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The Keys to Happiness - Sex and the Search for Modernity in fin-de-Siecle Russia (Paperback, New edition)
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The Keys to Happiness - Sex and the Search for Modernity in fin-de-Siecle Russia (Paperback, New edition)
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The revolution of 1905 challenged not only the social and political
structures of imperial Russia but the sexual order as well.
Throughout the decade that followed-in the salons of the artistic
and intellectual avant-garde, on the pages of popular romances, in
the staid assemblies of physicians, psychiatrists, and legal
men-the talk everywhere was of sex. This eagerly awaited book,
echoing the title of a pre-World War I bestseller, The Keys to
Happiness, marks the first serious attempt to understand the
intense public interest in sexuality as a vital dimension of late
tsarist political culture. Drawing on a strong foundation of
historical sources-from medical treatises and legal codes to
anti-Semitic pamphlets, commercial fiction, newspaper
advertisements, and serious literature-Laura Engelstein shows how
Western ideas and attitudes toward sex and gender were transformed
in the Russian context as imported views on prostitution, venereal
disease, homosexuality, masturbation, abortion, and other themes
took on distinctively Russian hues. Engelstein divides her study
into two parts, the first focusing on the period from the Great
Reforms to 1905 and on the two professional disciplines most
central to the shaping of a modern sexual discourse in Russia: law
and medicine. The second part describes the complicated sexual
preoccupations that accompanied the mobilization leading up to
1905, the revolution itself, and the aftermath of continued social
agitation and intensified intellectual doubt. In chapters of
astonishing richness, the author follows the sexual theme through
the twists of professional and civic debate and in the surprising
links between high and low culture up to the eve of the First World
War. Throughout, Engelstein uses her findings to rethink the
conventional wisdom about the political and cultural history of
modern Russia. She maps out new approaches to the history of
sexuality, and shows, brilliantly, how the study of attitudes
toward sex and gender can help us to grasp the most fundamental
political issues in any society.
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