This is Randi Hacker with another Postcard from Abroad from the KU Centers for East Asian Studies and Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Hidden here in Russia’s main library, you will find one of the Soviet Union’s best-kept secrets – a treasure trove of 12,000 items of erotica. The Bolsheviks began it in the 1920s with materials confiscated from aristocrats, including ancient Japanese shunga and books by the Marquis De Sade. During the Great Purge of the 1930s, the collection increased significantly when the collections of so-called “enemies of the state” were added to it. And thanks to perestroika in the 1980s, the collection received its most recent items, namely, English-language materials — like Playboy which were confiscated at customs. Since the collection was made available only to high-ranking communists, it remains remarkably untouched and well-preserved, revealing not just naked bodies, but the naked underbelly of Soviet censorship.

With thanks to Adrienne Landry for this text, from the KU Center for East Asian Studies, this is Randi Hacker. Wish you were here.