Posted on 07/05/2022 8:15:03 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
Travesti parties, Vladimir Lenin advocating sexual freedom, nudist anarchists aboard trams, a nude beach near the cathedral of Christ the Savior… such was Russian life at the beginning of the Soviet state. What could possibly go wrong?
“Stark naked people wearing armbands reading “Down With Shame!” have recently appeared in Moscow. A group was seen boarding a tram. The tram stopped, the public was outraged,” Mikhail Bulgakov, the famous Russian writer, wrote in his diary in 1924. Just 15 years prior to that, women could not think of going out in a knee-long dress. But did these changes happen overnight?
Pre-revolutionary Russian society, especially in the capitals, was not puritanical in nature. An anonymous soldier born at the end of 19th century recalls (link in Russian): “at 10, I had already been exposed to all kinds of lewd behaviour… Pornographic pictures were not exactly a rarity.”
Cross-dressing, travesti and gay parties were popular in artistic circles, with even a certain few noblemen having been known for being gay. Party life, often involving multiple partners, was a regular pastime for some. However, male homosexuality was a criminal offense… until Bolsheviks came onto the scene…
(Excerpt) Read more at rbth.com ...
Hedonistic and libertine people
“Government House” is a must read for those interested in the Russian Revolution. It is on a par with (but VERY different from) Gulag Archipelago, and the reader must stay with the first part of the book and not get discouraged or puzzled by what the author is doing. Like GA, it is a literary experiment.
What the author is doing, is portraying the mentality, psychology, and thinking of hard core bolsheviks from before the revolution through the show trials.
It is quite revealing. It shows how even highly intelligent people ignore human nature and commit their lives to an abstraction which does not exist and never will exist, a pov which allows them to inflict sadistic cruelty on others.
And in the process of the story, a lot of interesting history is revealed.
Yep, at least Stalin understood how harmful those policies were on Soviet society, and put a stop to it.
It’s like I always said, the only good thing Stalin ever did was to off Trotsky.
“The communists that destroyed Russia are now ruling the United States of America. Can you see it?”
We let them in in the 20s. They then burrowed in like ticks.
The only good thing to come out of the Soviet Union was the Avant-garde art of the 1920s. The linked article had some of the bold agiprop posters from that era. As with the radical family policy, this experimentation with art was ended by Stalin.
According to what metric? Russia has one of the highest abortion rates, the highest alcohol consumption and the lowest church attendance.
Agree. You’d be hard pressed to find a more immoral place on the planet than Putinist Russia. Their men are infamous for their drunkenness and philandering. Russian women respond in kind. Cheating is the national sport of Russia. Along with ice hockey of course. But that won’t stop the ignorant from fantasizing about things they know nothing about.
Seems to me the Germans in the late 20s promoted a hedonistic lifestyle to destroy the existing culture. Of course, later, they had a huge and popular reset promoting Aryian ideals as part of the Nazi scheme.
I think we are already beyond the half born out of wedlock stage.
They knew it wasn’t good for society when they promoted it. But it did serve their purposes, so they used it. When it no longer served its purpose they conducted purges. Hitler did the same. Not sure if they used “socialist lobotomies” like the Cuban communists did, or used other methods.
You live in a delusional fantasy world. Atheism is rampant in Russia, as is abortion, prostitution, suicide, early death from drug and
alcohol abuse.
Bkmk Soviet
And now the latest German ideals -- green politics -- are crashing against the shores of reality, as coal is being revived in a time of energy shortages which could have been easily foreseen, except for the blindness of ideology.
A delicious tidbit: "Germany's Largest Right-Wing Extremist Group is Turkish, not German"
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17486/germany-extremists-grey-wolves
Whether Soviet Socialism -- as the theme of this thread -- or National Socialism, those wacky socialists from Berlin to Moscow seem to have persistent albeit failing ideals. Today's Green Socialists are proving fine offspring of failed parents.
Oh, maybe that’s why the world is so upset with Russia, they are recovering from communism.
Bkmk
The English-language Russia Beyond site has a lot of good articles on Russian history and culture.
It’s very helpful for seeing them and for seeing us and the road we’re on now.
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