Moscow Sex Shop Is a New Plateau in Glasnost : Enterprise: Russians appear deeply interested in such wares as the glow-in-the-dark condoms.

The first sex shop in Russian history opened to the public on Monday--only, please, its management insisted, don’t call it a sex shop.

“We call it ‘an intimacy salon,’ ” director Alla Burashnikova said as she sat primly in a corner watching deeply interested Russians examine glow-in-the-dark condoms, an inflatable woman and six sets of shelves holding probably the broadest array of sexual devices ever gathered in one public place on Russian soil.

“We propagandize health,” Burashnikova said. “These things are for people who need them, not only for curiosity but because their life circumstances dictate it. Young couples have problems, and we have a few teaching devices that can help them. Or single women, widows who had husbands and now have problems, they can be helped.”

She may protest too much, but Burashnikova is dealing with a society that, over the last 75 years, developed a peculiarly Soviet brand of super-puritanism so potent that one overenthusiastic matron proclaimed in a classic line during a Soviet-American television exchange program: “We have no sex!”

Until three or four years ago, Soviet customs guards routinely confiscated Playboy magazines at the border; officials blankly denied the existence of prostitution and venereal disease, and men seeking performances by scantily clad women generally went to the ballet.

But former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reforms unleashed a flood of what Russians call “erotica,” primitively printed sex manuals, girlie calendars and bootleg blue movies. Sex education, however, still lags far behind the West, and public acceptance of open sexual discussion has been slow.

The “Intimacy Store-Salon” is “the first to try this, and we don’t know if we’ll make it or be condemned,” Burashnikova said. “We’re trying to introduce sexual culture but not in a distorted, vulgar way.”

More than a dozen patrons, mostly men, crowded the store’s antechamber Monday afternoon, waiting to pay the admission fee of 20 rubles--about 20 cents--to gain access to the adults-only inner sanctum.

The antechamber boasted Russian sex journals and a few Russian-made items, including a grim-looking “device for curing impotence” and what looked like a small distilling set billed as a prevention kit against venereal disease.

But the inside room, wall-papered in purple satin, held the real attractions, the imports from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Poland. Even at about two month’s salary for a small tube of “orgasm cream,” the displays fascinated the fur-hat clad Russian men inspecting the shelves.

Igor Petrov, a young medic, stood by to answer the many questions from customers. Before making any purchases, customers were encouraged to consult sex therapists in the larger clinic that houses the shop. The clinic and two other health organizations launched the store.

“People are interested in all our products, but mostly just because of curiosity,” Petrov said. “They’ve never seen all this--it’s the first time--and they want to know what everything is for. You can feel the lack of sexual culture. They ask the most naive questions.”

Larissa, 21, and Marina, 23, both medical students, said they had visited the shop to see what it offers--and then, in a storm of giggles, confessed to thinking about buying something as well. “A person should know everything,” Larissa said. “This is for everyone--love and sex.”

Ultimately, Petrov said, the store has the potential to become the “epicenter of sexual culture in Moscow. There is no other place you can come where you can get such concrete sexual information.”

Igor Trofanov, one of Intimacy’s main suppliers, pointed out proudly that it stocks nothing that encourages rough or violent sex--no whips, chains or pornographic magazines. “For the next few years, this is the optimal way,” he said, “while the public consciousness deals with the first stage. And then--we’ll see.”