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Translated from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Vol. 46 (1940), pp. 163-169.
Sexual Life is a complex of processes and phenomena associated with the relationship between the sexes, issues of sexual desire, satisfaction of sexual feelings and reproduction. Sexual life is based on sexual attraction, which is the totality of all psychophysical phenomena preceding and accompanying sexual intercourse; Unlike sexual desire in animals, which has the character of an innate instinct for reproduction, socio-economic factors have a decisive influence on the nature and forms of sexual attraction in humans. The problem sexual life is part of a larger social problem. Many bourgeois researchers interpret sexual life exclusively as a biological problem, focusing almost entirely on biological factors and laws underlying sexual desire, without touching its social side at all. The forms of sexual life are closely related to a number of social problems: population, marriage and family, prostitution, etc. Vladimir Lenin emphasized the incorrectness of the fact that “the sex and marriage question is considered separately, and not as part of a large social issue” (see K. Tsetkin, Lenin and the Working Woman, 1927, p. 28). V. I. Lenin sharply opposed Freud's sexual sociology, calling Freud's theory "fashionable stupidity" (see the same, p. 26).
The sexual instinct, which is the basis of sexual life, finds itself this or that expression depending on the specific socio-historical situation that determines certain forms of sexual relations, marriage and family. Even Karl Marx established that the nature and forms of sexual life are primarily determined by the nature of socio-economic relations corresponding to a given historical stage of development of society. Sex hormones play a large role in the emergence of sexual desire, in the nature of its manifestation (see). Sex hormones are secreted by the sex glands — the testes or testes in a man and the ovaries — in a woman. Sex hormones affect the body not only during puberty, but also throughout almost the entire life of a person; in childhood they are in a state of relative inactivity; during puberty, they have a decisive influence on the development of secondary sexual characteristics; their effect is weakened as one approaches old age and completely ceases in old age. There is a constant interaction between the sex glands and other endocrine glands (thyroid, vaginal, adrenal, etc.), and the hormones of the latter have a strong effect on the functions of the former, since both glands form a single system of endocrine glands. The processes of sexual life are biologically determined, along with the action of the endocrine glands, and the nervous system, which influences the excitement of sexual desire and the nature of its manifestation. Difficult living conditions, illness, abnormal nutrition, especially malnutrition, excessive labor for the most part reduce the intensity of sexual desire.
The onset of puberty depends on a number of factors - climate, nutrition, working conditions, living conditions, upbringing, etc. Puberty in males usually begins between 14–16 years, and in females at 13–14 years, but this period is subject to significant fluctuations. The age of marriage was set in the USSR at 18 for both sexes, in France, Italy and Belgium — 18 years for men, 15 years for women, in Germany — 18 years for men, 14 years for women, in Spain and Greece — 14 years for men and 12 years for women; in Australia, 14 years for both sexes. - Sex education is of great importance for the normal development of sexual feelings. The interest in sexual life that awakens long before the onset of puberty must be carefully and rationally directed towards explaining the biological processes of reproduction in nature, avoiding everything that can cause an increased unhealthy interest in sexuality and sexual excitability. An extremely important role in the matter of proper sex education is played by the family and teachers, who are responsible not only for the responsibility of creating conditions for a beneficially influencing environment, but also for a reasonable switch of sexual desire in the field of labor and cultural interests, rationally including the tasks of sex education in the system of general labor education As for the question of sexual abstinence, the current state of knowledge makes it possible to assert with no doubt that it is completely harmless.
Deviations from normal sexual desire are very diverse, sometimes taking on the character of severe perversions. They are conditioned not only by the pathological. violations and changes in the functions of the genital jelly, but also the decomposing influence of the environment. The most common deviation from normal sex life is masturbation (see). More or less rare perversions sexual life include: masochism, expressed in the need for the appearance of a feeling of voluptuousness to experience pain, humiliation; sadism, expressed in the appearance of a sense of voluptuousness when committing cruel acts (masochism and sadism are encountered mainly in persons with psychopathological disorders); fetish, expressed in the appearance of sexual arousal from objects belonging to an individual of the opposite sex (part of clothing, shoes, underwear, etc.). The pathological forms of sexual life also include: exhibitionist satisfaction of sexual feelings by sudden exposure of the genitals in an environment that does not allow this; sodomy, zoophilia - bestiality, sexual attraction to animals, which occurs mostly in the retarded, etc. Sexual attraction can be painfully increased, and a very strong sexual arousal arises from such weak and indifferent irritations, which usually do not cause a sexual reaction (the so-called satiriasis for men and nymphomania for women). This abnormality is caused by a dysfunction of the endocrine glands. Excessively intense sexual life Sexual excesses lead to a weakening of the body. Sex drive can be painfully reduced and even absent (see Sexual impotence).
Social problems. Sexual life in capitalist society is also characterized by flagrant contradictions in the area of sexual life: the need to ensure healthy sexual relations in the interests of human development, on the one hand, and the impossibility of doing this under capitalism, under the rule of bourgeois forms of family and marriage, hypocritical bourgeois property morality in the area of sexual relationships — on the other. In a capitalist society, marriage is only a lucrative trade deal for the bourgeoisie and "is in reality a community of lawful wives" (Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1937, p. 39). Real sexual love for a wife exists, according to Friedrich Engels, only “among the oppressed classes, therefore, at the present time, among the proletariat, regardless of whether these relations are officially recognized or not... Therefore, infidelity play an absolutely insignificant role here; the wife actually regained the right to dissolve the marriage, and when the parties cannot get along, they prefer to separate” (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in the book: Marx and Engels, Soch., vol. XVI, part 1, p. 53). While freely contracted marriages on mutual inclinations characterize the sex life of the proletariat, bourgeois marriage is basically enslaved to economic considerations based on property relations. VI Lenin exposed the hypocrisy of the sexual morality of a bourgeois society that supports prostitution, unbridled debauchery, vile forms of corrupt marriage, and gross violence against women. "The decline, decay, the filth of a bourgeois marriage, difficult to dissolve, a marriage with its freedom for a man, with its enslavement of a woman, the disgusting deceit of sexual morality and relationships — all this fills the best and most gifted youth with deep disgust" (see K. Zetkin, Lenin and the Working Woman, 1927, p. 31). On the same bourgeois-class nature of marriage under capitalist. Friedrich Engels also pointed out in a systematic manner, who showed that marriage is conditioned by the class position of the parties, is always a marriage of convenience and “quite often turns into the most open prostitution — sometimes of both parties, and much more often of a wife who differs from an ordinary courtesan only in that that he does not lease his body as a hired worker, but sells it into slavery once and for all” (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in the book: Marx and Engels, Works, Volume XVI, Part 1, p. 53).
Capitalist culture bears a pronounced stamp of the unusually painful interest of the bourgeoisie on the web. strata of society to sexual issues, to sex life and, moreover, in its most abnormal manifestations. Bourgeois art — eroticized music, painting, sculpture, literature — reflects the decay and decay of the culture of capitalist society, caused by the crisis of capitalism. Capitalist society, creating unbearable living conditions for the broad masses of workers, gives rise to abnormal conditions and forms of sexual life - late marriage due to material insecurity and, in connection with this, a strong proliferation of extramarital affairs, the development of prostitution in connection with mass unemployment and crying need (see Prostitution), the cultivation of interest in sexuality for profit (night cabarets, dance halls, pornographic literature and movies, drinking establishments, etc.). The ugly sex education of the growing generation also strongly contributes to abnormal sexual relations. In capitalist society, bourgeois youth usually begins sexual life long before the onset of physical maturity. In connection with promiscuous sexual relations among bourgeois youth, venereal diseases are very common. In bourgeois states, the incidence of venereal diseases is constantly growing: for example, in the United States for 7 years, from 1927 to 1934, the number of syphilis diseases increased by 35%, but this figure is underestimated, since with the existence of medical secrets, many diseases are not is registered. In England, the incidence of gonorrhea increased from 1925 to 1935 by 23%. The same is observed in other capitalist countries.
In the Soviet Union, there is no gender issue as a complex problem of gender relations that exists in capitalist countries, since all conditions have been created to eliminate the disharmony inherent in capitalist society between the biological demands and needs of the individual, on the one hand, and public interests, on the other. The proletarian dictatorship radically restructured marriage and family law, made women and men equal before the law and in everyday life, created a huge network of institutions for the protection of mothers and infants unprecedented anywhere in the world, ensured the wide participation of women in production and in all socialist construction. V. I. Lenin emphasized that "the especially vile, vile, hypocritical inequality in marriage and family law, inequality in relation to the child has been completely destroyed by the Soviet power" (Lenin, Soch., Vol. XXVI, p. 193). Lenin denied the independent significance of the sexual question. He considered it necessary to consider the issues of sexual life from the point of view of the interests of the development of the proletarian revolution. Lenin therefore recognized it as wrong to focus attention on them. “We say that our morality is completely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat. Our morality is derived from the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat” (Lenin, Soch., Vol. XXX, p. 410). V. I. Lenin in his conversation with K. Zetkin especially emphasized that he is distrustful of sexual theories in articles, studies, brochures, etc., in one word, to that specific literature, which grows magnificently on manure heap of bourgeois society. In Lenin's opinion, in the era of reaction, there is an excessive enthusiasm and interest in sexual life, which among the bourgeois intelligentsia and adjoining strata are manifested in connection with moods of decadence, and "in the party, the fighting proletariat... there is no place for this" (see. Zetkin K., Lenin and the working woman, 1927, p. 27). Lenin considered the unbridled SEX LIFE to be a bourgeois phenomenon alien to the proletariat, and the questions of SEX LIFE were a matter that affected the entire collective.
Lenin demanded a serious class approach to the issues of the relationship between a man and a woman, to issues of marriage and family, and especially warned against being carried away by various external revolutionary, and essentially reactionary demands of "free love." In his letters to Inessa Armand regarding the publication of a brochure for female workers, V. I. Lenin wrote: "I advise you to throw out § 3 - 'the demand for the (female) freedom of love' altogether. This is really not a proletarian, but a bourgeois demand" (see journal “Bolshevik", 1939, No. 13, p. 59) According to Lenin, in modern capitalist society, the ruling classes understand "freedom of love" as “freedom from the responsibility” in love, "from childbirth," "freedom of the adulterer," etc.; Lenin opposed the "philistine-intellectual peasant... vulgar and dirty marriage without love" and the demands of "free love" - "Proletarian civil marriage with love" (see the same, pp. 59 and 61). Sexual life Lenin considered from the point of view of love, the birth of a new life. “Love needs two, and a third, new, life is born. This position is a public interest, a duty in relation to society” (see K. Zetkin, Lenin and the working woman, 1927, p. 33). Sexual hypertrophy, as Lenin put it, does not give cheerfulness, but, on the contrary, takes it away. Pointing out that he does not preach asceticism and that a communist should not carry with him asceticism, but the joy of being, vitality, as well as the fullness of love for life, V. I. Lenin points out the correct path for the development of the interests of young people. “It is young people who need cheerfulness and vitality. Healthy sports, gymnastics, swimming, travel, exercise of all kinds, versatility of mental interests. Perhaps more jointly to study, study, explore. All this will give young people more than eternal "lectures and discussions about sexual problems and the so-called elimination. Healthy body, healthy mind! Not a monk or Don Juan, but not a German man in the street either” (see ibid.).
In the USSR, the Great October Socialist Revolution had a huge healing effect on everyday life, on marriage and family. If in the first years after the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution there were still strong vestiges of capitalism in the economy and in the minds of people, which was reflected in a rather large number of unstable sexual relations, then as socialist construction grew, especially after the elimination of unemployment, and with it, and prostitution, sexual life began to take the form of lasting, mostly marital sexual relations, which were already based on the feeling of love. The number of tailcoats increased sharply, the number of divorces greatly decreased. Surveys on the sexual life of young people, carried out by a number of authors in 1926, 1929 and in 1931, showed that young people began to enter sex life later, the number of fleeting and extramarital sexual intercourse decreased, and the role of marriage in sexual life increased greatly, moreover, marriage by mutual attraction, and not for economic reasons. Stalin's concern for the mother, for the child, for our youth, for her upbringing created all the conditions for the development of a strong, cheerful generation. The system of upbringing of children and adolescents in the USSR is based on the cultivation of ardent love for the homeland, a sense of camaraderie, love for work, spiritual requests in the field of art, and respect for a woman as a comrade in work. A lot of creative impulses have been created that distract the attention of young people from excessive sexual hobbies and direct their energy to joyful work and healthy rest, combined with physical culture. The co-education of children and adolescents of both sexes greatly contributed to the establishment of companionship among young people. Especially beneficial is the ennobling influence of the Pioneer and Komsomol organization on the life of children and youth, on awakening and meeting their cultural needs and on all their moral behavior.
In our country, the conditions that Engels put forward as a prerequisite for the improvement of the sex life of workers after the overthrow of capitalist society have been realized: exactly the generation that Engels dreamed of is growing up - “a generation of men who will never have to buy a woman for money or other means of social power, and a generation of women who will never have to surrender to a man for any reason other than genuine love, or refuse to surrender to their beloved man for fear of economic consequences” (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, in .: Marx and Engels, Soch., Vol. XVI, h. 1, p. 63). Signed: D. Gorfin.