Sexuality and the body in Russian culture

Jane T. Costlow, Stephanie Sandler, Judith Vowles

"Russians have their own, particular erotic culture, it's just that we don't know much about it." With these words, a contemporary Russian sexologist and psychologist sums both the premise and purpose of this volume to demonstrate that sexuality and the body in Russian culture is a valid, distinct, and complex subject; to explore why so little is known about it, compared with the practices and discourses of sexuality in Western countries; and to examine what we do know. The twelve essays in this volume break new ground in showing the ways in which ideas about sexuality, gender, and the body have shaped and been shaped by Russian literature, history, art, and philosophy from the medieval period to the present day. Because sexual practices and images of the body have received scant treatment by Russian scholars until very recently, the introduction investigates why Russian culture has treated questions of sexuality and the body with reticence, traces how this reticence itself became a myth of Russian culture, and provides background and historical context. The essays draw on a wide range of approaches - from postmodern and Foucault-influenced theories to more traditional historical and philological readings - but all are informed by feminist theory and practice in studying how gender has shaped the representations of bodies and sexual pleasures in Russia. Among the topics covered are: the language of sexual taboo in the medieval period, the figure of the prostitute in early Soviet writing, travel narratives about eighteenth-century Russian manners, the trial of the artist Natalia Goncharova for pornography, the critical reception accorded lesbian poet Sofia Parnok, the lyrics of motherhood and sexuality by Maria Shkapskaya, the misogyny of the popular puppet spectacle Petrushka, representations of the maternal breast in nineteenth-century literature, and the contemporary writer Tatiana Tolstaya's use of gender stereotypes.