The Soviet Union is known to take a somewhat puritan view of sex activity, presumably unrelated to the doctrine of original sin. Perhaps "puritan" is the wrong word; and perhaps a foreign observer cannot avoid measuring what he sees and reads against his own prejudices. Soviet actors and dancers do not flaunt sex as ours do; their people, young or old, are not constantly stimulated by sex on television or in display advertising. We are inclined to accuse them of swinging too far in the other direction. It is difficult for us to take a balanced or sympathetic view of the remarks of Viktor Bolshakov, who charged in Komsomolskaya Pravda in 1969 that nudes and pornography were being used in Czechoslovakia to influence people toward la dolce vita instead of strengthening Communism, with the assertion, as quoted in the press here, that "the difference between art and pornography is completely obvious." And another press story quotes a Moscow monthly as saying:

“There is a new moral criterion for condemnation and approval of sex the question is not whether it is marital or premarital but whether it was based on mutual love.

Our sex differs greatly from simple sex attractions of the ancient people since it presupposes mutual affection and places women in a position equal to men, which was not the case in the times of ancient Eros.

The so called sexual revolution in the West is weakening family ties, rejecting a number of traditional taboos on sex relations, meaning freedom of sexual intercourse.”

Professor Viktor N. Kolbanovsky of the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, accusing the medical and teaching professions in the U.S.S.R. of failing to educate or help out young or old with sexual problems. Despite easily available medical service for everything else, he says, people with such problems have nowhere to turn. Even in medical schools students "are not acquainted with the ABC's of sex." Dr. Kolbanovsky wants more study of Freud, whose teachings have never been popular in the U.S.S.R. Further details suggest strongly that Soviet doctors and teachers foster widespread sexual ignorance with a Victorian flavor, leading to impotency in men and frigidity in women, and to similar problems only too familiar in our own culture. But Soviet youth, although itself straight laced by our standards in its writings on sex matters, shows signs of breaking with the old traditions. A popular youth magazine, Yunost, has started giving advice to the lovelorn. The excessive consumption of vodka is beginning to alarm Soviet police officials. Increasing affluence seems to be infecting teenagers, if not with VD, then with that other Western disease, an obsession with expensive gadgets and the same soft life of which they accuse the Czechoslovaks, at the expense of a proper interest in ideology and physical work. (see VD CONTROL MUST EMPHASIZE MORALS MORE THAN MICROBES PART V)