Our politics are a shambles, our people divided and distraught. But we must fight the urge to turn away from our nation’s troubles.
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The Night Witches were the feared, all-female military aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. Yet the Night Witches weren't the only Soviet women on the front-line during the Second World War. Women were pilots, doctors, partisans, snipers and anti-aircraft gunners. Dr Fern Riddell speaks to Dr Reina Pennington and Prof Kristen Ghodsee.
Quote from the book Love, Marriage and Friendship in the Soviet Union (1984)
“One of the major factors that has contributed to the sexualization of the Soviet mentality today, according to Igor Kon, is ‘the drastic increase in female sexual activity.’ Kon derogates Victorian morality and medical theories that contend that ‘a decent woman in general does not enjoy sex.’ He asserts, referring for lack of Soviet data to Czechoslovakian sources, that the proportion of women from the younger generation who experience orgasm reached 79 percent, against 31 percent among women of the older generation. He further suggests that this sexual awakening of women is a source of conflict between men and women, presumably because now men cannot satisfy the increasing sexual appetites of Soviet women (Kon 1982, p. 118).” Page 55-56
Just the book I needed
I ordered this gem through interlibrary loan and discovered many fascinating facts about sex and love in the Soviet Union. The author, Vladimir Shlapentokh, was a prominent sociologist before he emigrated to the United States in 1978. This was his first book published in his adopted country in which he argues that the Soviet citizen had become hedonistic in the extreme.
The Rouge Exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris
While I was in Paris, I was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the Rogue exhibition at the Grand Palais. This was an exhibition of art from 1917 to 1953, and included amazing works from the early Soviet Era, while not whitewashing the horrors of Stalinism.
One thing that fascinated me were the quasi-erotic paintings of athletic bodies produced during the Stalinist era. According to the curators, because Soviet society was so prudish, the only way to paint nudes or scantily-clad figures was to portray young Soviet citizens engaging in sports activities. These images would have been quite titillating, I imaging, but they were acceptable because they upheld socialist ideals of physical fitness.
