Bathhouses, Hustlers, and a Sex Club: The Reception of Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings

Bathhouses, Hustlers, and a Sex Club: The Reception of Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings

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Bathhouses, Hustlers, and a Sex Club: The Reception of Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings

dc.contributor.author	Malmstad, John
dc.date.accessioned	2009-04-27T15:52:28Z
dc.date.issued	2000
dc.identifier.citation	Malmstad, John E. 2000. Bathhouses, Hustlers, and a Sex Club: The Reception of Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings. Journal of the History of Sexuality 9(1/2): 85-104.	en
dc.identifier.issn	1043-4070	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:2799134
dc.description.abstract	The bathhouse, resembling but not identical with the Finnish sauna, was one of the oldest features of Russian life, as common in the cities as in the countryside. In the cities, bathhouses varied from luxurious establishments to the most humble variety, where people of all classes-segregated by sex-mixed and mingled. By the very fact of writing about same-sex love with candor and in a nonjudgmental fashion, author Mikhail Kuzmin had challenged that climate of secrecy. By arguing, furthermore, that it was not immoral or ungodly, but morally distinctive, ethically sanctioned, and even at times spiritually superior, a matter not of decadent immoralism but the personal creation of values, Kuzmin had put the limits of society's boundaries and its seeming tolerance to the test, although the author can find no signs that he was aware of doing so. Nothing was dearer to the sexual politics of both Right and Left than the cliché of the innate purity and innocence of the peasantry, something that Kuzmin, who, unlike most intellectuals, had actually spent long periods among them, found astonishing.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	Slavic Languages and Literatures	en
dc.language.iso	en_US	en
dc.publisher	University of Texas Press	en
dc.relation.isversionof	http://ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a2h&AN=6602458&site=ehost-live&scope=site	en
dash.license	META_ONLY
dc.subject	immorality	en
dc.subject	bathhouses	en
dc.subject	sex	en
dc.subject	homosexuality	en
dc.subject	anonymous sex	en
dc.title	Bathhouses, Hustlers, and a Sex Club: The Reception of Mikhail Kuzmin's Wings	en
dc.relation.journal	Journal of the History of Sexuality	en
dash.depositing.author	Malmstad, John
dash.embargo.until	10000-01-01