Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Ludmila Ivanova (above) was the author of the famous sound bite on Soviet TV: “There is no sex in the U.S.S.R!.” When the film “Little Vera” came out during perestroika, featuring a sex scene, everyone watched. Courtesy photo Ukraine’s intellectual elite was traditional shy about sex, but folk art showed that people loved it and laughed at it

If you happen to ask a former Soviet citizen about sex in the former empire, nine out of 10 will respond with the phrase: “There is no sex in the U.S.S.R.!”

This is a joke that lingers from Mikhail Gorbachev’s era, when Soviet TV became more liberal and even started airing live shows with satellite links to the United States. It was during this kind of show on July 17, 1986, that this famous phrase was uttered by Ludmila Ivanova, member of the Committee of Soviet Women.

Nowadays, as they say, her words were taken out of context and there are actually three versions floating around about what she said. Besides the famous joke, some insist Ivanova said: “There is no sex in the U.S.S.R. – not on TV.” Ivanova herself claims to have said: “There is no sex in the U.S.S.R. – there is love.”

However, it is the incorrect joke that reflected the state of affairs with sexual pleasures in the Soviet Union. Obviously, the Soviet people did not abandon such a wonderful activity. But it was always hushed up.

Babies were “found in the cabbage patch” or “brought by a stork.” This is what they used to tell kids in response to their questions about where they came from. They may have been old wives' tales, but they were very much in demand.

I cannot even remember how I found out where children really came from. But I do remember very clearly one incident that led to my sexual awakening. It happened when one of my classmates gave me a bunch of typed pages that were supposed to be the works of Russian classics Alexei Tolstoy and Sergei Yesenin. They were, in fact, erotic stories describing a sexual act.

The reading was so exciting and stimulating that I felt like it was I who lived through those adventures. I was lucky that the teachers didn’t catch me familiarizing myself with this sort of literature. Otherwise, I would have been chastised at a meeting of my class or the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party that united 99.9 percent of young Soviet citizens.

I would have, at best, faced a public condemnation. At worst, I would have been expelled from the Komsomol. Those who were expelled could not be accepted to universities and they had almost no chance to earn a degree.

But sex had not always been taboo. I read that in the first years of the U.S.S.R., its government renounced the “hypocritical puritanical morals” of the Czarist regime. There was a notion that sex had to be just as easy as drinking a glass of water. Female Komsomol members were even obligated to satisfy the needs of male Komsomol members on demand. There were discussions whether the female Komsomol members should still do it during their “critical days.”

It’s difficult to say why the attitude of the Communist Party changed. Later, the Soviet government had a strange and impersonal policy on the issue. For example, one of the most widespread types of sculptures were those of women with oars. They almost had no sexual characteristics and were reminiscent of ugly hermaphrodites.

Film and literature had only hints of sex. This pseudo-chaste approach caused splits in personalities. On the one hand, sex was not prohibited. On the other, it was something secret and disgusting. Because of this, citizens had lots of complexes. Later on, when movies started incorporating three-second shots of bare female breasts, such films became hugely popular due to those very shots.

And when perestroika times produced a film called “Little Vera,” in which the lead character had sex with bare breasts while on top, every adult in the U.S.S.R. made sure to watch it. This was the real sexual revolution.

In Ukraine, the Soviet approach coincided with the traditional attitude of the intellectual elite. As a matter of fact, the term for erotic literature in Ukrainian comes from the word “shame” or “disgrace.”

The most famous erotic writer in the 19th century was a guy by the name of Oleksa Storozhenko. He wrote a story about a Cossack watching a date between a devil and a witch. She was beautiful, naked and seductive. And the devil was so hot he jumped into a puddle to cool down, boiling the water.

Another creature Storozhenko described was a naked female calf. These dissolute parts of his work shocked Ukrainian critics until the end of the 19th century.

But regular people lived their own lives and did not care much about the intelligentsia’s taboos. They created very “shameful” – or rather erotic – poems, songs and fairy tales. The images and characters in them were cheerful and funny, like in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. In one of them, a seducer tells a slow-witted virgin nun that he has a devil between his legs, and she has hell. He suggests they should send the devil to hell. She liked it so much she couldn’t be stopped.

Another example: In Ukrainian folk literature, the male organ is called “a fish” and the female one a “frying pan.” So “frying a fish” means doing you-know-what. Is it any worse than the Decameron?

Moreover, comparing the female organ with a frying pan was not brutal: In those days, this everyday kitchen object had much more importance that a microwave has for us today. The frying pan was respected.

These folk inventions make one think how chaste we actually are. At least, how chaste it seems we are. There was a recent poll among Europeans about the best lovers. On top were the Italians. The worst ones were Germans. The Ukrainians were not in the poll. What a nuisance, yes?

But then Italian women mentioned that Ukrainian workers are numerous in that country. One should be able to trust the Italian women more than all the others. After all, they won the title of hottest lovers in Europe. So they know their stuff.

The same poll said Ukrainian men have sex more often than other Europeans. So we can proudly say that neither the communist system, nor the shame from Ukrainian intellectuals managed to chill our yearning for erotic pleasures. Long live Ukrainian sex!

Yuriy Lukanov is a Kyiv freelance writer and journalist.