From Russia--With a Bit Too Much Love

Those who can, do; those who can’t, in Russia, tune in just after midnight on Saturdays to the country’s first television chat show about sex.

An American viewer would have no trouble recognizing the format: The spotlight is on a leather armchair, from which selected subjects reveal their most intimate thoughts about sex to Yelena Khanga, the glitzy, blond African-Russian-American presenter, as well as a panel of hip sexologists and a studio audience of about 100 strangers.

But this isn’t “Oprah.”

The public wrestling with inner demons, and the emotional audience reaction found in American equivalents, is nowhere to be seen in this broadcast named, coyly, “About That.” Its real-life revelations are couched as furtive half-jokes; its embarrassed participants spend much of their time on screen tittering nervously behind their hands.

It has been only 10 years since a respectable matron declared on a transatlantic talk show: “There is no sex in the Soviet Union!”

So the very existence of a television program about sex reveals how far modern Russians have left behind their old Soviet inhibitions.

But the content of “About That” also hints at some of the problems accompanying Russia’s subsequent sexual revolution.

Last Saturday, the subject for discussion was “sex across the generations.” Neatly bearded Vladimir, 65, who is bored with his 45-year-old wife’s body, prefers sex with 25-year-old women. He described how he lures them into the bushes behind McDonald’s by buying them Big Macs. “Oh yes,” he chortled happily. “They all like those American pies.”

Enter the audience. Three men, all in their 60s, agreed that they too like firm young female flesh, lingering over the reasons why. With much smacking of lips, one described an affair with a minor. Two young women eventually got to express an opinion--but it was the same opinion. Both giggled and praised the idea of sex with older men.

There were no dissenting views and no arguments.

“If people do it, it’s because of some special need,” Sergei Agarkov of the sexologists’ association Culture and Health commented on screen. “I’m not dealing with moral questions here.”

Once-prim Russia, which began to loosen up in the 1980s, is now permissive. Pornography is widely available, and strip clubs are rampant. But while Soviet restrictions have gone, knowledge about sex remains limited; no new code protecting people from today’s sex-related risks has taken hold.

According to sexologist Igor Kon, the number of males having their first sexual experience at age 16 increased from 38% in 1993 to 58% in 1995; parallel figures for women increased from 25% to 33%.

But teenagers tend to know little about the human reproductive system or safe sex, counselors say.

Although theirs is the second most sexually active nation after the United States, according to a recent survey by condom manufacturer London International Group, Russians are hostile to the notion of using condoms.

Russians ranked 12th out of the 15 nationalities surveyed in how often they use condoms. Syphilis infection rates today are 50 times higher among teenagers than they were five years ago, and AIDS is becoming a significant worry.

“These changes are not necessarily positive,” said Kon of Russians’ sexuality. He appears on “About That” but remains skeptical about its message, calling parts of it “just bad taste.”

The show, which has run for about a month, has prompted strong reactions. “We get a lot of calls,” said Bulat Akunov, the show’s producer. Some expressed gratitude and encouragement. But many others were full of “aggressive negation, open hatred and anger.”

Although Akunov bills his show as “social provocation,” aimed at stimulating serious discussion that will help overcome Soviet-era sexual taboos, the reaction of 50-year-old doctor Sasha Kazansky, watching the program for the first time, was dismissive. “This isn’t educational at all. It won’t help people make their minds up about anything,” he said. “It’s pure titillation.”