Come in and see ...

[Dave Monroe]

"'Come in and see some dirty pictures,' Bortz invited,
rolling off the hammock." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 154)

>From Josephine Schmidt, "Psst, Comrade, Check Out the
Erotica in the State Library," New York Times,
Wednesday, September 5th, 2001 ...

"MOSCOW — In the official Soviet world all families
were happy families and there was no interest in or
place for sex outside the nuptial bedroom. "Sex didn't
exist in the Soviet Union," said Marina Chestnykh,
recalling the upside-down logic that prevailed for
much of the Soviet era as she led the way into a
cagelike storage area of the Russian State Library
here.

"Ms. Chestnykh oversees an erotica collection
assembled by the Communist government, which for
decades kept its existence such a tight secret that no
one knows exactly what is among the approximately
11,000 books, postcards, prints, brochures, drawings
and other objects from around the world that are
jammed into the library's rambling storage stacks.

"There is still no comprehensive record of the
collection's contents or provenance because the trove
was never methodically assembled. It accrued over
decades thanks to customs officers, the secret police,
the Soviet government's censorship bureau, and
ideologically obedient library patrons who turned in
material that even hinted at sex, whether erotic,
pornographic, suggestive or even scientific in tone.

"So far, the collection has yielded previously unknown
drawings by Russian avant-garde artists; rare editions
of risqué poems by literary giants like Pushkin and
Lermontov; erotic prose published illicitly in the
Soviet Union of the 1920's; and items from Europe,
Asia and the United States, some dating to the 1700's
and many of which Ms. Chestnykh says are 'absolutely
unique
in this world.'

[...]

"Ms. Chestnykh, who is 38, said that government
officials liked to visit, and examining one thing
after another, they would pronounce the works 'a
nightmare, an absolute nightmare.' Every so often,
someone would leave with a postcard or two in his
pocket. 'It was theft, of course,' Ms. Chestnykh said.
'But how could a librarian stop them? They were party
officials.' ..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/05/arts/design/05ARTS.html?todaysheadlines

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