met him his daughter was twenty, and each time the conversa
tion turned to the unfortunate dock, she called her father a
'barbarian', and rightly so in my opinion. But he still did not
understand. 'Y ou see,' he said, 'in the end it was pointless, be
cause my daughter is corrupted.'
The ban applied in the USSR to physical love reduces it to
pornography, just as in the spoken language the terms designat
ing the sexual organs and functions become coarse insults. Of
15 4
nant. In I968, a few weeks after the Prague Spring had been
crushed, 1 happened to be' travelling in the same train as a group
of officers just returning from Czechoslovakia. The lieutenant
began to explain how necessary 'our' intervention had been:
'They wanted freedom, you see! AlI you see there are hippies
and pornography.'
'What have you got there?' 1 asked him, pointing to his
pocket, which was stuffed with postcards.
'The pornography 1 was telling you about. They're completely
dissolute there.' Then he took the cards out of his pocket: they
were just naked women.
'You're taking these home?'
'Yes, to Rostov. 1'11 give the naked women to my chums,' he
said with a gleam in his eye that belied his criticism of the
Czechs.
This contradictory behaviour is common to aIl puritan coun
tries and environments. That is why an attitude of tolerance
and laissez-faire on the authorities' part seems to me the best
way to make the Soviet mentality a more healthy one. Porno
graphy is condemned in public but tasted in private as a for
bidden fruit; it wouId be wiser to allow the free circulation of
pornography, but that is a wish as unrealistic as hoping that the
present regime ould tolerate the free circulation of an un
censored press.
What then is this clandestine pornography, and in what circles
does it circulate?
155
term. Often the negatives, sold secretly, look more like docu
ments from a gynaecological manual than anything designed
to stimulate the imagination. There are a few 8mm pornographie
films which have been made in the USSR, but their circulation
is limited for want of technieal equipment.
Erotic literature is widespread. First, because it is easy to
circulate and reproduce it; next, because Soviet society, and
particularly its intelligentsia, has a particular regard for books,
which are the main arena for argument and free thought. There
is now the familiar phenomenon of samizdat, the large-scale
clandestine circulation of forbidden books, but besides political
157
159
Prostitution
This sorry and sentimental vein ran dry with the Revolution;
the regime undertook to eliminate prostitution completely, and
it has indeed erased aIl traces of it, wbich does not mean that
prostitution is not still very much alive.
The Soviet Penal Code participates in tbis more or less deli
berate masquerade: there are heavy penalties for the offence of
procuring (five years' solitary confinement followed by political
exile, but the offence of prostitution is not mentioned. Tbis is
a way of denying the existence of prostitution: it can no longer
exist from the moment the procurers are not allowed to exploit
their victims. The official version stresses that, as prostitution is
one of the evils inherent in the oid bourgeois society, under
Soviet condi,tions women could not possibly have anything to
do with it. AIl the same, tbis doesn't mean that prostitutes are
safe from prosecution. In 1971, in the republic of Azerbaijan
alone, 1,221 women who had capitalised on their attractions
were prosecuted, and seven brothels were closed down. But
the sentences passed were not for prostitution, but for the
offences of 'vagrancy' or 'parasitism'. (In tbis connection, may
1 remind the reader that citizens are obliged by Soviet law to
160
1 62
12
roubles
duraki (a kind of
wants her and replace her by a new one. This kind of prostitu
tion is sufficiently common in the USSR to give rise to the fol
lowing anecdote:
morning and, seeing that the couch has been taken away, asks
him: 'What's happening? Am 1 fired?' There is a term for this
phenomenon: the sekretutka, a combination of secretary and
prostitute. Bonuses, extra leave, paid travel-sueh are the forms
of remuneration for these
sekretutki.
mostly army officers, workers from the North who come to the
capital to spend their wages, employees from provincial firms
priori, particularly
if the latter are Georgian, and can be thrown out after eleven
in the evening. The prostitute must therefore be very careful
not to attract the attention of the matrons who keep the keys
and watch over the corridors on each floor. But if the matron
catches a prostitute in the act, the latter may sometimes bribe
her with a rouble or two. The floor-matrons even act as pro
curers sometimes.
Besides the theatres, the chief place for a night out is the
restaurant, where one goes not only to eat, but to spend the
evening. Inevitably certain restaurants are known as spots where
prostitutes do their touting.
168
Sex crimes
Criminality and sex crimes are not peculiar to the USSR, how
ever, the particular attitude of that country manifests itself in
the efforts it deploys to minimise and conceal them.
ln this area statistics are virtually non-existent; furthermore,
those which are provided, and they are always fragmentary, are
not very credible, because most of the rime their object and aim
is to show that crime is disappearing in the USSR, which is
quite simply a joke. So any statement concerning the growth or
decline in crime can only be based on everyday impressions,
which are always deceptive. AIl 1 shall do, therefore, is to cite
cautiously a few examples of sex crimes obtained from data
which have appeared in recent publications (and notably a work
by the Soviet dissident Valry Chalidz,
Le Crime en Union
Sovitique, French translation published by Oliver Orban, Paris,
1977), as weil as from criminals encountered in the camps.
Rape
Amongst sex crimes, rape is certainly the most frequent.
According to a Soviet source, 1.7 per cent of a11 sentences passed
in 1966 were for rape. If one supposes, as Chalidz does, that
there are one million sentences a year, this would mean roughly
20,000 rapes. But naturally the real figure can only be higher,
for very often rapes go unpunished, either because the culprit
or culprits remain unknown, or because the victim brings no
charge out of fear of reprisaI, and especially out of shame or
fear of what people will say. It would appear, therefore, that
rape is a fairly widespread crime notwithstanding the heavy
penalties that it can entail: three to seven years' solitary confine
ment and, in sorne cases-for example, where the victim suffers
extremely gave consequences even-the death penalty.
Rape is a logical consequence of the kind of sexual frus
tration and relations between the sexes that exist in the USSR.
55
cime of the rape, and 30 per cent of them had drunk with the
men who subsequently abused them.
Rapes may be the acts of persons possessing a modicum of
power. I am thinking, for example, of the militia, who, as in
many other countries, are sometimes able to profit by their
position. In the town of Nikolayev a non-commissioned officer
in the militia took innocent girls to the station and forced them
to have intercourse by threatening to report them, which would
have brought them into disgrace. Several dozen victims passed
through his hands in this way before he was discovered.
The most extraordinary cases of rape are undoubtedly those
committed by women upon men. This occurs in situations
where the women are sexually starved. In the Kuril Islands this
kind of thing is common. Fishing-boat captains dare not let
their sailors go ashore, for there are thousands of women work
ing in the canneries who have no man for years on end, and the
sailors genuinely run the risk of death.
Violence, aggression and sadism appear to be profound
characteristics of Soviet sexuality, and the reasons for this
are inherent in the very tenor of Soviet life and in the whole
course of Soviet history.
Among these reasons, I shall cite two which immediately
come to mind. The first is the sadisJ):l wruch reigns in the world
of the prisons, a sadism established as a raison d'tat un der
Stalin (whose sadistic games were famous) and of which numer
ous traces remain in the methods employed during preliminary
examinations and in the manner in which prisoners are treated.
A chief of a camp in the Caucasus was very proud of the
method of torture he had invented, which he baptised the 'easy
chair'. Prisoners who had misbehaved were strapped between
two metal chairs, then the chairs were slowly separated. Prac
tices of this kind are both a symptom (they reveal by their
extent how serious the illness is) and a contaminating agent (an
overt quasi-Iegal sadism is an irresistible example for many
who, in other circumstances perhaps, would not dare to give
free rein to their instincts).
Secondly, one must mention the consequences of the war
with Nazi Germany. When the Soviet army moved onto the
counter-offensive,
the
local
population suffered
very harsh
1 71
from Odessa who was casbiered for having slept with bis
daughter of fifteen.
Incest between brother and sister is rarer. I knew a prisoner
in the camp who had raped bis sis ter after putting her to sleep
with a sleeping-pill and later drowned the baby born of tbis
union in a bucket of water.
Amongst sex crimes, mention must be made of crimes com
mitted by maniacs. These are certainly fairly rare, although the
absence of information on this subject does not really allow us
to ;udge. There are several examples from the large towns. In
Leningrad several years ago a young man from a good family
(as was discovered later) waylaid women in the doorways of
houses, stabbed them and raped them; the wounds were mortaI.
The maniac's victims were always women wearing a red coat.
The 'red-coat man' was declared a psychopath after medicaI
examination. He was therefore sentenced to compulsory treat
ment in a psychiatric hospital, which did not prevent the judges
from also passing a sentence reserved for criminals of sound
1 72
able, and no one can foresee where they will lead. As for the
subject which concerns me, vodka is responsible for impotence,
sterility, violence in sexual relations and lastly crime. According
to Soviet statistics, 80 per cent of murders and 70 per cent of
rapes are due to drunkenness and a1coholism. The frontier be
tween 'normal life' and criminal pathology is singularly fragile.
1 have known numerous cases where, in the life of the couple,
a1cohol was an essential prelude to violence and even to pure
and simple rape.
The Russians use a1cohol like a narcotic-and there is no
shortage of narcotics in the USSR either. According to certain
statistics from the USSR Prokuratura (Public Prosecutor), 1 . 8
per cent of young people in the large towns now take drugs. Of
course drugs in themselves do not cause an individual to com
mit crime, but they can so transform the individu al that he is
able to act only according to his elemental drives, and in this
way he may become dangerous. Drugs are used by many
prisoners, where they are able to obtain them, for they offer
compensation for sexual frustration.
A particularly disturbing phenomenon of recent years is the
dangerous increase of crime among the young, a phenomenon
which many Soviets would acknowledge to be true, but also
confirmed by official figures, which worry the authorities. In
April 1 972 a secret survey by the Public Prosecutor's Office was
communicated to the local Party committees. It covered 24
towns and 48 villages. The picture was so alarming that the
Central ommittee soon gave an order to put an end to the
survey. In 1 971 it was established that in 1 ,200 Soviet towns 49
per cent of rapes and 12 per cent of murders were committed by
youths under twentyo ln 1974, 7 1 8,000 crimes were committed
by adolescents under seventeen. It is particularly striking that
these crimes were not the actions of the poorest classes. Quite
the contrary : in 1 970 in 81 trials which took place in Moscow,
Kiev, Novosibirsk and Baku 62.8 per cent of the youths accused
came from privileged or at least advantaged families : children
of Party functionaries, research workers, scientists, intellectuals,
etc.
1 am fully aware that this type of phenomenon is extremely
difficult ta analyse, and, besides, it tends to be true of many
countries of the world. 1 wish, however, to return to an idea
which 1 have alread y mentioned apropos of sexual licence :
more th an ever, Soviet youth bas lost faitb in the morality and
1 74
1 75
Homosexuality
Several years ago the former English diplomat Guy Burgess was
answering questions from a Western journalist in Moscow.
Knowing that he was homosexual, the journalist asked him if
this created any problems for him in the Soviet Union. The
diplomat replied that in that regard the USSR was no different
from the West.
In reality that is not the case. Homosexuality is treated with
greater contempt in the USSR than in any other Western
country. The penalty for homosexuality is three to eight years.
The director Sergei Paradzhanov, for example, convicted in
I974 for homosexuality, was set free only after serving several
years in a camp. An Italian deputy, Angelo Pezzana, organised
a press conference in Moscow on 29 November I977 to protest
against the treatment of homosexuals by the Soviet government.
There has been no relaxation of the law. Homosexuals con
tinue to be convicted, and there is no reason to suppose that
there will be any change whatsoever in this area. The term
'homosexual' is very rarely used and is regarded as an insult. 1
do not believe the Soviet press has ever discussed the problem
of homosexuality, generally thought to be a synonym for total
perversion. It is a phenomenon which provokes such disgust
that people prefer to pass over it in silence. The rare books
devoted to sexuality contain at best only a dry definition of what
homosexuality is. The Soviet Medical Encyclopedia gives no
definition of lesbian love : it merely gives the geographical
location of the island of Lesbos.
Male homosexuality
alcoholism (he was always drunk, even when he came for con
sultation). This man sought out young boys and persuaded
them to have sexual intercourse with him, claiming that his sex
organ had been mutilated by a grenade during the war.
Female homosexuality
19 l1ed her.
1 80
cannot live
without. He1p me ;
tell me
what 1
181
Part Four
(in millions)
129
40. 7
92
9
6
5 3
44
3 5
3 .2
2 7
2.6
2
2
1.8
1 .7
1 .5
1 .4
1 85
Kirghiz
Mordovians
Bashkirs
Poles
Estonians
1 .4
1 .3
1 .2
1.1
1
(per thousand)
17 4
1 4 .6
1 4 5
158
152
1 6.2
17.6
192
19 4
3 05
33 5
3 4 7
3 5.2
1 88
191
The masses
192
The privileged
23
patient ran the risk of being taken for a malingerer and not
being treated seriously. Besides, stomach-aches were generally
treated with the utmost contempt: in 1975 a prisoner named
Sorokin died of an ulcer simply because the doctor refused to
treat him. In addition to these consultations, the head of the
infirmary used to have me come over when she was having
difficulty in establishing a diagnosis or in performing an urgent
operation.
him into the camp baths and raped him. Afterwards Shalapuk
hin committed suicide.
In February 1977 Sivtsov, a twenty-year-old worker from
Kharkov, was savagely raped by twelve prisoners. But the rape
of Sivtsov had another, more basic, reason: the camp authori
ties found him refractory.
This brings me to an important aspect of homosexuality in
the camps: the officers and their NCOs use rape as a threat. 'If
you try to be clever, or if you complain too much, we'll throw
you in a ceU, and you'U come out a pederast.' In my camp
Captain Zakharchenko would use a slang term to designate this
new form of punishment: 'We are going to "pederastise" you
(opederastim tebia).' In a samizdat document the dissident
Aleksandr Bolonkin describes how he suffered this kind of
treatment in prison at Ulan-Ude. The examining magistrates
threatened him with torture, rape. and even death to obtain a
confession. He was put in a ceU with a man named Oleychik,
who admitted to him that he had been put there for a 'special
mission' and threatened him with rape and murder.
To caU someone a pederast is the worst of insults. One day
an NCO hurled this epithet at a prisoner. So keenly was the
insult felt that the latter rushed at the man with an iron bar,
which earned him a further ten years in camp for recidivism.
Once sodomised, the victim is termed a pederast and becomes
the object of hatred and general disgust. At the same time, there
is no question of his being able to refuse to 'offer his ass', to
use prisoners' jargon. As a doctor, I was caUed to the infirmary
more than once to treat these wretches. The criminals never
missed an opportunity to vent their hatred and to 'assert them
selves' at the expense of the pederast scapegoats; they would
spit in their faces, beat them and literaUy trample them under
foot.
This time the pederasts had been given the word and they
;oined together to force their way to the front. Hitting and kick
ing, they drove aIl the other prisoners back and succeeded in
getting ahead of everyone else. The trick worked: after the
pederasts had touched the fish, no one else dared eat it.
The canlp authorities' complicity is apparent in their total
indifference to the incredible violence and bullying to which
the pederasts and untouchables are sub;ected. In fact they
themselves systematically make use of the rapists to eliminate
troublemakers. In January 1977 the pederast Kosolapov was
knifed to death at camp ITK-12 for refusing to 'offer his ass'.
The savagery of this act upset me less than' the authorities'
complete indifference to the murder of an innocent person.
Homosexuality in the camps is not merely codified by the
caste system. It finds additional 'legitimacy' in the existence of
harems run by real entrepreneurs. In my camp it was a certain
Volga, an enormous fellow of thirty, who owed his privileged
position to his strength and guile. The sexual act cost one rouble,
a tin of food or a packet of cigarettes. The price could reach
five roubles for particularly prized pederasts. Sex with sorne of
them cost ten roubles-when sodomy would be followed by fel
latio.
The pederasts were known only by women's names: Zhene
chka, Svetochka, or even affectionate nicknames usually given
to country girls: Yagodka C'my little berry'). Men would say:
'Come on, let's go and see Volga.' Volga would receive the
client, be paid and say: 'Wait, she's coming' Cbecause pederasts
were always spoken of in the feminine). Then Volga would go
and find the person, who was basically a prostitute. Sometimes
the latter would refuse-perhaps he had had a dozen clients the
day before. In such cases, Volga never beat around the bush: a
solid punch in the face and 'Go on, get on with it! ' would do
the trick
Volga's brothel was not the only one in camp, but it was the
principal one. The acts took place in washrooms which the
prisoners called 'fuck-rooms' Cebalnik), and also in the barracks,
even in broad daylight: a few blankets hung up as a screen
sufficed. The washrooms were located in a separate building
consisting of two rooms, each with ten taps. But prisoners never
went to wash in the room occupied by the harem, except as
clients.
Sorne of the prettiest pederasts never entered the harem: they
208
of passing the time; they feel within their rights because they
are deprived of women.
To be sure, every c10sed society has rigid hierarchies, but the
laws which govern the sexual castes in the camps are of an
absolute1y incredible scrupulousness, harshness and savagery.
In analysing the phenomenon, one can find therein a microcosm
of Soviet society. Mutatis mutandis, the kingpins of the under
world behave towards the pederasts and degraded as do the
privileged towards their subordinates, who for them are nothing
but human livestock. Closed, rigid and impenetrable castes are
likewise typical of the USSR, where the privileged group them
selves in a very closed milieu. Finally, the process of instan
eous downfall and loss of status likewise recalls the manner in
which an ordinary Soviet citizen may suddenly be overtaken
by the greatest misfortunes when the State swoops down on
him, automatically entailing the surrender of his entourage, his
colleagues and. his professional circ1e, so that he is henceforth
avoided like a pariah.
Political prisoners
There is one 'caste in camp which 1 have not yet mentioned:
these are the 'political' prisoners (an unofficial name, since in
the USSR the concept is not recognised). The latter join no
group and control their sexual needs more than ordinary crimi
naIs. The authorities endeavour to mix the two, but the mixing
remains formaI. In fact in the camps great value is gttached to
knowledge and learning. The prestige of being a doctor brought
me dozens of questions ranging from: 'Who is Aphrodite?' to:
'How much longer is the Soviet regime going to last?' The
respect the politicals attract renders more difficult the authori
ties' old tactic of setting against them the ordinary prisoners,
who are less and less sympathetic to their propaganda.
Finally, as 1 have already indicated, homosexuality and the
caste system are to be found in aIl Soviet concentration camps.
They are old traditions. According to Valry Chalidz, at the
beginning of the 1920S one still seduced young men, even if one
subsequently despised them. But during the 1930S and '40s,
homosexuality became much more common and assumed to
day's violent forms. It was under the threat of a knife that
prisoners would henceforth be 'seduced'. Moreover, the fact
that very young lads are condemned to forced labour along with
old criminals has greatly encouraged these practices.
210
Women's camps
1 am much .less weIl equipped to analyse liie in women's camps,
so 1 shall deal with them more briefly.
The information at my disposaI cornes from samizdat docu
ments and prisoners' accounts. The wife of one in particular
had spent four years in camps and she related the conditions of
her imprisonment when she came to visit him.
The women's camps are much less numerous than the men's.
Originally there were mixed camps where women were simply
placed in special barracks. During the Stalinist period this situ
ation led to brawls, violence, rapes and debauchery. At present
the sexes are kept separate. In spite of everything, mixed camps
gave the men and women an illusion of normal life; now the
loss of liberty is feIt even more keenly and may lead to revoIt.
1 had a chance to observe the women in the transit prisons.
Tbere is nothing more heart-rending than the sight of these
213
214
the corridor. There were wardens and men of the prison service
personnel along the whole length of it. They were there ta ridicule the
poor girls. As for me, 1 had long realised that these shower sessions
were a fine opportunity for these men to satisfy their voyeurism, and
1 had adopted the bad habit of washing myself in my chemise. 1
had already read similar stories in Solzhenitsyn, and 1 had seen
similar scenes in Romm's film Ordinary Fas cis m, but 1 had never
thought that 1 would have the chance to participa te personally in
these amusements.'
.
216
Conclusion
Revolution or catastrophe
society. The West, on the other hand, seems not only in its way
for these two qualities are foreign to his way of life. He loses
217
mirror which is the false life of the elite has very strict rules,
aIl the harder to observe as they have no basis in reality, just
as madness has an inner logic which is often diflicult to grasp.
Soviet society endeavours to tear the human being away from
his family and pursues him throughout his life, since in prin
ciple 'one never completes one's education'. Political education,
radio, te1evision and literature are only the cogs of a gigantic
pedagogical machine, 'the most obvious manifestation of which
is Soviet official language, that "wooden language", as it is called,
where words lose their meaning and dissolve into a kind of
impenetrable drone.
\Vhen a Soviet takes his first steps abroad, as has happened
during the last several years with the third wave of emigration,
his loss of will, sense of responsibility and individuality become
apparent. For six to twe1ve months he will generaIly be lost in
a sort of post-hypnotic uance. Trained as he is to obey signaIs
independent of his will and even of his comprehension, and to
know no ind"ependence or any real freedom of action, he will
218
love and control the basic sexual urges in order to make men
Russian people.
morality,
like
the
whole
of
peasant
culture,
was
ity of love and sex. For the moment trus image most often
219
220
Appendix
Octobriana: . an example of erotic samizdat
221