Dictatorship of Sex

Lifestyle Advice for the Soviet Masses

Frances Lee Bernstein (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

264 Seiten

2007
Northern Illinois University Press (Verlag)
978-0-87580-667-9 (ISBN)

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The Dictatorship of Sex explores the attempts to define and control sexual behavior in the years following the Russian Revolution. It is the first book to examine Soviet "sexual enlightenment," a program of popular health and lifestyle advice intended to establish a model of sexual conduct for the men and women who would build socialism.

Leftist social theorists and political activists had long envisioned an egalitarian utopia, and after 1917, the medical profession took the leading role in solving the sex question (while at the same time carving out a niche for itself among postrevolutionary social institutions). Frances Bernstein reveals the tension between the doctors' advocacy for relatively liberal social policy and the generally proscriptive nature of their advice, as well as their lack of interest in questions of personal pleasure, fulfillment, and sexual expression. While supporting the goals of the Soviet state, the enlighteners appealed to "irrefutable" biological truths that ultimately supported a very traditional gender regime.

The Dictatorship of Sex offers a unique lens through which to contemplate a central conundrum of Russian history: the relationship between the supposedly "liberated" 1920s and "repressive" 1930s. Although most of the proponents of sexual enlightenment in the 1920s would suffer greatly during Stalin's purges, their writings facilitated the Stalinist approach to sexuality and the family. Bernstein's book will interest historians of Russia, gender, sexuality, and medicine, as well as anyone curious about social and ideological experiments in a revolutionary culture.

Frances Lee Bernstein is Associate Professor of History at Drew University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

1: Disciplining the Sex Question in Revolutionary Russia

2: Making Sex

3: "Nervous People"

4: Envisioning Health

5: Conserving Soviet Power

6: Doctors without Boudoirs

Conclusion

Abbreviations List

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	10.1.2012
Reihe/Serie	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Sonstiges ► Geschenkbücher
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sexualität / Partnerschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-87580-667-8 / 0875806678
ISBN-13	978-0-87580-667-9 / 9780875806679
Zustand	Neuware