The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia

by Laura Engelstein

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 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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Russia, Sexuality, Russian History

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Laura Engelstein is an American historian who specializes in Russian and European history. She served as Henry S. McNeil Professor Emerita of Russian History at Yale University and taught at Cornell University and Princeton University.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was assigned to me in graduate school, but to judge by the highlighting and my lack of memory for it, I must not have contributed very much to that seminar. This was effectively the “first” time I’ve read it. At 14+ years, it would have been a bit old by the standards of scholarship at the time, so it may be considered a “classic” of sorts. On the other hand, my professor’s book is cited in the final footnote, so that might explain why she considered it a classic.

The book is a post-cultural-turn feminist exploration of sexual expression and identity in the final stages of the Russian empire, covering approximately 1890 to 1905 in detail, with occasional forays on either side of that chronology. Much of the book focuses on medical history, with issues of abortion, venereal disease, and homosexuality being discussed as they appeared in medical journals and professional conferences of the time. Legal issues, such as the question of “regulated” prostitution, also get attention, but more often in terms of how the medical profession addressed them than through the lens of jurisprudence. Interestingly, Engelstein is at some pains to avoid giving value judgments from a modern perspective, trying in all cases to take her sources at face value. This is especially useful in the discussion of syphilis, which medical doctors believed at the time was often transmitted through non-sexual contact and poor hygiene. By avoiding passing judgment on this, Engelstein makes it possible for us to see when this argument was and was not mobilized, and what this tells us about the moral standards of the age.

What we see throughout is a belief in the corrupting influences of “modernity” and the West, as expressed generally through urban society and the small Russian middle class, and an equal belief in the innocence and fundamental decency of Russia’ peasant classes. Note that, given her sources, this argument is coming precisely from within the most westernized and professional sectors of that middle class. Engelstein reminds us that these classes were consistently (even after 1905) barred from participation in the political process, and much of the story is their effort to prove that expert professionals should be called upon to assist in guiding social questions, essentially a Western concept. This creates a curious paradox in which the professionals involved argue for their own unworthiness at the same time as their importance.

The final chapter of the book shifts viewpoints to look at modernist writing, mostly after 1905. One suspects that this I what Engelstein was really interested in all along (the title of her book is that of one of the more outspoken novels she analyzes). But, the context provided in the previous chapters makes this essay far more accessible and interesting. We see here the departure of male and female writers from the standards of their society to embrace sexuality as a positive force, but we also understand their frequent failures to really break free of Russian morality, given the extreme power of the discourses that preceded them. This book isn’t the easiest work of history I’ve read, but it is an interesting example of the kind of work on sexual history that postmodernism made possible.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book lives up to its fin-de-siecle name because it's very much about the liberal intelligentsia. I can recognize it as a foundational piece of scholarship, but it was very dense and difficult to get through. However I appreciate Engelstein's varies use of source materials (contemporary novels and textbooks, lives of contemporary authors, law codes, ethnographies of peasant culture, sex surveys, statistics)