2
During the Khrushchev thaw, from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, the Soviet state launched a campaign on sex education, publishing a whole series of manuals on the subject. This represented a significant shift in the official Soviet policy towards sex: from prevailing silence on sex issues of the Stalin era to their examination in sex education brochures aimed at Soviet young people. These manuals were introduced in the hope of restricting the sexual activity of Soviet young people and in order to raise their awareness of venereal diseases, abortion and human physiology. In addition, some of these publications featured passages on homosexuality, labelling it a ‘sexual perversion’.
The emergence of these sex education manuals represented the Foucauldian ‘pedagogisation of children’s sex’ and a genuine attempt by the Soviet state to impose a ‘medical-sexual regime’ on Soviet families in the 1950s and 1960s. Doctors and educators, who wrote these manuals, urged parents and teachers to put children’s sexuality under close surveillance, looking out for any sort of suspicious behaviour and signs of sexual deviance.1 As Foucault argued, European governments of the eighteenth century took charge of sex through medical and pedagogical discourse because they perceived it to be a vital element of economic and political development. The question of sex had multiple facets: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, demographics and people’s individual health, so governments sought to exercise control over these issues to maximise the collective and individual forces of their societies.2 Similar considerations animated the Soviet pedagogisation of sex during the Khrushchev era: post-demographic crisis and the need for repopulation of the country warranted greater controls over the sexual lives of the young Soviet generation, especially non-productive sexual practices such as masturbation and homosexuality. The pedagogic discourse on sex and homosexuality, which I examine in this chapter, was to become an instrument of such control.
The Soviet sex education campaign was not merely about the economy of population. During the Khrushchev period, the main focus of sex education manuals shifted from an attempt to eliminate ‘the vestiges of the capitalist past’ to a focus on confronting ‘ideological diversions’ of the West. Soviet sex education also assisted Soviet leadership in its continued attempts to raise a generation of New Soviet People, who would adhere to the principles of communist morality, abstain from premarital sex and promiscuity and avoid sexual perversions. The latter issue was especially difficult to address.
Although homosexuality was practically unmentionable in almost all public sources of the time and was a very uncomfortable topic to discuss, the authors of some of these sex education manuals felt compelled to comment on it in their texts. Censorship and reluctance to admit that such phenomena existed in Soviet conditions certainly prevented them from addressing this topic at length and thus their thoughts on homosexuality do not easily lend themselves to scholarly analysis. Other authors were silent on the issue altogether. Yet their silence transmitted unspoken anxieties about possible sexual perversions in which adolescents could engage. In reading these manuals, I am guided by Michel Foucault, who wrote: ‘Silence itself – the things one declines to say, or is forbidden to name, the discretion that is required between different speakers is … an element that functions alongside the things said, with them and in relation to them.’3 Indeed, those authors who chose not to speak about homosexuality in the manuals did speak about adolescents’ ‘early sexual arousal’ and the importance of curbing it. When trying to decipher the ambiguities and the silences surrounding the issue of homosexuality in the manuals, I turn to Khrushchev- and Brezhnev-era specialist books on medicine, and other sources hidden from the public eye, where homosexuality was discussed with candour. The authors of these manuals emphasised the strong connection between ‘early sexual arousal’ and homosexuality, suggesting that the authors of sex education manuals indeed sought deflection from homosexuality.
Stalinist sexophobia and failed attempts to talk about sex
Before we proceed to the Khrushchev era, it is useful to say a few words about discussions on sex under Stalin. Scholars have argued that the Stalin era was a period of repressive sexual policies and gender ideology: abortion and homosexuality became a crime; psychoanalysis had been banned and Sigmund Freud denounced as a bourgeois scientist.4 Those few Stalin-era public sources discussing the issue of sex downplayed its significance in Soviet society. The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (1940) proclaimed: ‘In Soviet society there is no sex question as a complex problem of relationships between sexes, because everything necessary is provided to eliminate disharmony between biological demands and needs of a personality, which is inherent in the capitalist society.’ According to the author, there was no need for sex education either:
The system of upbringing of children and adolescents in the USSR is based on cultivation of ardent love for the motherland, comradeliness (tovarishchestvo), love of labour, respect for the woman as a comrade in labour. A mass of creative impulses is created, diverting the youth’s attention from excessive sexual pursuits (chrezmernoe polovoe uvlechenie) and rechannelling its energy to joyful labour (radostnyi trud) and healthy recreation (zdorovyi otdykh), combined with physical culture.5
Yet, despite the severe sexual conservatism and official downplaying of the issue of sex, Stalin-era doctors made attempts to pitch their manuscripts on sex education manuals to editors. We can find one such manual, which was never published, in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The manuscript was titled ‘On Sex Education’ (1946) and was produced by K. M. Kushnirchuk, a doctor from Poltava. It dealt with a variety of issues, ranging from sexual hygiene to marital life, with ‘sexual perversions’ discussed in the last section, which spanned as many as fourteen pages.6
Kushnirchuk asserted that there were two types of homosexuality – ‘congenital’ (vrozhdennaya) and ‘acquired’ (priobretennaya). The latter manifested itself ‘in the form of pederasty’, which ‘had a negative effect on one’s behaviour’.7 While the author was pessimistic about medical treatment of ‘congenital homosexuality’, arguing that in such cases ‘the prognosis was negative’, he added that ‘acquired’ homosexuality was merely a ‘bad habit’ and could be eradicated with the same methods employed for combating masturbation: ‘Acquired homosexuality is perfectly correctable (vpolne ispravim) under the influence of the similar methods employed for correction of masturbation.’8 In cases of ‘malignant pederasty’ (zlokachestvennaya pederastiya), the author recommended psychotherapy and hypnosis.9 Kushnirchuk mentioned lesbianism too, using an archaic term, ‘sapphism’ (safizm): ‘One of the types of homosexuality is safizm and lesbian love, which can be encountered among women and only among adults.’10 The manuscript, however, was sharply criticised by the reviewer – professor of biology V. Efimov. On 30 May 1946 Efimov produced a two-page review of Kushnirchuk’s book, blasting the author for daring to speak about sexual perversions in a manual intended for a young audience: ‘And then the author proceeds to sexual perversions. A question arises here – does the author really cover sexual perversions in his lectures on sex education?’11 Efimov concluded that the author’s manuscript ‘cannot be and must not be used in sex education of the youth’ and ‘can only bring harm to the youth’.12
Kushnirchuk’s treatment of sexual perversions is illuminating and we should consider it when examining the content of the Khrushchev-era sex education manuals. The most noteworthy point here is that this Stalin-era sex educator, writing about sex education, equated homosexuality with masturbation, framing both as part of the same construct – sexual perversion. He also believed that homosexuality, just like masturbation, could be ‘acquired’ and was a ‘bad habit’, and therefore could be eradicated with the same techniques. As I will show, Khrushchev-era sex educators, who discussed masturbation but preferred to avoid discussions of homosexuality, could have similar views.
The publication of the first Soviet sex education manual, Healthy Marriage and Healthy Family (1948), with a print run of 200,000 copies, written by Soviet doctor L. A. Zalkind, is also striking.13 It attests to the fact that despite the rigid ideological controls and total silence about sex peculiar to the Stalin era, there were still professionals who expressed the need for sex education among young people. The publication of this manual appears to be the result of the government’s aspiration to boost the declining birth rate. As Mie Nakachi has shown, the issue became especially acute following the war: living conditions were poor, there were significantly fewer men, and the privations and horrors of war led to increased infertility rates among women.14 Zalkind’s manual gave instructions on how to have a long, fulfilling marital life. It reminded readers that families with multiple children were given extensive support by the government; mothers who managed to give birth to as many as ten children were awarded an honorary title of ‘mother heroine’.15 Masturbation was framed as a pernicious habit that deprived young people of their energy and ability to have a healthy sexual life. Zalkind also covered the issue of abortion, framing it as a significant threat to women’s health and an act against the state.16 There was a substantial ideological component in his manual too: he treated questions of sex education with an overt Marxist gloss, heralding the victory of socialism in Soviet society and crediting it with women’s liberation and equality of rights with men.17 According to Zalkind, the victory of socialism had raised public consciousness and the cultural level of Soviet people; the old ‘communist morality’ and its emphasis on the building of communism replaced ‘bourgeois morality’.18 However, to Zalkind’s chagrin, some of its features – adultery, the disrespectful treatment of women, even depravity, still ailed Soviet society and needed to be eliminated through communist sex education.19
Zalkind contrasted the achievements of the socialist revolution and communist morality to life in the West and the ‘hypocritical’ bourgeois morality, which supposedly permeated Western society. He claimed that Western youth resorted to the services of prostitutes and was generally prone to promiscuity and sexual depravity.20 The lifestyle of Soviet young people, according to Zalkind, was completely antithetical: Soviet adolescents were more concerned with the interests of the collective and society, their approach to marriage and family was more ‘critical and conscious’ and their sexual attitudes were more restrained.21 Three years later, Healthy Marriage and Healthy Family (1951) was republished with a print run of 100,000 copies, having undergone several changes in its content. The revised edition further emphasised the dangerousness of the ‘vestiges of the capitalist past’ lingering in Soviet people’s consciousness and reframed some chapters accordingly. Whereas the first chapter of the first edition was simply titled ‘Marriage in Bourgeois Society and in Our Country’, the title of the first chapter in the second edition was more elaborate: ‘Marriage in Bourgeois Society and the Fight against the Vestiges of Bourgeois Attitudes towards Marriage in Our Country’.22
These two editions of the same-sex education manual were the only successful attempts by Soviet doctors to examine sex education and bring their ideas within the reach of the Soviet reading public under Stalin. Their publication suggests that different perspectives regarding sex education were apparently allowed within a tolerable range of discord. While Zalkind deplored parents’ inability to engage in the sex education of their children due to their own ignorance, he was also cautious not to challenge the official Soviet policy towards sex, which sought to prevent young children from reaching early sexual maturation. Zalkind constantly reminded his readers that sex education, if conducted improperly, might trigger premature sexual curiosity.23 His inconsistent views on sex education, as well as his repetitive warnings about the existing ‘capitalist vestiges of the past’, are discernible also in the narratives of the first Khrushchev-era sex education manuals.
After Stalin’s death in March 1953, the so-called period of the ‘thaw’ set in. This was characterised by important transformations in Soviet society distinct from the Stalinist period: millions of Soviet political prisoners were amnestied and released from labour camps, and the Soviet Union became more open to the outside world. Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to the XX Communist Party Congress in February 1956 launched the process of de-Stalinisation, which manifested itself in the significant relaxation of censorship and gave more freedom of information in the media. This freedom extended to issues surrounding sexuality, gender and the family: the Khrushchev leadership decriminalised abortion in 1955 and embarked on further ‘pedagogisation’ of the issue of sex by publishing more sex education manuals. The primary focus of these was the physiology of female bodies and pregnancy, as well as the undesirability of abortion and the associated medical complications.24 Apart from demonising abortion, Soviet educators attempted to control the sexual behaviour of Soviet young people and inculcate sexual morality in them. Health officials observed and deplored Soviet people’s romantic trysts with foreigners, clandestine abortions, adultery, pregnancy out of wedlock and thriving venereal diseases.25 Concerns about the sexual immorality of young people were an extension of broader anxieties about the perceived failure of the younger generation to meet the Soviet leadership’s expectations for the New Man and Woman.26
‘Hands above the blanket’: anxieties about sexual perversions in Khrushchev-era sex education manuals (1956–60)
Sex education was a difficult goal to accomplish. The Stalin-era attitudes towards sex were still fresh in people’s minds, including those of Soviet officials responsible for this sex education campaign. The reluctance of sex educators of the early Khrushchev era to talk about topics even distantly related to sex is obvious in the archival transcript of a discussion of the board meeting of the RSFSR Ministry of Education held on 29 December 1955. The agenda for the meeting was a manuscript of a new manual on biology titled Human Anatomy and Physiology.27 During the discussion, one of its participants, V. N. Belyaeva, noted that the book had one significant flaw – it featured an ‘excessively detailed description of sex cells and reproduction’. She went on to say:
It seems to me that we should be more cautious with issues related to sex education. We are talking here about schoolchildren who are fourteen years old … A detailed description of sex cells in the process of fertilisation may invite a host of extra questions in the classroom – they are unnecessary and undesirable.28
Belyaeva also argued for a less explicit description of the human body and recommended ignoring the most sensitive topics: ‘It seems to me that we may skip the descriptions of buttocks and the pelvic area.’29 She also suggested that the process of reproduction should be sketched out in general terms and preferably using the example of animals: ‘It is enough to indicate that the human fertilisation process is like that of mammals, in general terms, ignoring spermatozoon, egg cells, fertilisation.’30
Apparently, it was this continued reluctance of Soviet officials to provide explicit information on sexual issues to adolescents that delayed the publication of sex education manuals during the first years under Khrushchev. In 1958 a rural doctor from Ukraine, Anatolii Stankov, published a manual, Sex Life and Family, with a print run of 200,000 copies, which instructed parents and teachers on how to deal with issues of adolescent sexuality.31 Stankov alerted his readers: ‘Educators and parents should be able to notice the earliest deviations in sexual behaviour of adolescents, as they are easier to prevent than fix.’ He also argued that parents should direct children’s and adolescents’ sexual instinct from an early age in ‘the right direction’, raising their awareness of the ‘vestiges of the past’ and helping them protect themselves from moral degeneration, sexual disorders and venereal disease.32 Stankov made a number of striking statements: he proclaimed that family and marriage were not private matters in the Soviet Union, that young men and women were fully developed for sexual lives by the age of twenty-five and that they should start having sex only after they were married.33
Stankov also instructed parents on how to prevent the ‘early awakening’ of sexual desire in their children. It was especially important because, as a result of such an awakening, adolescents, both boys and girls, engaged in masturbation. If girls engaged in masturbation for a long time, then it would be difficult for them to feel sexual pleasure during ‘normal’ sexual intercourse. Furthermore, in rare cases, masturbation could lead some females to develop an ‘increased sexual need’ (povyshchennaya polovaya potrebnost’) or ‘nymphomania’. As for boys, masturbation could deprive them of energy, lead to sexual impotence and negatively affect their behaviour in society: ‘Focusing their thoughts on various sexual experiences, masturbators (onanisty) often seek solitude, avoid people, become secretive and shy.’34 To prevent early sexual awakening, Stankov advised parents to avoid touching children’s genitals when drying them off in the bathroom and to make sure that they wore comfortable clothes. It was crucial that adolescents had their hands above the blanket during sleep and that they got up immediately from bed after waking.35 Stankov’s recommendations ended with a categorical piece of advice: ‘Under no circumstances should two children or an adult with a child be allowed to share one bed.’36 This advice apparently reflected the author’s anxiety about the crowded conditions in which many Soviet people lived and the unwanted sexual experimentation that it could trigger between adolescents. Indeed, as scholars have shown, the problem of living space was still acute under Khrushchev: despite the massive housing campaign, apartments of the time were small and remained in ‘multiple occupancy’, typically because of sets of parents cohabiting with relatives.37 A child sharing a bed with an adult was an even more disturbing product of housing overcrowding – since the latter might be a homosexual.
Although Stankov did not mention the issue of sexual perversions in his manual (such discussions were considered inappropriate for young audiences, and even if his initial manuscript had such references, they would have probably been cut out by censors), we may discern unspoken anxieties about same-sex attraction in his narrative. As I noted, Stalin-era doctors deemed both masturbation and homosexuality as sexual perversions. Under Khrushchev, doctors discussing masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ in their medical articles argued that these phenomena were conducive to sexual perversions. For instance, Soviet doctor Yevgenii Popov wrote in the Soviet Medical Encyclopaedia that sexual perversions stemmed from the early ‘arousal’ of ‘children’s and adolescents’ sexuality’.38 Brezhnev-era police officers underscored the link between masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ and homosexuality even more explicitly. They did so in classified handbooks for law-enforcement agencies which were not available for regular Soviet readers. The author of one wrote:
Taking the path of homosexuality is undoubtedly facilitated by early sexual life, which leads to satiation and leads an individual to seek new emotions. It is also facilitated by protracted masturbation, which psychologically alienates the individual engaging in it and makes him seek fulfilment of sexual desire with individuals of the same sex.39
The fear that masturbation could cause homosexuality was not unique to Soviet sex educators and doctors – as Dagmar Herzog has shown, East German moralists in the late 1950s also warned that excessive sexual activity and self-pleasuring could drive people to ‘perversities’.40
Workers and directors in Soviet juvenile colonies also developed a concern about sexual perversions among young prisoners and insisted on the importance of sex education. In 1958, the same year that Stankov’s manual was published, Doctor Enver Mamedovich Rakhimov wrote a manual, On the Question of Physical Development of Wards in Juvenile Colonies (1958), for the workers of the Department of Juvenile Colonies of the Interior Ministry of the USSR.41 The manual dealt with questions of health, hygiene and the sexual maturation of the children in colonies. Rakhimov, apparently, staked his entire career on the sexuality of inmates in juvenile colonies and lesbianism in particular. I have been unable to find any biographical information on him, but I came across a reference to an unpublished manuscript of his work on lesbianism between underage female inmates. It was titled ‘On the Question of Sexual Perversions in the Juvenile Corrective Labour Institutions of the MVD’ (1952) and found in a manual, Sexual Perversions and Criminal Liability (1972), aimed at Soviet investigators.42 Rakhimov’s work provides another piece of striking evidence that under Stalin doctors and sex educators engaged with the issue of homosexuality.
Unlike Stankov’s book, which was published and available for the readers of ‘free society’, Rakhimov’s manual was intended solely for the official use of prison wardens and therefore featured more frank discussions on sexual perversions. His handbook explicitly emphasised the link between ‘early awakening of sexual desire’ and sexual perversions, claiming that correct sex education was the best way to prevent them. Advising the workers of the juvenile colonies on how to prevent ‘masturbation (onanism) and other sexual perversions’, Rakhimov wrote:
In the conditions of juvenile colonies, one of the main reasons for masturbation and other sexual perversions may be considered breaches of sanitary and hygienic norms: overcrowded dormitories (skuchennost’ v obshchezhitiyakh), two pupils sleeping in the same bed or three pupils sleeping in two beds, insufficient supervision over the adolescents, especially at night when sexual perversions become critical (prinimayut ostryi kharakter).43
Rakhimov’s belief that adolescents sharing the same bed was conducive to sexual perversions lends further credence to my argument that sex educators like Stankov sought to prevent homosexuality among adolescents in ‘free society’ by advising parents to disapprove of such a practice.
According to Rakhimov, it was important that underage convicts received proper information on sex education:
Educators, teachers, masters and medical professionals must consistently, truthfully and carefully talk with youngsters about sex life (polovaya zhizn’) considering their understanding and age. It should be done so as not to focus their attention on unnecessary details and wake unhealthy curiosity. At the same time, they should be protected from dishonest (nedobrosovestnyi) and vulgar (poshlyi) information emanating from various sources.44
Rakhimov maintained that good hygiene ‘plays an important role in the prevention of sexual perversions’.45 He advised excluding any external factors that might cause sexual arousal in children. For example, he recommended against hot baths as ‘they cause a strong rush of blood to sex organs and predispose to sexual perversions’.46 Finally, in order to prevent sexual perversions, Rakhimov advised taking special care with the young people whose ‘sexual maturation (polovoe sozrevanie) outruns (operezhat’) other features of physical maturation (fizicheskaya zrelost’)’. He advised his readers to keep such children away from any external sexual stimuli, both physical and verbal. He also urged the operatives of the colony to refrain from ‘juicy talks’ (pikantnye razgovory), ‘salacious anecdotes’ (pokhabnye anekdoty) and ‘seductive dress’ (soblaznitel’nye kostyumy) that could lead to ‘premature development of sexual feelings in children and adolescents’.
Another Soviet physician, Tigran Atarov, gave somewhat similar advice in his manual Questions of Sex Education (1959), published with a print run of 100,000 copies. Certainly, he did not talk about sexual perversions explicitly, but he did stress the point that adults should refrain from inappropriate behaviour in the presence of children. According to the author, if parents allowed themselves to demonstrate excessive affection to one another in front of their child, this might infringe on the moral development of their offspring.47 Atarov was also concerned about the early awakening of sexual desire and masturbation. He recommended that parents prevent their children from ‘contemplating the sex life of domestic animals and birds’ and not allow children to spend time on their own (uedinyat’sya). He advised parents not to leave children unattended and keep them close to the collective.48 Young people’s dietary habits had to be healthy as well: excessive consumption of sweets, spices and smoked food might trigger ‘increased sexual arousal’.49 Working conditions were also of paramount importance: those young people who worked in restaurants or cafes were particularly susceptible to premarital liaisons and the unhealthy awakening of sexual feelings. Atarov advised employers to hire only adults to work in such places.50 It is worth noting that some law-enforcement operatives believed that ‘public catering facilities’ (predpriyatiya obshchestvennogo pitaniya) were often used by homosexuals to find new acquaintances: ‘many homosexuals deliberately seek employment in public catering facilities, because it gives them an opportunity to establish a wide circle of acquaintances, discern homosexuals among them and draw new individuals in sodomy.’ It is therefore possible that Atarov’s prescriptions about the inadmissibility of hiring young people to work in cafes and restaurants were informed by similar anxieties.
‘Homosexuals … satisfy themselves with adolescents and youngsters’
In 1960 the Soviet State Medical Publishing House brought out more brochures on sexual education: The Youth Becomes a Man (1960), written by a Czechoslovakian professor of sexology, Josef Hynie, with a print run of 200,000 copies, and Questions of Sex (1960), by East German hygienist Rudolf Neubert, with a print run of 100,000 copies.51 These books stood in stark contrast to the previously published Soviet manuals on sex education. They dared to open a relatively frank discussion on sex with young readers without lengthy discussions of ‘capitalist vestiges of the past’ and ‘communist morality’. Most importantly, they explicitly discussed homosexuality. The authors of these books came from Czechoslovakia and East Germany and were sexologists with a solid international reputation. Indeed, by the late 1950s, sexology was already an established and legitimate field of academic and scientific inquiry in Czechoslovakia. At the time of the publication of his manual in the USSR, Josef Hynie directed the Czech Institute of Sexology in Prague, which had been functioning for over forty years.52 As I will show in the following chapters, sexological science from other socialist countries such as Czechoslovakia and East Germany exerted significant influence on the discussions of homosexuality not only among Soviet sex educators, but among Soviet doctors and legal scholars too.
It is striking that censors allowed discussions on homosexuality to appear in the Soviet versions of Hynie’s and Neubert’s manuals, considering their anxieties about the potential of such discussions to spark ‘unhealthy interest’ in children. We know, however, that the inclusion of these discussions was not merely due to the Soviet censors’ and editors’ oversight: they abridged the original versions and edited out some details.53 Apparently, there was a faction of Soviet censors and editors who saw value in bringing the issue of homosexuality to the attention of young people. Hynie’s manual, for example, depicted homosexuals as insidious and dangerous individuals who preyed on youth. The author encouraged young people to report such individuals to the police:
One can find people who have abnormal attraction to individuals of the same sex; they are called gomoseksualisty (homosexuals). Gomoseksualisty are aroused by and satisfy themselves with adolescents and youngsters, even though the latter have a normal interest in girls. Gomoseksualisty go all out to gain young people’s affection; they buy sweets and cigarettes for youngsters, tickets to the cinema, give them money, help them to do homework and generally pretend that they unselfishly love youngsters. However, after such preparation, they sooner or later proceed to act. Do not let them touch you! Do not be shy about reporting them to your parents or educators, do not hesitate to report such attempts aimed at you or other young men! Both parents and educators will willingly help. Homosexuality is a punishable crime, and gomoseksualisty are perfectly aware of that: that is why it is not difficult to get rid of them!54
Similar anxieties about predatory homosexuals permeated Khrushchev-era manuals on forensic medicine. One of them, Forensic Medicine (1960), related a sodomy case involving a man who seduced adolescents with the help of sweets and alcohol, and had sex with them in a park in a Soviet city from September to December 1959. The investigators established that one of the adolescents spent the entire night with the man, committing three acts of sodomy as a passive partner.55 It is worth noting that in 1960 US educators framed homosexuality in the same way, presenting homosexuals as child molesters. The controversial findings of Kinsey’s studies and the growing Cold War hysteria over homosexual subversion made homosexuality a matter of nationwide concern, urging American educators to tackle the problem. In 1961 the police department of Englewood, California, made an educational film Boys Beware, which depicted homosexual men as child molesters.56
Neubert’s Questions of Sex presented homosexuality in a different way.57 Unlike Hynie’s alarmist tone and warnings about the danger presented by predatory homosexuals, Neubert framed homosexuality as a medical matter, expanding on its presumed causes and suggesting some ways to treat it. He emphasised the biological nature of homosexuality: ‘the reason for such a deviation is the incorrect development of endocrine glands. There are people with alterations in the pancreas who suffer from childhood with diabetes. In the same way, there are people whose sex glands develop incorrectly from childhood.’58 Even in suggesting the congenital nature of homosexuality, Neubert deemed it necessary to treat homosexuality with hormone preparations, surgery and psychotherapy: ‘Medical science has found ways to treat this anomaly partially with hormonal drugs or by means of surgery through the transplantation of glandular tissue. However, more often, an already tried medical method is employed – psychotherapy, that is, an educative influence imposed by the doctor on the patient.’59 Unlike Hynie, who advised his readers to report homosexuals to law-enforcement agencies, Neubert’s attitude seems to be somewhat more lenient: homosexuals had to be treated, rather than just removed from society – a similar point of view would be promoted by Soviet sexologists later in the 1960s, as I will show in Chapter 3. Neubert did, however, note that such treatment was essential: ‘People with such deviations from the norm cannot have healthy relations with people around them and that is why they are to be subject to serious treatment.’60
Neubert also argued that incorrect upbringing could be a possible cause of the development of sexual perversions, although these cases were encountered less frequently than those where sexual perverts were genetically predisposed: ‘Perverted inclinations may appear in individual cases as a result of a depraved upbringing or under some other unfavourable circumstances.’ These ‘circumstances’ might occur as a result of parents’ irresponsible attitude to their children: ‘Deviations from the norm can be prevented provided that parents pay enough attention to their children. If parents are busy with their own business and amusements while children are on their own … there is a danger that this will produce some undesirable phenomena.’61 Lack of occupation was another reason for homosexuality and sexual perversions: ‘A person whose life is not filled with joyful labour seeks to make use of his energy in various follies (sumasbrodstvo).’ Thus, in a socialist society, where collective labour was of the utmost importance, instances of perversions were an exception: ‘All these phenomena are more characteristic of the obsolete, decaying capitalist world, rather than a developing and growing society. Often various perversions are the consequence of satiety and a frivolous way of life. In the majority of cases this can be said about the perverted progeny of rich families or antisocial elements.’62
Detrimental Western influences: sexual perversions and anti-Western propaganda
Despite Soviet health officials’ understanding of the importance of sex education, manuals with advice on how to lead one’s sex life were not published frequently. As Soviet professor of psychology V. N. Kolbanovskii explained in the medical journal Soviet Healthcare, there was a significant divergence of opinion on the issue among doctors.63 This was coupled with the institutional sluggishness of the Ministry of Education and other related governmental bodies.64 The publication of sex education manuals, however, was somewhat expedited in the wake of the June 1963 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. The decision to organise the Plenum was related to specific political developments in Soviet society in 1961 and 1962 that led the Soviet leadership to believe that ‘detrimental Western influences’ were seeping into the Soviet Union, corrupting Soviet people’s minds. What seemed particularly disturbing for Soviet officials were the ‘negative’ effects of Western culture, to which Soviet people were now exposed, either on their trips overseas or even at home mingling with foreign tourists visiting the Soviet Union.65
The Khrushchev government became concerned about the potentially undesirable consequences that the exchange of tourists between the Soviet Union and the United States might entail as early as 1955, when for the first time Soviet citizens received permission to apply to travel overseas, including to capitalist countries. Only those Soviet citizens ‘politically prepared’ and ‘stable from the perspective of morality and everyday life’ were permitted to travel abroad. Accordingly, to prevent Soviet citizens from excessive mingling with foreigners, the Soviet press warned Soviet citizens about Americans engaging in anti-Soviet behaviour. As I will show, there was also anxiety that these increasing interactions with foreigners could result in a greater prevalence of homosexuality in the Soviet Union.
According to Khrushchev himself, some prominent Soviet cultural workers, instead of propagating socialist ideals, had fallen prey to the ‘ideological diversion of the West’, imitating ‘inferior bourgeois traits’ in their art which were alien to the Soviet people. On 1 December 1962 he attended an exhibition of paintings and sculptures, organised by the Moscow branch of the Union of Soviet Artists, where he expressed his infuriation at a number of abstract works, which according to him were ‘alien’ to Soviet people. Khrushchev even suggested that homosexual influences might be at work, calling the art ‘pederasty’.66 On the following day the main Soviet newspaper Pravda denounced ‘inferior bourgeois traits’ in the works of those Soviet cultural workers, labelling them traitors to Soviet ‘realistic art’.67 These anxieties essentially legitimised Khrushchev’s move for greater ideological propaganda against bourgeois influences from the West and made him backpedal on almost every front.
To the dismay of the Soviet authorities, Western countries were not the only source of perverse influences. As some criminal cases of that period demonstrate, visitors from African countries with which Khrushchev sought to establish friendly relations exerted no less ‘perverse’ an influence on Soviet people. On 15 May 1962 the procuracy of the city of Moscow initiated a criminal case against two male students – Ahmed and Khafid, who came to study at the Moscow State University from Zanzibar. The investigation established that on 17 February 1962, at a party in one of the university’s dorms, Ahmed met fifteen-year-old Sasha Bolotin, whom he invited to his room. After treating Sasha to cognac, Ahmed committed sodomy with him as an active partner. Several days later, on the university campus, Sasha ran into Ahmed’s friend Khafid, who also inclined him to sodomy on several occasions.68 Sasha’s mother, who discovered these homosexual liaisons of her son from an entry in his diary, promptly reported these incidents to the police. After conducting a forensic examination and collecting evidence from eyewitnesses, investigators indicted the African students with sodomy. Hesitant about how to deal with students from Africa, and scholarship holders at that, investigators sent a secret note to the Foreign Ministry for clarification. Eventually the criminal file ended up on the desks of Soviet high-ranking officials Deputy Foreign Minister S. G. Lapin and Deputy Prosecutor General N. V. Zhogin, who ordered the African students to be deported, and closed the criminal case.69
The June 1963 Plenum was arranged to tackle the problem of perverse Western influences, while preparing Soviet citizens for ideological confrontation. It was devoted to the ‘tasks of ideological battle in contemporary conditions’ and stressed the importance of fortifying propaganda in the face of ‘the bitter ideological fight in the international arena’.70 It was decided to ‘increase political vigilance’ against ‘imperialist sabotage’ whose displays had already manifested themselves in Soviet society, in the art of some prominent Soviet cultural workers and in some ‘depraved’ Western theatrical plays shown in Moscow theatres.71 The delegates of the Plenum coincided in the opinion that ‘imperialist ideologies are trying in every way possible to influence Soviet people; their main objective is unstable elements, that is, individuals who are not politically and ideologically case-hardened’.72 Educational work was claimed to be the most effective means of confronting this malevolent capitalist ideology.73
The Plenum led Soviet sex education authors to reframe their discussions of sex education. Soviet physicians were now expected to address issues of sex in a similar anti-Western vein. From this point on, sex education discourse became more defensive: it essentially became an instrument for the dissemination of anti-Western propaganda. While earlier sex education manuals were merely expected to set their narratives around communist morality and ‘capitalist vestiges’, the authors of sex education manuals published in the wake of the Plenum were apparently expected to extrapolate the Plenum’s decisions to their discussions of sex education, suggesting that the main threat to the healthy sex life of the Soviet people was now coming from the West. In fact, one brochure on this point overshadowed all others: the foreword to On Sex Education (1964) explicitly stated that the task of sexual education was to prevent young people from acquiring ‘deleterious views’ on sex, as the ‘deleterious ideological influence of the West with its propagation of the animal importance of sexual attraction is still insinuating itself into our country in different forms’.74 The authors of another manual, Marital Hygiene (1964), stated: ‘Unfortunately the pernicious influence of bourgeois ideology, dominating the literature and arts of the capitalist countries, is taking its toll on a group of less stable representatives of Soviet youth in regard to morals.’75 The eradication of negative bourgeois influence required the joint work of parents, educators and doctors.76 The anxieties about homosexuality and sexual perversions as a result of Western pernicious influence were also incorporated in the sex education narrative.
Following the Plenum, the authors of sex education manuals devoted significant energy to descriptions of Western society’s inherent degeneracy. They suggested that it was the economic structure of the capitalist system that was inherently perverted – they contended that with the emergence of capitalist society and the prevalence of a ‘buy and sell’ attitude, economic inequality had become widespread, and this forced women to indulge in prostitution as the only means they could resort to in order to survive.77 The authors of sex education manuals also claimed that young people in the West, having at their disposal such a wide assortment of potentially corrupting institutions (nightclubs, rampant prostitution, cinema and television), became increasingly susceptible to vice.78 In contrast to Soviet young people, Western youth was merely interested in deriving a transient pleasure from sexual relations.79 Although these narratives were not new (Zalkind’s Healthy Marriage and Healthy Family had depicted Western society in a similar way), they had become more pronounced and elaborate, as it was now especially important to expose the ‘perverse ideological influence’ coming from the West.
Soviet physicians depicted the professedly high level of unemployment in Western society as the root of various kinds of antisocial behaviour: ‘Obvious and veiled vices of the social realm corrupt young people in capitalist countries physically and morally and they often adopt the path of a criminal. This is fostered by the prevailing unemployment in the West, which provokes a desire to live for the day.’80 Soviet conditions, then, were presented as an effective and healthy alternative to the depraved Western world. The aptitude of Soviet institutions to help Soviet people engage more deeply in productive labour and social life was contrasted with Western institutions, which allegedly facilitated the pleasure-seeking desires of the individual: ‘Sexual continence in our country can be feasibly achieved, for we have a variety of possibilities for sublimation. Devotion to work, studying, science or social activities alleviate the problem of sexual continence before solemnising a marriage.’81
Sex educators now explicitly framed homosexuality as a product of Western societies in line with the June 1963 Plenum’s pronouncements. A manual Hygiene of Sex Life (1964) presented homosexuality as a result of unemployment in the West:
the most important reason for homosexuality lies in those conditions of the capitalist countries which prevent starting a family … unemployment, the uncertainty about the future, lack of housing or its unaffordability, the uncertainty about whether one will be able to provide sustenance for future children – all these factors provide conditions for sexual perversions.82
Even though this particular passage does not plainly set out the logic of how homosexuality and uncertainty about the future are linked, a section from another sex education manual published in the same year discloses the inferential link between homosexuality and allegedly precarious social conditions in Western society:
Sexual debauchery and promiscuity are rooted in a deeply erroneous logic about the necessity to ‘get everything out of life’ (vzyat’ ot zhizni vse) … in bourgeois countries such thoughts are based on uncertainty about the future, the constant threat of unemployment and the absence of any room for growth for young people in the future.83
Promiscuous sexual activity resulting from uncertainty about the future was believed to be the key reason for sexual perversions: ‘Promiscuous sexual activity is always related to excess, which leads to satiety, which prompts a desire to irritate the nervous system more actively. This, in turn, leads to sexual perversions.’84 In the face of ostensibly unreliable Western social institutions and lack of occupation, therefore, young people were believed to become more desperate and sceptical about their future. According to Soviet physicians, they had no other option but to live their lives to the full and welter in endless sexual pleasure (since they could not afford to have a family), which drove them to seek new and sophisticated ways of appeasing their sexual desire, with homosexuality being one of the best options to do that.
The authors of Hygiene of Sex Life reluctantly admitted that homosexuality was a phenomenon that might also be found in Soviet society, although very rarely: ‘Along with normal (sexual) attraction, in very rare cases an attraction to the same sex is observed, so-called homosexuality.’ They continued:
The latter is … the result of the psychopathic alteration of the personality. Socially created reasons for mental perversions, for homosexuality in particular, are military barracks, prisons of the capitalist countries, where many men lead an unhealthy life. The breeders of homosexuality are also private male institutions, which are very common in the West.85
The authors made sweeping claims about the roots of homosexuality, not providing any credible evidence for their claims and hampering understanding of the logic of their descriptions. Yet, if one places these claims in the overall narrative on sex and sexual perversions contained in this manual, it becomes clear that the authors did not just randomly refer to homosexuality as a ‘psychopathic alteration of the personality’. An explanation for what might trigger such a condition was essentially provided in the preceding section of Hygiene of Sex Life, where the authors discussed ‘excessive sexual desire’, which was an indication of ‘neurasthenia, hysteria and psychasthenia with signs of sexual obsession’.86 Since, allegedly, homosexuality, like other sexual perversions, stemmed from ‘sexual excess’, then it comes as no surprise that a ‘psychopathic alteration of the personality’ (that is, homosexuality) was its direct result.
Although Soviet physicians did not explain how Western influences could encourage Soviet citizens to become homosexuals, Soviet doctors expressed such fears in their correspondence. For instance, in 1964 the chief venereologist of the Moscow Health Department A. Obukhova observed in her report on venereal disease: ‘Widespread exchange of tourists, long overseas trips, acquaintance with perverted customs of the bourgeois countries have a negative impact on some morally unstable Soviet citizens. Therefore, various sexual perversions, primarily homosexuality and sodomy, have seeped into our country.’87 A manual for sex crimes from the Brezhnev era further elaborated on the link between Western influences on Soviet people and how exactly it contributed to homosexuality:
One of the factors contributing to the spread of homosexuality is the influence of corrupt bourgeois ideology on morally unstable people. Such people are intensely searching for foreigners and other persons who have various kinds of pornographic literature, pornographic photographs, products etc. In the future, these objects are used as a means of involving new persons, including minors, in criminal activity.88
Conclusion
Although it might appear surprising, Soviet doctors actually attempted to make a case for sex education during the extremely conservative Stalin era. They pitched manuscripts of manuals to editors in which they discussed the issues of children’s and adolescents’ sexual development. Editors and reviewers were very careful in selecting appropriate materials for publication, censoring and rejecting anything that could be deemed harmful to the younger generation. Homosexuality was one such dangerous topic and any mentions of it in the context of sex education were believed to be inadmissible. The first Stalin-era sex education manual, Healthy Marriage and Healthy Family (1948), dealt with the issues of human psychology, sexual relations between men and women, and venereal diseases, avoiding any discussions of ‘sexual perversions’. It also delineated the overarching goal of Soviet sex education: the fight against the ‘vestiges of the capitalist past’, a term that embraced all of the undesirable sexual phenomena existing in Soviet society at the time: venereal disease, extramarital sex and adultery.
With the abolition of criminal penalties for abortion in 1955, Khrushchev attempted to bring the issue of sex and reproduction under the tighter controls of disciplinary discourse. During clinic appointments doctors were expected to educate their patients on the harm of abortion and discourage them from such a practice, while sex education manuals, which were now published more frequently, deployed medical discourse on a larger scale. Apart from tackling abortion, these manuals instructed young people on how to properly lead sexual lives, encouraging them to wait until they were married and to engage in sex only for procreation. The authors of these manuals advised parents to preclude any early sexual awakening of their children by depriving them of any sexual stimuli and redirecting their attention from sex to more productive activities. Some recommendations given in these manuals point to the authors’ anxiety about homosexuality and their concern about the emergence of such activity among children with heightened sexual desire. Some manuals, mainly those written by sexologists from communist countries, openly discussed the issue.
As cultural contacts between the Soviet Union and the US expanded under Khrushchev and the Soviet government became more anxious about the consequences, Soviet sex education manuals saw corresponding changes. After the June 1963 Plenum, which was devoted to strategies for confronting the ‘ideological influence of the West’, Soviet sex education changed its focus from the goal of eliminating ‘vestiges of the past’ to the fight against the ‘advancing bourgeois ideology’ that allegedly sought to influence ‘unstable elements’ in Soviet society. These changes affected the discourse on sexual perversions and homosexuality. Rather than emphasising ‘early awakening of sexual desire’ as a core rationale for sexual perversions, the authors of sex education manuals published in 1964 claimed that it was Western influences that were the real reason for sexual perversions.
After Khrushchev’s removal from power, Soviet sex education manuals continued to be published in the Soviet Union, but with their content now less influenced by anxiety about the ‘ideological influence of the West’. Instead, Brezhnev-era sex manuals became more focused on increasing young people’s awareness of the physiological aspects of their bodily maturity. Throughout the ensuing ‘stagnation’ period, homosexuality was mentioned even less frequently and the few allusions to it were apparently informed by Soviet ‘sexopathology’, which emerged in 1964 and defined it as a medical condition. The emergence of a medical definition of homosexuality will be explored in the following chapter.
How serious were the attempts of the Khrushchev and Brezhnev governments to bring adolescent and adult sexuality under disciplinary controls of discourse? It is certainly difficult to gauge the magnitude of these attempts with complete certainty, yet considering that the sex education manuals were published across the Soviet Union’s various republics (despite their somewhat modest print runs, which usually did not exceed 200,000 copies), one may draw the conclusion that these attempts were significant.89
Notes
1Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 42. On the ‘pedagogisation’ of sex, see p. 104.
2Ibid., pp. 24–5.
3Ibid., p. 27.
4Anna Rotkirch, ‘What Kind of Sex Can You Talk About? Acquiring Sexual Knowledge in Three Soviet Generations’, in Living through the Soviet System, ed. Daniel Bertaux, Paul Thompson and Anna Rotkirch (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2005), p. 99.
5See D. Gorfin, ‘Polovaya zhizn’’, in Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1st edn, vol. 46 (Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1940), pp. 163–9.
6GARF, f. 10049, op. 3, delo 98, ll. 1–65.
7Ibid., ll. 62–4.
8Ibid., l. 65.
9Ibid.
10Ibid.
11Ibid., ll. 66–7.
12Ibid.
13Lev A. Zalkind, Zdorovyi brak i zdorovaya sem’ya (Moscow: Medgiz, 1948).
14Mie Nakachi, ‘Abortion Is Killing Us: Women’s Medicine and the Dilemmas for Post-war Doctors in the Soviet Union, 1944–48’, in Soviet Medicine: Culture, Practice and Science, ed. Frances L. Bernstein, Christopher Burton and Dan Healey (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), pp. 196–7.
15Zalkind, Zdorovyi brak, p. 15.
16Ibid., p. 21.
17Ibid., p. 3.
18Ibid., p. 4.
19Ibid., p. 9.
20Ibid., pp. 36–7.
21Ibid., p. 37.
22Lev A. Zalkind, Zdorovyi brak i zdorovaya sem’ya (Moscow: Medgiz, 1951), p.5.
23Ibid., p. 62.
24See for example: Ol’ga Nikonchik, Abort i ego posledstviya (Moscow: Medgiz, 1956). On sex education and abortion, see: Field, Private Life and Communist Morality.
25Field, Private Life and Communist Morality, pp. 55–6.
26Juliane Fürst, ‘The Arrival of Spring? Changes and Continuities in Soviet Youth Culture and Policy between Stalin and Khrushchev’, in The Dilemmas of De-Stalinisation: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era, ed. Polly Jones (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 135.
27GARF, f. A-2306, op. 75, d. 1074, ll. 1–26. I was first alerted to this document by Deborah A. Field’s book Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev’s Russia (2007).
28Ibid., p. 1.
29Ibid., p. 3.
30Ibid.
31Anatolii G. Stankov, Polovaya zhizn’ i sem’ya (Kiev: Gosudarstvennoe meditsinskoe izdatel’stvo SSSR, 1958).
32Ibid., p. 4.
33Ibid., pp. 19–69.
34Ibid., p. 90.
35Ibid., pp. 92–3.
36Ibid., p. 93.
37Lynne Attwood, Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 156.
38Yevgenii A. Popov, ‘Polovye izvrashcheniya’, in Bol’shaya meditsinskaya entsiklopediya, 2nd edn, vol. 25 (Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1962), p. 951.
39Yurii V. Aleksandrov, Polovye prestupleniya: Prestupniki i poterpevshie (Kiev: Nauchno-issledovatel’skii i redaktsionno-izdatel’skii otdel Kievskoi vysshei shkoly MVD SSSR, 1975), p. 41.
40Dagmar Herzog, Sex after Fascism: Memory and Morality in Twentieth-Century Germany (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005), pp. 196–7.
41GARF, f. P-9412, op. 2, delo 110, l. 48.
42Boris V. Daniel’bek, Polovye izvrashcheniya i ugolovnaya otvetstvennost’ (Volgograd: Vysshaya sledstvennaya shkola MVD SSSR, 1972), pp. 106–7.
43GARF, f. P-9412, op. 2, delo 110, l. 86.
44Ibid., l. 89.
45Ibid.
46Ibid., l. 90.
47Ibid.
48Ibid., ll. 50–1.
49Ibid., l. 54.
50Tigran S. Atarov, Voprosy polovogo vospitaniya (Moscow: Medgiz, 1959), p. 54. See: Aleksandrov, Polovye prestupleniya, p. 45.
51Iosif Gyne, Yunosha prevrashchaetsia v muzhchinu (Moscow: Medgiz, 1960); Rudolf Neubert, Voprosy pola (Moscow: Medgiz, 1960). Igor Kon tells us that Neubert’s Questions of Sex and his other book A New Book on Wedlock (published in 1969) ‘became immediate best-sellers’. Kon also revealed that these books ‘had been deliberately selected by the authorities for the Soviet reader as the least “offensive” and most moralistic’. See: Kon, Sexual Revolution in Russia, p. 96.
52Věra Sokolová, ‘State Approaches to Homosexuality and Non-Heterosexual Lives in Czechoslovakia during State Socialism’, in The Politics of Gender Culture under State Socialism: An Expropriated Voice, ed. Hana Havelková and Libora Oates-Indruchová (Oxford: Routledge, 2014), pp. 85–6.
53Rudolf Neubert, Die Geschlechterfrage (Greifenverlag, 1956), pp. 80–2. I am grateful to Kate Davison for translating some parts of Neubert’s book for me.
54Gyne, Yunosha prevrashchaetsia v muzhchinu, p. 36.
55Mikhail I. Avdeev, Sudebnaya meditsina (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo yuridicheskoi literatury, 1960), pp. 394–5.
56Catherine A. Lugg, US Public Schools and the Politics of Queer Erasure (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 20–1.
57Neubert, Voprosy pola.
58Ibid., p. 44.
59Ibid.
60Ibid.
61Ibid., p. 44.
62Ibid.
63Viktor N. Kolbanovskii, ‘O polovom vospitanii podrastayushchego pokoleniya’, Sovetskoe zdravookhranenie, no. 3 (1964): 19.
64Field, Private Life and Communist Morality, pp. 56–7.
65For more details, see: Anne E. Gorsuch, All This Is Your World: Soviet Tourism at Home and Abroad after Stalin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). On other kinds of socio-cultural interactions between the Soviet Union and the United States, see: Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
66For details, see Abraham Brumberg, ‘Tempest in a Gallery’, New Republic 148, no. 7 (1963): 17–20.
67See: Anonymous, ‘Iskusstvo prinadlezhit narodu’, Pravda, no. 3 (December 1962): 1.
68GARF, f. 8131, op. 34, delo 386, l. 2.
69Ibid., ll. 4–21.
70Boris P. Bortsov, XXII s”ezd partii i iyun’skii (1963g.) Plenum TSK KPSS o zadachakh ideologicheskoi raboty v sovremennykh usloviyakh (Kiev: Vyshaya partiinaya shkola pri TSK KP Ukrainy, 1964), p. 16.
71Viktor A. Ageev, Ovsei G. Korogodzkii and Petr G. Novikov, Iyun’skii /1963/ Plenum Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS i ego istoricheskoe znachenie (Moscow: Moskovskoe gorodskoe otdelenie obshchestva ‘Znanie’ RSFSR, 1963), pp. 10–13.
72Bortsov, XXII s”ezd, p. 16.
73Ibid., pp. 17–18.
74Nikolai I. Chuchelov, O polovom vospitanii (Moscow: Meditsina, 1964), p. 4.
75Aleksandr A. Gabelov and Elizaveta B. Derankova, Gigiena braka (Moscow: Meditsina, 1964), p. 67.
76Ibid.
77Serafim A. Artem’ev, Vasilii D. Kochetkov and German G. Shtan’ko, Gigiena polovoi zhizni (Moscow: Znanie, 1964), p. 5.
78Ibid.
79Chuchelov, O polovom vospitanii, pp. 24–25.
80Gabelov and Derankova, Gigiena braka, p. 27.
81Chuchelov, O polovom vospitanii, p. 19.
82Artem’ev et al., Gigiena polovoi zhizni, p. 20.
83Chuchelov, O polovom vospitanii, pp. 24–5.
84Ibid., p. 25.
85Artem’ev et al., Gigiena polovoi zhizni, p. 20.
86Ibid., p. 19.
87TsMAM [Central Archive of Moscow], f. 552, d. 1335, l. 69.
88Aleksandrov, Polovye prestupleniya, p. 41.
89See for example: Seranush Dashtayants, O polovom vospitanii shkol’nikov (Grozny: Checheno-Ingushskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1966); Liliya Sanyukevich, Polovoe vospitaniie detei i podrostkov (Minsk: Nar. Asveta, 1979); Iosif Gyne, Yunosha prevrashchaetsya v muzhchinu (Tashkent: Ukituvchi, 1970); Lyudmila Timofeeva, Vospitanie chuvstv: O nekotorykh voprosakh polovogo vospitaniya uchashchikhsya (Frunze: Mektep, 1977).