SEX-EDUCATION AND THE AIDS EPIDEMIC IN THE FORMER SOVIET-UNION

This paper describes the Russian response to sexuality, sex education and AIDS. Using primarily Russian language sources, it analyses the background to the current Russian debate on sex education since the 1960s. The nature of the government response - the introduction of a health education programme designed largely to combat specific sexual diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhoea - is also explored. It is suggested that the demise of the Communist edifice has not significantly altered official attitudes towards sex and sexuality. Particular attention is devoted to the impact of the AIDS epidemic on government and popular reaction to this sex education programme. Given the adverse effects which the breakup of the FSU, economic crisis and the disintegration of the USSR Ministry of Public Health in November 1991, have had on the possibility of launching a unified, co-ordinated and systematically concerted sex education programme it is concluded that backward attitudes towards sexuality are likely to exist for many years to come and the same is true with regard to the widespread prejudices towards the victims of AIDS in the FSU.