Sexuality in Early Soviet Union

Writing-Reading the Sexual Revolution in the Early Soviet Union
Author(s): Greg Carleton

Source: Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oct., 1997), pp. 229-255
Published by: University of Texas Press
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Writing-Reading the Sexual Revolution
in the Early Soviet Union
GREG CARLETON
Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literatures

Tufts University
What has the sexual act, so natural, so necessary, and so just, done to man?
kind, for us not to dare talk about it without shame and for us to exclude
it from serious and decent conversation? We boldly pronounce the words
"kill," "rob," "betray"; and this one we do not dare pronounce except be?
tween our teeth. (Montaigne)1
Though the satisfaction might prove fleeting, Montaigne

would likely be drawn to the current critical scene. At least in a quantita-
tive sense, no subject but sexuality seems to command our shared per?
sonal and scholarly attention. If, as Montaigne announces, "this chapter
will put me in the boudoir," then we have not seen fit to leave. Studies
of this topic have bred with the rapidity more of rabbits than humans.
Montaigne's frustration with his contemporariesis all the more on target
because it highlights what, in truth, is the driving force of our critical
attention today: the problems that surround "talking about sex." In Rus?
sian studies, as two recent books remind us, this issue has been of tragic
importance. Igor Kon lays an entire host of social horrors at the feet of
the Soviet government's reluctance to acknowledge sexuality as a vital
component of human life. In his stinging indictment, official silence be-
got ignorance, which begot tragedy: rampant sexism, sexual abuse, rape,
and the reliance on abortion as the primary method of birth control.
And when authorities, however half-heartedly, did open their mouths, it
was best to run: "Bolsheviks' philosophy on gender and sexuality was as
Ronald M. Frame, trans., "On Some Verses of Vergil," The Complete Essaysof Mon?
taigne (Stanford, CA, 1958), 3:644.
[JournaloftheHistoryofSexuality1997, vol. 8, no. 2]

? 1997 byThe Universityof Chicago.All rightsreserved.1043-4070/97/0802-0003$02.00
229

230 Greg Carleton
primitive as a caveman's club."2 Mark Popovsky, out to damn the Soviets

twice over, holds them responsible for the "debauchery" ofthe 1920s,
when the lusty lefties who occupied the Kremlin allegedly exacerbated
by word and deed an unhealthy obsession with sex after the revolution.3
(Lenin's decidedly unspicy personal life is conveniently left out; instead,
Aleksandra Kollontai, with her advocacy of "free love," and lesser-known
demons are made to shoulder the blame for corrupting Russian culture.)
Yet, conversely, when officials finally sought at the end of the decade to
rein in the supposed orgiastic inclinations of youth, Popovsky holds
them in equal contempt for intervening in private citizens' lives. Either
way, both Kon and Popovsky find ample room to condemn Soviet ac?
tions, whether constituting extreme libertinism or "totalitarian control
over the individual."
Double damnation for failing to treat sexuality properly is all the more
striking given that Soviet society saw itself as the most progressive in the
world, especially in terms of women's status and gender relations. At
least on paper (a point that needs to be underscored as Wendy Goldman
has demonstrated),4 the revolution earned its name in decrees and ac?
tions that, taken together, were unprecedented: the legalization of abor?
tion, divorce on demand, the abolishment of illegitimacy as a category
(one's parental responsibilities thus extended beyond the family), the
guarantee of alimony to both women
and men (collection was another
matter), the active recruitment intoof women
political/party organiza?
tions, free and universal health care, and a massive literacy campaign.
(Women's right to vote had already been secured in the period between
the tsar's abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution.) Moreover, industrial
and social resources would be directed to relieve women from domestic
burdens so they could join men as professional equals. The planned con?
struction of communal kitchens, laundries, and child care facilities would
shift essentially all domestic responsibilities outside ofthe home. And
with the ultimate elimination of class difference, Soviet planners could
easily envision a period of true freedom for both sexes, one where rela?
tionships would be on equal footing, without the intervention of the
clergy, the poison of private property, or past bourgeois prejudices such
as male chauvinism, discrimination, and possessiveness.
So ambitious a plan would likely have met defeat anywhere in the
1920s (or, for that matter, still today). For this reason we can readily
2Igor S. Kon, The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From theAge ofthe Czars to Today(New
York, 1995), p. 55.
3Mark Popovsky, Tretii lishnii (The superfluous third) (London, 1985).
4
Wendy Goldman, Women,the State and Revolution: SovietFamily Policy and Social Life,
1917-1936 (New York, 1993).

Writing-Reading the Sexual Revolution in the Early Soviet Union 231
agree with Kon and Popovsky that, sexually speaking at least, whatever
emerged in the Soviet Union diverged sharply from this ideal. Yet failure
is perhaps less important than what revolutions can tell us in a different
sense. Precisely when the object of study is how something is talked
about, revolutions are of particular, almost unique, value. A revolution?
ary context is one in which relations of power and the discourses that
enable themare inchoate, immature; old paradigms have been de-
throned yet sufficient time has not elapsed for new ones to stabilize and
gain the authority of a naturalized veneer. Moreover, revolutions are
never of one valency or direction, regardless of their executors' goals;
the iconoclasm that marks sociopolitical upheaval unleashes many voices
and a profound spirit of inquiry that can be at odds with the intentions
ofthe "official" revolution. In the 1920s, sexuality was a domain where
such a clash of interests was of exceptional prominence. Soviet youth, in
full accord with the sense of empowerment that, nominally at least, the
Bolshevik Revolution had bestowed on them as the generation that
would lead the world to communism, transferred their iconoclastic en-
thusiasm to questions of sexual behavior. As the idea of revolution de-
scended through their midst, it became invested with meanings and
values that outstripped the relatively straightforward intentions of the
Bolshevik old guard.
Such microrevolutions became an object of intense concern in the
komsomol, the Communist Youth League responsible for grooming fu?
ture members ofthe party. There, Bolshevik ideology and youths' natural
exploration of their own sexualities came head-to-head. For now, the
parameters of this conflict can be summarized by simple question: Was
a
1917 a license to experiment and defy received conventions of normative
sexual behavior, or did it impose on youth added responsibilities so as
to preserve their "energy" for the revolution? Perhaps no single issue
captivated students' and young workers' attention as did sex after the
revolution, and it was not significantly hidden from view. Commentary
on sexuality found expression in the most diverse media: party platforms,
sociological studies, published surveys, health brochures, literary jour?
nals, newspapers, and special handbooks. Yet the most heated and argua-
bly far-reaching domain of debate was the fiction that employed "the
question" as its motivating center. Sex, as always, sells, and my focus will
be on three works of 1926, now mostly forgotten, that did it best for
their time: Lev Gumilevsky's Dog Alley, Sergei Malashkin's "Moon on
the Right," and Panteleimon Romanov's "Without Cherry Blossoms."5
5Lev Gumilevsky, Dog Alley (Leningrad, 1927 [Gumilevsky published it himself]);

Sergei Malashkin, Moon on the Right (Riga, 1928), originally published in Toung Guard 9
(1926): 3-54; Panteleimon Romanov, "Without Cherry Blossoms," in Izbrannyeproizvede-

232 Greg Carleton
Their popularity forced party officials, however reluctantly, to recognize

that imaginarive literature had become a viable forum for youth to artic-
ulate their real-life concerns. Much as television, film, or music today, it
provided a common, accessible frame of reference. And, much again as
today, it spawned a backlash from Soviet critics for allegedly corrupting
its audience.
My objective is not simply to analyze the tension between popular
appeal and critical response, or to highlight the curious, bizarre, and in-
triguing ways that sexuality was represented in an environment of uto?
pian desire and belief. In a metacritical sense, revolutionary contexts are
of additional value because the same congestion of interests that erupts
in their wake can challenge the theoretical models we employ to map
and interpret cultural dynamics. Kon's and Popovsky's focus on the
top?that is, party echelons?has gained new impetus, mutatis mutan-
dis, with the popularity of Foucault and new historicist theories of
power. If party officials were previously suspect due to their ignorance
about sex or, conversely, their profligacy, now, as given in the work of
Eric Naiman, they project something more sinister: a concerted strategy
to "investigate," "infiltrate," and "colonize" youths' personal lives by
"seducing them" into a public discussion of sexuality6 Both the older
and newer approaches rely on a relatively clear, top-down image ofthe
Bolshevik Party directly precipitating a near crisis of sexuality in the
1920s for its own power-hungry purposes. While I would not deny that
an impulse to control marks many Bolshevik objectives, I believe that
more is at stake than just the party's needs. By illuminating neglected
features and forgotten voices of the polemics surrounding Gumilevsky,
Malashkin, and Romanov, I question how realizable any such intentions
actually were and whether the exercise of control was as smooth or effi-
cient as projected. In so doing, I hope not only to put in broader per?
spective the discursive roots of the crisis of sexuality but to highlight
certain theoretical and empirical limitations that can issue from the blan-
ket use ofthe concept of power in the study of cultural tensions during
revolution.
The Godmother of Pornography
As a political leader, feminist, party official, publicist, and author of fic?

tion, Kollontai primed the stage for the 1926-collision of interests. Her
niia (Moscow, 1988), pp. 185-95 (originally published in Toung Guard6 [1926]: 13-21,
though it has been torn out ofthe official holdings ofthe Lenin Libraryin Moscow).
6Eric
Naiman, "The Case of Chubarov Alley: Collective Rape, Utopian Desire, and the
Mentality of the NEP," Russian History/Histoire Russe 17 (1990): 1-30, "Za krasnoi

impact was a functionof both what she wrote and how she was repre?
sented by her contemporaries. Echoing Montaigne, she protested that
issues of sexuality had long been met with silence or trepidation. With a
realistic eye brought to bear on the troubling conditions ofthe postrevo-
lutionary environment, she voiced in words which, miscon-
this concern
strued and misapplied, almost became the equivalent of a "just do it"
slogan for youth in the 1920s: "The sexual act must be seen not as some?
thing shameful and sinful but as something which is as natural as the
other needs of [a] healthy organism, such as hunger or thirst."7 By de-
fining sex in such straightforward terms, Kollontai affirmed the fact that
biological attraction was transhistorical; yet she also believed that sexual
behavior itself was shaped by socioeconomic conditions. In "Make Way
for Winged Eros," an article addressed to the working youth and pub?
lished in the komsomol journal Toung Guard in 1923, she argued that
in capitalist societies sexual relations were doomed to take one of two
unhealthy and
emotionally impoverished forms: unbridled carnality
("wingless" eros) or possessiveness (exemplified by a husband treating
his wife or mistress as property). Only a socialist society, by eliminating
the rule of property and the fetish of self, could guarantee the proper
basis for mutually rewarding relationships and real emotional-sexual sat?
isfaction. This state would be characterized by a true freedom to love,
one in which there would be no formal limits on its expression. A rela?
tionship could be short-term or long, depending on the strength of ei?
ther partner's interest. The freedom she espoused meant that no one
(usually the woman) be trapped in a situation for either material
should
(economic dependency on the husband) or conventional reasons (capi?
talist restrictions on divorce or the bourgeois double standard of calling
a woman a whore if she pursued a relationship outside of marriage). Free
love was not, she insisted, an invitation to hedonism or "blindly physio?
logical" attachments, nor was the individual's "I" to compromise the
interests ofthe collective.
Rooted in the philosophy of both Friedrich Engels and August Bebel,
Kollontai's argument echoed the common opinion of her fellow Marx-
ists; all believed bourgeois conventions to be demeaning and detrimen-
tal. Most, however, preferred to skip details regarding how exactly
political and socioeconomic liberation would impact personal relation-
dver'iu: Vvedenie v gotiku NEPa" (Behind the red door: An introduction to the gothic
during NEP), Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie20 (1996): 64-90. Naiman has recently pub?
lished Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology(Princeton, NJ, 1997), but it
appeared too late for inclusion in this article.
7AleksandraKollontai, "Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Rela?
tions," in Selected Writings of Aleksandra Kollontai, trans. Alix Holt (London, 1977), p.
229. The essay was first published in 1921 in the journal Kommunistka.

234 Greg Carleton
ships. And it was Kollontai's fictional illustration of what "might be" in

the 1923 story, "Three Generations," that proved hardest to digest.8 It
chronicles the changes in attitudes toward marriage and sexual behavior,
from pre- to postrevolutionary Russia, through a woman, her daughter,
and grandchild. All three are progressive; all three have rebelled against
the moral conventions of their parents' generation. The first, Marya, left
her husband whenher love for him disappeared. Olga, her daughter,
pursued two relationships simultaneously; now with a daughter herself,
she has entered into a common-law marriage with a third man, Andrei.
It is the last generation, represented by Olga's daughter Zhenya, that has
given new meaning to sexual rebellion. To wit, Zhenya has slept with her
stepfather Andrei and is now pregnant (though she is not sure who the
father is and plans to have an abortion anyway). The story centers on
Olga's appeal to the unnamed author to help her understand Zhenya's
action. What upsets Olga most is that Zhenya seems to view sexual inter?
course with such cold rationality. Her daughter does not love Andrei,
feels no passion for him, and has had sex voluntarily Does this mean,
Olga asks, that her daughter is corrupt, or is she herself only behind the
times? After all, as Zhenya has informed her, if Olga had tried to prevent
Andrei and Zhenya from sleeping together, it would have demonstrated
"a terribly possessive attitude" on her part.
The author, Olga's friend, does not provide an answer. Rather, the
story closes with her meeting Zhenya where we are given the opportu?
nity to hear firsthand the new generation of Soviets. For Zhenya, sex
is something natural, a simple physical desire that can be satisfied with
whomever one wants. Since all three live together, her stepfather is noth?
ing but a convenient partner or, more accurately, outlet?an attitude she
expresses with distinct eloquence: "I need Andrei about as much as I
need this table here." In fact, given her political activism, she has no time
for love; to her it is just an emotional drain that can foster passion and
jealousy, both of which would interfere with her work. Since the author
neither delivers advice nor passes judgment on what she has learned, we
are left with an ambiguous ending. On one hand, Zhenya, like her
mother, has gained professional and economic autonomy; she is not de?
fined in relation to a man but by her contributions to society. In this
regard she embodies something of Kollontai's ideal: she is in control of
her life and is not silent as to her sexual feelings. Moreover, she is not
self-centered since her energy is directed to the collective?a point un-
8This
story first appeared in Kollontai's collection Liubov3pchel trudovykh(Love ofthe
worker bees) (Petrograd, 1923); see English translation of "Three Generations" in Love
ofthe WorkerBees, trans. Cathy Porter (London, 1977), pp. 182-211, hereafter cited in
text as W.

derscored by the final line of the story where she waves off the whole
discussion as distracting since "we have so much work to do" (W,
p. 211). On the other hand, this third generation is not a carbon of Kol?
lontai's principles. Zhenya's ability to divorce all emotion from the sexual
act brings her into conflict with Kollontai's disapproval of purely physical
relationships. To situate
Zhenya in Kollontai's argument is therefore
problematic. Still, Kollontai leaves no doubt in the story as to whether
this young woman should be valued as a productive member of society.
After all, Zhenya never hides where her true passion lies: "I love [Lenin]
far more than all the men I like and have slept with" (W, pp. 210-11).
Alas, the affection was not to be returned. In his celebrated interview
with the German marxist Clara Zetkin, Lenin allegedly slammed his
hands on the table when confronted with Zhenya-like thought: "The
Revolution demands concentration. It cannot tolerate orgiastic condi?
tions."9 Time could not be wasted on such frivolous questions when the
survival ofthe Union and the success of world revolution were at
Soviet
stake. Youth needed to discipline their bodies and minds through intel?
lectual and physical (but not that one!) activity. For Lenin, attention to
sex was counterrevolutionary. Women "who confuse their personal ro?
mances with politics"
(R, p. 49) or men "who run after every petticoat"
could not be trustedto carry out the struggle. With Zetkin sitting in
awe, wishing that "hundreds, thousands were present to hear his words,"
the party leader directly launched into Kollontai and the ill-fated "glass
of water" theory that had become permanently attached to her name.
To equate satisfying a sexual urge with reaching for a glass of water to
quench one's thirst was simply "unmarxist." Worse, the theory's popu-
larity had only "made our young people mad, quite mad." "Of course
thirst must be satisfied," he countered, "but will the normal man in nor?
mal circumstances lie down in the gutter and drink out of a puddle, or
out ofa glass with a rim greasy from many lips?"
Published shortly after his death, Lenin's ex cathedra warning was
heard by thousands as it circulated through myriad articles and decrees.
But Kollontai's story was read by an equal number as well. And many
officials were perplexed by youths' attachment to Zhenya's character and
the possibility that they might see her as an example to follow. With Le?
nin's interview acknowledged as the final word, doctors, critics, and party
elites launched a concerted assault against free-love promiscuity on three
fronts. First, they declared that unbridled sexuality would only lead to a
rise in sexually transmitted diseases and prostitution. Second, it would
9Clara Zetkin, Reminiscences ofLenin (New York, 1934), p. 50. The conversation alleg?
edly took place in 1920, while Zetkin's account was first published shortly after Lenin's
death; hereafter cited in text as R.

236 Greg Carleton
deprive women ofthe very independence and freedom that the revolu?
tion had ostensibly brought them. Once again, it was argued, women
would find themselves victimized by "Don Juans" (since men would feel
no responsibility for their behavior) and burdened by unwanted preg?
nancies. (Legalized abortion was not framed as a freedom of choice issue
but as a dangerous, necessary evil that would disappear with the triumph
of socialism.) Third, with the focus aimed at men, sexually active youth
would be putting their maturing bodies in grave danger. Since bodily
energy was believed finite, any expenditure needed to be carefully moni-
tored and justified; otherwise, one's mental and physical faculties could
be severely and permanently damaged. Using a metaphor that reap-
peared, notably, in Gumilevsky's Dog Alley, A. B. Zalkind, one ofthe
more prominent voices
in this campaign and a self-styled "communist
psychoneurologist," cautioned
that sex was a "spider, greedily and mer-
cilessly sucking out an enormous amount ofthe body's energy."10 Sup-
porting the chorus of arachnophobes, Emelian Yaroslavsky, a member of
the Bolshevik old guard, explained that this was why a promiscuous
twenty-five year old can look "ready for the rest home."11 A doctor, writ?
ing in Red Students, was more specific: early sexual activity robbed the
male body of vital hormones, resulting by age thirty in atrophied tes-
ticles, loss of beard and moustache, a pale, weakened body, and, finally,
impotence.12 The scare tactics of "do it now, pay later" predictably
reached their peak with masturbation. It was of particular concern, for
example, for the commissar of health, Nikolai Semashko, who on nu?
merous occasions inveighed against this supreme evil, which was doubly
marked because not only did it waste energy, but it was narcissistic and
therefore anticollective.
In no uncertain terms, the cliche ofthe personal made political found
a ready home in the postrevolutionary world ofthe Soviet Union. Giving
in to one's hormones signaled individual weakness, a failure of will, and
lack of discipline. It suppressed one's rational core, making the person
susceptible to the rule of caprice, whim, and instinct. To preserve the
righteous and resurrect the injured, Zalkind therefore proposed "Twelve
Sexual Commandments," for which the fifth?"the sexual act should not
be repeated frequently"?he enlisted Kollantai's "Three Generations" as
10A.B. Zalkind, Polovoivoprosv usloviiakhsovetskoiobshchestvennosti:

Sbornikstatei (The
problem of sexuality in relation to the soviet community: A collection of articles) (Le-
ningrad, 1926), p. 23.
nEmelian Yaroslavsky,"MoraP i byt proletariata v perekhodnyi period" (Morality and
daily life in a transitional period), KomsomoVskiibyt, comp. I. Razih (Moscow, 1927), p.
49. The article originally appeared in the journal Molodaiagvardiia (May 1926).
12Dr.
Demidovich, "Polovaia zhizn' i zdorov'e studenchestva" (Sexual behavior and
students' health), Krasnoe studenchestvo8 (1927-28): 42.

the negative example: "Apparently, Zhenya suffers from a moderate case

of satyriasis [sic], a point which Comrade Kollantai, it seems, forgot to
remind us."13 More frequent were exhortations to sublimate sexual en?
ergy into creative activity or, as Lenin suggested, sports. After all, as an?
other professor reminded youth in an anthology designed specifically to
answer their questions about sex, a "sedentary life causes blood to de-
scend to those organs located in the waist region, and that can aggravate
one's sexual feelings." In fact it is restraint, he assured them, that "gives
great pleasure."14
None ofthe above assertions are outlandish or unique if we remember
the political, national, and medical traditions from which the party leaders
emerged. In their rhetoric we see the full play of fears and prejudices that
marked the beliefs of progressives ofthe nineteenth century, the church,
and most doctors. Though for different reasons, the Right and the Left,
the secular and the religious, all advocated control and moderation. Sovi-
ets differed from their predecessors by reformulating how this common
goal was to be understood and commented on. The devil and sin were up-
staged and replaced by a single concept: regardless of one's preferences or
habits, whether frigid, heterosexual, homosexual, a masturbator, or a Don
luan, sexual behavior was exclusively a function of class.
Grafting class terms onto this domain was something of a rhetorical
coup. If a proletarian body engaged in any destructive or wasteful behav?
ior, then the cause had to lie outside ofthe working class. By theory, it
could not originate from within. In a pure environment, one uncontami-
nated by bourgeois influences, the working class would never exhibit or
dream of unhealthy, degenerate sexual practices. In fact, the indigenous
sexual identity of the proletariat and bourgeoisie was so diametrically
opposed that mixing the two was akin to violatirig natural law: "Sexual
attraction to a class-hostile, morally repugnant object is as corrupt as
being sexually attracted to a crocodile or orangutan."15 This opposition
between bourgeois corruption and an inherently sexually advanced pro?
letariat offered a convenient answer as to why the ideal had not yet been
achieved. Everyone recognized that the revolution had not eradicated all
vestiges of bourgeois society; indeed, by necessity, much of the Soviet
economy of the 1920s was still capitalist. For this reason, one could
transfer blame for any proletarian corruption onto bourgeois traitors
who, in almost conspiratorial fashion, had littered Soviet society with
their decadent dress, art, and ideas like free love. This was why, Zalkind
13Zalkind,p. 53.
14V. Gorinevskii, "Polovoi vopros" (The problem of sexuality) in KomsomoVskiibyt,
pp. 286-87.
15
Zalkind, p. 49.

238 Greg Carleton
argued in all seriousness, proletarian teenagers continued to masturbate

as frequently as bourgeois youth (though others cited an alleged de-
crease in masturbation among the former as evidence that the social en?
vironment was improving).16 "Bourgeois traps" could also explain why
male workers still frequented prostitutes, treated wives as outlets for
gratification, pursued multiple affairs, consumed pornography, and en?
gaged in other such behavior. Only with the advent of true socialism, a
period free of all cultural toxins, would the proletariat exhibit a clean bill
of sexual health.
In contrast to the past, the future would be one where sexuality was
neutralized; its expression would have no impact on society in terms of
thought, dress, behavior, speech, and, most important, productivity.
Sexual modesty, fidelity, and frugality were to be its watchwords because
-
only in such fashion could a person be integrated fully with an industrial
ized, technological environment.17 To work with a machine demanded
the same constancy and reliability; as one critic noted, "Industrialization
of the country rests on the industrialization of each person as an indi?
vidual."18
Belief in the eventual realization of this mechanized ideal allowed for
two rhetorical luxuries that demonstrate
why youth were disheartened
with official
explanations and, at the same time, why the issue would
explode in 1926. First, questions of sexuality could be shifted to a differ?
ent domain, one definable in terms with which authorities were more
accustomed. If behavioral problems could be traced exclusively to exter?
nal factors, then they could be solved there as well. As Yaroslavsky noted,
improved housing conditions and industrial growth would eliminate
close living arrangements, which were seen as one ofthe primary reasons
for the too early awakening of sexual feelings in youth.19 (We remember
the effect living at home had on Zhenya.) Second, since the issue would
disappear on its own accord, one could be wildly opaque in any discus?
sion. Zalkind, for example, had no need to offer any details because he
could assure his audience that in the near future "the sexual question
will receive its complete and ideal resolution." Since the revolution had
been victorious, "we will be victorious in this matter as well."20
16Ibid., p. 34. For arguments that decreased masturbation was a good sign, see Izrail
Gel'man, Polovaia zhizn3 sovremennoi molodezhi (The sexual behavior of contemporary
youth) (Moscow, 1923), pp. 123-24; and later, David Lass, Sovremennoestudenchestvo(byt,
polovaia zhizn}) (Students today [Daily life, sexual behavior]) (Moscow, 1928), p. 173.
17Zalkind,p. 61.
18A.
Divil'kovskii, "Bolezni byta molodezhi" (The ills in youths' daily life), Novyi mir
11 (1926): 172.
19Yaroslavsky, p. 43.
20Zalkind (n. 10 above), pp. 14, 16.

Such conviction armed officials with irrefutablecause to deny the em?

pirical accuracy of Kollontai's
portrayal of youth. In what was to become
the key methodological step in attacking fictional representations of sex?
ual relations, ostensibly eyewitness, documentary evidence was mar-
shaled against her. In the issue of the Toung Guard, following "Make
Way for Winged Eros," Ilya Lin snapped back that Kollontai was not
only blind to the reality of how youth behaved but, worse, slandered
their good name. Based on his observations from a region outside of
Moscow, he charged: "Working youth don't think about any sex stuff."
And though he conceded that they may be sexually involved, "all that
happens unnoticeably. It takes up no time, occupies no space."21 For
him, the theory of incompatible proletarian and bourgeois sexualities
easily translated into real terms, making the ideal shift into fact. Those
who were doing that were the "bourgeois fathers and sons." Everyone
knew that the "working guy" was different. He "has his favorite girl
whom he respects," and their "relationships are simple, without any mis-
understandings." Another came to the rescue of universities: "We know
of course that students today devote the bulk of their energy to stud?
ies. . . . The 'problem of love' does not play one-tenth the role in our
lives as Comrade Kollontai would have it. . . . And even if there is some
interest in questions of sex, then their interest is doubled if speaking of
materialist theory, tripled if speaking of economics."22
A difficult thing, these statistics. Reports of student conferences, sur-
veys within universities, and letters published in komsomol organs suggest
that interest did exceed the one-tenth norm. "It's pretty bad regarding
the sex question," a worker reported. "No way do the guys want to ab?
stain. Whenever they get together they all start debating it."23 Some male
teenagers actively sought relief from hormonal distractions and, in spirit
with the times, placed salvation in technology. One assumed that science
would soon discover something to relieve men of their longing for
women and "attendant
nightmares."24 Another asked for a pill that
would sexual desire until one was able to support a family. A few
suppress
had already given up hope, claiming that they had "no time for love," so
the government should just build public brothels, which would save
them from psychological ruin.25 Women were also concerned with men
21
Ilya Lin, "Eros iz rogozhsko-simonovskogo raiona" (Eros from the rogozhsko-
simonovsky region), Molodaiagvardiia 4-5 (1923): 154.
22P.
Vinogradskaia, "Voprosy morali, pola, byta i tov. Kollontai" (The problem of mo?
rality,sex, daily life, and comrade Kollontai), Krasnaia novy6 (1923): 188-89.
23These are the comments ofa komsomolmember at a
factory, A. Bordadyn, in Komso-
moVskiibyt (xs..11 above), p. 163.
24"Novyi byt" (The new way of life), Smena 17 (1926): 15.
25Lass,pp. 199,212.

240 Greg Carleton
exploiting the demise of conventions of modesty in order to reduce all

relationships to sex. Others admitted to the same distractions as men:
"Sex, I'm afraid, plays the major role in my life. It usually doesn't inter?
fere with my work, but that's a big struggle."26 Another complaint from
young women was that quantity did not improve quality: increased sex?
ual activity had not increased satisfaction. A leader of female students
was more forthright in declaring her allegiance to the new times. With
address provided, she requested that any "poor boys" suffering over the
question of sex be sent to her group.27
We could easily debate Kollontai's critics on such anecdotal grounds
for some length. More important is the fact that while young Soviet citi?
zens were using something ofthe authorities' own vocabulary, they did
not gain the same singleness of purpose from it. Lenin had declared in
his attack on Kollontai that the proletariat needed "clarity, clarity, clar-
ity," and the Bolshevik class paradigm was designed to offer precisely
that. After all, "environment is everything" was an interpretive model of
enviable breadth, and in the hands of figures such as Zalkind or Yaroslav-
ksy it possessed magical powers of explanation: if proletarian, then . . . ;
if capitalist, then. . . . But as the terms filtered down into the hands of
others (who, to say, had not made Marx, Engels, or Bebel their
needless
bedside companion), meanings were muddied up. In fact, the more
prevalent and popular the Bolshevik rhetoric became, the more it was
susceptible to contamination and misappropriation; vaunted class terms
often becamelittle more than synonyms for good or bad, from the per?
spective of youths' own interests. If the discursive seams always show in
the exercise of power, then at this level they were nearly rent asunder.
Thus, to the horror of most authorities, youth sometimes turned the
charge "bourgeois" inside out. If modesty, marriage, good manners,
neat clothes, and decent language characterized the ideal of prerevolu-
tionary society, then by a certain logic they had no place in the postrevo?
lutionary one. Many youths thus felt that love and its attendant emotions
(passion, jealousy, respect) should be east out wholesale as bourgeois
conventions. Some even called Marx a philistine for being faithful to his
wife.28 Others employed class rhetoric for more personal and prurient
goals. If class came first, one male reasoned, then, as a member ofthe
proletariat, women should not refuse him.29 Or, as another extrapolated,
does not equality between sexes really mean equal access?30 Understand-
26GePman (n. 16 above), p. 114.

27"Novyibyt,"p. 15.
28E. Yaroslavsky,"K postanovke voprosa" (Characterizing the problem), in Polovoi
vopros(Moscow, 1925), p. 2.
29"Novyibyt,"p. 15.
30German,p. 115.

ably, those who twisted class terms around to legitimate their own sexual
expectations came under attack as "radishes," that is, red on the outside,
white on the inside (white being the color of counterrevolution).31 Yet
however touching, naive, shocking, or humorous, these voices revealed
that youth had a complex range of responses and experiences with regard
to what idealogues saw as a straightforward issue. More to the point,
they publicly underscored the acute distance between good sounding
jargon and a problematic reality.
The Summer of1926
It was to be the komsomol itself that brought this issue to a head in 1926.
In June, its signature journal, the Toung Guard, published Romanov's
"Without Cherry Blossoms," which is set at a Moscow university where
love is despised as a bourgeois attitude. (In Russian, the title is reminis-
cent of Kollontai's
"wingless" metaphor.) Two students use a cherry
blossom twig to symbolize emotional attachment to the sexual act. He
asks her if she can "do it" without the twig; she answers yes, but adds
that "with the twig" it is better. He responds that he could have sex with
anybody She refuses him but later cannot stand to be alone when every?
one else is together. She goes to his room where he greets her with "Well,
what's the sense of wasting time talking?" and turns the light out in def?
erence to her need for "poetry." She is resistant but he forces himself on
her. The story is written by the woman in the form of a letter to a friend
describing this "first time," with emphasis on the material and emotional
poverty of students' lives that on her side enforces loneliness and on his
breeds a contemptuous attitude leading him to commit rape.
Three months later, the Toung Guard followed Romanov's tale with
Malashkin's "Moon on the Right." The protagonist in this story is Tanya,
a provincial young woman who falls into the wrong crowd at a Moscow
university. She, like the male before, becomes one of those who scorns
love, and, in this way, has "unnoticeably made it to her twenty-second
guy." The main action centers on an outrageous party attended by her
friends in the komsomol where all smoke hashish and drink, are openly
promiscuous, and trade heady speeches about the need for free love (in
the hedonistic sense). After she fails to seduce the one uncorrupted kom?
somol member there, Tanya is filled with self-loathing at her own inability
to feel true emotion, and she attempts suicide. In the epilogue we learn
that she has gone north, "led a virginal life," and later reconnected with
that man.
31M. Bekker, "Liubovnaia lirika komsomola" (Love lyrics ofthe komsomol),Komsomol-

iia 4 (1926): 68.

242 Greg Carleton
Gumilevsky's lengthy novel Dog Alley was written the same year as
Malashkin's and Romanov's stories and published early in 1927.32 In the
book, Khorokhorin, the komsomol leader at a provincial university who
feels that casual sex is a necessary thing to keep the body's energies in
"equilibrium," becomes infatuated with another student, Vera, who lives
in Dog Alley. As a conventional femme fatale who has already caused
the downfall of a professor, Vera's philosophy can be summed up in her
response as to why she does not want to live with a man: "What for? First
of all, it would be boring and second, it would get in the way of being
with other men." As Khorokhorin fails more and more for Vera, his equi?
librium is shattered, his health deteriorates, and his work suffers. He is
ensnared in a "spider web" of passion and jealousy as Vera alternately
entices and resists him. In the climactic scene he confronts her with a
revolver, a shot rings out, and Vera dies. Khorokhorin believes he has
killed her and shoots himself. He later recovers to find out from the good
detective (Vera's father) that in fact the disgraced professor had shot her
and confessed to the act in a suicide note. Khorokhorin goes to a small
city in Siberia and is never seen with a woman again. At Vera's funeral,
the new student leader (who has demonstrably led a sexually chaste life)
castigates those who are weak and fail prey to demon sex.
We need not question why these three are not household names of
Russian literature.The impact of their fiction was decidedly less in narra?
tive achievement than in the role they played in shifting the polemic over
sexuality from a theoretical ground to one closer to youths' own lives.
The works were linked by a common focus on the komsomol; each dealt
with the current (mis)use of terms such as "bourgeois"; they all made
reference to real-life voices and personages; and all three consciously
staged their internal debate over sex in terms that would appeal most to
young readers. Instead of preachy doctors or dry bureaucrats, readers
could now hear from students like themselves. No one seemed to care
much about the melodramatic doses or the overwrought attempts (espe?
cially with Gumilevsky) to make the plot a plot. Of more immediate at?
traction was the narratives' heavy metafictive layer: not only does each
story portray the "problem" at hand, the characters' primary activity is
to discuss in explicit detail their opinions of it. That they were fictional
personages was of no concern; their value was recognized, almost exclu?
sively, as an introduction to and illustration of one of the positions in
real-life polemics. No wonder, it was reluctantly noted, youth lined up
for these works, shared them, and argued over them, whereas the pages
of already established Soviet classics by Fyodor Gladkov or Aleksandr
2Gumilevsky (n. 5 above).

Serafimovich were thumbed quite less.33 A serious rupture had formed

between the interests of young Soviet readers and officially favored litera?
ture. As one critic wondered, Had the latter lost its "democratic" roots
by spurning "the current, everyday issues of life that so attract and in-
trigue today's reader?"34
Given the popularity of these three literary works, Soviet authorities
paid the fixll price for their less than convincing attention to such "cur?
rent, everyday issues." And the majority response, predictably, was not to
amend treatment, but to attack those who had brought them to the fore.
"Women's underwear occupies an unnaturally large place in our litera?
ture," declared Pravda, the party's central organ; it was time for lingerie
to get back in the drawer.35 With Kollontai continually raised as the in?
spiration for this "hypertrophic eroticism," the full weight of ideological
and scientific conviction was brought down on these "brethren writers
who as three assert that vulgarity, pornography, depravity and animal lust
reign over contemporary youth."36 That their writing might have tried
to assert something quite different was, for many, of little concern; that
it was fiction was generally ignored. Refuting its empirical potential, set?
ting the record straight for future historians became critics' primary
task.37
The first attempts to rescue the reputation ofthe komsomolfrom such
slander were eyewitness reports from party members. At a university con?
ference, Sofiia Smidovich, a member of the old guard and prominent
spokesperson for women, resolutely declared that she had never seen any
"Tanya's" in her work.38 Smidovich was seconded by an article in a prole?
tarian journal that asked how Tanya could be accepted as a real-life por?
trait of the komsomol when, after all, she is never seen with a book.
Somewhat indelicately (given the targeted group), it accused Malashkin
of confusing a few bad individuals with the majority of students: "Does
this portray the face of youth? A thousands times, no! Here [with the
33Zel. Shteiman, "Pobediteli, kotorykh sudiat" (Victors who are judged), Golosaprotiv:
Kriticheskii aVmanakh (Leningrad, 1928), pp. 89-114.
34Ibid., p. 107. He has Romanov in mind with this statement.
35P. Ionov, "Bez Cheremukhi" (Without cherry blossoms), Pravda (December 4,
1926), pp. 5-6.
36G.
Korotkov, "Literatura sobach'ego pereulka" (Dog alley literature), Rezets 15
(1927): 15. "Hypertrophic eroticism" is from Dm. Bukhartsev, "O pessimisticheskoi 'lune'
i pessimizme voobshche" (About the pessimistic "Moon" and pessimism in general), Molo-
doiBoVshevik9-10 (1927): 16.
37Reference to historians comes from "O klevete na nashu molodezh'" (Regarding the
slander on our youth), KomsomoVskaiapravda (March 1, 1927), p. 1.
38"Disput v Akademii Kom. Vospitaniia im. Krupskoi" (A dispute in the Krupskaia
Academy of Communist Education), Molodaiagvardiia 12 (1926): 168-73.

244 Greg Carleton
depiction of Tanya] we just get the pimples. But can pimples be shown
separate from the face?"39 Many cited actual polls taken of university stu?
dents "proving" that long-term relationships were preferred to one-
night stands (though no one saw fit to mention the arguable distance
between the ideal and actual). Later, it was found that students and
young workers could answer for themselves. They questioned Malash-
kin's knowledge of their life by noting that on their stipends no one
could parties like Tanya. Others took more personal of?
afford to throw
fense. The journal Red Students featured a response accusing Romanov
of throwing "a clump of dirt in the face of proletarian students."40 It also
published students' love poetry to show that they actually recognized
the importance ofa "cherry blossom" in their relationships.41 As with
Smidovich, personal experience was commonly enlisted as evidence
against the three. At a public reading, a female student followed Ro?
manov to the podium and stated, "Girls don't get together with guys for
one night or one week, as it's described [in "Without Cherry Blos?
soms"]. I spend a lot of time in the dormitories and have noticed that
there it is clean and chaperoned."42 A meeting of Moscow metalworkers
likewise pronounced "Moon on the Right" a "disgusting book," and
female workers emphatically rejected (as if this were Malashkin's intent)
the personal example set by Tanya. "The working youth," it was con?
cluded, "has a granite core."43
Unlike a decade later under Stalin, here the defense was given its turn.
Gumilevsky, Malashkin, and Romanov all made public appearances
where they argued that their intent was not to slander but to expose the
shortcomings of youths' behavior and provide a moral lesson of how not
to act.44 A few critics recognized their efforts while generally withhold-
ing praise on the quality of their writing.45 (A notable exception reached
for the same hyperbole as the prosecution by comparing Malashkin to
391.Novich, "Kholostoi vystrel" (A blank shot), Na literaturnom postu 1 (1927): 52.

40M. Gribanov, "Dovol'no klevety" (Enough slander), Krasnoe studenchestvo 8
(1927): 59.
41K. Konstantinov, "Liubov' studencheskaia" (Love among students), Krasnoe studen?
chestvo8 (1927-28): 75-77.
42B., "Cheremukhi ili bez cheremukhi" (With or without cherry blossoms), Molodoi
Leninets (August 11,1927),p.2.
43F.Berezovskii, "Protsess 4-x," Smena9 (1927): 3-4.
44ForGumilevsky's own defense, see Lev Gumilevsky, "Zakliuchitel 'noe slovo" (A final
word), Krasnoestudenchestvo6 (1927): 52-53.
45See Abram Lezhnev, review of Sobachii pereulok, Krasnaia nov} 1 (1927): 256-57,
and "Byt molodezhi i sovremennaia literatura" (Daily life of youth and contemporary liter?
ature), Krasnoe studenchestvo 5 (1927): 51-53; N. Erlikh, "Merzost' naraspashku (li?
teratura o molodezhi)" (Vileness in your face [literature about youth]), Zaboi 5 (1927):
21-22; D. Gorbov, Unasiza rubezhom(Home and abroad) (Moscow, 1928), pp. 172-89.

Proust in terms of his psychological depth.)46 More significant were the

letters from youths who, contrary to their peers, affirmed the social and
personal conditions addressed by the three works. Printed in the same
journals as hostile critics (and often alongside noted personages such as
Smidovich), they provided the rudiments of a genuine debate. One
wrote to the Toung Guard, "In general, the sexual relations between
male and female komsomol members have been given a timely and accu-
rate description. Among youth there is no shortage of those 4love-
obsessed' people like [Tanya] Aristarkhova. And, on this standard of
vice, our group also measures up."47 Another noted in Red Students that
if anyone needed proof of things gone awry, they could just look at the
exposes in this very same journal. Indeed, he noted, why else had a new
verb appeared in students' jargon: perekharakhorit, to outdo Gumilev?
sky's Khorokhorin at his own game.48
Ultimately, the point is not whether these writers accurately portrayed
students' behavior, but what the attacks against them can tell us.49 Cru?
cial here?one should almost say deliberate?is the misreading of their
work.50 The distorted interpretations of Kollontai reached full volume in
critics' efforts to turn these works into alleged celebrations of free love
when, as would seem apparent to the more sober reader, it was precisely
this attitude that was being castigated. In all three works, the route cho?
sen by the protagonist is revealed to be destructive; if anything, they
preach the ill of sex without restraint or emotion. Indeed, Gumilevsky
took the notable step of incorporating Lenin's principles nearly verbatim
46Georgii Yakubovskii, "Psikhologicheskii neorealizm Sergeia Malashkina" (The psy?

chological neorealism of Sergei Malashkin), Zvezda 1 (1927): 147-61.
47"U nas v zhurnale"
(In our journal), Molodaiagvardiia 11 (1926): 221.
48"Vmesto itogov literaturnoi diskussii" (In place ofa summary ofa discussion on liter?
ature), Krasnoestudenchestvo10 (1927): 63-67. His name also derives from the verb khoro-
khorifsia (to swagger).
49Nearly two decades ago, Sheila Fitzpatrick drew on the polls conducted among stu?
dents to argue that this literature had little to do with the reality of student life. While this
was a pioneering study, one that provided an excellent profile ofthe difficulties of students'
lives, she put too much faith in the polls' accuracy as counterproof. The low double-digit
percentage of young men who admitted to masturbation would seem to east the respon?
dents' honesty in doubt. (In "Za krasnoi dver' iu" [n. 6 above, p. 78], Naiman also ques?
tions their accuracy and focuses more appropriatelyon the use to which such data was put.)
Moreover, the poll results do not gainsay the crucial fact that, whether or not youth were
actually behaving like characters in the fiction, they certainly devoured this literature and
were talking excessively about it. Sheila Fitzpatrick, "Sex and Revolution: An Examination
of Literary and Statistical Data on the Mores of Soviet Students in the 1920s," Journal of
Modern History'50 (1978): 252-78.
50In "The Case of Chubarov Alley" (n. 6 above), Naiman has also noted the absurdity
of contemporary critics' stated belief that these works advocated free love (in the hedonis-
tic sense).

246 Greg Carleton
in the closing speech ofthe komsomol leader (complete with the sun, on
cue, rising higher and higher) as he exorcises the demons of Khoro?
khorin from his group's midst.51 But even this tactic was to no avail. One
workers' journal berated Gumilevsky for not providing his readers with
a proper lesson and, in order to correct his alleged omission, cited the
very same words of Lenin.52 Morality critics, it seems, rarely read what
offends, and this led to an all-too-familiar scenario: by ignoring baldly
transparent moralizing (particularly with Gumilevsky and Malashkin)
and letting their fears dictate interpretation, critics rewrote the texts in
their minds to confirm their same fears. The result, predictably, was to
make these works appear far more harmful, salacious, and depraved than
they could ever pretend to be without such help.
From the official point of view, the writers' mistake, it seems, was one
of proportion. We have to take seriously the "Tanya without a book"
objection. Though in these fictions the moralizing may be in the right
place, the characters do little but engage in or discuss sex. Those critics
adhering to Lenin's final counsel of "clarity, clarity, clarity" were thus left
with little room for interpretive flexibility: either outright rejection or
complete assimilation/cooptation of a given text. The latter course was
obviously more problematic for it would have demanded the uncomfort?
able explanation of why this subject could occupy the komsomoPs exclu?
sive attention for the length of a novel. Would cooptation not have
confirmed the charge that youth seemed more interested in "questions
of sex than the revolution in China?"53 In turning the writers' motives
inside out, critics' primary objective was to keep the established para?
digm sound. If members ofthe komsomol were the model for future be?
havior then sex had to be put in its proper (i.e., minor) place. In short,
a substantial degree of misreading?what was highlighted, what was ig-
nored?was almost preordained by the place the ideological paradigm
demanded of these texts.
It is on the face of such simplemindedness, prudery, and dogmatism
that we may feel inclined to continue berating Soviet critics ofthe 1920s.
51
Gumilevsky's memoirs, Sud3bai zhizn3 (Fate and life), written in 1958, were recently
published in serial form (Volga 8 [1988]: 83-118), and they include important insights
into the 1926 scene. He states that he wrote Dog Alley by the suggestion ofthe Toung
Guard and that Maksim Gorky read the manuscript and praised it for its didactic value.
Gumilevsky elaims his allegiance to Lenin's dicta on sexuality, and notes, with some pique,
that while Malashkin and Romanov were reprinted frequently, his novel was allowed only
two printings, until he personally intervened with the head of censorship board, Poliansky,
who, in the small world that it was, had published a blistering review of Malashkin (see n.
54 below).
52Korotkov (n. 36 above), pp. 15-16.
53Sergei Gusev, "Kakova zhe nasha molodezh'" (On the state of our youth), Molodaia
gvardiia 6 (1927): 114-39.

Yet what is most striking in the attacks on these three authors is not, I
believe, uncompromising ideological posturing or arrogant presump-
tions of infallibility (both of which we would expect to find), but that
the rhetoric of interpretation was almost exclusively that of nonfiction.
With little exception, accuracy and truth-telling were the only viable cat?
egories of evaluation. Fiction either "failed," and thus was slanderous,
or it "succeeded" and could be accepted without substantive qualifica-
tion as a faithful instantiation-illustration of the Bolshevik class para?
digm. One could argue that to read these fictions in line with the
paradigm necessitated, in functional terms, a requalification of their ge-
neric designation. The result was not a blurring of fictional/nonfictional
boundaries; it was more ofa de facto denial of fiction's ontological status.
Fiction had no value, no vitality, except in its potential as a sociological
document. This is why it made perfect sense for critics to conduct their
analyses in, and marshal evidence from, a domain outside of fiction itself.
The conditions set by Valerian Poliansky (who accused Malashkin of vio-
lating the same) therefore should not come as a surprise: "The artist
should base his creative work on scientific grounds, having recourse, at
times, to statistics so as to avoid making incorrect conclusions." Imagi?
nation by itself had no place: "The artist should incorporate real-life ma?
terial and not make it up."54
What we witness here is not Don
Quixotian naivete or the desire to
resurrect Zola's famousexperimental novel but the need to extract from
fiction (or hold it to) the same clarity of purpose and argument that one
could presume to find in publicistic writing. It was understood that fic?
tion admitted nuances or allowed for gaps that would be inappropriate
for an ideological treatise. Indeed, this was the central problem, as at-
tested by the debate over whether Tanya represented the pimples or the
whole face. Likewise (and more suspect), Malashkin and Romanov of?
fered plausible motivations for their protagonists' downfall, which, if not
to elicit sympathy, did elicit understanding. By presenting characters as
individuals first, and less as representatives ofa sociological group, these
two bypassed the clear-cut, class-based definitions ofthe issue that were
heralded by authorities and theoreticians. No doubt this absence ex?
plains why less doctrinaire students identified with the "reality" of the
stories. Yet it also points to where certain critics would find fault. All
writing, no matter what its formal generic trappings, had to exhibit the
certainty and coherence typical ofa platform statement.55 This is not to
54ValerianPoliansky, "O povesti S. Malashkina 'luna s pravoi storony'" (On S. Malas-

khin's novella "Moon on the Right"), Pechatf i revoliutsiia 2 (1927): 98.
551 have discussed the development of this phenomenon in more detail in "Genre in
Socialist Realism," Slavic Review 53 (1994): 992-1009.

248 Greg Carleton
say that a given text was, inherently, of this nature; rather, it enforced
how a text should be treated by critics. In their hands, ambiguity had to
be removed, and the labels of pornography and slander, though in a neg?
ative sense, accomplished this task well. At least officially, no questions
remained as to these works' potential value.
Call it a fear of fictional license. Life could
imitate art, so care had to
be taken. As Vyacheslav Polonsky warned, even if one were to recognize
the writers' good intentions, "the clumsy treatment of sexual depravity
can sometimes lead to its increase, just as the improper extinction ofa
fire can sometimes facilitate its spread."56 The concern was not hypothet?
ical. Officialfears were confirmed (and doubtless heightened) by reams
of exposes that flooded key journals such as the Toung Guard, New Shift,
Toung Bolshevik, Toung Leninist, and Red Students, stressing the poverty,
corruption, debauchery, drunkenness, and overall grime that character?
ized much of life in the university and factory dorm. More compellingly,
that same year (1926), two crimes involving komsomol members?a gang
rape and a woman driven to suicide by a husband who also committed
murder in a robbery?were elevated into national events as the trials un-
folded (with a play even being made ofthe second crime). Naiman has
exhaustively dissected the unprecedented media attention given to these
two incidents in relation to the party's attempts to come to terms with
corruption among youth. Both incidents played directly into the direct-
causation argurnent. Had not the team of Gumilevsky, Malashkin, and
Romanov (they were usually depicted, erroneously, as working in con-
cert) twisted youths' heads around so that they saw Khorokhorinian-
type behavior as the ideal? The coincidence between Gumilevsky's title
and the fact that the gang rape occurred in an alley was evidence too
good for one critic to ignore: "There's no place for these dog alleys on
our proletarian street."57 With minor adjustments in chronology (since
publication did not always precede event), Polonsky could pronounce
the final judgment: a bad idea (sex equated with drinking water) dissem-
inated to the population by literature, leads to real-life tragedy.
The Party and the Power Principle
The collision of events and fears, the sheer quantity of attention poured
on a subject presumably resolved, ensured that official tolerance would
quickly reach exhaustion. Never again was sexual behavior to dominate
56VyacheslavPolonsky, "Kriticheskiezametki: O rasskazakhSergeia Malashkina" (Criti?

cal remarks:About the stories of Sergei Malashkin), Novyi mirl (1927): 178.
57Bobryshev,"Pereulki i tupiki" (Alleys and deadends), KomsomoVskaiapravda(March
2, 1927), p. 2.

Soviet media as it did in this short period. By the end ofthe decade, with
severe pressure imposed on all forms of expression, other problems in
culture and society came under official scrutiny Yet it is the origin and
intensity of the polemic, not its cessation, that continues to hold our
attention. As noted before, Popovsky blames the corruption of youth
on the licentious attitudes
allegedly propagated by Kollontai. Though
expressly anti-Soviet, he employs the same argument as party officials by
making no allowances for the fact that revolutionary iconoclasm, in and
of itself, might naturally shape, amplify, and bring to the forefront ques?
tions that (if we allow for a certain essentialism) generally occupy youth.
Indeed, none are needed since he more or less assigns "free-love" Bol-
sheviks the same role that a moralist critic might give TV: youths' sexual
curiosity and rebelliousness are seen as unnatural, atypical, and therefore
the result of some nefarious plan. For Naiman, the question of whether
youth actually behaved in such a manner is beside the point, but the
focus on external influences remains.
With an impressive analysis ofthe
various ways sexuality permeated media in the 1920s, he argues that the
party deployed such discourses as part of an organized campaign to erot-
icize the topic: "Komsomol organs endeavored to tease and excite so that
they could later condemn and, eventually, control."58 In effect, the sub?
ject of sexuality served as kind of discursive bait?Naiman even invokes
Pavlov?that would entice readers "into the orbit of official propa?
ganda" so that, ultimately, they could be subject to greater control.59
The goal would have made Foucault proud, and because ofthe method?
ological premises that issue from this model, it concerns me more than
Popovsky's.60
The initial question?Why would the party draw attention to that
which it opposed??already leads us onto problematic grounds because
it focuses our attention on a limited body of evidence and thus encour-
ages a search for a single agency. Admittedly, the resulting picture di-
verges somewhat from Foucault's. For him, power was to remain the
"great anonymous"; pace Machiavelli, Foucault would "do without the
58Naiman, "The Case of Chubarov Alley," p. 9.

59Naiman, "Za krasnoi dver'iu" (n. 6 above), p. 67.
60While
my attention is directed primarily to others' use of Foucault to analyze Soviet
society, Laura Engelstein has recently raised questions as to the viability of Foucault's ideas
in relation to the conditions of late imperial and early Soviet Russia. She highlights dangers
in accepting Foucault's critique ofthe bourgeois-liberal social order as a model with univer?
sal applicability.See her "Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Impe?
rial and Soviet Russia," American Historical Review 98 (1993): 338-53. (Responses by
Rudy Koshar and Jan Goldstein follow.) Engelstein has also produced the most compre?
hensive study of sexuality and sexual expression in prerevolutionary Russia to date in The
Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Searchfor Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca, NY,
1992).

250 Greg Carleton
persona of a prince," concentrating instead on relations of force.61 In?

deed, however much his own vocabulary highlighted power's "strategy,"
"machinery," "intentions," and "calculation," Foucault forestalled the
impression ofa specific, behind-the-scenes institution manipulating dis?
course by insisting on power's "nonsubjectivity" In a curious way, how?
ever, this is what the Soviet context tempts us to restore. If the topic at
hand is the makeup and deployment of discourse, then the party is an
entity of almost irresistible explanatory appeal; in its name, power and
subjectivity make a handsome couple, for who would gainsay the party's
desire to dictate, subjugate, and control? Its seeming omnipresence al?
most impels us to return the prince to his previous stature and locate a
sentient, coherent, all-enabling, all-determining center of power.
Yet whatever we might gain heuristically by naming the "great anony?
mous," we risk losing in the very tidiness ofthe picture that emerges. As
Carolyn Porter has argued in a related critique of new historicism, the
tendency to view power as a totalizing monolith actually impoverishes
its value as a critical tool. It becomes "universal, essential, eternal" and
thus functions as little more than a "kind of transhistorical epistemeV62
Employed as a catchall metaphor, power discourages consideration of
resistances; everything originates from and can be traced back to some
power center. Lost as a result is an empirical sense of how any such plans,
consciously drafted or not, might have been thwarted or compromised.
Youth enter Naiman's party model solely as victims, or targets of strate?
gies from above; when heard, their voices are projected as mere exten-
sions of party manipulation. Significantly (though for reasons that differ
from Popovsky's), little is made ofthe critical fact that youth were genu-
inely interested in sex and, in this revolutionary and thus liberating cli?
mate, were inclined to believe that they could ask (and perhaps even
answer) the hard questions previous societies had long denied, papered
over, or otherwise diverted.
The obvious risk in adhering to an exclusive "power is party" model
is to fail prey to the Bolsheviks' own rhetoric and assume that talk about
sexuality could only be initiated by or enabled under the aegis of the
party. No doubt many Bolsheviks would have wished for such control,
but it would be premature, I believe, to grant them this, especially in the
1920s. At that time the party, the komsomol, and the media were never
of one voice or intention. (Indeed, this would be the goal of socialist
61Michel
Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. 1 of The History of
Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (1978; reprint, New York, 1990), pp. 95, 97.
62Carolyn Porter, "AreWe Being Historical Yet?" South Atlantic Quarterly 87 (1988):
765.

realism a decade later.) As became clear from the arguments given by the
party-member editors ofthe Toung Guard in defense of their provocative
publications, there was a profound fault line in party thought. Many
prominent membersopenly embraced texts that challenged dominant
paradigms, awakenedreaders, and made them think?not with the ob-
jective of undermining the party's ideological authority but of improving
its relevancy and thereby safeguarding its primacy.63 (It is important to
keep in mind that none of those who came out in support of Malashkin,
Gumilevsky, or Romanov saw themselves as anti-Soviet or antiparty.)
Others, favored a literature and media that essentially
conversely, in-
stantiated, upheld, or proved the verity of received paradigms. (Popular
examples would be the "counterfiction" of writers such as Mark Kolosov,
that gave G-rated pictures of an uncorrupt, basically desexed komsomol.)
Because of this fracture, the 1920s was a period of confused intentions
and concerns. From the fear expressed at the Fourteenth Party Congress
(convened in December 1925), that the party had not succeeded in win-
ning over youth to the admission that "on the cultural front" for 1926
"we [the Bolsheviks] suffered a great defeat," these years cannot be de?
scribed as ones during which the party exercised fundamental control.64
Regardless of what happened later under Stalin, the Soviet 1920s readily
define a period when, to borrow Alan Sinfield's quip, "the dominant ide?
ology ha[s] not quite got its act together."65 And if we combine this fact
with a relative tolerance in the media for diverse voices as well as for
63See, e.g., the editorial praising of, among others, Malashkin and Romanov, whose
works, "though sometimes mistaken," do not "smooth over rough edges but put before
the reader sharp problems of today's reality.""Put' 'Molodoi gvardii,'" Molodaiagvardiia
6 (1927): 191-95.
64Regardingthe Fourteenth Party Congress, see Nikolai Bukharin's"Doklad tov. Bukh-
arina o komsomole," XIV s3ezdvsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoipartii (b). Stenograficheskii
otchet, 18-31 Dek., 1925 (Moscow, 1926), esp. pp. 815-27. On defeat in the culture wars,
see S. K., "K voprosu o khuliganstve" (Regarding the question of hooliganism), lunyi kom-
munist 19 (1926): 47-53. In addition to the usual culprits of poor living conditions, failed
education, and a weak administration, S. K. targets contemporary literature as filled with a
"pornography" from which "hooligan cadres" gain insight and nourishment. It should be
pointed out that in "The Case of Chubarov Alley" Naiman explicitly connects the furor
over the gang rape with interparty struggles between Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Bu-
kharin, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, and others in the mid-1920s; yet, curiously, he
still speaks ofthe party as if it were a single authority. Against this practice I would suggest
that even if we accept that a seat of power could be identified at this time, then we have to
ask how much real, effective power was actually wielded. If anything, the fact that a clamp-
down became necessary suggests that the cultural and political authorities of the early So?
viet Union were not all that powerful.
65Alan Sinfield, Faultlines: Cultural Materialism and the Politics
ofDissident Reading
(Berkeley, 1992), p. 44.

252 Greg Carleton
commentary on troubling social phenomena, it almost makes sense that

sex, with or without official license, would appear in public media and?
being sex?naturally draw much attention.
I stress these more muddled features of the 1920s environment in
order to counterbalance the smoothness and controlled nature of the
picture that develops if we concentrate on the party and entities
primarily
sympathetic to its concerns. A focus exclusively on the presumed rein
holders "at the top" allows for too fluent a passage between intention
and actual result. Sometimes tension and controversy are just that?par?
ticularly in the aftermath of the most destructive social revolution the
world had yet seen. This is not to say that such could never be the case.
As Katherine Binhammer has recently shown in the revolutionary con?
text of 1790, concerns over sexuality can be overtly incited and manipu-
lated into a crisis by entrenched powers in order to enforce certain
political objectives and, very often, gender distinctions.66 But this is why
I have drawn attention here to less official voices. It is one thing to argue
for a ruling order that deliberately incites a phenomenon, and another
to describe power echelons trying to contain or control one that erupts
for reasons not entirely accountable within some overall strategy. For this
reason, the public debates and diverse
responses generated by the work
of Gumilevsky, Malashkin, and Romanov are of particular value because
they indicate that things were not so unidirectional, planned, or top-
down.
What is more, the responses of youth suggest that something ofa real
crisis was brewing in the 1920s, though not in the sense that doctors
and party leaders feared, that is, that a masturbating youth would not
live to see the golden age of communism. Youth actively and vocally
sought to understand their own bodies and behaviors within a new ethos
and through a new vocabulary. Yet for many of them, logically enough,
sexuality could not readily be defined within the exclusive bourgeois and
proletarian spheres by the party. Indeed, to impose an either/or,
favored
right/wrong polarity on such a profoundly complex domain of human
behavior would likely produce frustration. A vocabulary of absolutes
tends to block effective discussion by holding all acts to a limited palette
that does not truly address the matter, but merely registers approval or
disapproval. (We need only think ofthe results ofthe more contempo?
rary "just say no" campaigns.) As employed then, "proletarian" and
"bourgeois" had little semantic value beyond this function. This made a
collision of interests almost inevitable in the 1920s. Youth seemed less
concerned with judging than with understanding; yet officially sanc-
66Katherine
Binhammer, "The Sex Panic ofthe 1790s," Journal ofthe History ofSexual?
6
ity (1996): 409-34.

tioned discourse, which they sincerely tried to use, pushed them toward
the former. The predictable result was dissatisfaction on all sides.
Moreover, if we accept that discourses of sexuality were an important
vehicle for the party's exercise of power, then we have to acknowledge
their inherent limitationsas well. In a striking replay (three months later)
of Romanov's story, the New Shift published an exchange of letters that
acutely illustrated youths' rightful impatience with the official party po?
sition. Lida, a nineteen-year-old member ofthe komsomol, wrote to the
journal asking for advice on how to deal with men who only wanted sex
and feared that any sign of commitment would drag them into marriage.
Notably, Smidovich (whom we have heard before lambasting Malashkin's
Tanya) was given the task to answer. To no surprise, she pointed to a
future where such concerns would be moot, and thus her advice, awash
in comforting platitudes, came to a simple conclusion: Lida need not
worry because her feelings did not contradict "the interests ofthe prole-
tarian state." Needless to say, this brought only a mocking reply from
Nina, indignant at Smidovich's frequent use of what "should" and "will"
be. Putting herself in Lida's place, she charged, "If it's not too diffi?
cult, I would like to hear something more concrete instead of cheap
moralizations." Regarding the future, Nina pointed out, everyone is in
agreement; but what ofthe "earthly realization of [these] heavenly prin?
ciples?"67
We have no more information about her, but Nina demonstrated why
attentionto sex did, in real terms, pose a threat to Soviet authorities.
The more youth spoke, the more their voices underscored a painful split
between certain hard facts ofa postrevolutionary reality and a theoretical
class paradigm that should have been able to account for those facts, but
that was not always adequate or convincing. No doubt what many in the
party heard, unchoreographed, from younger citizens like Nina was truly
surprising, unsettling, and upsetting?particularly because it came from
the most valued segment of the population. This, I believe, points to
an incompleteness in the standard argurnent that the majority of Soviet
officials displayed "caveman-like" ignorance regarding sex. Like most,
they were more secure operating in a theoretical
domain. There, every?
thing made sense, the boundaries of permissibility and right/wrong were
eminently recognizable, and no anomalies or exceptions disrupted one's
comprehension of phenomena. For all intents and purposes, the attacks
on these three writers and the advice given to youth like Lida dem?
onstrate a desire to remain in this safe zone. The tactic most often
67"Pis'mo komsomolki" (A letter from a komsomolmember), Smena9 (1926): 11-12;

Nina's reply appeared three issues later, pp. 9, 17. The debate continued for another three
issues, nos. 15, 16, and 17.

254 Greg Carleton
employed to deal with sexuality, whether broached in fictional or docu?

mentary guise, was simple and, on the surface, effective: abstract it to
the theoretical level where a solid answer was always available.
However, the efficiency of such an all-explaining theoretical model
was compromised by its real-life applicability. Ironically (and reveal-
ingly), this was nowhere more evident than in critics' own efforts to
check the potential impact and appeal of fictions that treated sex openly.
Since censorship was far less preemptive in the 1920s than later, the task
of containment fell more to critics; yet the more they attacked these
works as slander, the more they had to dance around the fact that reality
and theory were not one and the same. One critic argued herself into a
box trying to reconcile what she (regrettably?) knew to be true and what
theory said should have been the case: "111 conditions exist, but not the
kind Romanov describes; they're there, but different; present but not
like that."68 The defense presented by the offended Moscow workers was
no less persuasive: "We don't deny that there is sexual depravity among
about us, that is a lie!"69
us . . . but what is written
Such clumsy attempts at damage control combined with votes of no
confidence by individuals like Nina made the ultimate act of contain?
ment?in Foucault's terms, old-fashioned repression and taboo?all the
more likely. But it also meant that such a clampdown was accomplishable
only later. To be sure, the issue of communists in the bedroom was to
flare up once more in 1930 with Iurii Libedinsky's The Birth ofa Hero, &
novel by one ofthe former editors ofthe Toung Guard. (It memorably
begins with the protagonist, a high-placed member of the party, spying
on his sister-in-law while she is bathing; the question that then occupies
him for the next fifty pages is whether or not he should sleep with her.)
Yet the bludgeoning that Libedinsky received only guaranteed that the
next celebrated reference to sexuality would be of a decidedly different
flavor. In the classic
of socialist realism, How the Steel Was Tempered
(1934), the new communist, Pavel Korchagin, dispensed with the issue
once and for all with charming words of wisdom: "Mama, I've sworn to
myself not to chase girls until we've knocked offthe bourgeoisie in the
whole world."70
In The History of Sexuality, Foucault was willing to grant that before
the rise of centralized monarchies, there were "dense, entangled, con?
flicting powers."71 We would do well to acknowledge that revolutions
68
"Disput v Akademii Kom. Vospitaniia im. Krupskoi" (n. 38 above), p. 173.
69Berezovskii (n. 43 above), p. 4.
70Naiman has discovered a most
striking coincidence between the name ofthe real-life
leader in the gang rape case, Pavel Kochergin, and the fictional Pavel Korchagin.
71Foucault
(n. 61 above), p. 86.

can precipitate this same confusing plurality, no matter if, ultimately,

they devolve into the kind of centralized and authoritarian states of
which old-style monarchies could only dream. Sometimes power is weak,
sometimes it is seriously threatened by the multiplicity of forces and in?
terests that arise in any transitional period. In the Soviet 1920s, sexuality
was a domain where this was acutely felt, and in no uncertain terms it
drove home to the Bolsheviks a fundamental flaw in their enabling my-
thologies: their class paradigm had less application here than elsewhere.
Bolshevik officialswere not prudes, nor were they silent regarding sex;
rather, they could not fundamentally speak to the issue as long as they
adhered to a discursive stance that sought to explain everything in either/
or terms. Indeed, the critical efforts to intervene with, recatalog, and
contain fiction, inhibited perhaps the one channel where it might have
received a more useful airing. On the eve of that long, hot summer in
1926, the organizers of one poll among Moscow students cautioned,
"The sexual life of youth is being conducted abnormally due to an ab?
sence of sexual literacy."72 Such literacy could never be obtained through
the language proposed then.
72"Polovaiazhizn' studenchestva" (The sexual lifestyle of students), VecherniaiaMoskva

(April 16,1926), p. 2.


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Sexuality in Early Soviet Union

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Writing-Reading the Sexual Revolution in the Early Soviet Union

Author(s): Greg Carleton

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in the Early Soviet Union

Department of German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literatures

Though the satisfaction might prove fleeting, Montaigne

[JournaloftheHistoryofSexuality1997, vol. 8, no. 2]

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primitive as a caveman's club."2 Mark Popovsky, out to damn the Soviets

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5Lev Gumilevsky, Dog Alley (Leningrad, 1927 [Gumilevsky published it himself]);

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Their popularity forced party officials, however reluctantly, to recognize

The Godmother of Pornography

As a political leader, feminist, party official, publicist, and author of fic?

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ships. And it was Kollontai's fictional illustration of what "might be" in

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10A.B. Zalkind, Polovoivoprosv usloviiakhsovetskoiobshchestvennosti:

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the negative example: "Apparently, Zhenya suffers from a moderate case

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argued in all seriousness, proletarian teenagers continued to masturbate

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Such conviction armed officials with irrefutablecause to deny the em?

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exploiting the demise of conventions of modesty in order to reduce all

26GePman (n. 16 above), p. 114.

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The Summer of1926

31M. Bekker, "Liubovnaia lirika komsomola" (Love lyrics ofthe komsomol),Komsomol-

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2Gumilevsky (n. 5 above).

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Serafimovich were thumbed quite less.33 A serious rupture had formed

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391.Novich, "Kholostoi vystrel" (A blank shot), Na literaturnom postu 1 (1927): 52.

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Proust in terms of his psychological depth.)46 More significant were the

46Georgii Yakubovskii, "Psikhologicheskii neorealizm Sergeia Malashkina" (The psy?

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54ValerianPoliansky, "O povesti S. Malashkina 'luna s pravoi storony'" (On S. Malas-

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The Party and the Power Principle

56VyacheslavPolonsky, "Kriticheskiezametki: O rasskazakhSergeia Malashkina" (Criti?

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58Naiman, "The Case of Chubarov Alley," p. 9.

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persona of a prince," concentrating instead on relations of force.61 In?

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commentary on troubling social phenomena, it almost makes sense that

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67"Pis'mo komsomolki" (A letter from a komsomolmember), Smena9 (1926): 11-12;