Sex Question

SEX QUESTION (sexual problem) encompasses in the present time in bourgeois countries a broad circle of questions concerning the physiology, psychology, psychopathology, eugenics, ethnology, law, sociology, and social hygiene of sexual life. The S.Q. in bourgeois society plays a very significant role, usually greatly exaggerated and artificially emphasized. At the same time, healthy public attention to questions of sexual life is determined by a number of very important circumstances: sexual attraction is a powerful factor in the preservation of the species; sexual functions, being a source of the generation of new lives, are connected with problems of population, questions of the quantity and quality of new generations; the physical and mental health of the collective stands in a certain degree of connection with one or another aspects of sexual life (the role of prostitution, the influence of venereal diseases on the health and capacity for work of the collective, the role of abortions, neuroses of a sexual nature, etc.).-The doctrine of sex became scientific only in the last 2-3 decades. Almost until the most recent time, knowledge of the basic processes of human sexual function rested on the most primitive conceptions. Despite the enormous victories of materialist knowledge in other areas of biology, the area of sexual theory until the end of the 19th century remained completely in the captivity of idealism. The sexual function of humans, sexual attraction, relations between the sexes, etc., which changed forms of their manifestation under the influence of the general change in social relations determined by the economic development of society, were considered unchanging; sexual attraction was approached from the point of view of absolute concepts of good and evil, a number of physiological processes were attempted to be explained by an originally existing expediency. The scientific study of problems of sexual life was approached with prejudice. And if the pre-revolutionary bourgeoisie of the Renaissance era, in opposition to the medieval church, demanded a healthy and open attitude toward questions of sex, then in the period of the decline of capitalism, bourgeois society with its hypocrisy, prudish morality and the lush flourishing of pornographic literature considers it necessary to conceal all that was connected with the scientific illumination of sexual life: the well-known English sexologist Havelock Ellis at the end of the last century could not publish the results of his research in England due to the prejudices of bourgeois society and the traditions of academic circles. The development of the doctrine of sexuality into a scientific discipline proceeded by different paths, which merged into one channel only recently. The first to follow the path of studying sexuality was psychiatry in the persons of Westphal, Magnan, Lasègue, Krafft-Ebing, who studied psychosexual deviations from the norm, connecting these deviations rather superficially and one-sidedly with endogenous factors of abnormal constitution. The most comprehensive work of this period was Krafft-Ebing's book 'On Sexual Psychopathy' (1884; this book was reprinted many times in various languages, including Russian). The weak side of these first works in the field of sexology was that they were based on the casuistry of psychiatric clinics, considered sexual perversions exclusively from a medical point of view and treated the problem of sexual psychopathology as a problem of degeneration. In a number of works, Havelock Ellis gives an analysis of a number of major problems of sexual life. In the 90s, with special works devoted to problems of sexuality, appeared the Viennese neuropathologist and psychiatrist Sigmund Freud. His doctrine was developed more comprehensively in the 1900s. Built on an idealistic basis, penetrated, especially in recent years, by nothing concealed mysticism, completely unsubstantiated, especially in its sociological part and in the advancement of the sexual principle as the main driving factor in human and social life,-Freud's doctrine nevertheless made a certain contribution to the development of sexology through the enormous factual material which Freud and his disciples collected, and partly through the method of psychoanalysis. Already in the article published with Breuer on the mental mechanism of hysterical phenomena (1893) and in the book 'Studien über Hysterie' (Lpz.-Wien, 1909), Freud, while studying hysteria, came to the conclusion that neuroses are an expression of disturbances or psychic traumas, mainly of the sexual sphere in early childhood. The sexual is fundamental in all mental and especially emotional manifestations. All creative processes arise through the sublimation of the sexual. Sexuality plays a dominant role in human and social life. Sexuality manifests itself at a very early age: the infant already in the act of sucking receives sexual experiences. Sexual manifestations in children pass through three basic stages: the early stage, or homosexual, autoeroticism, or narcissism, and the stage of sexual maturity, or heterosexual.-In 1904, Forel's book 'The Sexual Question' appeared. It went through a number of editions and was translated into many languages, including Russian. On the title page of the book it stated: 'a natural-scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological investigation'. In 1906, Ivan Bloch's book 'The Sexual Life of Our Time' appeared in German. In the preface, Bloch wrote that he considered the problem of sexual life 'not only from the point of view of medicine but also from the point of view of anthropology and cultural history, convinced that a purely medical consideration, although it will always constitute the core of the science of sexual life,-is insufficient. For understanding the multifaceted relations of sex to all other areas of human life, the science of sexual life needs to be included in the science of man in general, embracing and all other sciences: general biology, anthropology and ethnography, philosophy and psychology, medicine, history of literature and history of culture in its full extent'. Paying special attention to 'the tendencies of social, economic and racial-hygienic character that have recently appeared in the sphere of sexual life, especially manifested in the question of such an important struggle against sexual diseases, in the question of the protection of motherhood and of free love', Bloch considered the struggle for the elimination of venereal diseases the central problem of the S.Q. Despite however the significant advances made in the study of the sexual question by the beginning of the 1900s, sexology still remained devoid of that scientific basis which was introduced into it, on the one hand, by biology, endocrinology and reflexology, on the other-by Marxist methodology and special works by Marx-Engels-Lenin devoted to the history of marriage and family, analysis of marriage and family, relations between the sexes, the position of women, causes of prostitution in capitalist society, as well as views on the future of all these relations under socialism. The research of Correns, Morgan, Wilson, Johannsen and others in the 20th century deeply and comprehensively developed what had been done by Gregor Mendel, who discovered the laws of heredity in 1865, and by Oscar Hertwig, who showed in 1875 the course of the fertilization process. Thus the problems of sex in a biological respect became truly on a materialistic basis. Of no less importance for the scientific development of sexology were the advances of endocrinology in the 20th century. More or less random observations on eunuchs, concerning the relations between the sexual glands and sexual characteristics, became much clearer thanks to the systematic experimental research conducted by Steinach, Sand, Lipschutz on animals, especially experiments on guinea pigs, as well as the experiments of Brandes, Pezard, Voronoff and Zavadovsky on other mammals and birds. Here should also be included the works of Biedl, Ancel et Bouin, Kyrle, Stieve, Prange, Danilevsky, Tushnov, Sakharov and others. These works clarified the enormous importance of the sexual glands and the specific sex hormones they produce in the biology and pathology of sexual life. A great role in the scientific development of sexology was also played in the 20th century by the works of Bekhterev, who studied sexual attraction from the point of view of reflexology. Along with the study of problems of sex by medicine and biology, the scientific illumination of a number of aspects of sexual life proceeded from the side of anthropology, sociology and ethnography (Westermark, Reitzenstein, Ploss-Bartels, Muller-Lyer, La-targue, Kunow, Kautsky, Malinowsky, Felix Bryck and others). Already by the end of the last century a colossal amount of material had been accumulated, which, according to Müller-Lyer, 'encompassed all sociological phenomena that are directly or indirectly connected with the production of people' and which, according to Müller-Lyer, encompassed the sociology of love, marriage and its conclusion, winning brides, dissolution of marriage, the social position of women, the family, education, inheritance, sexual selection, age status, kinship, wedding institutions, etc.'

However, all this vast material, the collection of which by bourgeois travelers, ethnographers, cultural historians, and others continues to the present day, is predominantly descriptive, without delving into establishing the connection between family-marital organization and the entire social structure, and without rising to grasping the social regularity guiding the development of the family and marriage. Marx holds first place in establishing that sexual relations in society are regulated primarily by social relations at each given stage of social development. At a time when there were no significant ethnographic studies, Marx pointed out that marriage and family are such a historical category as other social institutions and establishments, and that economic interests played the main role in the emergence of these institutions. Following him, Engels, as he wrote, carrying out Marx's spiritual testament, in his book 'The Origin of the Family, Private Property and State' on the basis of research by Morgan, Bachofen, McLennan, and others, gave a brilliant historical analysis of the family. The primary form of relations between the sexes, according to Engels, was promiscuity: relatively disorderly sexual relations expressed in unstable, easily dissolvable unions. The primitive form of sexual relations was 'disorderly insofar as there were as yet no restrictions established later by custom. But from this by no means follows the necessity of mixing all and sundry in everyday practice. By no means is the existence of temporary single pairs excluded' (Engels). The original and spontaneously arisen form of human society was the clan, based on blood ties, and only after clan ties began to weaken did diverse forms of family develop. On the heels of relative promiscuity comes group marriage, which first passes through the phase of the consanguineous family, which arises as a result of the tribe splitting into several age groups. Sexual intercourse is permitted only between groups of the same age; sexual intercourse between persons related by ascending or descending lineal ties is excluded. In the next phase of the family, the punaluan, or comradeship, gradually developed from the previous one, sexual intercourse is already prohibited not only between persons related by ascending and descending lineal ties, but also between nearest relatives in the direct line (brothers and sisters). With the transition to a more settled way of life, the family becomes syndasmic (casual). Here, and in the phase of group marriage, kinship is determined by the mother, there is a community of property for the individual household, whose structure places the woman as the leader. The complication of economic relations and the constant wars among savages lead to the development of new forms of marriage and family. On the heels of the peculiar form of sexual relations, resting on the absence of private property and primitive communism with its universal equality, which destroyed the right of the strongest individual and the strongest sex, first comes the predatory marriage, and then the purchased one. The woman who freely disposed of herself gradually loses her freedom. The primary monogamous heterostatic system is destroyed. The growing elements of private property replace this system with one where a man can keep as many women as his position among his tribesmen and his physical strength, which ensure him success in abducting women, allow him. The development of barter, gradually replacing the abduction of women with sale, transforms woman into the property of man. On the heels of matriarchy comes the patriarchal family, and Engels sees the reason for this change in the complication of the conditions of economic life, in the taming of animals, the breeding of herds, and agriculture. 'The overthrow of mother-right,' writes Engels, 'was the defeat of the female sex, having world-historical significance. Man took the reins of government in the house, and woman lost her honorable position, was enslaved, turned into a slave to his passions, a mere instrument for childbirth.' 'Individual marriage,' writes Engels, 'in its appearance in history by no means means reconciliation between man and woman, and even less can it be recognized as the highest form of marriage. On the contrary, it means the enslavement of one sex by the other, the proclamation of mutual hostility of the sexes, unknown until then in all previous history.' Further, quoting Marx's words that 'the first division of labor occurred between man and woman for the purpose of producing children,' Engels adds: 'The first class contradiction appearing in history is revealed in the development of the opposition of interests between husband and wife in individual marriage, and the first class oppression—in the enslavement of the female sex by the male.' The monogamous family, grown on the basis of patriarchy, has survived in bourgeois society to the present day. The bourgeois state in every way protects the family and marriage as an institution of private property. The main goal of bourgeois legislation is to ensure property rights and inheritance rights. Marriage and family law in bourgeois countries primarily protects the 'legal' marriage (see). The rights of 'illegitimate' children are very limited. In most countries, the state recognizes civil marriage either exclusively or on a par with the religious ceremony. In a number of countries to the present day, canon law has retained full force, according to which marriage is indissoluble. In most bourgeois countries, legislation in every way makes divorce difficult. Hence all the falsehood and hypocrisy that constitute the essence and foundation of bourgeois marriage and family. Hence the problem of freeing marriage and especially divorce from the guardianship of the church and state as the most important component of the S.Q. and sexual reform in capitalist countries. Marx, Engels, and Lenin are responsible for the most brilliant analysis and critique of marriage, family, and relations between the sexes in bourgeois society. Marx and Engels repeatedly emphasized that marriage and family in bourgeois society are a form of private property, that the bourgeois family cannot be separated from its economic basis, that all relations in bourgeois marriage and family are purely monetary relations. 'On what does the modern bourgeois family rest? On capital, on private gain' (Marx and Engels, 'Communist Manifesto'). Engels evaluates the bourgeois marriage in contemporary French and German society 'as a legally recognized form of debauchery' (Engels, 'Anti-Dühring'), 'as the crudest prostitution sometimes for both sides, more often for the woman, who differs from the ordinary courtesan only in that she hires out her body not by piecework, as a hired worker, but sells it once and for all into permanent slavery' (Engels). Monogamous marriage and family in capitalist society do not in fact exist, 'and in civilized countries in this 'final union' long ago ceased to see anything morally binding, and on the contrary, the husband keeps a mistress, and the wife horns her husband' (Marx and Engels, Works, vol. V, Research, articles 1845-1848, pp. 155-156). Another component of the S.Q. and sexual reform in modern capitalist countries is prostitution (see), its associated spread of venereal diseases and the need to prevent them. Prostitution, being closely connected with the institution of bourgeois marriage, is a necessary social institution of the bourgeois system. 'In bourgeois society marriage represents one side of sexual life, prostitution—the other' (Bebel). Prostitution is a consequence of unemployment in capitalist society and 'is a symptom of the poor organization of our society' (Marx and Engels, Research and articles, vol. III, p. 674). Its social roots are in 'the need and poverty of working families, the exploitation of child labor, the unbearable housing conditions' (Lenin, vol. XXVI, 5th international congress for the struggle against prostitution). Tens of thousands of prostitutes, filling the city streets every evening and forced to sell their bodies to the first passerby, owe their position to the 'virtuous' bourgeoisie and its deception: 'the bourgeoisie itself promotes the development of prostitution' (Engels, 'The Condition of the Working Class in England', p. 147). The demand for prostitution is conditioned by the breakdown of the family, the decreasing significance of marriage due to late marriages, which are timed to the period of full economic independence, the achievement of which in the conditions of the post-war world economic crisis is becoming increasingly difficult. The demand for prostitution is also conditioned by the fact that under capitalism, sexual pleasures, like alcohol, are presented as a necessary institution of social euphoria. Finally, the development of prostitution in capitalist society is connected with the fact that it, like other types of capitalist enterprises, is a source of capitalist gain. The colossal spread of venereal diseases, standing in close connection with the existence of prostitution, forces bourgeois society to raise the question of the struggle against prostitution.

This struggle, which is mainly directed against the prostitute and is expressed in regulation, abolitionism, or the American system, yields no results. The main cause giving rise to prostitution—unemployment—'modern society, based on competition' (Marx and Engels)—cannot be eliminated; therefore, the 'struggle against prostitution,' which is supported precisely by the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, 'is disgusting bourgeois hypocrisy' (Lenin). The compulsion of a woman to sell her body to the first passerby is in the closest connection with the economic, political, and sexual inequality of women in capitalist society. This question is the third component part of the sexual problem and sexual reform in capitalist society. Marx, Engels, and Lenin, proceeding from the position that the degree of freedom achieved by a given society should be measured by the greater or lesser freedom of women in that society, considered that 'the entire position of woman in capitalist society dehumanizes her' (Marx and Engels, Works, 1844-45, Vol. III, pp. 228-229). In bourgeois society, woman becomes prey and an object serving 'to satisfy social lust' (Marx and Engels). In the words of the bourgeois philosopher Nietzsche that 'when a woman has scholarly inclinations, there is usually something wrong with her sexual sphere,' the vulgar cynical attitude of bourgeois society toward woman found its brightest expression. The position of the working woman and peasant woman is especially difficult in capitalist society. The working woman and peasant woman in capitalist society, in addition to being oppressed by capitalism, is also oppressed by man, who retains all privileges and with whom she is not equal even in the most advanced and 'free' bourgeois republic. In capitalist society, women 'remain in 'domestic servitude,' 'domestic slaves,' being crushed by the most stupefying work of the kitchen and generally of solitary household management' (Lenin). In the sexual sphere, the inequality of woman is best illustrated by the existence of a dual sexual morality and the attitude of bourgeois legislation toward the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child. The position of the unmarried mother and the illegitimate child and their protection constitute the fourth component part of the S. q. and sexual reform in capitalist countries. In capitalist society, sexual feeling in most people awakens extremely early. Already at the age of 10-12 years, and in many cases even earlier, conflicts arise which have an enormous influence on a person's further life. These conflicts consist in the fact that sexual maturation usually occurs significantly earlier than the maturity of the organism as a whole, that sexual desire awakens for the most part significantly earlier than sexual maturity, that the search for an answer to the question of the essence of sexual life and information about it occurs not at the age at which it is necessary, not in the light in which it would be desirable, not by the persons and not from the sources from which information about the sexual process would be necessary to obtain. And these conflicts are predominantly a phenomenon not of biological but of social order: the chaos of the capitalist system, all sides of which have distorted the healthy biological and social manifestations of the human organism, sexualizing elements, deeply and powerfully permeating in the capitalist system all sides of human life, hypocrisy in the matter of informing youth about the true essence and social significance of sexual life—such are the causes of these first early conflicts of sexual life. Behind these first conflicts, expressed in the inability to practice sexual abstinence until a certain age, early masturbation, etc., follows a series of other conflicts consisting in the early beginning of sexual intercourse, the promiscuity of premarital sexual relations, conflicts in marriage, extramarital sexual intercourse, and in connection with them the spread of venereal diseases, etc. Being helpless in eliminating all these conflicts, not knowing and not wanting to uncover to the end the real causes of all these conflicts, bourgeois sexology tries to reduce these conflicts to incorrect sexual upbringing and lack of sexual education. Hence the demand for sexual education and sexual enlightenment as the fifth component part of the S. q. and sexual reform in modern bourgeois society. The sixth component part in the S. q. of the modern bourgeois state is the problem of abortion (see), which in turn is part of the general questions of the struggle against childbirth, entering into the problem of population. The problem of abortion is also connected with the question of contraceptives, which constitute a large section of the S. q. The legislation of almost all modern bourgeois states prohibits the performance of abortions for non-medical reasons; the circle of medical indications for the performance of abortions is very limited. The laws on abortion are not only a relic of reactionary clericalism, but above all a reflection of the institution of property; according to canon law, the fetus is already a bearer of the divine spirit, and abortion is considered murder. The laws on abortion, which are an expression of the policy of forced birthrate, are closely connected with modern militarism, which needs a large amount of cannon fodder for its continuous wars. The circumstances connected with the fact that the modern family, through conscious limitation of birthrate (through abortions, contraceptives, etc.), has almost completely ceased to fulfill one of its main functions—the 'reproduction' of children—also force bourgeois legislation to go the way of prohibiting abortion. Numerous bourgeois politicians in Germany and other countries consider it necessary to maintain the laws on abortion in order to struggle against 'sexual savagery,' because, 'if a girl knows that the performance of abortion will go unpunished, then the already existing and now sexual savagery of morals will catastrophically drag the people into the abyss.' Bourgeois legislation on abortion is deeply class in its nature. With its sharp edge it is directed against women from the working classes, who in the presence of a prohibition on abortion are forced to turn to various midwives, healers, and midwives to perform it. The main goal—increase in birthrate—this legislation does not achieve; on the contrary, the increasing year by year epidemic of abortions and the continuous decrease in birthrate have become an integral factor in the life of modern capitalist society. Partially in connection with this ineffectiveness of the laws on abortion and mainly in connection with the depreciation of labor power, in the conditions of the modern world economic crisis and multi-million, year by year increasing unemployment, and hence the lack of interest in new births, more radical bourgeois elements are putting forward, especially in recent times, demands for the legalization of abortion and the widespread distribution of contraceptives. In the S. q. of the modern bourgeois state, a significant place is occupied by the problem of sexual crimes, their punishability, and the reform of this legislation, as the seventh component part. A characteristic feature of bourgeois law is the application of the principle of public responsibility for such acts which, although not accompanied by the violation of anyone's rights, are considered immoral. Hence the punishability of various sexual perversions: homosexuality, sodomy, etc. Sexual perversions are extremely widespread in modern bourgeois states (see Homosexuality). The relations between the sexes, marriage and family, which arose on an economic basis and are closely connected with the institution of private property, begin to disintegrate very early. The development of industrial capitalism finally undermines all the foundations of the old family and radically changes not only the relations between husband and wife but also between parents and children. The family, in former epochs for the most part producing everything it needed, now begins more and more to borrow consumer goods first from small industry, then from capitalist—factory. Family economy begins to lose its former economic self-sufficiency and with it many of the former social functions. The state, increasingly strengthening itself, now takes from the father the right of family jurisdiction, places women and children under some of its protection, grants the wife some (very limited) social equality, and establishes her right to children. Woman to an increasing degree begins to participate in industrial life; her independence in economic, personal, and finally political relations increases. Thus the personality in the family acquires ever greater significance, and the former monogamy, resting on relations of private property, begins to be felt as already obsolete and burdensome.

Despite all this process, however, 'the actual body of the family, property relations, exclusive relations with other families, compulsory cohabitation, relations connected with the presence of children, the arrangement of modern cities, the accumulation of capital, etc.,—all this remained, because the existence of the family became inevitable due to its connection with the independent of the will of bourgeois society mode of production. The family continues to exist in the 20th century with only the difference that its disintegration has become universal due to more developed industry and competition' (Marx and Engels, 'The Holy Max'). The 20th century and especially the years associated with the last imperialist war have finally led to the collapse of marriage and the family. The war mechanically broke up a huge number of marriages; hundreds of thousands of adult men and women, who were married and accustomed to sexual intercourse, being separated from each other for long months and years, went the way of extramarital relations. Tens of thousands of girls, who in normal times would have entered into marriage and were deprived of this opportunity due to the mobilization of marriageable age men, also went the way of extramarital relations. The war, accompanied by the death of millions of healthy men in the prime of their lives, sharply disrupted the relationships between the male and female parts of the population (see Age-sex composition of the population and War). A striking indicator of the collapse of marriage and the family in bourgeois countries is the extraordinarily high growth of divorces with a constantly decreasing number of marriages concluded, especially now, during the period of the world economic crisis. In 1925 compared to 1913, in almost all European states the number of divorces doubled, in England the number of divorces increased more than 4 times, and in Austria more than 7 times. In the USA the number of divorces from 1905 to 1923 increased by more than 140%. In some states one divorce fell for every 2^1/2 marriages. And this happened despite the fact that obtaining a divorce in bourgeois states and to the present day is extremely difficult, that 'the right to divorce in most cases remains unrealizable under capitalism' (Lenin), because in the legislation on marriage and divorce 'modern bourgeois democracy even in all the most democratic republics shows itself in this respect precisely as feudal' (Lenin). Along with the decrease in marriage rates and the increase in divorces, an important indicator of the crisis processes of the bourgeois family is the greatly increased after the war number of children born out of wedlock. And this despite the presence of legislation that protects primarily the rights of 'legitimate' children. In Germany out of every 100 born there were in 1913 9.7 illegitimate, in 1926--12.6; in Berlin in 1926 every fifth child was born out of wedlock; in Austria in 1922 out of every 100 born there were 20 born out of wedlock, in 1927--25.7. Finally, the extraordinarily increased, especially after the war in capitalist countries, prostitution and extramarital relations testify to the complete collapse of bourgeois marriage and the family. Numerous bourgeois researchers, such as Kaiserling, Hinkle, Hoffmann, Michels, Fosdick, Maurer, Mitchell, Sernau, Horney and others, confirm this phenomenon. Marriage, family, sexual relations are experiencing a profound crisis. The need to find some way out of the situation is recognized by all. Hence the numerous and diverse measures that are now being put forward in bourgeois countries to improve sexual relations and save marriage and the family. The project of the new Italian criminal code proposes to introduce punishment in the form of three years' imprisonment for adultery in marriage. Some agricultural areas of the USA react to the phenomena of the disintegration of the American family by methods of the Ku Klux Klan: often people in masks forcibly take the destroyer or female destroyer of marriage into the woods, strip them naked, smear them with tar, cover their bodies with feathers and force them to run, warning them not to be caught again. In all countries, multi-volume books on the physiology of love are being written, based on the consideration that familiarity with this 'art' will save the bourgeois marriage from destruction. Numerous authors propose various projects for the reform of marriage. In 1924 Knight in America put forward and later Lindsey developed in detail the idea of companionate marriage (Companiate Marriage--comradeship marriage); with ideas close to this marriage, Buchow-Hochmeyer in Germany--'Temporary Marriage' (Die Zeitehe), and in Austria Urbanich--'Trial Marriage' (Die Probeehe) appeared. Others put forward ideas of student marriage, marriage in threes, etc. All these projects, with greater or less determination, with significant or insignificant doses of utopianism, proposed in one way or another to reform marriage and thereby improve the deadlocked sexual relations. However, in essence these projects only increase freedom for men and actually further root the inequality of the sexes. Of course, they do not see the real causes of the deadlocked sexual question in capitalist countries. They do not intend to fight with the capitalist system, which objectively in its course of development is disintegrating and corrupting bourgeois marriage and the family. This is what makes their projects utopian and doomed to death. Despite the great acuteness of the sexual question in capitalist countries, the bourgeois movement for sexual reform is very weak. The fight for sexual reform is led by the Sexological Institute in Berlin (Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft), organized in 1919 by Magnus Hirschfeld, the Society of Physicians for the Study of Sexology and Constitution in Berlin (founded in 1913; in 1927 it had 300 members). Its organ is 'Arch. f. Frauenkunde und Konstitutionsforschung' (appearing since 1914). In 1913 the International Society of Sexology was founded in Berlin; its organ is 'Ztschr. f. Sexualwissenschaft und Sexualpolitik' (since 1914). After the war, two international congresses of this society were held. Societies that deal with issues of sexual reform are also the German League for Birth Control and Sexual Hygiene (Berlin, in 1929 19,500 members; organs: 'Sexualhygiene' and 'Der Wachruf'), the League for the Protection of Motherhood and Social and Family Hygiene (Berlin, in 1929 8,000 members; organ 'Liebe und Leben'). After the war, the World League for Sexual Reform (Welt-Liga fur Sexualreform) also arises, led by Hirschfeld, Forel, and Ellis. Until 1932 the League convened five international congresses. Representatives of the USSR took part in the works of these international congresses up to the fourth congress in Vienna in 1930. According to Hirschfeld's report to the IV Congress, the League consisted of 182 members representing various societies with a total membership of 130,000 people. The main demands put forward by the World League for Sexual Reform are as follows: political, economic, and sexual equality of women; liberation of marriage and especially divorce from the guardianship of the church and the state; regulation of birth control in the sense of responsible attitude to one's reproduction; implementation of eugenic measures; protection of the unmarried mother and child; proper approach to the evaluation of intersexual variations, especially homosexual men and women; prevention of prostitution and venerealism; changing views on perversions of the sexual instinct, which should be considered not as a crime, sin or vice, but as a more or less pathological phenomenon; criminal sexual law that punishes only actual invasions of the sexual freedom of another person, but not interfering with sexual acts based on the sexual consent of adults; systematic sexual education and enlightenment. The practical result of the movement for sexual reform in bourgeois countries, if we do not count very small achievements in the field of legislation, is the organization in a number of countries of state consultations on marriage and sexual life (Sexualberatungsstelle). In the USSR there is no sexual question in the sense in which it exists in capitalist countries. There is also no such acuteness of attention, such unhealthy curiosity and at the same time such hypocritical attitude, so characteristic in relation to this question in capitalist countries. The USSR is the only country in the world in which basically those problems are solved which in the bourgeois system lead to a constantly existing and insoluble sexual question. And if in bourgeois countries the impossibility of solving this question socially, which cannot be done without the destruction of capitalism, leads to the fact that the entire problem is often transferred to the biological and ethical plane, then the USSR, which has basically completed the construction of the foundation of socialism, solves this problem socially. The October Revolution, in the first two months of its existence, overthrew all the old legislation on marriage and the family.

The church's protection over marriage was removed, and although the law provided for the registration of marriage, an unregistered marriage was equated in all rights with a registered one. All permissions for marriage were abolished and freedom of divorce was established upon the application of one of the spouses. In the legislation on marriage and family, the law took the side of the weaker party; therefore, without interfering in the substance of relations, it established the obligation to guarantee the interests of spouses and children; parental rights can be exercised only in the interests of the child; the law provided broad opportunities for establishing paternity; property acquired during marriage is considered common. All this legislation, which was an expression of completely new socio-economic relations, led to the family ceasing to be an institution of private property and acquiring a completely new content. Freedom of divorce did not lead to the breakdown of family relations, but to their strengthening: 'freedom of divorce does not mean the "breakdown" of family ties, but on the contrary, their strengthening on the only possible and stable democratic foundations in civilized society' (Lenin). In 1925, per 10,000 population of the RSFSR there were 16.4 divorces, in the USA-15.2, i.e. almost the same number. And this was at a time when in capitalist countries 'the right to divorce in most cases remains unrealized', when it is here 'difficult to implement, conditionally limited, formally narrow', when 'the actual number of actual divorces (of course not sanctioned by the church and the law) is incomparably greater everywhere' (Lenin). The 1926 census showed that marriage and family in the USSR remain almost the exclusive form of socio-sexual relations. An analysis of the census results, conducted by the Ukrainian demographer A. Khomenko, led him to the conclusion that 'a marriage organized in the Soviet manner and formalized legally is such a widespread form of sexual relations that no other forms can compete with it'. Surveys of sexual life conducted among different groups of the population of our country show that modern marriage satisfies its participants in the overwhelming majority. In a survey of sexual life conducted by Z. Gurevich in 1930 among 4,500 female workers and employees, 80% of female workers and 85% of employees answered that they were satisfied with their married life. 88% of men and 96% of women, according to a 1926 survey of sexual life (Gurevich), consider marriage and long-term cohabitation as the ideal of sexual life. The great significance in creating a new family in the USSR and thereby in improving sexual relations was that the Soviet country, in its very first year of existence, did not leave 'in the true sense of the word a stone upon stone from those vile laws about the inequality of women, about restrictions on divorce, about the disgusting formalities accompanying it, about the non-recognition of children born out of wedlock, about the search for their fathers, etc.-laws, the remnants of which are numerous in all civilized countries' (Lenin). The Soviet republic immediately ensured legal equality for women. It set itself the task of completely freeing and emancipating women, involving them in politics, socially productive labor, pulling them out of 'domestic slavery', freeing them from subjugation, from stupefying and degrading, eternal and exclusive kitchen conditions. And this task could only be resolved by socialism, only by the transition from small farms to common and collective cultivation of the land. 'The real emancipation of women, the real communism will begin only there and when, where and when the mass struggle (led by the proletariat possessing state power) against this small domestic economy begins, or rather, the mass reorganization of it into a large socialist economy. Public dining rooms, kindergartens, nurseries-these are samples of these sprouts, these are the simple, everyday, not assuming anything pompous, eloquent, solemn means that in practice are capable of freeing women, in practice are capable of reducing and destroying her inequality with man in her role in social production and in social life'. This task set by Lenin in 1919 has now been basically resolved. Under the conditions of unprecedented successes in the field of industrialization and collectivization, the working woman and peasant woman of the USSR are increasingly being drawn into socially productive labor, politics, the building of socialism, and education year by year. In enterprises and institutions of the USSR at present there are 5,715 thousand women. Compared to 1926, the number of female workers and employees increased in Moscow by 222%, in Gorky by 258%, in Astrakhan by 274%, in Stalingrad by 435%. In 1926, there were 9.9% women in rural soviets, in 1932-21%. In city soviets there were 18%, now 25.8%. In the USSR Central Executive Committee of the first convocation there were 12 women members and candidates, in the sixth convocation-166. One-sixth of the party and two-fifths of the Komsomol at present consist of women. 35% of all members of the collective farm boards in Ukraine are women. In 1897, literate women in Russia were only 11%, in 1931-65%. In FZU schools in the RSFSR, 33% of all students are women. In higher educational institutions, about 1/6 of future engineers are women; in individual industries this percentage rises to 40. In higher medical educational institutions, the percentage of women reaches 69.6. By the beginning of 1932, almost 3/4 million working women are studying in higher educational institutions, technical schools, workers' faculties, and FZUs. Also year by year, the number of public dining rooms, kindergartens, nurseries, laundries is growing-all that actually contributes to the emancipation of women. At the beginning of the five-year plan, public dining rooms could provide food for 720 thousand people a day, by 1932 they serve up to 15 million people in cities, up to 9 million in collective farms. In 1917, there were 4,920 kindergartens in the cities of the USSR; in 1932-879,700; seasonal kindergartens in rural areas were 35,000 in 1917, and 6,340,000 in 1932. In close connection with the elimination of unemployment in the USSR, the completely new position of women, the radical change in marriage and family, and consequently the improvement of sexual relations, prostitution has almost completely disappeared. A significant reduction in prostitution could be observed compared to the pre-war time already in the first years after the October Revolution. On the streets of cities in the socialist country, you no longer encounter anything that even remotely resembles the horrific pictures of prostitution in large capitalist cities. Of course, prostitution has not yet been completely eliminated. There remain individual, very few women who prefer to engage in prostitution rather than go to work in factories and plants. The task of the public should be the re-education of these most alienated members of the collective and their involvement in labor. One of the indicators of the health-improving processes in the sexual life of the USSR as a result of the sharp reduction in prostitution, the new content of marriage and family, and the position of women is the reduction in venereal diseases (see Venereal diseases). Also, the legalization of abortion in the USSR was a health-improving factor. The legalization of abortions in the USSR also did not have a noticeable effect on the birth rate of the population. The USSR is in Europe the country with the highest birth rate (see) and natural population growth. Completely different compared to capitalist countries is the legislation on sexual crimes in the USSR. Its basis is the principle of responsibility for offenses that violate anyone's interests or are accompanied by causing harm. The moral assessment of offenses as a measure of guilt is excluded. Violence in both direct and hidden forms, as well as any kind of corruption, is punishable. The rights of children and adolescents are specially protected.-Finally, the questions of sexual education and enlightenment and related questions of sexual abstinence, the struggle with masturbation, the early beginning of sexual life and all related socio-pathological processes are posed in the USSR completely differently compared to capitalist countries. This difference becomes understandable from the presence in our country of at least only such factors as joint education and upbringing of boys and girls, the class nature of this upbringing, their early involvement in socio-political life, the pioneer movement. Only these factors create the basis for reasonable sexual education, for directing sexuality into a healthy channel. We thus see that all questions of sex in the USSR stand in a completely different social plane compared to capitalist countries. The problems of freeing marriage and divorce from the guardianship of the church and the state, the political inequality of women, the position of the unmarried mother and child, the prohibition of abortion, the punishability of sexual perversions-in short, the problems that form the basis of the sex question in capitalist countries-do not exist at all in the USSR. Other problems, such as the economic inequality of women, the elimination of prostitution and the associated venerealism, are basically resolved and in the very near future with the further course of socialist construction will be finally eradicated.

Third, those expressing the remnants of a 'dual sexual morality' and, as a consequence, a certain disorder in sexual life, incorrect views on sexual abstinence, etc., etc.,--have every prerequisite to be liquidated along with the remnants of all other 'capitalist elements in consciousness' in the further process of building socialism. Finally, such questions as sexual education and enlightenment, the dissemination of contraceptives for the purpose of reducing abortions, the treatment and prevention of venereal diseases, the creation of offspring free from hereditary burdens,--all these questions in our country have been placed in the plane not only of broad study but also of practical implementation. The task of Soviet medicine and public health is the even deeper study of all these questions and their implementation in life.

3. Gurevich.