pre marital sex?

Hi everyone,

How common was premarital sex in ussr? Was sexual immorality looked down on?

Premarital sex was considered ordinary, but sexuality itself was a restricted topic in society (for example, condoms were sold as "Product Number Two", and pornography could not be legally purchased anywhere). Old conservative Russian values prevailed in this way. Come to think about it, I'm not sure if the Orthodox Church is even against premarital sex or not. The closed status of sexuality publically was not just based on religious values. Russians generally are polite, quiet and reserved in public.

Of course, that is not to say that people were against sexuality. Because people lived close together in cramped living spaces, they would modify their behaviour depending on each other's needs (for example a mother and father might go out to dinner or to a friend's so that their son and daughter in law could have time to themselves at home).

I see. How common were things such as teen pregnancy and how high were divorce rates?

How common was pornography, though? Surely it did circulate illegally?

There was almost no pornography in USSR.

Divorces were easy and cheap to get, especially if the couple had no children, although the court was supposed try to persuade the couple to change their minds. The decline in religion probably had something to do with it, because in the more religious southern republics, divorce rates remained lower. Also, the status of women as equal and independent citizens that had control over their own destinies was also an important factor. As for causes for divorce -same as in most countries I suppose, probably with more alchol abuse related issues and living arrangements related (it could be very uncomfortable and hard for a couple until they got their own apartment).

I'm really not sure about teen pregnancy. Most couples would try to wait to have children, due to the impact on quality of life, and to get to the stage where you're having intimate relations could also be a drawn out process (think 1940s-1950s conservative America sexual culture). However, lack of education or contraceptives (which at various times were difficult to get) probably resulted in many teen pregnancies. Abortion was used as a form of contraceptive by women since it was legalized to the collapse of the country -and still today. This has probably harmed many women's bodies, not to mention their psychology.

As for pornography, I would say that it was very difficult to find. It did circulate illegally, but wasn't popularized like other illegally circulated Western goods. Again, probably something to do with conservative Russian culture.

Loz wrote:

There was almost no pornography in USSR.

I believe I read somewhere, maybe Wikipedia !, that much more common than visual pornography was a more refined, "literary" samizdat pornography! So I guess Fifty Shades of Grey would have been the Playboy of the Soviet Union!

This has nothing to do with the subject, but I thought it would be funny,

"After 1926, the 'postcard divorce' made the dissolution of marriage especially easy. The 'postcard divorce' operated in the following manner. If either spouse wished to divorce the other, that person simply went to the ZAGS office (which registered all marriages and divorces) and filled out a postcard announcing that the marriage had been terminated. The divorced, and possibly unwitting, spouse received the announcement in the mail several days later. [...] Then there was the case of a ballerina who surprised her husband by bringing home a new husband after divorcing the former husband in the morning. Since he could find no other housing, the rejected male had to occupy a corner in his former wife's 'honeymoon suite.'" - Chase, William. Daily Life in Moscow, 1921-1929. 394-395.

Wow, that sounds like the inspiration for Bed and Sofa.

I'm all for speedy divorces, but as they imply a contract, they should be treated more carefully, I think.