Rethinking Sexual Modernity behind the Iron Curtain

Abstract:

We are used to thinking that the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was an essentially Western phenomenon. The surge in pornographic production, effective oral contraception, and new developments in fashion and popular culture all seem to be inextricably linked with a capitalist economy. Yet little has still been written about the transformations of intimate lives on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Was there a sexual revolution behind the Berlin Wall? And, if so, what areas of social life did it impact? Did women -in the words of Kristen Ghodsee - have better sex under socialism? Polish Sexual Revolutions: Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain (Oxford University Press, 2025) studies the history of sexuality in state-socialist Poland in its European and global context, focusing on how communism transformed both sexual discourses and intimate practices between 1945 and 1989. It reconfigures our understanding of the sexual revolution, departing from the case study of Poland to complicate our understanding of ‘sexual modernity’ and ‘progress’. Engaging with the most recent scholarship on sexuality in East Central Europe, the monograph reassesses the role played by communist states in modernising their citizens’ approaches to sex. Contrary to the stereotype which perceives East Central Europe as ‘lagging behind’ the West in sexual matters and having to ‘catch up’ after 1989, the book sheds light on the ambiguous histories of state-socialist entanglements with sex to showcase alternative visions of sexual liberation. By focusing on forgotten genealogies of discussions of sexuality, the monograph historicizes the roots of contemporary debates on sex education, LGBTQ+, and women’s rightsin the region.
 

Bio:

Dr Anna Dobrowolska is a postdoctoral assistant at the Department of History, University of Basel. She holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford, and her research focuses on the history of sexuality, visual culture, and gender under state socialism. Between 2021 and 2024 she was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, an EUI-IHEID Fellow at the Geneva Graduate Institute, and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warsaw. Her articles have appeared in theJournal of Women's History, Rethinking History,and Aspasia. In 2024, she received the Polish Science Foundation's START Fellowship for young researchers. Her monograph Polish Sexual Revolutions: Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain was published by Oxford University Press in 2025.