Цитаты из книги The Russians

A sociological survey of university students at Leningrad University in 1969 turned up the results that 85 percent of the men and 70 percent of the women had had premarital sex before age 21. And though Leningrad, as a cosmopolitan city, may be abnormally liberal, one social scientist commented that "nevertheless, the figures are very indicative."

When it comes to sex, Russia is certainly no land of strolling lovers. Few and far between are the necking or petting couples in parks and other public places. That kind of public display of affection is frowned upon. Candid discussion of sex in public, or even in private, is virtually taboo. The Western cult of the body simply does not exist.

One of the primary impulses of the 1970 educational reform — undertaken, ironically, as an answer to the American reforms that followed the American panic after Sputnik in 1957 — was the desire to break out of the mechanical teaching methods.

The positive side of the no-nonsense Soviet approach to classroom education is that great gobs of materials are committed to memory and children are drilled to mastery of fundamentals. In subjects like math and the natural sciences which lend themselves to that method in the early years, results are impressive. Laurie learned so much in a year of Russian school (where she half-skipped a grade) that she coasted for the next full year in mathematics in the Anglo-American Embassy School in Moscow.

In general schools, electives are out of the question. Laurie's sixth grade had a dozen set subjects: math, physics, biology, Russian literature, Russian grammar, Russian Medieval history, geography, English, drawing, singing, physical culture, and work (sewing for girls, shop for boys). The emphasis was on drill, drill, drill and straight memory work, often unchanged for generations.

School runs six days a week and from September 1 to May 30 with very short holiday periods. Laurie and Jenny found the homework load heavy, and not just because they were foreigners. Russian children work hard, too.

Our own Scott came home one day to announce that "the czar was like the English king but Lenin's team was stronger and Lenin won!" When I mentioned this to a Soviet diplomat, he smilingly replied, "Give us time. We'll make a Bolshevik of him."

Our children liked Nu Pogodi! as much as the Roadrunner cartoons in America.

The innumerable songs about Lenin give him the aura of a combined George Washington, Santa Claus and Christ figure, the most perfect human who ever lived and, in the words of one tune, "always the best friend of children."

A Swedish couple had sent their six-year-old son to Soviet kindergarten. Trying to assert paternal authority over him one day, they asked him what grown-ups he respected. Instead of naming mother or father first, he said, "Lenin."

Russian men have a reputation for a slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am approach to sex.

Some women privately retort to the complaints of their husbands that the way Russian men make love, the women do not get much sexual satisfaction anyway.

"For each birth, we figure two abortions," Dr. Bloshansky said. "In Moscow we have almost the same statistics as New York — about 200,000 abortions [in 1973]. That includes both abortions and miscarriages. Abortions are about 85 percent [or 170,000]."

Soviet condoms are so thick and clumsy that they destroy all sexual pleasure and men told me they refused to use them.

Privately, Russians have a lively, earthy approach to sex-in-the-flesh whether on university campuses, in writers' homes or in any other mixed group setting that lends itself to promiscuity. Privately they relish dirty jokes and gossip about other people's infidelities. But in public, they have a Victorian squeamishness about candid discussion of the biology of sex, and "in public" can mean just two people.

To me, one of the most attractive features of Russian life is the strength of family feelings and the deeply felt sense of responsibility from generation to generation.

The high divorce rate (about 28 percent in 1974 compared to 43 in America, though in Moscow it was said to be about 50 percent) is further evidence of the strains of modern urban life, intensified by pressures on working women and the housing squeeze which allows individuals little privacy.

Roughly 60 million women were at work in 1974, close to 85 percent of all working-age women, the highest percentage in the industrialized world (in America the figure was just about 50 percent).

I recall one leading Russian journalist, back in Moscow after a visit to the United States, unhappily contending that "American men are under the thumbs of their wives."

For centuries, Russians have been flooding Westerners with vodka as a form of hospitality which conveniently numbs the travelers' critical faculties.