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LOST REVOLUTIONARY - A.B. ZALKIND (1888-1936) (translated with DeepL)

https://psy.1sept.ru/article.php?ID=200400107 Степанов Cергей | Заблудившийся революционер. А.Б.Залкинд (1888 - 1936) | Журнал «Школьный психолог» № 1/2004 Home page of "First of September" - Home page of the magazine "School Psychologist" - Table of Contents №1/2004 MEMBERS LOST REVOLUTIONARY A.B. ZALKIND (1888-1936) At the dawn of the new millennium, in 2001, the publishing house Agraf, which specializes in the production of intellectual literature, published Aron Zalkind's book Pedology: Utopia and Reality in the "Symbols of Time" series. Zalkind himself has never written a book under this title, as any utopian would be unlikely to admit that his ideas are utopian. This new book is a compilation, as if deliberately made up of Zalkind's most odious works, which nowadays are perceived almost caricaturedly. Even the infrequent references to Zalkind in the press are reduced mainly to quoting the most flamboyant of his maxims for the amusement of the public. Contemporary psychologists know little about this interesting man, who can rightfully be called one of the key figures in the formation of national psychology in the first third of the twentieth century. His personal and scientific destiny is deeply controversial and dramatic, and instructive in its own way. A passionate revolutionary and innovator, Zalkind sensitively caught the wind of the times, but in their practical embodiment of clearly "overdid it", leaving the posterity is not so much a heritage as a warning. This article was published with the support of the online store health "VitaBio". Means with bacteriophages, aerovitamins and cosmetics REBION, drugs for allergies, psoriasis, angina, SARS and flu, various infections, treatment of skin, antibiotics. Courier delivery and pick-up in Moscow, a guarantee of quality, reasonable prices, cashless payment. View a catalog of products, prices, contacts and make an order you can on the site, which is located at: http://vitabio.ru/psikhologiya-otnoshenij/vozrastnye-krizisy/315-krizis-podrostkovogo-vozrasta?showall=1. WAS IT TRUE? We know the biography of Aron Borisovich Zalkind only in its major milestones, which even it is not always possible to reliably date. Our search for any portrait of him proved fruitless; it seems that none has survived. For example, there is no photograph in Zalkind's handwritten questionnaire, which is on file in the Lenin State Pedagogical University (he worked for several years at that university, then called the 2nd Moscow State University). But accurately specified date of birth - June 5, 1889. We find the same date in the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, where a personal article is devoted to Zalkind. Subsequently, for some reason, another date was given - 1888. (In the recently published directory "Russian psychoanalysts" indicated 1886.) Specify it today is no longer possible. And the date of his death is not known at all. He died in July 1936 of a massive heart attack - according to one romantic version, on the street, returning from a party meeting, at which the decree "On Pedological Perversions..." was announced. We will never know on what day this happened, or if this was in fact the case. No testimony or recollections have survived about the personality of this man. One can only imagine the ambition of a Jewish boy from Kharkov, who in the early twentieth century conceived of a medical career. An ambition for those times almost utopian, but in exceptional cases feasible. Zalkind managed to enter the medical faculty of Moscow University, upon graduation from which in 1911 he began his own practice, specializing in psychoneurology. VIEWS AND INTENTIONS As a student, Zalkind became interested in psychoanalysis, an innovative and exotic doctrine at the time, and took part in the "Malye Pyatnits" seminar led by V.P. Serbsky, where practical aspects of the Freudian approach to neurosis were actively discussed. It seems that Russian enthusiasts did not attach great importance to the row of schisms among Western psychoanalysts which began in the 1910s, continuing to venerate "dissenters" along with Freud. Thus, Zalkind in his views leaned more toward Adlerianism and tried to consider from these positions problems not quite usual for a psychoanalyst, such as somnambulism. This is the subject of his articles, published on the eve of World War I in the central organ of Russian psychoanalysts, the journal Psychotherapy. The articles were printed in a highly honorable environment, the handwriting of an enthusiastic and successful psychotherapist can be felt in them. One can form an idea of Zalkind's views and probably intentions according to his definition of creativity given at the time: "Whatever field it concerns - it is a process of the maximum, the most profitable use of psychic powers for the achievement of the largest, within the limits of a given situation, goals. It is unlikely that the author foresaw at the time the situation in which life would place him and the kind of creativity it would require to achieve the largest, within these limits, goals. Having had the full measure of the hardships of war - Zalkind spent three years in the active army at the fronts of the First World War - he embraced the revolution with delight and devoted himself selflessly to its service. Today, the Austrian communist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich is referred to as its founder when Freudo-Marxism is mentioned. Zalkind, a Freudian with a pre-revolutionary record and a Bolshevik since 1921, could be called founder with no less justification. Like Reich (who incidentally only became well-known in Moscow during a short visit in 1929), Zalkind believed that a combination of the revolutionary approaches of Marx and Freud to man and society could produce a truly new man and a new society. Reality, however, was correcting these judgments. A PECULIAR CONTINGENT Advising party members ("The List of Medical Doctors" 1925 qualifies his specialty as "psychopathology"), Zalkind becomes convinced of the ineffectiveness of the analytical approach to this contingent. Very quickly he develops a new, absurdly ideologized view of the problems of mental health and illness. "The Great French Revolution as a massive curative measure (mostly surgical?...-S.S.) was more useful for human health than millions of baths, plumbing, and thousands of new chemicals," he now declares. However, in articles published in the mid-1920s and in his book Essays on the Culture of Revolutionary Time, Zalkind describes an interesting situation, seemingly unrecorded by anyone else. The partaker, on whom the burden of revolutionary construction rests, wears out quickly and sharply. The 30-year-old carries within him the diseases of the 45-year-old; the 40-year-old is almost an old man. Zalkind sees the causes in constant nervous excitement, overwork, poor hygiene, and - there were still delicate allusions to this at the time - in the cultural backwardness and even professional inadequacy of many workers. According to Zalkind, up to 90 percent of Bolshevik patients suffered from neurological symptoms, almost all had hypertension and sluggish metabolism. Zalkind called this symptom complex the "partriad." In his article "On the ulcers of the RCP" (even if he had not had a heart attack, Zalkind would hardly have lived longer - for this name alone a firing squad was guaranteed) he accompanies the clinical picture with a skilful sociopolitical analysis, demonstrating an understanding of the internal party situation. Zalkind accuses the opposition of a particular prevalence of psychoneurosis. Its activists suffer from excessive emotionality, which is, as Zalkind argued at the time of his fascination with Adler, the essence of neurosis. The treatment in such cases, he recommends, is "an intensification of party re-education. Among Communist students (most of whom supported the Trotskyist opposition), Zalkind found at least half of them mentally unhealthy. Here are some of the cases he reviewed. Depression in a 22-year-old student, a former commissar of a regiment in the Civil War, who was "disgusted with life under the New Economic Policy. Hysterical somnambulism in a former red commander who has also been deprived of peace by the neopmans, "triumphant, fat and dressed up"; Zalkind interprets his hallucinosis as "a passage into another world, where his lusts are realized... he is again in battle, in command, serving the revolution in his own way." (I wonder how the pioneer of Russian Freudianism would comment on the total neuroticization of our days.) PUTTING SEX IN ITS PLACE Zalkind attached great importance to the issue of sex in party hygiene - psychoanalytic attitudes could not help but have an impact. In his opinion, modern man suffers from sexual fetishism, and putting sex in its proper place is the responsible task of the new science. "It is necessary for the collective to be more drawn to itself than the love partner." To this end, Zalkind develops a detailed system, the Twelve Commandments of Sexual Behavior of the Revolutionary Proletariat. Their general meaning is that the energy of the proletariat must not be diverted to sexual relations useless to its historical mission. "The sexual must in everything be subordinated to the class, in nothing interfering with the latter, in everything serving it." Therefore, until marriage, namely until the age of 20-25, sexual abstinence is necessary; the sexual act should not be repeated too often; there should be less sexual variety; sexual selection should be along the lines of class, revolutionary-proletarian expediency; there should be no jealousy. The last, 12th and most important commandment, stated: the class, in the interests of revolutionary expediency, has the right to interfere in the sexual life of its members. From today's perspective, Zalkind's commandments sound almost anecdotal. But we must admit that for all the twists and turns of official ideology that followed, its basic tendency in dealing with the sexual question was anticipated (or modeled?) by Zalkind with amazing foresight. Everyone remembers how, fifteen years ago, a participant in a Soviet-American television bridge pathetically declared to the amusement of millions of viewers, "We do not have sex!" What she meant by this is easy to understand if you reread the commandments, which Soviet society, while firmly forgetting about their author, has been steadily adhering to for over half a century. Moreover, the entire theory and practice of sex education in the family and in schools were built on these commandments, or, more precisely, on the idea of sublimated libido. This is, of course, an extreme, and its negative aspects are obvious. But is it much better than the other extreme, which modern society has fallen into according to the "opposite" principle? After all, liberated sexuality is fraught with no less problems than the impaired one! Examples abound. A SMALL BUT TOUGH PEDOLOGIST At the 2nd Psychoneurological Congress held in Leningrad in early 1924, Zalkind's reports attracted universal attention. Of the 906 delegates to the congress, only 429 were specialists in psychoneurology; many of those present considered themselves Marxist educators. The observer observed that among educators, "the shift toward revolutionary ideology is taking place at a much faster pace than among other strata of the intelligentsia, whose representatives are confined to a narrow circle of isolated practice. To this audience, which soon formed the backbone of the country's pedological cadre, Zalkind offered an eclectic program that was enthusiastically received. The reviewer of "Krasnaya Novia" perceived Zalkind's program as follows: "Sociogenetic biology combined with the teaching of reflexes, with careful use of Freudian concepts of great value and some of his experimental methods, will greatly enrich the bio-Marxist theory and practice. By a special resolution, the congress welcomed Zalkind's reports as "a coherent sociological analysis of a number of neurological, psychopathological, and pedological problems in the light of revolutionary public opinion. It was pedology, the new science of the child, that the revolutionary enthusiasts intended to solve the urgent problems facing society in the shortest possible time. At that time, science was generally regarded as a powerful magical force, much as cavemen regarded witchcraft, which guaranteed radical changes for the better at the wave of a magic wand. (Admittedly, this prejudice is quite tenacious!) To build a new society in a country where 70 percent of the population could neither read, nor write, nor even understand what was being said from the rostrum, it was necessary to educate a new generation of cultivated people to replace the dislocated one. Or at least not to hinder those thousands of young enthusiasts who wanted to contribute immediately to the building of a utopia. The number of pedagogical colleges in the country increased one and a half times during the 1919/1920 school year alone; still they were overcrowded: in 1921 there were six times as many students as in 1914. The People's Commissar of Education A. V. Lunacharski proclaimed: "Our school network may come close to a really normal school network when it will be penetrated by a network of sufficiently scientifically trained pedologists... It is also necessary that in every teacher, in the brain of every teacher there should live, perhaps, a small, but strong enough pedologist. Does this remind you of anything? The "old" sciences were to disappear, shrink under the onslaught of the new sciences, or at best move into their territory. Normal science (in Thomas Kuhn's terminology) tells us what phenomena or people are like on their own, while power needs a description of what they can become through its intervention. At the 1st Congress of Pedology in late 1927, Lunacharski stated unequivocally in his report: "Pedology, having studied what a child is and according to what laws he develops, will thereby illuminate for us the most important process of producing a new man in parallel with the production of new equipment that goes along with the economic line. In his speech at the same congress, Zalkind attempted to present a platform on which two and a half thousand congress participants, representing several different scientific fields and a myriad of theoretical orientations, could consolidate. This was wishful thinking: the congress approved a "united platform" of Soviet pedologists. This course was henceforth to steer the ship of Soviet paedology. An enthusiastic Zalkind took the helm. IN THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGIST. In April 1928 the Commission for Planning Research in Pedology in the RSFSR under the People's Commissariat for Education began its work; Zalkind was appointed its chairman. By the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of August 17, 1928 its level was raised to the Interdepartmental Planning Pedological Commission. In the same year the journal Pedology, under his editorship, began to be published. In 1930 Zalkind initiated the convening of the Congress for the Study of Human Behavior. Thereby the country's chief pedologist laid claim to the role of the ideologist of the totality of human sciences. His report to this Congress entitled "The Psychoneurological Sciences and Socialist Construction" deserves special attention. During the twelve years of Soviet power, Zalkind states, a new mass man grew up in the country. The revolutionary epoch created him in a bushcraft fashion, but he is winning amazingly. It is bad, however, that the psychoneurological sciences do not provide any assistance to the new masses. Mass psychoneurological literature, mass counseling, mass instruction need to be created. All of this is lacking, and only ominous warnings are heard from the augurs of human studies: our science is not yet mature enough to do mass work. The governing bodies of the Party are carrying out cadre and educational work, but science does not give positive instructions in this field. On the contrary, we even hear negative instructions, threats to the mass new man. It is quite obvious, concludes Zalkind, that the bulk of all psychoneurology does not do what the revolution needs. It is impossible not to admit that, once again, Zalkind was surprisingly sensitive to the trends of the times. His report was perhaps even ahead of its time in its aggressiveness. At the end of 1930. The Psychological Institute in Moscow was transformed into the Institute of Psychology, Pedology, and Psychotechnics. Zalkind replaced N.K. Kornilov as its director. But unlike the "new mass man," Zalkind had a past that was becoming disreputable in front of his eyes and had to be repudiated. Several recent Freudian works explain Zalkind's renunciation of psychoanalysis as a forced step dictated by the persecution that had begun. To be fair, such an assessment should be recognized as exaggerated - persecution was not yet in question, but psychoanalysis was rapidly going out of fashion. In the early thirties, Russian psychoanalysts continued to gather in a small circle to discuss their dreams, but it was not a dissident underground, but rather an exotic interest group. Publications became rare. Official encouragement has waned, but it has not yet been replaced by obstruction. At the same time, or in connection with it? - The enthusiasm of recent heroes cooled down, too (enthusiasm that stirs easily with support from on high, but vanishes with the loss of it). STUMBLING UPON FREUD By the sincerity of Zalkind's tone of self-criticism one can feel it well - when the wind changes, the weather vane feels it first. "I," Zalkind wrote, "objectively contributed to the popularization of Freudism in the USSR in 1923-25, and by inertia even later. But I was putting into Freudism my own particular understanding, which was in fact a complete perversion of Freudism. However, I continued to call my views Freudism, and this seduced the "little ones. I have always, Zalkind recalled, tried to justify "the extreme sociogenic conditionality, the plasticity of man and human behavior," to defend an understanding of personality as an "active, combative, creative element. But Zalkind did not find this in the old, "reactionary" psychology. "Having stumbled upon Freud in 1910-1911, I thought I had finally found a treasure trove. Indeed, the Freudian personality burns, struggles, is dynamic, culls, pursues a persistent strategy, switches its aspirations, its energy reserves, etc. In short, the emptied, flabby self of the old Freudian psychoneurology is finally being thrown out of science (so it seemed to me at the time). Zalkind can easily believe this: this is how Freud was perceived by romantically inclined youth in the years of his greatest popularity in Russia. However, as is well known, romanticism over the years is replaced by common sense. If we ponder on Zalkind's judgement, it becomes clear that he was in fact quite far from Freudism, both before and now. Just think of his 12 Commandments, which if Freud had known about them he would have laughed at best. So, in a sense, Zalkind is subjectively honest in his repentance. But his extremist pathos is irredeemable. "The consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat drives - and forever - an aspen stake into the grave of Soviet Freudianism." ANOTHER HORNET'S STAKE Probably, Zalkind was too hasty with this vampire metaphor. Even N.K. Krupskaya unexpectedly sided with Freudism: one should not, they say, bend to the other side - the unconscious plays its role in life and in behavior. But a word is not a sparrow, and the aspen stake is, indeed, forever. Zalkind can no longer stop. His new methodology reads: "We become from slaves of scientific techniques their masters... The main (if not all) mass of scientific research today must be short-term, quickly producing definite conclusions for the immediate future. However, history teaches us: constant fluctuations shake the weather vane, and it is he who is the first to be swept away by a new gust of wind, which is stronger than the previous ones. In 1932, Zalkind ceases to be the director of the Institute of Psychology, Pedology and Psychotechnics (in the booklet that was recently issued for the Institute's anniversary, in the portrait gallery of its directors there is not only a portrait of Zalkind, which is quite understandable, but also no mention of him, as if there were no such person). He was also removed from his post as editor-in-chief of the journal Pedology. The journal itself did not have much time to live. The days of pedology were numbered. The leader of Soviet paedology outlived it by a few days. Instead of mournfully paternal obituaries, he was followed by a biased article criticizing his personal "perversions of pedology". Either by oversight, or by a wicked irony, it was included as an afterword in the current volume of his works. Another aspen stake in the necropolis of Russian psychology. Outside the window is the wind. A shifting... Sergey STEPANOV The Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat I. There must be no too early development of sexuality among the proletariat. II. Sexual abstinence before marriage is necessary, and marriage only at full social and biological maturity (i.e., 20-25 years of age). III. Sexual intercourse is only as the final consummation of deep comprehensive sympathy and attachment to the object of sexual love. IV. Sexual intercourse must be only the final link in the chain of deep and complex experiences that bind the lovers at this moment. V. The sexual act must not be repeated frequently. VI. The sexual object shall not be changed frequently. Less sexual variety. VII. Love must be monogamous, monoandrous (one wife, one husband). VIII. With every intercourse one must always be mindful of the possibility of conceiving a child and generally mindful of offspring. IX. Sexual selection must be along the lines of class, revolutionary-proletarian expediency. Elements of flirtation, courtship, coquetry and other methods of specifically sexual conquest must not be introduced into the love affair. X. There must be no jealousy. XI. There shall be no sexual perversion. XII. The class, in the interests of revolutionary expediency, has the right to interfere in the sexual life of its fellow-members. The sexual must in all things be subordinate to the class, in no way interfering with the latter, in all things serving it. Cited from http://www.a-z.ru/women/texts/zalkinr.htm with reference to Zalkind A.B. The Twelve Sexual Precepts of the Revolutionary Proletariat // The Philosophy of Love In 2 vols. Т. 2. M.: Politizdat, 1990. С. 224-255.

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Zalkind A. B. - The Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat (translated with DeepL)

https://a-z.ru/women/texts/zalkinr.htm Залкинд А. Б. Двенадцать половых заповедей революционного пролетариата Family, Family Planning. Zalkind A. B. The Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat // Philosophy of Love. In 2 vols. 2. M., Politizdat, 1990. С. 224-255. Zalkind A. B. The Twelve Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat Collectivism, organization, activism, dialectical materialism - these are the four main powerful pillars underpinning the building of proletarian ethics which is now under construction, these are the four criteria by which one can always see whether one or another action is expedient from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary proletariat. Everything that contributes to the development of the revolutionary, collectivist feelings and actions of the workers, everything that best promotes the planned organization of the proletarian economy and the planned organization of discipline within the proletariat, everything that increases the revolutionary fighting ability of the proletariat, its flexibility, Everything that removes the mystical, religious film from the eyes and brain of the workers, that increases their scientific knowledge, their materialist acuteness of analysis of life,-all this is moral and ethical from the standpoint of the interests of the developing proletarian revolution, all this must be welcomed, cultivated by all means. On the contrary, everything that contributes to the individualistic isolation of the workers, everything that brings disorder into the economic organization of the proletariat, everything that develops class cowardice, confusion, stupidity, everything that fosters superstition and ignorance among the workers,-all this is immoral, criminal, such behavior must be ruthlessly pursued by the proletariat. Hence, a critique of the individual rules of bourgeois ethics now becomes available to us. We can replace any rule of behavior of exploitative ethics with a very concrete, practical consideration aimed at the protection of the class interests of the proletariat... ... "Thou shalt not create adultery" - to this commandment some of our youth have tried to contrast another formula - "sexual life is everyone's private affair," "love is free" - but this formula is wrong, too. The sanctimonious prohibitions on sexual life, insincerely imposed by the bourgeoisie, are, of course, ridiculous, because they presuppose some sinful beginning in sexual life. Our point of view, on the other hand, can only be revolutionary-class, strictly businesslike. If this or that sexuality helps to separate a person from his class, reduces the sharpness of his scientific (i.e., materialistic) curiosity, deprives him of a portion of the productive-creative capacity for labor that the class requires, and lowers his fighting qualities, then fuck him. Sexuality is permissible only in that content which promotes the growth of collectivist feelings, class organization, production-creative, militant activity, acuteness of knowledge (these are the principles on which the sexual norms given by the author in the article below are built), etc., etc. From these examples, we see that an organized, active and materialistically-conscious collectivism is the moral touchstone on which we can unmistakably test the revolutionary sharpness and class correctness of one or another of our actions. Our entire life, our entire way of life, must be based on these principles. ...Every area of proletarian class behavior must be based on the principle of revolutionary expediency in working out its norms. Since the proletariat and the masses of workers attached to it economically constitute the overwhelming part of humanity, revolutionary expediency is thereby also the best biological expediency, the greatest biological good (as we shall see below). Consequently, the proletariat has every reason to intervene in the chaotic unfolding of modern man's sexual life. Being now in the stage of initial socialist accumulation, in a period of pre-socialist, transitional, heroic poverty, the working class must be extremely calculating in the use of its energy, must be frugal, even stingy when it comes to saving strength in the name of increasing the fighting fund. Therefore, it will not permit itself the unbridled drain of energetic wealth that characterizes the sexual life of modern bourgeois society, with its early excitement and licentiousness of sexual manifestations, with its fragmentation, its atomization of sexual feeling, with its insatiable irritability and excited weakness, with its frantic flitting between eroticism and sensuality, with its crude intervention of sexual relations in intimate intra-class relations. The proletariat replaces chaos with organization in the field of economics, elements of systematic expedient organization it will bring to modern sexual chaos as well. Sexuality for the creation of healthy revolutionary class progeny, for the correct, combative use of all the energetic wealth of man, for the revolutionary and expedient organization of his pleasures, for the combative formation of intra-class relations - this is the proletariat's approach to the sexual question. Sex as an integral part of the proletariat's other martial arsenal - this is the only possible working class perspective on the question of sex now: all the social and biological assets of the revolutionary proletariat are now its martial arsenal. Hence: all those elements of sexuality which are harmful to the creation of a healthy revolutionary shift, which rob class energy, which fester class joys, which spoil intra-class relations, must be ruthlessly swept away from class life, swept away with all the more implacability that sexuality is a habitual, sophisticated diplomat, cunningly creeping into the smallest cracks - of assent, weakness, short-sightedness. I. There must be no too early development of sexuality among the proletariat-the first sexual commandment of the revolutionary working class. The communist children's movement, seizing all children's interests from an early age into its mainstream, creating the best conditions for the development of children's independence, for children's physical self-healing, for the bright flowering of inquisitive, social, adventure-heroic aspirations, confines all children's attention to itself and does not allow the parasitic spider of early sexual excitement to appear. There is physiological training, and combat training, and bright class ideology, and early equal camaraderie between the different sexes - premature sexual development has nothing to grow on under such conditions. Therefore, the first task of the proletariat is to prevent early infantile We shall direct parents and schools to the necessity of a correct approach to the social and biological interests of the child, we shall assist in this approach and expend all our energy as a class in the organization of the mass communist children's movement and its introduction into all corners of children's and school and family life. The sanitation of child sex life will make the now so difficult struggle against the sexual confusion of adulthood unnecessary in the future. II. Sexual abstinence before marriage is necessary, and marriage only at full social and biological maturity (i.e., 20-25 years of age) is the second sexual commandment of the proletariat. And what is harmful, they will tell us, in sexual activity before marriage? What is harmful is that such sexual activity is unorganized, connected with a casual sexual object, unregulated by a lasting sympathy between partners, subject to the most superficial excitements, that is, characterized by precisely those traits which, as we shall see below, must be unconditionally and ruthlessly eradicated by the proletariat in its environment. This kind of chaotically developed sexual content is never limited to the narrow sphere of purely sexual existence, but impudently invades all other areas of human creativity as well, stealing them with impunity. Is this permissible in terms of revolutionary expediency? III. Sexual intercourse is only as the final consummation of deep, comprehensive sympathy and affection for the object of sexual love. Purely physical sexual desire is unacceptable from a revolutionary proletarian point of view. What distinguishes man from all other animals is that all of his physiological functions are imbued with a psychic, i.e. social, content. Sexual desire for an object which is morally repugnant, dishonorable, hostile to the class is just as perverse as human sexual desire for a crocodile or an orangutan. The sex drive of a properly developing cultured man absorbs a mass of valuable elements from the life around him and becomes inseparable from them. If one is attracted to intercourse, it must mean that the object of sexual attraction is also attracted to other aspects of his being, not only the width of his shoulders or hips. In fact, what would happen if the sexual partner were a class-ideally deeply alien person? First, of course, it would be an unorganized, extramarital affair, driven by superficial sensual sexual excitement (only people who are oriented toward a long life together enter into marriage, i.e. secondly, it would be sexual desire in its roughest form, not moderated by feelings of sympathy and tenderness, not regulated by anything social: such an attraction would stir up the basest sides of the human psyche, would give them full scope; thirdly, the child who might nevertheless appear, despite all preventive measures, would have parents deeply alien to one another and would find himself divided, split mentally from an early age; Fourthly, this connection would distract from creative work, for, built on purely sensual lust, it would depend on accidental causes, on minor fluctuations in the moods of the partners, and, satisfying without any creative effort it would greatly depreciate the very meaning of creative effort-it would rob creativity of one of its major exciters, to say nothing of the fact that the great frequency of sexual acts in such a connection, unmoderated by moral motives, would also to a large extent deplete the brain energy that should go to social, scientific, and other creativity. Such sexual behavior is certainly out of the way with revolutionary expediency. IV. The sexual act must be only the final link in the chain of deep and complex experiences that bind the lovers at the moment. It is not only a "simple attraction" to the act of intercourse: it is to be preceded by a heightened feeling of all-round intimacy, deep ideological and moral fusion, a complex deep mutual impregnation, the physiological completion of which can only be the act of intercourse. The social, the class ahead of the animal, not vice versa. The presence of this social, moral, psychological premise of the sexual act will lead to the most valuable results: first, the sexual act would become much rarer, which, on the one hand, would increase its content, the joyous saturation it gives, on the other hand, would prove to be a major saving in the general chemistry, leaving to creativity a considerable amount of unspent energy; Secondly, such sexual acts would not separate, as is usually the case with frequent sensual closeness, up to disgust for each other (Tolstoy gives a brilliant, quite realistically correct illustration of this in his "Kreutzer Sonata"), but would bring them even deeper, even stronger; Thirdly, "this kind of sexual intercourse would not oppose the creative process, but would coexist harmoniously alongside it, nourishing it and feeding it with added joy (meanwhile, the hunger sensual intercourse steals also the very creative mood, withdrawing from creativity's subjective fund almost all its emotional material, almost all its "passion", for quite a long period, emptying, depleting, "creative fantasy; this refers, as we see, not only to the chemistry of creativity, but also to its mechanics). V. The sexual act must not be repeated often. This is already sufficiently evident from the above points. However, the motives of the fifth "commandment" are not exhausted. There is every scientific reason to claim that really deep love is characterized by infrequent sexual intercourse (although infrequent sexual intercourse itself does not always mean deep love: sexual indifference may be hidden under it). In deep real love, the formalized sexual desire matures as the final stage of the whole series of rich, complicated experiences of mutual intimacy preceding it, and such processes proceed, of course, for a long time, requiring for themselves a large quantity of nourishing material. VI. Do not change the sexual object frequently. Less sexual variety. VI. Do not change the sexual object frequently. Less sexual variety. If the above points are fulfilled, this "commandment" will not be necessary, but it should still be substantiated. a) the search of a new sexual, love partner is a very difficult care, which takes away from creative aspirations a large part of their emotional power; b) even when finding this new partner a whole series of experiences, efforts, new skills for comprehensive adaptation to it are required, which is just as a robbery of other creative-class forces; c) when conquering a new love object it is sometimes required an intense struggle not only with it, but also with another "conqueror" - a struggle that has quite a distinct sexual character and coloring VII. Love must be monogamous, monoandrous (one wife, one husband). This is clearly evident from all of the above, but, in order to avoid misunderstandings, we must nevertheless emphasize this point. It may be pointed out to us that it is possible to observe all these rules when there are two wives or husbands. "Ideal intimacy, infrequent sexual intercourse, and other directives are also compatible with being twice-married, twice-married." "Well, imagine that one wife (husband) makes up for in me ideologically and sexually what is lacking in the other (other); one cannot find in one person the full embodiment of the love ideal." Such considerations are too transparent a stretch. The love life of the two-woman(s) is extremely complicated, captures too many areas, energy, time, special interest, requires too many special adaptations, no doubt increases the number of sexual acts, to the same extent the class creative activity loses in the corresponding area, because the sum of forces diverted toward an inordinately complicated sex life, even in the most brilliant state of the latter, will never pay off with a creative effect. Creativity under such conditions always loses rather than wins, and moreover loses not only quantitatively, but also in a gross distortion of its quality, since it will be continuously burdened by an excessive and special sexual, love" interest. VIII. In every sexual act one must always be mindful of the possibility of conceiving a child, and generally mindful of offspring. No prophylactic remedy, except the grossly harmful ones, guarantees fully against possible pregnancy - and abortions are extremely harmful for women - and therefore the intercourse should catch both spouses in a state of full biological and moral well-being, since the indisposition of one of the parents at the time of gestation seriously affects the child's body. The same consideration, of course, once and for all excludes the use of prostitution, since the possibility of contracting a venereal disease is the most terrible threat both to the biological heredity of the offspring and to the health of the mother. IX. Sexual selection must be along the lines of class, revolutionary-proletarian expediency. Elements of flirtation, courtship, coquetry, and other methods of specifically sexual conquest must not be introduced into love relationships. Sexuality is seen by the class as a social function and not as a narrowly personal one, and therefore it is social, class virtues, and not specific physiological-sex lures, which are in the vast majority either a relic of our pre-cultural condition or developed as a result of the rotten effects of exploitative living conditions, that should attract and win in love life. The sex drive itself is biologically strong enough that there is no need to excite it with additional special methods. Since the revolutionary class, which saves all of mankind from destruction, has exclusively eugenic tasks in its sexual life, that is, the task of the revolutionary-communist recovery of mankind through progeny, obviously it is not those traits of class-less "beauty," "femininity," and grossly "muscular" and "mustached" masculinity, which have little place and are of little use under the conditions of industrialized, intellectualized, socialized humanity, that should reveal themselves as the strongest sexual stimuli. The modern human fighter must be distinguished by a subtle and precise intellectual apparatus, a great deal of social flexibility and sensitivity, class courage and firmness, whether male or female. The powerless, fragile "femininity," which is the product of thousands of years of servitude to women and at the same time the only supplier of material for coquetry and flirtation; Just as the "mustachioed," "muscular-boned" masculinity, more necessary for a professional loader or a knight of the pre-armed period than for the dodgy and technically educated modern revolutionary,-all these traits, of course, correspond minimally to the needs of revolution and revolutionary sexual selection. The notion of beauty and health is now being radically reconsidered by the fighting class in terms of class expediency, and the class-futile so-called "beauty" and the so-called "strength" of the exploitative period of human history will inevitably be pulverized by bodily combinations of the best revolutionary device, the most productive revolutionary expediency. It is not without reason that the ideals of beauty and power differ deeply in various social strata, and that the aesthetics of the bourgeoisie, the aesthetics of the bourgeois intelligentsia, are far from appealing to the proletariat. But the proletariat does not yet have its own aesthetics; it is in the process of its victorious class struggle, and, therefore, it would be a terrible mistake on its way to forming the methods of new class sex selection to use the old, putrefied methods of sex enticement, as far as their class validity is concerned. What will the offspring be like in class terms, created by parents whose main virtues, which were the main sexual stimulants, were: the powerless and coquettishly lively femininity of the mother and the "broad-shouldered muscularity" of the father? Revolution, of course, is not against broad shoulders, but it is not by them that it ultimately wins, and it is not on them that revolutionary sexual selection should be built at its core. The powerless fragility of women is of no use to it at all: economically and politically, that is, physiologically, the woman of the modern proletariat must approach, and is increasingly approaching, the man. It is necessary to achieve that harmonious combination of physical health and class creative values which is most expedient from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. The embodiment of this combination will be the ideal of proletarian sexual selection. The basic class-values should be the basic sex-bait, and only on them will the sex-union be built in the future. It is not without reason that not only the concept of beauty, but also the concept of the physiological norm, is currently the subject of such passionate scientific discussion. X. There must be no jealousy. Sexual love life, built on mutual respect, on equality, on deep ideological closeness, on mutual trust, does not allow for lies, suspicion, jealousy. Jealousy has several rotten characteristics about it. Jealousy, on the one hand, is the result of mistrusting the person you love, fearing that he will hide the truth; on the other hand, jealousy is the product of mistrusting yourself (a state of self-deprecation): "I am so bad that she or he does not need me, and he or she can easily cheat on me. Further, there is an element of the jealous person's own lies in jealousy: Usually those who are not trustworthy in matters of love are not trustworthy themselves; from the experience of their own lies, they assume that their partner is also prone to lie. Worst of all, in jealousy, its main content is an element of rude possessiveness: "I don't want to give her (him) up to anyone," which is completely unacceptable from a proletarian-class point of view. If my love life, like my entire life, is a class asset, if my entire sexual behavior must be based on considerations of class expediency, it is obvious that my choice of sexual object as well as the choice by others of me as a sexual object must, in the first place, be based on the class utility of this choice. If my sexual partner's departure from me is associated with an increase in his class power, if he (she) has replaced me with another object that is more valuable in the class sense, how anti-class, shameful does my jealous protest become under such conditions? The question is different: it is difficult for me to judge for myself who is better: me or the one who has replaced me. But appeal, then, to comradely, class opinion, and be firmly reconciled if the evaluation was not in your favor. If you have been replaced by the worst one(s), you are left with the right to struggle to win back the one(s) who left you, or, if you fail, to despise him or her as someone who is not class-minded. But this is not jealousy. Jealousy is the fear of others' lies, that is, of one's own lies as well, the feeling of one's own nothingness and powerlessness, the animal-proprietor approach, that is precisely what a revolutionary proletarian fighter should not have in any case. XI. There must be no sexual perversions. No more than 1-2% of contemporary sexual perversions are genuinely intra-biological, inborn, constitutional; the rest are in fact acquired conditioned reflexes produced by a pernicious combination of external conditions and require the most resolute class struggle against them. Every sexual perversion, weakening the central sexual content, is reflected at the same time on the quality of the offspring and on the entire development of sexual relations between partners. Sexual perversions always indicate a gross inflection of sexual life toward naked sensuality, a severe lack of social and loving stimuli in the sex drive. The sexual life of the perverted lacks those creatively regulating elements which characterize normal sexual relations: the demands of more and more diversity, the dependence on random stimuli and random moods become really enormous in the perverted; the difficulty of finding a partner fully satisfying the needs of the perverted, the fear of losing the partner already found, the difficulty of the task of the perverted adjusting him to himself (that is actually mutilating the partner for his pleasure), frequent jealousy, suspicion of the perverted, and the need to make his own choices. The class must try with all its might to bring the perverted one back into the mainstream of normal sexual experience. XII. Class, in the interests of revolutionary expediency, has the right to intervene in the sexual life of its members. Sexuality must be subordinated to class in everything, not interfering with it in any way, serving it in everything. There is too much chaos in contemporary sexual life, too many ridiculous conditioned reflexes in the field of sexuality, created by exploiting sociality, for the revolutionary organizing class to accept this bourgeois inheritance without struggle. Ninety percent of contemporary sexual content has lost its biological spontaneity and is subject to the corrupting influence of a variety of factors, from under whose power it is necessary to liberate sexuality by giving it a different, healthy direction, by creating for it expedient class regulators. Sexuality ceases to be "the private affair of the individual" (as Bebel once said, but he did not live in the militant era of the proletarian revolution or in the country of the victorious proletariat) and becomes an area of social, class organization. Of course, we are still far away from a truly exhaustive class-normalization of sexuality among the proletariat, since the socio-economic preconditions for this normalization have not yet been clearly studied, and there is also a great deal of fetishism in the biological interpretation of sexuality. Attempts to rigidly normalize sexuality now, of course, would lead to tragic absurdity, to the most complex misunderstandings and conflicts, but nevertheless there are general introductory milestones for the class correction of the sexual question, for the creation of a basic sexual direction. By sensible advice from comrades, by organizing class opinion in an appropriate direction, by giving valuable artistic images of a certain type in art, by intervening even in cases that are too crude, even by the professional court, by the narsu, etc., etc., class can now give major impulses along the lines of sexual selection, along the lines of saving sexual energy, of socializing sexuality, ennobling and eugenicizing it. The further on, the clearer the path on this issue becomes, the more firm and clear, the more detailed the class's demands regarding the sexual behavior of its fellow-men will become. But it will not only make demands, it will build an environment conducive to the fulfillment of these demands. The measure of its demands will correspond to the possibilities of the new environment, to the degree of its maturity and strength. Being determines consciousness. The sexual must submit entirely to the regulating influence of the class. An environment corresponding to this is already taking shape. Of course, our "12 commandments" do not at all exhaust all the norms of behavior of the revolutionary proletariat. The author only poses the question in its original form, trying to fix the first milestones. In doing so, he has tried to hold consistently to the three criteria indicated above for the class-appropriate sexual behavior of the proletariat: 1) the question of progeny; 2) the question of class energy; 3) the question of relations within class. One of the preconditions for this was, among other things, the consideration that in the transitional period of the revolution the family had not yet perished. A healthy revolutionary progeny with the most productive use of his energy and the best possible relations with his other classmates will be realized only by the worker who begins his sexual life late, who remains a virgin before marriage, who creates sexual relations with a person close to him as a class-lover, who will skimp on sexual acts, performing them only as the final discharge of a deep and comprehensive social-love feeling, etc., etc. This is how the author thinks of the "sexual platform" of the proletariat. A few words about "robbed," about human joys emasculated by my norms. All joy, in its class use, must have some valuable productive purpose. The larger this joy, the fuller its productive value must be. What, then, is the productive value of the whole vast sum of man's modern "sexual joys"? This value is purely parasitic for a good 3/4 of the time. The organs of the senses, not receiving proper impressions in the rotten modern environment, movements not receiving proper space, social instincts, inquisitive aspirations, squeezed, flattened in the chaos of our exploitative and post-exploitative modernity, give up all their remaining unused energy, all their free motor fund, their excessive activity to the only reserve factor - the sexual, which becomes the hero of the day, the willy-nilly spider. Hence the early awakening of sexuality, hence its early spreading through all branches of human existence, hence its impudent impregnation of all pores of human existence, even science. Is it really that much use for revolutionary, pre-communist culture to cultivate this spider-like existence of our sexuality? Is it not better to give the robbed their goods back to them? Is it not better to "degrade", "usurp", and "suck" the swollen sexuality with the corresponding hard influences (the class anti-pump, revolutionary sublimation) in order to squeeze out of it and suck out the values it has stolen from the body, from the class? Soviet conditions facilitate this as much as possible. How much new, unmediated, not dampened by sexual lust, vivid, heroic, collectivist, militant class aspiration will man then receive anew! How much acute scientific research, materialistic curiosity, no longer chained to the sexual organs alone, will man then gain! Are these joys less joyful than sexual joy? Is their productive value less than the value of a carefully guarded sexual intercourse or sexual dream? Especially since, by right, this wealth, both socially and biologically, does not belong to the sex, - it was only stolen by the latter in an atmosphere of ridiculous exploitative energy turmoil. Soviet society is most favorable to our radical reform of sexual behavior, from which we proceed in the construction of our milestones. Whereas the bourgeois order created an enormous biological excess in the ruling classes, a great part of which was spent on sexual arousal, while on the other hand it flattened the working masses by squeezing out a great part of their unused creative activity in the direction of the sexual, Soviet society has just the opposite characteristics: it expelled the slackers with biological excess and unleashed the compressed forces of the working masses, thereby liberating them from sexual captivity as well, giving them ways to sublimate. The sublimational possibilities of the Soviet public, that is, the possibility of translating sexualized experiences into creative ways, are extremely great. All one needs to do is to become well aware of this and skillfully reorganize sexuality, regulate it, place it in its proper place. Much of this, of course, depends on the speed of the creative deepening of the Soviet public itself, that is, of our socialist economy in the first place. But there is also the broadest scope for special activity. Indeed, what a tremendous desexualization (detachment from the sexual) is the full political emancipation of women, the increase in their human and class consciousness. Women's emancipation and uncultivation play a very large role in the condensation of sexual experience, since for women under such conditions the sexual is almost the only sphere of spiritual interests. For the grossly sensual man, however, such a powerless woman is especially tasty prey. The liberated, conscious woman withdraws a large lump from this too "rich" sexual fund of both sexes, thereby freeing up a large portion of the creative forces bound up to that sexual purpose. Also of tremendous desexualizing, sublimating significance is the general creative emancipation of the working masses of the USSR, whose entire compressed forces, which were also spent on excessive sexual nutrition, are now being liberated for businesslike, productive public exposure. Here we must also include the emancipation of the nationalities and other gains of the revolution in freeing the masses from the exploitative yoke. Of great importance is also the separation of the population from religion. Trying to reconcile with a sordid reality, religion destroyed martial impulses, belittled and squeezed a number of bodily and social aspirations, thus flattening most of them in the direction of the sexual content. The dying religion of the masses weakens their sexual squalor; it revives their martial qualities (although religious preachers lie to the contrary: without religion, sexual licentiousness will appear). The distraction of our old intelligentsia also fostered a lot of sexual debauchery. The stronger the detachment from martial reality, the more extra-real fiction it contains, i.e. more sexual fiction. Attached now to the Soviet chariot of rigidly practical construction, the most socially healthy part of the old intelligentsia is being re-educated, losing piece by piece and its extra sexual weight, not to mention the fact that it is gradually being more and more insistently replaced by a newly growing, quite materialistic, worker-peasant intelligentsia. The communist children's movement will save children's age from early puberty (isn't it the product of our October Revolution), etc., etc. Obviously, now is the time for an organized restructuring of sexual norms. Our public allows this readjustment to begin, demands this readjustment, greedily awaits the creative forces which will be set free from sexual captivity after this readjustment. Does a true friend of the revolution, a true citizen of the USSR have the right to object to the rehabilitation of sexuality? But how to begin, how to conduct this "sexual reform"? What is needed is an initiative, an example, a demonstration. The spearhead in the sexual rehabilitation of workers and all of humanity, as in everything else, must be our red youth. Raised in the heroic sublimating atmosphere of our revolution, stuffed with bright class creative joys in a way that young people have never been stuffed before, they will more easily get rid of the rotten sexual inertia of the exploitative period of human history. It is she who owes it to herself to be an energetic pioneer in this field, showing the way to the younger generation, her successor. Amidst the variegated and heated discussion that our red youth is currently engaged in, among the most varied, partly ridiculous sexual ideals - in the style of at least Kollontay's Zhenya or in the ascetic spirit of Tolstoy - a trickle of class regulation of sexual desire, a trickle of a scientifically organized, revolutionary-appropriate, businesslike approach to the question of sex begins to break through more and more distinctly. There is no doubt that this stream will steadily grow, absorbing into itself all the healthiest revolutionary-ideological quests of youth in the field of sex. Here and there, individual, brave, strong groups are already trying to bind themselves to certain firm directives in the field of sexuality. Here and there, setting an example for others by their behavior, they try to draw the attention of other comrades to the sexual misbehavior going on around them. Sometimes in contact with the domestic and NUT local cells, always in close contact with the Party cell, with the Komsomol cell, they also try to find a method of practical influence on those who are too grossly violating the class equality in the area of sex. Our revolutionary, proletarian art is also searching hard in this field. Every now and then, the professional court, the party committee, the control committee cut through public attention with the message that the boundary of sexual permissibility ends there, and young people reel this information in, using it in case of strategic necessity - to suppress too unbridled impulses around them. Thus, gradually, from below, the experience is accumulated by energetic searches, and a system of business rules is formed. The author has no doubt that the system of sexual norms, created by this mass practice, groped from below, mostly coincides with the scheme given by him above. There may, of course, be changes in detail, additions, variations, but the scheme does not pretend to exhaust the whole problem, it only tries to give direction. Our children, the pioneers, will be the first to bring the matter of sexual health improvement to really serious results. They are the ones to begin with. A few more words about the responsibilities of red youth in the sexual field. Much is given to them, and therefore much is demanded of them. The October Revolution was forged by a heroic Bolshevik underground cadre which pulled the masses behind it, which gave an enormous number of heavy sacrifices to the proletarian good. This is the heroic-revolutionary fund with which the proletarian revolution, which is unfolding and will continue to unfold for a long time to come, is nourished. What heroic fund has our youth contributed to the revolution? Of course, they have not yet been able to do much with their age, but, at any rate, their fighting heroic accumulations are not so great in the short term as the revolution has been a few years in a relatively peaceful period. Therefore it is not a sin if the heroic, sacrificial revolutionary fund, among other parts of this fund, also includes a rich contribution of sexual modesty, of sexual self-organization by the youth. It will improve our morals, it will help us form strong, creatively saturated class fighters, it will enable us to give birth to a healthy, new revolutionary shift, it will save a lot of precious class energy, which already unproductively flows away too much, due to our ineptitude. In order to build, we must learn to save in an organized way.

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Kollontai's Glass of Water theory or Zalkind's Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat?

Who you agree with more? Kollontai's Glass of Water theory or Zalkind's Twelve Sexual Commandments of the Revolutionary Proletariat? Were they good for 1920s-1930s Soviet Union? What about current implementations, which one would you lean closer to and why?