ABSTRACT
Despite its revolutionary origins, the Soviet Union was in many respects a staunchly conservative society. This was certainly the case concerning relations between the sexes, both social and sexual. Although men and women were theoretically equal, traditional notions of male and female personality and behaviour continued to prevail, with women persistently described as the ‘weak sex’. Once the relatively loose sexual morality of the revolutionary era was brought under control, physical intimacy was supposedly confined to married couples and dedicated to procreation. Each new generation of young men and women was expected to fit in to the established pattern of gender and sexual relations without complaint or question. The Soviet Union claimed to have created a ‘new psychology of the personality, the basic trait of which is collectivism’ (Kovalev 1983:38). This supposedly meant that everyone now acted in the interests of everyone else. In reality, it meant that everyone was supposed to act the same as everyone else.
