There is no sex in the USSR is a Russian catchphrase, that comes from the words of a Soviet participant of the Leningrad, Boston "tele-bridge" titled "Women Talk to Women", recorded on June 28 and broadcast on July 17, 1986.
In 1986, two television hosts, the Soviet Vladimir Pozner and the American Phil Donahue, organized one of the first "tele-bridge" broadcasts of the Glasnost era, directed by Vladimir Mukusev. During the discussion, an American participant posed a question to Russian women:The Soviet participant Ludmila Ivanova, an administrator in Hotel Leningrad and a representative of the "Committee of Soviet Women" replied:The phrase was drowned in laughter and applause. Ludmila also added, concluding the sentence: „We have no sex — we have love“ Another Soviet participant said loudly:In popular culture, the phrase morphed into "There is no sex in the USSR", excluding the concluding "we have love".
The phrase "There is no sex in the USSR" is widely used in Russian to describe the prejudice and antisexualism of the Soviet culture and taboos of public discussion of topics related to sex. Conversely, supporters of the past Soviet regime mention it as an example of a phrase taken out of context by the Soviet Union's detractors.[1]
In an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2004 Ivanova herself presented a somewhat different version of the story:[2]
The fact that Ivanova completed the phrase by saying "We have love" was confirmed by the tele-bridge's director Vladimir Mukusev[3]
American ethnographer Kristen Ghodsee said that the sexual life of women under Socialism was, in fact, richer than under Capitalism thanks to the greater economic independence.[4]
The "tele-bridge" incident was used by the Polish linguist Anna Wierzbicka as an example of the fact that even though sex as a phenomenon is "a given of human life", a word meaning sex does not exist in most languages of the world as it does in English, and when it does exist, it is often a loanword from English.[5]
Ivanova herself later immigrated to Germany.[6]