Sexual Life

Sexual Life in the biological sense encompasses a vast circle of the most complex phenomena, the study of which constitutes a significant part of modern biology. Numerous phenomena concerning the physiology and pathology of S. l. cannot be understood without knowledge of the biological foundations, essence and origin of the instincts of sex and reproduction, the essence of heredity and the laws of its transmission, the development of sexes and their differentiation, the anatomy of sexual organs, the role and activity of the endocrine glands and especially the sex glands, the essence of sexual desire, the mechanism of the sexual act, etc. Normal sexual life is conditioned primarily by the presence of sexual organs. Underdevelopment of sexual organs or various abnormalities in the anatomy of the latter prevent normal S. l. Sexual organs serve sexual activity and in a broader sense - reproduction. They are the site of formation of sex cells used for reproduction, as well as certain products of internal secretion, which exert the greatest influence on the morphological and psychic properties of male and female individuals. During puberty, hormones determine the development of physical and psychic characteristics. In the process of further development, the organism as a whole, as well as individual organs and cells, the processes of feeling and consciousness are under the enormous influence of the activity of the sex glands and their hormones. The sex glands and the sex hormones they secrete are internal stimuli causing sexual desire, without the normal development of which S. l. is impossible. Removal of a sex gland (castration), congenital complete or relative insufficiency of a sex gland (hypogenitalism) cause serious disturbances in the development of sexual organs and their functions, as well as in the development of the organism as a whole; sexual desire sharply decreases and may be completely absent. With congenital hyperfunction of a sex gland, the phenomenon of hypergenitalism occurs, which is characterized by premature sexual maturity (pubertas praecox) and in most cases also excessive development of sexual organs and secondary sexual characteristics. The phenomena of hypo- and hypergenitalism can also be caused by various diseases of the sex gland. The function of the sex glands is in close interaction with the entire endocrine system (see). The entire hormonal system is in close interaction with the nervous system, also with the constitution of man as a whole. In turn, all these systems, on the one hand, being under the influence of hereditary factors, on the other hand, are under the continuous influence of factors of the external environment, under the conditions of human life, the social environment (nutrition, temperature, working conditions, various nervous irritants, different in the city and in the countryside, among the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, etc.). Hence it is quite obvious that all phenomena related to S. l. and especially those relating to sexual maturity, sexual desire, the sexual act, must be considered in all their complex combination and interaction of biological and social. This applies equally to the physiology of S. l. as well as to the pathology of the latter. The sexual life of man is a phenomenon by no means only of biological, but also of social order. The sexual instinct of man is realized in the physical connection between the sexes in a certain social setting, and this historically changing environment remains decisive for sexual relations in society, for the beginning, ways and character of S. l., for the social institutions that grow to a greater or lesser extent on the basis of sexuality (marriage, family, prostitution). This has now become understandable even to some bourgeois researchers. Thus, the most prominent contemporary English anthropologist Malinowski (Malinowski) writes in a monograph published by him in 1931, concerning the sexual life of the Trobriand natives of the islands of British New Guinea: 'Although love life is indeed the most important, it is only one of the many existing relationships between the sexes. It cannot be studied in isolation, but only in close connection with the legal status of man and woman, with their family relations, with the distribution of economic functions between both of them. Sexual life in the broadest sense of the word is rather a sociological and cultural force than merely a physical connection between people.' At an earlier stage of primitiveness, the sexual relations of people are characterized by sexual promiscuity, not regulated by any rules or customs. 'In the primitive state of human society,' writes Engels, summarizing the results of Morgan's research on the history of the family, 'complete freedom of sexual relations prevailed within a certain tribe, so that in it every woman belonged to every man, and every man to every woman.' Engels considered this primitive form of sexual relations disorderly insofar as there were not yet any restrictions established later by custom. 'But,' he wrote, 'from this by no means follows the necessity of mixing all indiscriminately in everyday practice. By no means is the existence of temporary single pairs excluded.' A number of the greatest anthropologists and ethnographers of past decades (Lubbock, Bastian, Spencer, Bancroft, Southerland, Powers, Kovalevsky), as well as of the most recent time (Deschamps, Roth, Felix Bryck, Malinowski), in confirmation of the promiscuity that existed at the primitive stage of human development, point to the absence of any restrictions on the freedom of sexual relations among many contemporary primitive peoples. According to Margold, among the natives of the Marquesas, Philippine, Marshall, Madison and other islands, even children are involved in sexual life. From an early age they are accustomed to peculiar sexual games. Children's games in 'sexual intercourse' are widely spread. Among the Bakoongo parents encourage little girls to sexual intercourse, as this proves that they have proper desires and later will have children. Other tribes in early S. l. see 'preparation and exercise for the most important task of man and woman' (Margold). Felix Bryck in a monograph published in 1928 based on his research of Bantu tribes (Bagischu, Bagand, Budama, Banioro, etc.) during a 2-year stay in equatorial Africa North of Victoria-Nyanza, reports that among many Negro tribes youth before entering marriage live in promiscuity. The epochs that followed the first stage of primitiveness destroyed promiscuity as a special form of sexual relations and S. l., 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. Fleeting physiological connections - first under the influence of the division of labor between man and woman, on the basis of the woman performing the function of giving birth to children, and then under the influence of the transition from nomadic to sedentary life, the complication of economic forms, constant wars between savages, the development of exchange trade and growing elements of private property - gradually pass into more or less permanent sexual unions, which by custom, and then by law and statute, restrict sexual freedom, mainly of women. Among all savages and peoples of a lower stage of barbarism, the woman still enjoyed not only equal but also a privileged position in the sphere of the economy, social, family and S. l. Matriarchy established for the woman incomparably greater sexual freedom than for men. 'A girl remaining a virgin,' says Barbosa about the Nairs, 'will not, in their opinion, be admitted to paradise.' 'A married woman of Berber tribes enjoys the greater respect the more friends she has among men' (Lafargue). According to Myners, among the Kamchadals the best recommendation for a girl is the largest number of lovers. 286

Sexual Life. In the era of feudalism, it is impossible to speak of sexual life as something unified and characteristic of the entire society. Sexual relations and sexual life varied among the different classes of feudal society—lords, merchants, peasants, artisans. The character of sexual relations and sexual life was determined by the economic life of each class, the nature of family organization, and the role that women of each class played in social life, marriage, and the family: "For a knight or baron, as well as for a ruling prince, marriage was a political act, a matter of increasing one's power through new connections; the interests of the dynasty, the family, must play a decisive role, and by no means personal desires" (Engels). Marriage between feudalists was an economic transaction aimed at increasing the feudal lord's wealth and passing it on to inheritance to one who was "flesh and blood" of the feudal lord. Hence the exclusion of personal inclinations and sympathies in feudal marriage, the subordinate position of women, the protection of her "fidelity." A woman is confined to the terem and castles, bodyguards are assigned to her, and during the feudal lord's absence, special chastity belts (Keuschheitsgiirtel, Ceinture de chastete, Keuschheitsschloss, Venusband, Treu-schutz) are placed on her, and her adultery is severely punished. Christianity, morality, and law of this period regarded a woman as a lower being, as the "janua diaboli" (gate of the devil), as the embodiment of sinfulness, a being that "must be covered with the blush of shame merely at the consciousness that she is a woman." The church and the state turned marriage into the enslavement of women; with their ascetic ideals, they tried to suppress one of the powerful human instincts—sexual love and sexual feeling. The latter, however, found its way through all the barriers of the lying morality of the ruling classes. Suppressed in its healthy aspirations, it turned into a vice. Chronicles of the feudal era tell of lords' "unbridled lust from the first stirrings of youth to old age" (Lambert). The most debauched orgies took place in feudal castles, and the male and female monasteries of this period became the worst kind of brothels, unnatural forms of sexual life became widespread. Women locked in castles found a thousand ways to bypass the vigilance of bodyguards and obtain keys to chastity belts. Daughters of feudalists penetrated to the knights visiting their fathers and forced them to come closer.. Prostitution in medieval cities grew to extraordinary dimensions, and syphilis, brought to Europe at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, found here favorable ground for its spread. The arbitrariness of the feudal lord and landowner and the dependent position of the peasant largely determined sexual relations <among the peasantry. The feudal lord owned the "right of the first night" (jus primae noctis), according to which the feudal lord had the right to spend the first night with every girl who married a peasant who belonged to the feudal lord. "The female half of the medieval peasant proletariat was by right and law at the disposal of the master for the satisfaction of his whims" (Schidrowitz). However, despite the severity of the conditions of life

28& ---------------. »--------f~----rjf---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- of the peasantry of the feudal epoch, precisely in this class more than in any other, sexual relations developed under the influence of personal inclination, and if Engels attributes the emergence of individual love to the Middle Ages, then its first shoots appear precisely in the peasantry. Marriage for love, rather than for economic calculation, was much more common among the peasantry than among the nobility, and girls here enjoyed greater freedom than the daughters of knights and boyars. -If a girl, the daughter of a knight, had relations with a man before marriage, she and her entire family were considered disgraced; in the peasantry at that time, they viewed this matter simply and did not see any disgrace in people coming together before marriage. Sexual relations and P. z. in capitalist society also differ among different classes. Among bourgeois youth, sexual feeling usually awakens long before biological and social maturity; P. z. begins very early. Sexual maturation occurs earlier among the wealthy classes than among the proletariat and peasantry (see Menstruation). The main reasons for this earlier sexual maturation of the privileged class lie in the following: the meaty, fatty, deliciously prepared food of these classes is a significant irritant to the nervous system; the absence of physical labor and, conversely, early mental work associated with a sedentary lifestyle in evenly heated enclosed rooms acts to accelerate the process of sexual maturation. According to Meerovsky's data based on his 1907 survey of Breslau doctors and students, the awakening of sexual feeling occurred at 5-6 years of age in 8.5% of all respondents, at 7-8 years-4.5%, at 9-10 years-£5%, at 11-12 years-31.3%, at 13-14 years-16.4%, at 15-16 years-19.4%, at 17-18 years-6%. According to Zhbankov's data based on a 1908 survey of female students, mostly belonging to bourgeois and middle-class groups, the awakening of sexual feeling before the age of 14 was noted in 59.9% of all surveyed. A 1926 survey (Gurevich and Grosser) of Kharkiv university students, the vast majority of whom were workers and peasants, indicates a later awakening of sexual feeling among these groups compared to the bourgeoisie. The main reason for these differences lies in the fact that persons belonging to the wealthy classes have incomparably more abundant sources of sexual stimulation than the proletariat has. The absence of physical labor, an idle life, cinema, literature, the nightlife of capitalist cities, street prostitution, brothels, thousands of restaurants, bars, variety theaters, delis with the incessant sounds of fox-trot and charleston coming from them, the barely clothed nudity of women-all this awakens sexual feeling too early, leads to the enormous spread of masturbation and the early beginning of P. z. -A significant role in this early awakening of sexual feeling, and consequently in the early beginning of P. z., is played by the hypocritical attitude of bourgeois society toward all questions related to P. z., and consequently the complete absence of sexual education and enlightenment. Information concerning P. z., children of bourgeois circles receive not from parents, educators or doctors, but from comrades, from pornographic literature, from observations of the P. z. of adults, etc. It is quite obvious that all these sources cannot direct the awakening sexual feeling into a healthy channel. According to Meerovsky's data regarding Breslau doctors and students, the first sexual intercourse was at 14-15 years of age in 3% of all respondents, at 16-17 years in 18%, at 18-19 years in 50%. According to Chlenov, who surveyed the sexual life of Moscow students in 1904, 51% of men began P. z. before the age of 16. According to statistics from a German higher school, 80% of those surveyed had their first sexual intercourse before the age of 18. According to Prof. Duck's data, a 1928 survey of a lyceum in a small town in the Rhine province showed that 70% of schoolgirls over the age of 14 were already living P. z. -Lindsey says that 90% of modern American male youth have sexual experience before finishing school, i.e., before the age of 18. Very high figures are given in the same regard by Calverton for female youth in America. There can be no doubt that from a socio-hygienic point of view, the beginning of P. z. at an early age represents an extremely negative phenomenon. Neither the male nor the female organism has yet matured by this time. Therefore, it is very important during this period to accumulate physical and psychological strength. Early P. z., however, will not lead to the accumulation of strength, but to its dissipation. The fear of pregnancy will poison the existence of many young women who begin their P. z. early; early beginning of P. z. will doom a woman to a longer period of childbearing, hence to a greater number of pregnancies, births, abortions, and this at an age when the organism is by no means prepared for this. Finally, since among bourgeois youth P. z. usually began with prostitutes, it led to the possibility of contracting venereal disease at a very early age. According to Meerovsky's data, 94% of the students and 92% of the doctors he surveyed had their first sexual act with prostitutes. Other surveys give roughly the same figures. -The first sexual act in the vast majority of cases marks the beginning of more or less regular P. z. Beginning P. z. with prostitutes, bourgeois youth subsequently follows the path of disorderly short-term relations, either with prostitutes or with girls from those social groups that in capitalist society usually form the ranks from which prostitution is recruited: domestic servants, shop salesgirls, employees of cafes, restaurants, beer halls, dancers, chorus girls. The famous German psychiatrist Hirschfeld considered that disorderly relations "undoubtedly represent a product of the big city and are closely connected with the development of capitalism." I. Bloch as early as the beginning of this century called the disorderly, short-term character of P. z., which he discovered, "in such an appalling degree and in such a fatal manner," "wild love." The enormous psychological harm and socio-hygienic danger of this "wild love" are beyond any doubt. For a woman, the frequent change of men in these short relationships, reducing them solely to sexual relations, means the impossibility of the emergence of deeper spiritual relations; "wild love" reduces her to the position of a mere object of physical pleasure for a man. In a man, this character of sexual relations, which ultimately turns into a cult of nothing but the crude sexual act without any need for a spiritual connection, is then transferred to marriage. As a result of the impossibility of deeper spiritual relations on both sides-the fleeting nature of sexual relations, mutual distrust, the transformation of love into a kind of sexual sport, without inner warmth, only as an attempt to satisfy one's thirst for pleasure. Thus "wild love" introduces enormous corruption into P. z. Being a constant and intermediate link between hygienically impeccable sexual relations and prostitution, it contains the danger of transferring all the harmful influences of prostitution to relations between the sexes. "Wild love" prevents any ennoblement and improvement of P. z.: from the point of view of social hygiene, it is a powerful factor in the spread of ven. b-ny. According to Meerovsky's data, 51.9% of those he surveyed had ven. b-ny. According to the 1904 Moscow student questionnaire, those with ven. b-ny constituted 25%, among Yuryev students there were 27.6%. According to Zhbankov, 6.8% of female students living P. z. had ven. b-ny. All these morbidity figures for ven. b-ny among bourgeois youth are significantly higher compared to the morbidity figures of the proletariat. According to Blyashko in Berlin, 16.5% of merchants, 25% of students, and 8% of the proletariat contracted ven. b-ny annually. Thus, 41% of diseases among the social upper classes (merchants and students) stand in contrast to the 8% of diseases among the proletariat as evidence of healthy P. z. Gauschtein, Kampfmeier and others also assert that venereal diseases in the working environment are incomparably lower than in the bourgeois environment; the use of prostitution among the proletariat is also many times less than among the ruling classes. Lindsey-Calverton, Michels and other recent researchers assert that at present the role of prostitution in the P. z. of bourgeois male youth has fallen significantly. They explain this by the fact that especially after the war, when a revolution occurred in the sexual views of bourgeois youth, broad strata of female bourgeois youth also entered into premarital P. z. The latter phenomenon can be considered an indisputable fact.

At the same time, since prostitution in capitalist society not only constantly exists but, under the conditions of the modern economic crisis, continuously increases, and since bourgeois youth does not cease to make use of prostitution—all this leads only to the expansion of the circle of patients with venereal diseases, and to the growth of pregnancies and abortions among bourgeois female youth. Prof. Duke points out that out of 750 schoolgirls of a German lyceum who were examined, 45% of those examined were suffering from venereal diseases, and 100 girls out of 750 were pregnant. Lindsay and Calverton cite shocking figures on the spread of venerealism and abortions among bourgeois female youth in America. Such is the sexual life of bourgeois youth in modern capitalist countries. Sexual relations and the sexual life of married people represent an even more dismal picture. Marx and Engels as early as the end of the last century vividly exposed the sexual relations and sexual life of capitalist marriage. Showing the influence of industrial capitalism on marriage, Engels wrote: 'The right of the first night by inheritance passed from the feudal lord to the factory owner. Prostitution grew to unprecedented dimensions and even marriage itself turned into a legally recognized form of debauchery, its official cover, supplemented by numerous illegal connections' ('Anti-Dühring'). 'The bourgeois marriage,' wrote Marx and Engels, 'is a community of women' ('Communist Manifesto'). The foundation on which bourgeois marriage rests is private property, monetary relations: 'The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family relations their touching sentimental veil and reduced them to purely monetary relations' ('Communist Manifesto'). Ivan Bloch determined the number of marriages of convenience in bourgeois society at 75%; Max Nordau considered this percentage to be even higher. A fine illustration of the fact that marriage in modern bourgeois society is a commercial transaction is the existence in all countries of various marriage exchanges, marriage bureaus, thousands of marriage announcements published daily in almost all bourgeois newspapers and magazines. This leads to the almost complete absence in bourgeois marriage of feeling of personal inclination, sympathy, spiritual unity; and this is precisely why in bourgeois marriage 'in place of all physical and spiritual feelings,' as Marx writes, 'there has come the simple estrangement of all these feelings, the feeling of possession.' The private property and monetary basis of bourgeois marriage leads to 'the unbearable boredom of marital cohabitation' (Engels), to the fact that 'the violation of marital fidelity has become a necessary social phenomenon' (Engels), that 'the wife's lover and the husband-cuckold' (Engels) have become characteristic figures of the monogamous family in the era of capitalism. These full of malicious irony and sarcasm characterizations by Marx and Engels of relations between the sexes in bourgeois marriage can be fully applicable to the sexual relations and sexual life of bourgeois society in the era of decaying capitalism. Friedlander characterizes sexual relations in modern Germany as follows: 'The sexual-ethical ideal of Christianity, chastity before marriage and purity of marital relations, with the self-evident assumption that marriage is a monogamous and strong union—this ideal is currently not realized anywhere, even approximately. Every sincere observer must agree that in reality polygamy and promiscuity currently represent the form of sexual life for a significant majority.' This assessment of sexual relations in modern Germany is completely correct: the unrestrained sexual life of youth, the catastrophic decline in the number of marriages, the constantly increasing number of divorces despite legislative obstacles, the growth, along with the involvement of women in the labor process, of sexual freedom, which in practice is a protest against the 'dual sexual morality' and expressed in the fact that in her sexual behavior she begins to imitate man, the growth of extramarital births with a sharp decline in the overall birth rate, the premarital institution of Freundschaft, the open and secret prostitution grown to unprecedented dimensions, the wider than before the war spread of venereal diseases into marriage and family, the growing homosexuality, the abortion rate grown to extraordinary dimensions while at the same time the widespread use of contraceptives—such is the background of sexual relations in modern Germany. The same picture we observe in other capitalist countries. 'America,' writes Michels in 1928, 'for 16 years now has been facing a sexual crisis to a much greater extent than Europe.' This crisis has affected almost all strata of modern America, but it has manifested itself most deeply among the ruling classes. Sexual relations have reached complete decay among these ruling classes because the family has long ceased to be an economic unit, and marriage a spiritual unity of two people. In the era of decaying capitalism, among the parasitic class of the bourgeoisie and plutocracy, the biologically worthless and socially useless type of woman is finally taking shape. Not knowing domestic or professional work, brought up in the bourgeois craving for luxury and extravagance, not having children or having at most one child, in the upbringing of which the woman does not participate—such a type of woman cannot form the basis for a family. Balls, automobile trips, dresses, sports, participation in beauty contests—such are the usual occupations of girls and women belonging to the classes with medium and high incomes. And it is precisely women from these classes who are now primarily appearing in America as destroyers of marriage and family. No wonder the problem of 'women from the class with leisure' has now become the object of 'profound' American research. Divorce for women of this class has now become a sign of 'good form'; entering marriage, she immediately insures herself against divorce. Divorcing, she seeks to extract as much money as possible from the man. During the divorce proceedings, she for a time becomes the heroine of the day, an advertisement and bait for newspapers flattering her empty vanity.—Even more dismal is the male type from these same classes. 'Trained exclusively for the acquisition of money,' writes Michels, 'young Americans play in sexual relations either a very pitiful passive role, leaving aggressiveness to the woman, or are characterized by extreme coarseness in morals; the latter type produces a repulsive impression. Occupied with the pursuit of money, almost always away from home, they have long ceased to form the basis of the family.' The crisis of sexual, marital, and family relations in modern bourgeois society and the hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness of the 'shepherds' of this society are vividly reflected in the papal encyclical issued by the Roman pope Pius XI in 1931. 'Marriage, this divine institution,' he writes, 'is currently being held in contempt and humiliation. Not only in secret and in darkness, but also publicly, without any sense of shame, orally and in print, in all kinds of spectacles, in novels, love stories and satires, in film presentations and in radio reports, in short—in all the inventions of modern times, the sanctity of marriage is trampled in the mud and held up to ridicule. Divorce, violation of marital fidelity and the most shameful vices are glorified or at least described in vivid colors, as if they are free from any guilt and disgrace.' In 'The Condition of the Working Class in England' and in 'Capital,' Marx and Engels depict the sexual relations and sexual life of the proletariat. Describing the moral and intellectual character of the proletariat before the industrial revolution, Engels writes: 'They were "respectable" people and good family men, led a moral life because there were neither taverns nor disreputable houses nearby, and they had no occasion to be immoral. Patriarchal family relations were not violated until the marriage of the children. Young people grew up in idyllic innocence and closeness with their playmates until marriage, and if sexual intercourse between them did occur almost always before marriage, it happened only when the parties recognized a moral obligation to enter into marriage, and the completed marriage again brought everything into order' (F. Engels, 'The Condition of the Working Class in England'). The emergence of industrial capitalism destroyed this idyll of patriarchal family relations. Intemperance in the consumption of alcohol and in sexual relations became a vice of the English workers: 'And this vice,' writes Engels, 'follows with inevitable iron necessity from the general position of this class, left to itself without the means to properly use its freedom. The bourgeoisie has granted it only these two pleasures, imposing on it a mass of heavy labor and suffering. In order to somehow enjoy this life, the workers therefore throw themselves with all their passion on these two pleasures, indulging in them in the most excessive and disorderly manner. When people are placed in a position worthy only of animals, they have nothing left but to either rise against this, or actually become animals' (F.

Engels, 'The Condition of the Working Class in England,' p. 147). 'The immorality of youth in Sheffield,' writes Engels, 'seems greater than anywhere else; however, it is difficult to say which city deserves the palm of precedence in this respect; about whatever city one reads in the report, it seems that it deserves this palm of precedence.' 'According to the testimony of all witnesses, early promiscuous sexual relations and prostitution, which is often practiced by adolescents as early as 14-15 years of age, constitute an extremely frequent phenomenon in Sheffield' (F. Engels, ibid., pp. 223-229). What, then, do Marx and Engels see as the causes of this immorality, of early, promiscuous sexual relations? In the working and living conditions of the working class under capitalism, in the exploitation of female and child labor. First of all, the factory owner himself corrupts the female worker. 'Service in the factory,' writes Engels, 'like any other, if not more so, is associated with the master's right of the first night, which, however, is self-evident. And in this respect the factory owner is master over the bodies of his female workers. Dismissal is a sufficient threat to overcome any resistance in a girl in 9 cases out of 10, if not in 99 out of 100, who does not particularly value her chastity anyway. If the factory owner is sufficiently low for this (and the commission's report speaks of many such factory owners), then his factory is at the same time his harem; if not all factory owners avail themselves of this right, the position of the girls in the nature of things does not change from this' ('The Condition of the Working Class in England'). In 'Capital,' Marx writes: 'The moral depravity resulting from the capitalist exploitation of female and child labor is described with exhaustive fullness by Engels in his 'The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (K. Marx, 'Capital,' Vol. I, 8th ed.). Marx and Engels show how the joint work of people of different ages of both sexes in the capitalist factory, night work, etc., fatefully affect their morality: 'The joint presence of people of both sexes and all ages in one workshop, the inevitable rapprochement between them, the accumulation of people who have received no intellectual and moral education in one narrow space—all this cannot have favorable consequences for the development of the female character' (F. Engels, 'The Condition of the Working Class in England,' pp. 163-174). In one of the notes to 'Capital,' Marx cites the following from the report of the International Statistical Congress in Paris: 'In addition to the 'destructive effect of night work on the human organism,' the 'fateful influence of the night joint presence of both sexes in the same poorly lit workshops' is also noted' ('Capital,' Vol. I, 8th ed., p. 221, Note). Also, the housing conditions of the proletariat in large cities, overcrowding, overcrowding of housing negatively affect the character of the S. l. of the proletariat. Marx cites the following words of Dr. Simon: '...it (overcrowding of housing) almost inevitably entails such a denial of all decency, such a filthy mixing of bodies and physical functions, such nudity of the sexes, that all this has a bestial, not human character' ('Capital,' Vol. I, 8th ed., p. 526). 'Many, without undressing, sleep on the bare floor—young men and women, married and unmarried indiscriminately, crowded together' ('Capital,' Vol. I, 8th ed., p. 529). 'Pointing out how often it happens that adults of both sexes, married and unmarried, are crowded (huddled) in narrow bedrooms, their reports should have led to the conviction that under the described circumstances the feeling of shame and decency is grossly violated, and that morality is destroyed almost inevitably' ('Capital,' Vol. I, 8th ed., p. 549). Finally, all the living conditions of the proletariat in large cities negatively affect the upbringing of children. Marx in the first volume of 'Capital' cites the following words of Dr. Hunter: 'One must be a bold prophet to predict all that can be expected from children who, under conditions unparalleled in this country, are now being prepared by upbringing to become members of dangerous classes—brought up, spending until midnight with people of different ages, drunk, indecent and quarrelsome.' However, as the proletariat becomes more and more organized as a class, and its consciousness and revolutionary consciousness grow, the intemperance of S. l. ceases to be a feature that was characteristic of it in the period when it was forming only as a class. The S. l. of the working population in capitalist society, due to early familiarity with the intimacies of S. l., joint work of men and women in factories and plants, early economic independence of both sexes, the absence of a view on the necessity of sexual abstinence before marriage, began very early; at the same time, in relations between the sexes among the proletariat, there exist certain class ideals and class duties. Sexual ties are established here quite early, sometimes a child appears, sometimes even another, then the joint life is formalized. And it is rare for a proletarian who wants to enjoy the respect of his class comrades to leave the girl he has made a mother. From this point of view, the circumstance that a skilled female worker very rarely becomes a prostitute is very important. Living in her class, living its way of life, its morals, having little contact with classes that concentrate their life on idleness, dress, refined pleasures, the skilled female worker rarely succumbs to the temptation of this class and its pursuit of pleasures. Even in conditions of unemployment, she finds support in her class and only extreme need drives her to prostitution. The proletariat itself resorts to prostitution much less frequently than the bourgeoisie. In relations between the sexes among the proletariat, the feeling of personal inclination and attachment appears incomparably more often than among the bourgeoisie, where all relations are relations built on bare 'calculation.' Marx and Engels did not by chance point out that although 'the proletariat has no concept of the family at all, at the same time there are tendencies toward family life, based on very real relations.' Marital relations among the cease where feeling, inclination and attachment disappear. The difference in sexual relations and in the S. l. of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in capitalist countries deepens even more when the proletariat comes to power. This fact is confirmed by numerous studies conducted in our country after the October Revolution. And if the studies conducted soon after the proletarian revolution still show significant influences of capitalism on sexual relations and S. l., then the closer to the present time, the more capitalist elements lose their significance in the economy, way of life, psychology and consciousness of the masses, the more favorable the indicators of sexual relations and S. l. become. According to Rotstein's data from a questionnaire he conducted in 1926 among 1,055 Moscow workers aged 17-25, the beginning of S. l. before 14 years was in 8.2%, at 15-17 years in 39.6%. We have approximately the same picture from a number of other studies (Lase, Batkis and Gurevich, Platovsky, Taradin, Kogan and Lebedinsky, etc.), relating to the first approximately 5-9 years after the proletarian revolution. These studies, mainly of working-class and peasant youth, show that the S. l. of men began quite early, which can be explained by the earlier economic independence of workers and peasants, but also by the fact that their upbringing and development took place under the conditions of the capitalist system and its influences. The study already conducted by A. M. Furmanov in 1931 of the way of life of working-class youth aged 16-20 shows that only 37.6% of the boys surveyed began to live S. l. This is an indisputable indicator of the health-improving influences of recent years. In our country, a woman begins sexual life later than a man. According to our 1929 survey data among Ukrainian peasant women, S. l. before 14 years began in 0.4% of those surveyed, by 17 years S. l. was already lived by 26.4% of those surveyed, by 19 years by 65.5% of those surveyed. In the 1926 survey (Gurevich and Grosser) of Kharkiv students, where the petty-bourgeois group constituted only 6.1%, those beginning S. l. before 14 years was 3.4%, by 17 years S. l. was already lived by 29.2%, by 19 years by 55.8%; after 23 years S. l. begins only in 8.8%. According to Sheinfogel in 1926 based on a survey of the semi-rural proletariat of three factories, by 13 years sexual relations had 0.9% of the women surveyed, for the age 14-16 years it was already 12%, at 17-20 years the curve reaches its maximum height of 69.8%, then the curve begins to fall. According to Gerstein in 1926, S. l. begins at 14 years in 0.56% of Ukrainian women workers, by 17 years S. l. is already lived by 21.43%, by 20 years by 70.88%, by 24 years by 92.34%. The average age of beginning S. l. in women according to Batkis is 21.6 years, according to Petrenko 20 years, according to the 1926 survey (Gurevich) 23 years, according to the 1929 survey (Gurevich) of peasant women 19.02 years, according to the 1930/31 survey (Gurevich) of Kharkiv city workers 19.48 years and of Kharkiv city employees 20.84 years.'

Thus, the sexual life of the working woman and peasant woman begins earlier than in the petty bourgeois population groups; the peasant woman begins her sexual life somewhat earlier than the working woman. The 1931 investigation by A. M. Furmanov shows that of the 827 girls he investigated, mostly aged 16-19 years, only 9.72% were sexually experienced. In the sexual life of the male youth of our country, prostitution does not occupy the place it has in the sexual life of bourgeois youth. If the first sexual act among bourgeois youth occurs with a prostitute in more than 90% of cases according to the Meierovsky method, then according to Gelman's data from the 1922 investigation, the first sexual act with a prostitute was in 28%, according to a later investigation by Batkis - in 16.60%, according to the 1926 investigation (Gurevich) - in 9%, according to the investigation of the student body of the Communist University of the Toiling East, published in 1930 - in 6.3%, according to A. M. Furmanov's 1931 investigation, 3.3% of those he investigated began their sexual life with prostitutes. This reduction to almost zero of the role of prostitution in the beginning of the sexual life of our youth is explained by the fact that the elimination of unemployment in our country has led not only to the almost complete destruction of prostitution but also to a highly conscious attitude of the youth of the proletarian country toward prostitution. In our 1926 investigation, 95% of those investigated wrote that they have a negative attitude toward prostitution. "Prostitution," wrote one of those investigated, "is the vile remnants of slavery; prostitution corrupts society; it must be destroyed as quickly as possible." "I have a negative attitude toward prostitution," wrote another, "it degrades woman and one's own dignity." Along with the decline in the role of prostitution, the role of wife or friend among those with whom proletarian male youth begins their sexual life increases year by year. According to the data of the 1904 investigation of Moscow students and the Breslau physicians, there was not a single case of beginning sexual life with a wife; according to Batkis *ю 295 10.5% of those investigated began their sexual life with a wife; according to the 1926 investigation (Gurevich) - 25.8%. According to Kogan and Lebedinsky based on an investigation of Moscow working youth (1928), 37.9% began their sexual life with a wife and friend, according to Furmanov's 1931 investigation - 54.2%. The first sexual intercourse was, according to Lass, among female students in 33% with a husband, in 26% with a person with whom the woman then entered into marriage. According to the 1926 investigation (Gurevich), the first sexual intercourse was with a husband or a loved one in 87% of the women investigated, with casual acquaintances in 11%. According to Kogan and Lebedinsky (1928), the first sexual intercourse was with a husband in 82%, with a comrade in 16%, with casual acquaintances in 2%. According to Furmanov (1931) - with a husband and friend in 85%, with a casual acquaintance in 2.5%. All these data, even more clearly than in men, testify to the role of love, friendship, and long acquaintance as factors that are beginning to play an increasingly important role in the beginning of the sexual life of youth. These factors also acquire a significant role in further sexual life. In the first years after the end of the civil war and the beginning of the New Economic Policy, numerous researchers noted phenomena of disorderly sexual life and the short duration of sexual relations among a considerable part of the youth of our country. Thus, in the 1926 investigation (Gurevich), the following data were obtained: 1) 75% of men entered into sexual relations after a short acquaintance with a woman; 2) sexual relations of unmarried men were short-lived in 73%; 3) in married men or men who had been married, sexual relations had a long-term character only in 63.4%; 4) 45% of men in marriage had extramarital sexual relations. In women: 1) 72% entered into sexual relations after a long acquaintance; 2) sexual relations of single women were long-term in 54.5%; 3) sexual relations of married women or those who had been married were long-term in 72%; 4) extramarital sexual relations were in 18%. Comparing Gurevich's 1926 data with Gelman's 1922 data, we see that the percentage of long-term relations among our investigated subjects is significantly higher. According to Gelman, the nature of sexual relations is as follows: in men, long-term relations - 15.7%, short-term relations - 58.1%, mixed - 26.2%. Extramarital relations of married men - 62%. In women: sexual relations were long-term in 44.8%, short-term - in 55.2%. According to Gurevich's data, in men long-term relations - 48%, short-term - 25%, mixed - 27%; in women long-term relations - 71%, short-term - 21%, mixed - 7.3%. Thus, the figures of 1926 already give more favorable indicators compared to 1922, revealing an indisputable tendency toward the ordering of sexual life, which in the years of the beginning of the New Economic Policy was under the influence of the revived wave of petty-bourgeois elemental forces. The investigations of the following years show that with the growth of socialism in our country, these health-improving tendencies are increasingly strengthening. According to Kogan and Lebedinsky (1928), long-term sexual relations with one person in men are already noted in almost 60%, in women in 91%. According to the 1929 investigation (Gurevich) of Ukrainian peasant women and in 1930-31 of working women and women employees from peasant women, extramarital sexual life in the last two years before the investigation was found in married women 4.2%, in working women 1.6%, in women employees 2.5%. These last figures are many times lower than the 18% of extramarital relations of married women in our 1926 investigation. These figures, as well as the data presented above, testify that the sexual life in our country is rapidly improving, that sexual relations are increasingly based on the principles of "individual sexual love," in which Engels saw "the greatest moral progress" and which is completely alien to bourgeois society. And this role of "individual sexual love" is acquiring increasing importance not only in relations between the sexes among the proletariat of our country, but also among the peasantry. The 1929 investigation allowed us to conclude that the conditions of the modern countryside to a greater extent than before allow young people to enter into marriage based on mutual attraction. "Rural youth," writes Makeev, "enters into marriage not by the choice of father or mother, but by their own attraction." "A fellow entering into marriage for love," writes Murin about rural youth, "can already get well acquainted with the bride. This makes the marriage more durable." Factors testifying to the health-improving processes of sexual life going on in our country and in turn having a health-improving effect on sexual life are the stabilization of divorces in recent years in our country and the decrease in venereal disease incidence (see Sexual Question, Venereal Diseases). Indeed, in the fight against venereal diseases, as well as as with abortion, the health services still face a great and difficult task. In a number of their works, Marx, Engels, and Lenin pointed out what main moments will, when the proletariat comes to power, contribute to the improvement of sexual relations. Showing in the first volume of "Capital" how the joint work of persons of different ages of both sexes in the capitalist factory fatefully affects sexual morality, Marx wrote: "Just as clearly, the combination in the combined workforce of persons of both sexes and the most diverse ages, which is a plague-ridden source of corruption and slavery, as long as it appears in its crude, spontaneously formed capitalist form, under which the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker, that this same combination under appropriate conditions must, on the contrary, turn into a source of human development." The October Revolution created in our country the situation where not the worker exists for the process of production, but the process of production exists for the worker; thereby the conditions that previously were a plague-ridden source of corruption have turned into a source of human development. Labor, which on the capitalist factory was previously servile, not limited by any laws, speaking essentially, labor that was previously in dark, overcrowded, anti-hygienic premises, such labor could not but have a negative effect on sexual morality. Quite different is the labor that in the Soviet country has already become "a matter of glory, honor and heroism." Labor in beautifully equipped, light hygienic premises cannot but be a factor of health-improving significance. Socialist competition and shock work, involving the working people in broad state and public activities, study, which in the Soviet country covers millions of working people, the broad development of rational and cultural leisure, sports and physical culture instead of drunkenness and debauchery, which were once the only form of mass leisure -- all this contributes to the sublimation of the sexual, redirecting it into a healthy social channel.

No less significance for the improvement of S. l. was the elimination, at the very moment of the proletariat's coming to power, of public houses, cabarets, bars and other resorts of open and secret prostitution, which had a corrupting influence on S. l.; with unquestionable success in the very first years after the revolution, a most severe struggle was conducted against pornographic literature; joint upbringing and education of boys and girls was implemented; sex education and enlightenment was put forward as an important task. The enormous influence on the improvement of S. life was the equalization of political rights of men and women in our country, their economic equality, the attraction of women to social labor, new forms of family created on the basis of political and economic equality of the sexes and new laws on marriage and divorce. Engels attached all these factors, in terms of their health-improving influence on S. l., colossal significance. He wrote: 'The emancipation of woman presupposes as its first preliminary condition the return of the entire female sex to social labor, and this in turn requires that the individual family cease to be the basic economic unit of society... We are heading towards a social revolution when the existing economic foundations of monogamy will disappear as inevitably as its supplement-prostitution.' 'With the disappearance of prostitution, monogamy, instead of ceasing to exist, will finally become a reality for men as well.' 'The equality of women, judging by all past experience, will contribute to men becoming truly monogamous to an infinitely greater degree than to women showing a tendency to polyandry (polygyny).' 'Complete freedom in the conclusion of marriage can thus be fully implemented only after the abolition of capitalist production and the property relations created by it eliminates those secondary economic considerations which still today exert such a tremendous influence on the choice of spouses. Then no other motive will remain except mutual inclination.' In the improvement of S. l., an important role should be played by sexual hygiene. The main task of sexual hygiene of children and adolescents consists in preventing the premature development of sexual feeling, thereby of masturbation and early beginning of S. l. This task is solved by proper sex education (see), hygienically rational nutrition, care for the body of children and adolescents, for their bedding. Hygiene of S. l. includes hygiene of menstruation, pregnancy, the postpartum period. This also applies to the prevention of venereal diseases and to knowledge about contraceptives. Sexual hygiene includes questions concerning not only the physiology and pathology of S. L., BUT ALSO FUTURE GENERATIONS. Z. Gurevich. Lit.-see lit. to art. Sex Education and the Sex Question.