ABSTRACT
In Russia, along with the reassessment of all values during the Revolution, moral principles regulating sexual matters in society have been subjected to revaluation. Portrayals of human nudity and the most vulgar pornography have begun to fill the literature market. Even special marriage journals have appeared. Free love worship in Russian society finds, especially among the youth, an extremely favorable ground to display itself at different places through genuine epidemics of a sexual nature that follow a particular development in different cities, mainly in central and southern Russia. One of those epidemics, known as “Candles,” has been repeatedly cited in Russian newspapers. The epidemic achieved wide scope, particularly among the student youth in different cities, for example Kiev and Kursk. The extent to which the youths’ views of free love during the period of the Russian Revolution started to appear openly in society is indicated by one of the meeting’s resolutions reaching the press at the time.
