Title: Sex in public
First published: 1997
Description: Sex in Public examines the ideological poetics and the rhetoric of power in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, a period of anxiety over the historical legitimacy of Soviet ideology and Bolshevik power. Drawing on a wide range of sources - Party Congress transcripts, the classics of early Soviet literature, sex education pamphlets, the cinema, crime reports, and early Soviet ventures into popular science - the author seeks to explain the period's preoccupation with crime, disease, and, especially, sex.

Using strategies of reading developed by literary scholars, he devotes special care to exploring the role of narrative in authoritative political texts. The book breaks new ground in its attention to the ideological importance of the female body during this important formative stage of Bolshevik rule.
Subjects: Communism and sex, History, Soviet union, history, 1917-1936, Soviet union, politics and government, 1917-1991, Sexual Behavior, Literature, Communism, Sovetskaja Associacija Meždunarodnogo Prava
Places: Soviet Union
Time periods: 1917-1936
LC classification: DK266 .N22 1997