‘Yes, There was Sex in the USSR’ Focus of New Book-Length Study

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – One of the most famous and widely repeated statement to come out of the USSR was the declaration by Ludmila Ivanova who declared in the course of a Soviet-American telebridge in July 1986 that “we have no sex [in the USSR] and we are strictly opposed to it.”

    That immediately became both the subject of mirth because everyone including presumably Ivanova herself knew that wasn’t true but also evidence in the minds of many Russians and others of just how out of touch with reality the Soviet leadership was at least in words if not, of course, in action.

    Now, Rustam Aleksandr, a Russian scholar at the University of Melbourne, demonstrates just how out of touch the Soviet government was in a new book entitled There was Sex: Intimate Life in the Soviet Union (https://individuum.ru/books/seks-byl-intimnaya-zhizn-sovetskogo-soyuza/; reviewed by Semyon Vladimirov at meduza.io/feature/2025/04/08/seks-byl-novaya-kniga-rustama-aleksandera-ob-intimnoy-zhizni-v-sovetskom-soyuze).

     Aleksandr attracted widespread attention for 2022 study of homosexuality in the USSR, a book entitled The Closeted: The Life of Homosexuals in the Soviet Union, which has now been translated into English (meduza.io/episodes/2023/03/14/govorim-ob-istorii-lgbt-v-sssr-snachala-bolsheviki-dali-soobschestvu-polnuyu-svobodu-a-potom-uvideli-v-nem-shpionov-i-rastliteley-armii-i-flota and books.google.com/books/about/Red_Closet.html).

    According to Vladimirov, Aleksandr’s three most important conclusions are that Soviet society was puritanical except at the beginning and the end, that Soviet law enforcement was less obsessed with sex than were party officials, and that there were a large number of Soviet academics who tried to pull back the veil of secrecy on sex the Kremlin wanted maintained.

    His new book helps to explain why the Putin regime has moved in the directions it has, simultaneously allowing more sexual activity of various kinds than was the case earlier but presenting itself as a defender of traditional values, including hostility to the very kinds of behaviors its members likely favor and participate in.