Soviet Sex Podcast

In this episode, Amanda interviews Dr. Siobhan Hearne about her fascinating research (which is clearly still relevant as people’s bodies are still being regulated today) on venereal diseases and how this was policed. We go through treatments, the relationships between medical personnel and police, and the reasons why Latvia had such high VD rates. We […]

In this episode, Amanda interviews Dr. Kristy Ironside about her wonderful article, “Between Fiscal, Ideological, and Social Dilemmas: The Soviet ‘Bachelor Tax’ and Post-war Tax Reform, 1941-1962.” We go through what exactly the tax system was like in the Soviet Union, who was behind the idea of one of the first explicit pronatalist reforms, how it […]

In this episode, Amanda interviews Dr. Paula Michaels about her wonderful book Lamaze: An International History. We go through what exactly the lamaze technique is, its Soviet origins in the post-WWII period, and how it spread to France and then to the USA. Throughout the discussion, we also highlight the experiences of women and of […]

In the first special topic’s episode, I (Amanda) interview Dr. Wilson Bell about his journal article, ‘Sex, Pregnancy, and Power in the Late Stalinist Gulag’ that was published with the Journal of the History of Sexuality. In this episode we discuss gulag inmates’ sexual relations (with other inmates or camp staff), camp ‘marriages’, and what […]

In this episode, I look at the sex, health and family policies from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I will be examining the 1955 relegalisation of abortion, 1965 divorce procedure, 1968 Family Law and investigate how Brezhnev dealt with nationalism and demography as well as how […]

In this episode, I look at the 1936 and 1944 Family Codes and the 1941 Bachelor Tax to see the quick evolution of pronatalist policies that in the Soviet Union that affected sex, marriage and family life, as well as focusing on urgent the 1944 policy was after the devastating effects of the Second World […]

In this episode, I look at the 1918 and 1926 Family Codes and the 1920 Legalisation of Abortion decree to see how these fundamentally re-shaped sex, marriage and family expectations in the USSR. You can find sources for this episode here.