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Regulating homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91: A different history
This ground-breaking book challenges the widespread view that sex and homosexuality were unmentionable in the USSR. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras (1956–82) have remained obscure and unexplored from this perspective. Drawing on previously undiscovered sources, Alexander fills in this critical gap.
The book reveals that from 1956 to 1991, doctors, educators, jurists and police officers discussed homosexuality. At the heart of discussions were questions which directly affected the lives of homosexual people in the USSR. Was homosexuality a crime, disease or a normal variant of human sexuality? Should lesbianism be criminalised? Could sex education prevent homosexuality? What role did the GULAG and prisons play in homosexuality across the USSR? These discussions often had practical implications – doctors designed and offered medical treatments for homosexuality in hospitals, and procedures and medications were also used in prisons.
The book reveals that from 1956 to 1991, doctors, educators, jurists and police officers discussed homosexuality. At the heart of discussions were questions which directly affected the lives of homosexual people in the USSR. Was homosexuality a crime, disease or a normal variant of human sexuality? Should lesbianism be criminalised? Could sex education prevent homosexuality? What role did the GULAG and prisons play in homosexuality across the USSR? These discussions often had practical implications – doctors designed and offered medical treatments for homosexuality in hospitals, and procedures and medications were also used in prisons.
- GenresNonfictionQueerHistory
344 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 25, 2021
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About the author
Rustam Alexander
5 books8 followersRustam Alexander is a historian and independent scholar who obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 2, 2025
(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)
Небольшая, просто написанная, но специализированная книга на тему отношения советской власти к гомосексуальности и гомосексуалам, которых в СССР либо отправляли в тюрьмы, либо отправляли в психологические лечебницы. Я хочу сказать, что книгу можно порекомендовать только тем читателям, которые сильно заинтересованы в данной теме. Пускай книга и написана легко, но даже при этом интерес удастся удержать только в том случаи, если читатель в действительности хочет узнать, как советская власть обращалась с гомосексуалами, какую политику проводило в отношении их и как врачебное сообщество относилось к данному вопросу. Что точно нет в этой книге так это описания бытовой жизни гомосексуалов. Большая часть книги рассматривает гомосексуальные акты либо в советских тюрьмах, либо описывает медицинские случаи касательно «лечения» гомосексуалов. Хотя автор даёт общее представление о политике советского государства в отношении гомосексуализма, книга всё же ориентирована на конкретные два случая или, вернее, темы: гомосексуализм в советских тюрьмах и методы использования медицинских институтов для решения «проблемы» гомосексуализма. В книге так же отдельно упоминается женский гомосексуализм, который имел другой статус, нежели мужской и в частности, женский гомосексуализм не преследовался настолько сильно властями, при том, что предпринимались попытки уголовного преследования и лесбиянок.
Лично меня в книге заинтересовала не тема гомосексуалистов в СССР, а сексуальность и сексология в Советской Союзе в контексте тезиса «в СССР секса нет». Как не покажется это странным, но этот тезис действительно оправдан. О сексе в СССР не было принято говорить открыто, эротика и порнография была под запретом, а сексуальное образование молодёжи было очень и очень слабым. Это не должно никого удивлять т.к. сексуальность и эротизм всегда были главным врагом любой тоталитарной власти. Любая тоталитарная власть всегда боролась с открытым проявлением сексуальности, что уж говорить про гомосексуальность (впрочем, открыто проявлять свою гомосексуальность, было не принято даже в странах Запада вплоть до 1990-ых годов, т.е. даже на Западе знаменитости предпочитали не афишировать свою гомосексуальную ориентацию вплоть до 1990-ых годов). Но вернёмся к книге.
The agenda for the meeting was a manuscript of a new manual on biology titled Human Anatomy and Physiology. 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’.
<…>
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.’ 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 fertilization process is like that of mammals, in general terms, ignoring spermatozoon, egg cells, fertilisation.’
У советского правительства как будто была идея, что заниматься сексом можно исключительно только по одной причине – для продолжения рода. Секс ради удовольствия как будто исключался и как будто был лишним в деле воспитания советского человека. Невольно вспоминается эпоха диктата католической церкви, которая также активно вмешивалась в сексуальную жизнь граждан, в частности видела в получении удовольствии от секса исключительно грех. Впрочем, советское руководство в вопросах секса ненамного далеко ушло от церковного взгляда.
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.’
Как мастурбация связаны с гомосексуальностью, вы спросите? По мнению советского руководства, непосредственно. В Советском Союзе, как будто это была очень религиозная страна, ни секс ради наслаждения, ни мастурбация, ни даже оральный/анальный секс не были признаны в качестве нормального и разнообразного поведения человека, а исключительно как нечто ненормальное, что нуждается в коррекции, лечении.
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.
<…>
Brezhnev-era police officers underscored the link between masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ and homosexuality even more explicitly.
<…>
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’.
Как можно увидеть, все, что не является стандартом (в Советском Союзе), т.е. всё что так или иначе отходит от советской «нормы» признаётся порочным и не нормальным и с чем, следовательно, нужно бороться. Советская система, безусловно, боролась со всеми проявлениями сексуальности и эротизма именно по этой причине – секс должен быть исключительно для продолжения рода и ничем больше. Поэтому неудивительно, что в какой-то момент советское руководство пришло к выводу, что гомосексуальность, подобно западной музыке и фильмам, является порождением Запада, и которое разлагает не только западное общество, но и молодое советское.
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.
<…>
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’.
<…>
The anxieties about homosexuality and sexual perversions as a result of Western pernicious influence were also incorporated in the sex education narrative.
<…>
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. In contrast to Soviet young people, Western youth was merely interested in deriving a transient pleasure from sexual relations.
Последнее что хотелось отметить, это практика того как в СССР «лечили» гомосексуалистов.
In his report, Goland described a more elaborate model of medical treatment for homosexuality which consisted of three stages. The aim of the first stage was to ‘establish a sexual-psychological vacuum’, a special state characterized by disappearance of homosexual desire; the second stage was aimed at teaching the patient how to appreciate women’s beauty and establish social contacts with them; the third stage was to help the patient further develop his ‘heteroerotic’ desire towards women. During the first stage, the patient was given hypnotic suggestions to develop a ‘calm, cold and indifferent attitude to men’. The patient was to use auto-training, which would help him distract himself from his ‘fixations’ on men.
Как пишет автор, кто-то из врачей искренне верили в такое «лечение», но были и врачи, как я это понял, которые считали, что нужно отказаться от уголовного преследования гомосексуалистов. Однако данный вопрос меня не сильно интересовал, ибо мне была интересна общая картина политики, которую проводил СССР в отношении сексуальности и сексуального образования в целом. Как видим, именно из советского прошлого идут причины сегодняшней гомофобной политики, а также политики полного устранение любого проявления эротизма, сексуальности в публичной сфере в сегодняшней России (включая отказ от образовательных программ на тему секса и сексуальности).
It's a short, easy-to-read, but specialized book about how the Soviet government treated homosexuality and gay people, who were either sent to prison or mental hospitals in the USSR. I would like to note that this book can be recommended to readers who are very interested in this topic. Although the book is easy to read, it will only hold the reader's interest if they are genuinely interested in learning how the Soviet authorities treated homosexuals, what policies they pursued in relation to them, and how the medical community viewed the issue. What is definitely not in this book is a description of the everyday life of homosexuals. Most of the book examines homosexual acts either in Soviet prisons or describes medical cases concerning the “treatment” of homosexuals. Although the author gives a general overview of Soviet state policy on homosexuality, the book focuses on two specific cases, or rather topics: homosexuality in Soviet prisons and the methods used by medical institutions to solve the “problem” of homosexuality. The book also mentions female homosexuality separately, which had a different status than male homosexuality. In particular, female homosexuality was not persecuted as severely by the authorities, even though attempts were made to prosecute lesbians.
Personally, what interested me in the book was not the topic of homosexuals in the USSR, but sexuality and sexology in the Soviet Union in the context of the thesis “there is no sex in the USSR.” As strange as it may seem, this thesis is indeed justified and true. It was not normal to talk openly about sex in the USSR; erotica and pornography were banned, and sex education for young people was very, very poor. This should come as no surprise, since sexuality and eroticism have always been the main enemies of any totalitarian regime. Any totalitarian regime has always fought against the open expression of sexuality, not to mention homosexuality (however, openly expressing one's homosexuality was not accepted even in Western countries until the 1990s, i.e., even in the West, celebrities preferred not to publicize their homosexual orientation until the 1990s). But let's get back to the book.
The agenda for the meeting was a manuscript of a new manual on biology titled Human Anatomy and Physiology. 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’.
<…>
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.’ 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 fertilization process is like that of mammals, in general terms, ignoring spermatozoon, egg cells, fertilisation.’
The Soviet government seemed to have the idea that sex could only happen for one reason: to procreate. Sex for pleasure was seemingly excluded and considered unnecessary in the upbringing of the Soviet citizen. This inevitably brings to mind the era of the Catholic Church dictatorship, which also actively interfered in the sexual lives of citizens, particularly viewing the enjoyment of sex as a sin. However, the Soviet leadership did not stray far from the Church's view on matters of sex.
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.’
How are masturbation and homosexuality related, you ask? According to the Soviet leadership, directly. In the Soviet Union, as if it were a very religious country, neither sex for pleasure, nor masturbation, nor even oral/anal sex were recognized as normal and diverse human behavior, but exclusively as something abnormal that needed correction and treatment.
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.
<…>
Brezhnev-era police officers underscored the link between masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ and homosexuality even more explicitly.
<…>
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’.
As can be seen, anything that is not standard (in the Soviet Union), i.e., anything that deviates in any way from the Soviet “norm,” is considered immoral and abnormal and must therefore be combated. The Soviet system undoubtedly fought against all manifestations of sexuality and eroticism for this very reason—sex should be exclusively for procreation and nothing more. It is therefore not surprising that at some point the Soviet leadership came to the conclusion that homosexuality, like Western music and films, was a product of the West, corrupting not only Western society but also young Soviet society.
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.
<…>
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’.
<…>
The anxieties about homosexuality and sexual perversions as a result of Western pernicious influence were also incorporated in the sex education narrative.
<…>
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. In contrast to Soviet young people, Western youth was merely interested in deriving a transient pleasure from sexual relations.
The last thing I would like to mention is the practice of how homosexuals were “treated” in the USSR.
In his report, Goland described a more elaborate model of medical treatment for homosexuality which consisted of three stages. The aim of the first stage was to ‘establish a sexual-psychological vacuum’, a special state characterized by disappearance of homosexual desire; the second stage was aimed at teaching the patient how to appreciate women’s beauty and establish social contacts with them; the third stage was to help the patient further develop his ‘heteroerotic’ desire towards women. During the first stage, the patient was given hypnotic suggestions to develop a ‘calm, cold and indifferent attitude to men’. The patient was to use auto-training, which would help him distract himself from his ‘fixations’ on men.
As the author writes, some doctors sincerely believed in such “treatment,” but there were also doctors, as I understood it, who believed that criminal prosecution of homosexuals should be abandoned. However, I was not particularly interested in this issue, as I was more interested in the overall picture of the USSR's policy on sexuality and sex education in general. As we can see, the reasons for today's homophobic policies, as well as the policy of completely eliminating any manifestation of eroticism and sexuality in the public sphere in today's Russia (including the rejection of educational programs on the subject of sex and sexuality), stem from the Soviet past.
Небольшая, просто написанная, но специализированная книга на тему отношения советской власти к гомосексуальности и гомосексуалам, которых в СССР либо отправляли в тюрьмы, либо отправляли в психологические лечебницы. Я хочу сказать, что книгу можно порекомендовать только тем читателям, которые сильно заинтересованы в данной теме. Пускай книга и написана легко, но даже при этом интерес удастся удержать только в том случаи, если читатель в действительности хочет узнать, как советская власть обращалась с гомосексуалами, какую политику проводило в отношении их и как врачебное сообщество относилось к данному вопросу. Что точно нет в этой книге так это описания бытовой жизни гомосексуалов. Большая часть книги рассматривает гомосексуальные акты либо в советских тюрьмах, либо описывает медицинские случаи касательно «лечения» гомосексуалов. Хотя автор даёт общее представление о политике советского государства в отношении гомосексуализма, книга всё же ориентирована на конкретные два случая или, вернее, темы: гомосексуализм в советских тюрьмах и методы использования медицинских институтов для решения «проблемы» гомосексуализма. В книге так же отдельно упоминается женский гомосексуализм, который имел другой статус, нежели мужской и в частности, женский гомосексуализм не преследовался настолько сильно властями, при том, что предпринимались попытки уголовного преследования и лесбиянок.
Лично меня в книге заинтересовала не тема гомосексуалистов в СССР, а сексуальность и сексология в Советской Союзе в контексте тезиса «в СССР секса нет». Как не покажется это странным, но этот тезис действительно оправдан. О сексе в СССР не было принято говорить открыто, эротика и порнография была под запретом, а сексуальное образование молодёжи было очень и очень слабым. Это не должно никого удивлять т.к. сексуальность и эротизм всегда были главным врагом любой тоталитарной власти. Любая тоталитарная власть всегда боролась с открытым проявлением сексуальности, что уж говорить про гомосексуальность (впрочем, открыто проявлять свою гомосексуальность, было не принято даже в странах Запада вплоть до 1990-ых годов, т.е. даже на Западе знаменитости предпочитали не афишировать свою гомосексуальную ориентацию вплоть до 1990-ых годов). Но вернёмся к книге.
The agenda for the meeting was a manuscript of a new manual on biology titled Human Anatomy and Physiology. 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’.
<…>
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.’ 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 fertilization process is like that of mammals, in general terms, ignoring spermatozoon, egg cells, fertilisation.’
У советского правительства как будто была идея, что заниматься сексом можно исключительно только по одной причине – для продолжения рода. Секс ради удовольствия как будто исключался и как будто был лишним в деле воспитания советского человека. Невольно вспоминается эпоха диктата католической церкви, которая также активно вмешивалась в сексуальную жизнь граждан, в частности видела в получении удовольствии от секса исключительно грех. Впрочем, советское руководство в вопросах секса ненамного далеко ушло от церковного взгляда.
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.’
Как мастурбация связаны с гомосексуальностью, вы спросите? По мнению советского руководства, непосредственно. В Советском Союзе, как будто это была очень религиозная страна, ни секс ради наслаждения, ни мастурбация, ни даже оральный/анальный секс не были признаны в качестве нормального и разнообразного поведения человека, а исключительно как нечто ненормальное, что нуждается в коррекции, лечении.
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.
<…>
Brezhnev-era police officers underscored the link between masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ and homosexuality even more explicitly.
<…>
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’.
Как можно увидеть, все, что не является стандартом (в Советском Союзе), т.е. всё что так или иначе отходит от советской «нормы» признаётся порочным и не нормальным и с чем, следовательно, нужно бороться. Советская система, безусловно, боролась со всеми проявлениями сексуальности и эротизма именно по этой причине – секс должен быть исключительно для продолжения рода и ничем больше. Поэтому неудивительно, что в какой-то момент советское руководство пришло к выводу, что гомосексуальность, подобно западной музыке и фильмам, является порождением Запада, и которое разлагает не только западное общество, но и молодое советское.
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.
<…>
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’.
<…>
The anxieties about homosexuality and sexual perversions as a result of Western pernicious influence were also incorporated in the sex education narrative.
<…>
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. In contrast to Soviet young people, Western youth was merely interested in deriving a transient pleasure from sexual relations.
Последнее что хотелось отметить, это практика того как в СССР «лечили» гомосексуалистов.
In his report, Goland described a more elaborate model of medical treatment for homosexuality which consisted of three stages. The aim of the first stage was to ‘establish a sexual-psychological vacuum’, a special state characterized by disappearance of homosexual desire; the second stage was aimed at teaching the patient how to appreciate women’s beauty and establish social contacts with them; the third stage was to help the patient further develop his ‘heteroerotic’ desire towards women. During the first stage, the patient was given hypnotic suggestions to develop a ‘calm, cold and indifferent attitude to men’. The patient was to use auto-training, which would help him distract himself from his ‘fixations’ on men.
Как пишет автор, кто-то из врачей искренне верили в такое «лечение», но были и врачи, как я это понял, которые считали, что нужно отказаться от уголовного преследования гомосексуалистов. Однако данный вопрос меня не сильно интересовал, ибо мне была интересна общая картина политики, которую проводил СССР в отношении сексуальности и сексуального образования в целом. Как видим, именно из советского прошлого идут причины сегодняшней гомофобной политики, а также политики полного устранение любого проявления эротизма, сексуальности в публичной сфере в сегодняшней России (включая отказ от образовательных программ на тему секса и сексуальности).
It's a short, easy-to-read, but specialized book about how the Soviet government treated homosexuality and gay people, who were either sent to prison or mental hospitals in the USSR. I would like to note that this book can be recommended to readers who are very interested in this topic. Although the book is easy to read, it will only hold the reader's interest if they are genuinely interested in learning how the Soviet authorities treated homosexuals, what policies they pursued in relation to them, and how the medical community viewed the issue. What is definitely not in this book is a description of the everyday life of homosexuals. Most of the book examines homosexual acts either in Soviet prisons or describes medical cases concerning the “treatment” of homosexuals. Although the author gives a general overview of Soviet state policy on homosexuality, the book focuses on two specific cases, or rather topics: homosexuality in Soviet prisons and the methods used by medical institutions to solve the “problem” of homosexuality. The book also mentions female homosexuality separately, which had a different status than male homosexuality. In particular, female homosexuality was not persecuted as severely by the authorities, even though attempts were made to prosecute lesbians.
Personally, what interested me in the book was not the topic of homosexuals in the USSR, but sexuality and sexology in the Soviet Union in the context of the thesis “there is no sex in the USSR.” As strange as it may seem, this thesis is indeed justified and true. It was not normal to talk openly about sex in the USSR; erotica and pornography were banned, and sex education for young people was very, very poor. This should come as no surprise, since sexuality and eroticism have always been the main enemies of any totalitarian regime. Any totalitarian regime has always fought against the open expression of sexuality, not to mention homosexuality (however, openly expressing one's homosexuality was not accepted even in Western countries until the 1990s, i.e., even in the West, celebrities preferred not to publicize their homosexual orientation until the 1990s). But let's get back to the book.
The agenda for the meeting was a manuscript of a new manual on biology titled Human Anatomy and Physiology. 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’.
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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.’ 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 fertilization process is like that of mammals, in general terms, ignoring spermatozoon, egg cells, fertilisation.’
The Soviet government seemed to have the idea that sex could only happen for one reason: to procreate. Sex for pleasure was seemingly excluded and considered unnecessary in the upbringing of the Soviet citizen. This inevitably brings to mind the era of the Catholic Church dictatorship, which also actively interfered in the sexual lives of citizens, particularly viewing the enjoyment of sex as a sin. However, the Soviet leadership did not stray far from the Church's view on matters of sex.
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.’
How are masturbation and homosexuality related, you ask? According to the Soviet leadership, directly. In the Soviet Union, as if it were a very religious country, neither sex for pleasure, nor masturbation, nor even oral/anal sex were recognized as normal and diverse human behavior, but exclusively as something abnormal that needed correction and treatment.
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.
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Brezhnev-era police officers underscored the link between masturbation and ‘early sexual awakening’ and homosexuality even more explicitly.
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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’.
As can be seen, anything that is not standard (in the Soviet Union), i.e., anything that deviates in any way from the Soviet “norm,” is considered immoral and abnormal and must therefore be combated. The Soviet system undoubtedly fought against all manifestations of sexuality and eroticism for this very reason—sex should be exclusively for procreation and nothing more. It is therefore not surprising that at some point the Soviet leadership came to the conclusion that homosexuality, like Western music and films, was a product of the West, corrupting not only Western society but also young Soviet society.
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.
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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’.
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The anxieties about homosexuality and sexual perversions as a result of Western pernicious influence were also incorporated in the sex education narrative.
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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. In contrast to Soviet young people, Western youth was merely interested in deriving a transient pleasure from sexual relations.
The last thing I would like to mention is the practice of how homosexuals were “treated” in the USSR.
In his report, Goland described a more elaborate model of medical treatment for homosexuality which consisted of three stages. The aim of the first stage was to ‘establish a sexual-psychological vacuum’, a special state characterized by disappearance of homosexual desire; the second stage was aimed at teaching the patient how to appreciate women’s beauty and establish social contacts with them; the third stage was to help the patient further develop his ‘heteroerotic’ desire towards women. During the first stage, the patient was given hypnotic suggestions to develop a ‘calm, cold and indifferent attitude to men’. The patient was to use auto-training, which would help him distract himself from his ‘fixations’ on men.
As the author writes, some doctors sincerely believed in such “treatment,” but there were also doctors, as I understood it, who believed that criminal prosecution of homosexuals should be abandoned. However, I was not particularly interested in this issue, as I was more interested in the overall picture of the USSR's policy on sexuality and sex education in general. As we can see, the reasons for today's homophobic policies, as well as the policy of completely eliminating any manifestation of eroticism and sexuality in the public sphere in today's Russia (including the rejection of educational programs on the subject of sex and sexuality), stem from the Soviet past.
June 7, 2021
This is a solid academic book that offers great insight into a period never explored before. It contains amazing sources and, although it may be heavy going in the introduction, it sets the reader up well and is generally readable for an academic monograph.
One of the most fascinating things that I learned from this book is the fact that during the 1960s and 1970s Soviet lawyers and jurists were actively pushing for decriminalisation of sodomy in the USSR. They were looking at developments around the world, where decriminalisation of sodomy was taking place, and argued that the USSR had to modify its laws. Their arguments fell on deaf years - Soviet authorities simply ignored them.
I was also struck by the fact that Soviet high-ranking officials and legal scholars discussed female homosexuality behind closed doors and some of them actually insisted that lesbian women ought to be punished by law as well! This proposal was never taken up, which could be due to the inferior position of women in Soviet society. Up to now, nothing has been known about these discussions and Alexander’s book is the first to shed light on this highly interesting issue.
Finally, I was really intrigued by Soviet medical thinking on homosexuality. This book made an impression that although many doctors believed that homosexuality was a medical disorder and disagreed with Kinsey, some of them were in a way sympathetic to homosexuals and even tried to talk them out of undergoing treatment.
I think this is an extremely important book that Russian people need to read, although I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon due to Russia’s political situation and state-sanctioned homophobia.
One of the most fascinating things that I learned from this book is the fact that during the 1960s and 1970s Soviet lawyers and jurists were actively pushing for decriminalisation of sodomy in the USSR. They were looking at developments around the world, where decriminalisation of sodomy was taking place, and argued that the USSR had to modify its laws. Their arguments fell on deaf years - Soviet authorities simply ignored them.
I was also struck by the fact that Soviet high-ranking officials and legal scholars discussed female homosexuality behind closed doors and some of them actually insisted that lesbian women ought to be punished by law as well! This proposal was never taken up, which could be due to the inferior position of women in Soviet society. Up to now, nothing has been known about these discussions and Alexander’s book is the first to shed light on this highly interesting issue.
Finally, I was really intrigued by Soviet medical thinking on homosexuality. This book made an impression that although many doctors believed that homosexuality was a medical disorder and disagreed with Kinsey, some of them were in a way sympathetic to homosexuals and even tried to talk them out of undergoing treatment.
I think this is an extremely important book that Russian people need to read, although I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon due to Russia’s political situation and state-sanctioned homophobia.
May 29, 2021
El autor manifiesta una realidad poco conocida y abordada desde una perspectiva histórica muy interesante. Sin duda, este libro devela sucesos que pocos estarían dispuestos a contar de la URSS. A mi juicio, y en aras de la democratización del saber, este compilado académico debería estar en otros importantes idiomas, como el Español y así tener un alcance más global. ( it’s a bit expensive though)
June 7, 2023
Alexander's academic volume of research on the history of how Soviet Russia dealt with homosexuality changed my life. Reading it as a 40-year-old queer Russian, I finally found the answers to life-long questions I'd had about my homophobic family. It was a painful but necessary lesson, learning that my family was taught homophobic views by the Russian government long before I was born, and that there is absolutely nothing I could ever do about it.
Russian anti-gay rhetoric is currently as strong as it was during the Soviet Union, and poses a grave danger to the rest of the world. Alexander's book couldn't come at a better time. More people should be informed of just how deep and serious the problem of Russian homophobia is.
Russian anti-gay rhetoric is currently as strong as it was during the Soviet Union, and poses a grave danger to the rest of the world. Alexander's book couldn't come at a better time. More people should be informed of just how deep and serious the problem of Russian homophobia is.
May 30, 2021
A very important piece of work which is exciting and promising. It’s a little pricey but worth the read. This author is one to watch!
April 4, 2023
Little is known about queer experiences in the USSR. Every contribution is anticipated. This book does not disappoint. Great work!
February 9, 2024
Fantastic and well researched--great look into an tagically understudied aspect of Soviet life.
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