>
>On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > A friend of mine was a Komsomol leader in the early 80s. His mother, who
> > was one of the SU's biggest geologists, picked him up of Playboy at one
> > of her overseas conferences. He was terrified smuggling it back to his
> > apartment in a bag, afraid the cops would stop him. Getting caught with
> > it would have seriously damaged a Komsomol leader's reputation.
> >
> > Punishment for makinh pornography in the USSR was 3 years
>
>So did it have a short-lived cachet among the educated when the USSR fell
>and it became legal, like it did in Spain? Where it became a symbol of
>new license and free expression?
>
>Michael
--------
Can't really tell you. I know there was a period where pretty racy stuff was shown on TV, but that's died down. I've never seen anything but very, very softcore French porn late at night, much less than you could see on German TV.
Russia is a very conservative country, by and large. Profanity is looked down on as extremely uncouth. I would never say the equivalent of "fuck" in front of a Russian with any education whatsoever. The novelist, I don't remember his name, who wrote "Goluboye Salo" ("Light-Blue Lard" or "Gay Lard," depending on how you translate it) has been brought up on pornography charges because he describes clones of Stalin and Brezhnev having sex.
Porn and prostitution are illegal in Russia still, but those laws aren't enforced except in high-profile cases like the aforementioned. There has been a move to re-outlaw male homosexuality, but in my opinion this is going to go nowhere.
_________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com