Nudity and Western Decadence!
by The secretary of the writers union in Moscow declared on December 11th 1969 that nudity as displayed in the show ‘Oh Calcutta’ is a sign of decadence in Western culture. He further claimed that this ‘bourgeois’ thinking was affecting or infecting the youth of Russia.
Sergei Mikhailkov was best known in Russia for writing books for children, he lashed out at the Broadway show which featured performers doing nude scenes, he also criticized pornography in general (how the two can be associated together?). He further commented that such exhibitions were a general striptease and that is one of the slogans of modern bourgeois art. He stated that it is unfortunate that even Russian youth were becoming enamored to such decadence. He further complained that young people are becoming more familiar with the theatre of the absurd without a hero and the modern reactionary tendencies in the literature and art of the west, than with the past and present of their fatherland.
He was speaking at a conference of Russian intellectuals and his next target was Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, he accused the author of writing scathing remarks through his writing about the Soviet police state as well as his enmity of the Russian government. He did however state that Solzhenitsyn was a talented writer, the novelist did not understand his role of special correspondent for so many foreign institutions and organizations.
Many years after his rant at this conference and looking past his many statements it was clear that the impact of western society through media, literature, music and film was having a deep impression on some of those of the ‘old school’ at that time in the Soviet Union and that western decadence was going a long way towards winning that battle.
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