An Erotic Revolution? Pornography in the Russian Empire, 1905–1914

Abstract

I n M a y 1911 F r I d r I c h L I b L I k , a fifty-one-year-old bookshop owner living in Iur’ev (now Tartu, Estonia), stood trial for selling pornographic postcards.1 Two students alleged that Liblik kept postcards with “seductive images” in a special box in his bookshop. On the basis of their testimony and the discovery of eleven of the offending postcards, Liblik was fined fifteen rubles and required to serve a week’s prison sentence. The production of “obscene” literary or artistic works “with the goal of corrupting morals, or which are obviously opposed to morality and decency” had been an offense under the Russian Empire’s criminal code since 1845.2 Under Article 1001, individuals who produced and disseminated material with the potential to “corrupt morals” faced a maximum fine of 500 rubles and up to three months’ imprisonment. Censorship committees were responsible for deciding what exactly constituted an illegal image, guided by this vague definition of obscenity as material intent on bringing about moral decline. Overburdened officials working within the tsarist bureaucracy were tasked with confiscating illegal images and bringing the producers and distributors to justice. This article examines the history of pornography in the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1914 with a particular focus on distributors, publishers, and the imperial police. The article has two principal arguments. First, I will demonstrate that reactions to pornography signaled unease with the empire’s accelerated path toward “modernity,” broadly defined as a period of industrialization, urbanization, consumerism, and the development of