An Erotic Revolution? Pornography in the Russian Empire, 1905-1914

Abstract

The turn of the twentieth century marked a watershed moment in terms of the availability and visibility of pornography across the European continent. Technological innovation, improvements in networks of communication and transportation, the development of mass media, and rising consumerism resulted in an explosion in old and new mediums of pornography. In the Russian Empire, revolution in 1905 further accelerated this trend, as it brought the relative relaxation of tsarist censorship and expedited the development of the mass-circulation press. Revolution also set the Russian case apart from international trends in the suppression of pornography, as provincial authorities used the significant additional powers granted to them in the wake of widespread social and political unrest to crack down on suspect material and target specific social and ethnic groups. This article examines the dissemination and suppression of materials deemed to be pornographic within the Russian Empire from 1905 until 1917. It will show how pornography was at the center of official and popular concern about the impact of “modernity” (broadly defined as industrialization, urbanization, consumerism, and the development of mass communication) on the Empire’s subjects, particularly youth and working-class people.