Sergei Zherebkin Male fantasies in Ukraine: fucking women and building nation1 As is known, for the first time

the discourse on sexuality, nonpublic within Soviet totalitarianism (lets recall the famous: we do not have sex!), becomes legalized in Soviet culture, namely, in discourses of literature and art in the late post-Soviet period (196080ies). The collapse of the former communist regime and disintegration of the USSR is characterized in respect to this by the fact that connotations of sexuality start to be used more actively not only in literature and art, but also in public politics and mass media, signifying practices of wide-ranging sexualization in the post-Soviet culture as a whole, expressed in particular in famous phenomena of sexualization of politics or politicization of sexuality. Within discourse analysis of sexuality in the former USSR in post-Soviet research in the early 1990ies appear such new phenomenon as phenomenon of gender studies, which consider in particular specifics of functioning of gender-marking subjectivity within Soviet and post-Soviet cultures, in which context emerges research not only on womens, but also on mens subjectivity. The main aim of this article is to present a comparative analysis of two types of male sexuality in the late Soviet (when as aforementioned after many years of being banned in the former USSR the problematic of sexuality is articulated in the cultural context for the first time) and post-Soviet (when the problem of the sexual is linked for the first time to the problem of the national after a long functioning of the Soviet non-national represented in famous and extremely abstract construct of homo sovieticus) periods on the basis of Ukrainian mens literature, which, in our opinion, allows us, firstly, to reveal some structural peculiarities in functioning of Soviet mens sexuality, and, secondly, to detect some new additional characteristics of the post-Soviet mens sexuality in contrast to the generally accepted. At that the main outline of my analysis is strategies of representation of mens sexuality in its relation to womens subject, and as a basic source for that analysis will serve works by the popular Ukrainian authors-experimenters such as the writer of the sixties Yevgen Gutsalo (1937 1995), who was writing consciously in Ukrainian in the period of general Russian domination in Soviet Ukraine and who was experimenting at that with existential problematic at the background of a dominating tradition of social realism; and such as the most popular contemporary Ukrainian writer and poet Yuriy Andrukhovich (born in 1960), defined enthusiastically as a new Gogol by Ukrainian critics.
1 Quotation by Zillah Eisenstein is used as name of the article. Zillah Eisenstein, Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts in the 21st century, New York/London 1996, 133.

Male fantasies in the Soviet Ukraine or Once again about love2 Therefore, as aforesaid, exactly in the post-Soviet period in our culture within new incipient discipline of mens studies appear new studies on mens sexuality, which included also works by Igor Kon, Sergey Ushakin, Helene Mesherkina, Anna Temkina, Helene Zdravomyslova, Helene Iarskaia-Smirnova, and by others.3 At that the main paradox of mens sexuality in the post-Soviet period, exposed by post-Soviet scholars, consists in the fact that mens sexuality in this period is not constructed in the terms, as awaited, of phallic sexuality or, as expressed by Igor Kon, of traditional canon of hegemonic masculinity,4 typical for such patriarchal societies as the former USSR, but in the terms of the so-called sexuality of deprived mens subject or even, as stated by Susan Larsen as aggrieved masculinity.5 The notion deprivation within this context means first of all an actual deprivation of a mens subject of right to the private live and subjectivity; accordingly, researchers define deprived mens subjectivity or aggrieved masculinity of the late post-Soviet period as dependent, suppressed, manipulated, and victimized.6 The researchers also agree in their opinion on the reason of such situation: since the monopoly on the hegemonic masculinity belonged exclusively to the totalitarian regime and all mens functions belonged, correspondingly, to the only bearer the totalitarian leader, mens sexuality does not have any other way of representation within this historical period, but in the aforementioned aggrieved masculinity. Indeed, when in Soviet Ukrainian literature in the works by a famous writer Yevgen Gutsalo the sexuality was for the first time included in the construction of masculinity, it is represented as sexuality of the deprived Soviet mens subject. In Gutsalos story Improvisations of Body (1985) for the first time, where as can be seen from its name connected to a specific notion body, problematic of sexuality was legalized in the official Ukrainian literary discourse. The main character of the story, where the narration is held by the first person to better express existential experience of the character, suffers and rushes about because of impossibility to fully
2 Title of the famous Soviet film (1968) of Georgiy Natanson. 3 Works of almost all post-Soviet mens studies scholars are represented in: Sergey Ushakin ed., O muzhe(n)stvennosti (On Masculinity), Moscow 2002. 4 Igor Kon, Muzhskie issledovania: meniaushiesia muzhchiny v izmeniaushemsia mire (Mens Studies: Changing Men in Changing World), in: Irina Zherebkina ed., Vvedenie v gendernye issledovania (Introduction to Gender Studies), Kharkov/St-Petersburg 2001, 562 - 605, 581. 5 Susan Larsen, Melodrama, muzhestvennost i nazionalnost: stalinskoe proshloe na sovietskom ekrane (Melodrama, Masculinity, and Nationality: Stalinist Past on the Post-Soviet Screen), in: Ushakin, O muzhe(n)stvennosti , see note 3, 630 - 663, 660. 6 Anna Temkina and Helene Zdravomyslova, krizis maskulinnosti v pozdnesovietskom discurse (Crisis of Masculinity in the Late Soviet Discourse), in: Ushakin, Ushakin ed., O muzhe(n)stvennosti, see note 3, 432-451, 448.

and adequately realize his subjectivity in Soviet social reality, going through existential problems with his wife in the family, with other women, with his surrounding at work, etc., what causes a feeling of sharp sympathy and empathy for his existential problems by a reader, who got used to the fact, that a Soviet person should not have any existential problems, but, as is known, only the common for all people problem of communism building. Within a new for Soviet Ukrainian literature discourse improvisation of body we face surprisingly strange sexual fantasies of the character in Gutsalos text. Tired of his existential troubles, Gutsalos character suddenly finds out from a stranger by a bear stall about a sleeping woman, in a peasants house in Slobozhanshina in the ethnographical museum in Kiev. The unexpectedness of this information for the character consists in the fact that each museum visitor can sexually possess this woman, because as the stranger states, she does not refuse anything to anyone, since she is sleeping.7 The intrigue of the story and the peculiarities and paradoxes of Soviet mens sexuality lies in the fact that as soon as the character receives this accidental information about the sleeping woman in the peasants house in Slobozanshina, he is at once obsessed by sexual desire, which appears stronger than all his previous existential self-doubts and uncertainty about his mens subjectivity. Inspired, he rushes in search for the sleeping woman in a peasants house in Slobozhanshina: I did not think then, recollects Gutsalos character, how many men had visited her today, I forgot everything I had heard, I desired you see? I desired this woman. Nothing frightened me when this desire appeared.8 What does this characters irresistible desire mean? It means first of all the following: the character at once realizes that this woman is an ideal sexual partner for him, with whom he can embody his mens sexuality completely and forget about his former uncertainty in his relationship with his wife and other women which does not allow in the Soviet conditions to actually feel what he is biologically the man. A peculiarity of Gutsalos story consists at that in the fact that the entire episode with the sleeping woman is actually an episode of a dream, which the character, tired of diffidence, has. Certainly the author describing mens sexuality of the character employs mechanisms and peculiarities of the dream deliberately: in the authors opinion, only in a dream a man has a possibility to adequately realize his own subjectivity within Soviet totalitarian society. Therefore, the only thing that troubles Gutsalos character within the plot of the sleeping woman is the fear that this sleeping woman can turn out to be a real woman, who will manifest her own sexual interest and will refuse to act as a passive sexual object, depriving him
7 Yevgen Gutsalo, Improvizazii ploti (Improvisations of Body), Kiev 1993, 73. 8 Gutsalo, Improvizazii ploti, see note 7, 74-75.

of the possibility to realize his sexuality. In the story this anxiety is expressed in his doubts and fear that this sleeping woman may happen to be actually his wife, who has become detached from other tourists to give herself pretending asleep to strangers. The fear to lose his own mens identity is so strong that even when he finds the peasants house in Slobozhanshina and makes sure that the sleeping woman is not his wife, the character is not able to release himself from the fear that his search may end in disaster which will destroy the illusion of the autonomous being of his mens identity. Well, I can clearly see, she is not my wife, I feel much better, but still, I cant perceive myself the character admits. I see its not my wife in the bed, but, doesnt matter, she could be there as well.9 Thus the climax of the story comes when the character of the story finds out that the sleeping woman is not his wife who can deny his aggrieved masculinity or castrated sexuality. The characters self-uncertainty disappears at once and he immediately has a sexual intercourse with her. Gutsalos character is so anxious to realize his sexuality at all hazards and is so carried away by the possibility to do it that the fact that he actually rapes the sleeping woman since he uses her simply as a passive sexual object does not embarrass him. Moreover, it seems to Gutsalos character that during the sex with him the sleeping woman smiled as if even being asleep she knew with whom she was. She neither stretched her hands to me nor embraced, but I could feel her body so close to me, and it was such feeling as if she gave in to me, as if she wanted and she felt comfortable with me. And I did not perceive myself as a violator, but on the contrary I felt as if everything between us was mutually agreed 10 Therefore, the paradox of representation of mens sexuality in the Soviet period consists in the fact that despite the mens character rapes the sleeping woman due to the entire Soviet ideology of gender equality in this period the character has an illusion during actual act of rape that the woman is a fullfledged partner of the sexual relations and enjoys them as much as he does. As a result I can conclude that a specific totalitarian character of realization of mens sexuality as a sexuality of the incapable to realize his own actions, infantilized Soviet man is manifested in the fact that in spite of the deprived sexuality realized as rape towards a woman on whom the function of a passive object is imposed and whose interests are not taken into consideration and are not satisfied, the character cannot identify his actions towards a woman as violence and himself as violator, moreover, he interprets them as relations of mutual consent and affection. Thus if the majority of the aforementioned studies of the Soviet masculinity describe only one side of the deprived mens sexuality victimization, depression, dependence, the reading of
9 Gutsalo, Improvizazii ploti , see note 7, 75. 10 Gutsalo, Improvizazii ploti , see note 7, 75.

Improvisations of body by the Ukrainian writer Evgen Gutsalo reveals us an ambivalent structure of mens sexuality in the late Soviet period and its other side which we should not overlook in the general analysis of gender relations in the Soviet society as a whole, namely, the fact that the rhetoric of love and care can dissemble practices of a direct violence towards women. If to talk about general social context of gender relations within the Soviet period, does not the very same illusion of equal gender partnership nurture discriminatory in their nature practices of totalitarian attitude to womens subjectivity in this period on the whole? Mens sexuality in the post-Soviet period: fucking women and building nation In the post-Soviet period when in the countries of the former USSR the ruling communistic ideology was changed for the ideology of nationalism, we witness the consequent change of an old model of Soviet mens subjectivity and appearance of the new an ideal of aggressive masculinity or hyper masculinity with a corresponding features of hypersexuality, not concealed, as in the Soviet period, but, vice versa, openly manifested, meeting at this requirements of revival of a new national identity in contrast to the old communist internationalist one. Attention must be paid to the fact, significant for all post-Soviet national cultures, that the revival of a new national mens identity (as well as womens) is not regarded as a purely personal, but as an important political and even national task. Within the new discourse of the post-Soviet nationalism accordingly to the general binary logics of nationalism discourse as such which divides as is known the world into us and they, i.e. the ethnically ours and the ethnically alien, women are also divided into the ours and the alien and regarded also differently within the policies of mens sexuality: if the sexual attitude to the ethnically alien women is represented mainly in the discourse of violence, including, as numerous studies of national wars and conflicts shows, a direct violence, then the attitude to the ethnically ours women is represented mainly in the discourse of desire towards the so-called sublime womens symbolic object for the sake of which the so-called real women are sacrificed (to the nation or to the mens subjectivity). A characteristic example of nationalist masculine policies of subjectivity and sexuality in the post-Soviet period is novels by a leading Ukrainian postmodern writer Yuriy Andrukhovich: if the novels by the Ukrainian Soviet writer Yevgen Gutsalo represent subjectivity as aggrieved masculinity, the novels by Yuriy Andrukhovich, on the contrary, represent a new national identity of a Ukrainian man with features of hyper masculinity which it lacked so much both in

the Ukrainian pre-Soviet traditional and imperial totalitarian Soviet cultures. One of the most famous novels by Andrukhovich, Moskowiada (1993), is dedicated to the identification problems of a young Ukrainian poet, which he is trying to solve within ethnically alien cultural medium, namely in Moscow. The plot collision of the novel is based on the fact that a young Ukrainian poet Otto von V., who studies at the Moscows Literary Institute and suffers from an alien totalitarian Soviet milieu starts his way from one point of Moscow (dormitory of Literary Institute) to another one (the center of Moscow), where, enduring on his way different dramatic adventures (meetings with criminals and militia, horrors of the Moscow underground and arrest by KGB, etc.), he should join his Ukrainian friends at last, i.e. the ethnically ours, the meeting with whom is to symbolize his attainment of both an independent national and poetical identification. Though the meeting of the character with his ethnically ours in Moscow never took place, the character managed to acquire his own national and intellectual identification, because as a result of this dramatic and dangerous trip in the ethnically different and alien space he settled a score with the Russian Empire in different way and at the same time he killed his own fear and dependence on it (shot himself).11 Therefore the novel has an optimistic ending: as if the killed Andrukhovichs character still went to the railway station and with a bullet in his head left for Ukraine, where, as we can suppose it, he will meet the real ethnically ours and achieve a final resolution of his identification problem. Moscow, in view of Andrukhovichs character, is the capital of the ever hostile to Ukrainian culture Russian empire, which presents a constant threat to his nation and which as the poet jokes it would be better to level to the ground and to plant with forests as before the foundation of the city.12 Therefore when he comes from Ukraine to Moscow for his studies, he feels as if he were in the epicenter of a hostile imperial totalitarian world where almost everything seems aggressive and hurts his national feelings: writers-Russophiles, his neighbors in the dorm, architecture, the underground, Russian itself, which seems to him so vulgar, that he compares it with Mongol or with Swahili. Even names of the streets, as it seems to him, bear this despotic spirit. A scornful attitude of women of Moscow seems to the character especially offensive and discriminatory for his national feelings, because women as is known represent in the ideology of nationalism the most important national symbols and values both of their own and ethnically different cultures. Hence first of all for the offence of his national he tries to avenge to women of Moscow moskovki, katsapki (an offensive and scornful nickname of Russian women in
11 Andrukhovichs Moskowiada as a transformation of a usual trip into a fantasmatic adventure was compared by critics with the famous Russian novel by Venedikt Erofeev Moscow-Petushki (1970). 12 Yuriy Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, Moscow, 2001, 104.

general, and Moscow women in particular) , who, as it seems to him, treat him as a Ukrainian with contempt and, in particular, they ridicule his Ukrainian accent and language (mova). To defend his own individuality, the character tries as hard as he can to prove his intellectual and pure biological, i.e. mens superiority to those haughty and at the same time ignorant moskovki. As a result the character follows the one pattern in all his relations with Moscow women: if in the beginning of their acquaintance moskovki treat him very arrogantly and contemptuously because of his Ukrainian origin, then at the end he puts them in their place, not only because, firstly, he suppresses them with his knowledge of modern culture, literature, and especially, that is typical, of psychoanalysis, but also, secondly, he suppresses them sexually as a result all the moskovki admit his superiority at last and try to begin sexual relations with him. Why does mens subjectivity of Moskowiada character appear so effective, shaping into such desired in traditional Ukrainian culture sexual type of macho who at intimate level has no doubts, uncertainty, or defeats, so common for a pre-Soviet and Soviet Ukrainian man? Certainly, a logical effect of new mens hypermasculinity becomes possible only because characters own subjectivity in his communications with ethnically alien women (as well as men) is supplemented with the universal structure of the national imaginary, which presupposes that the subject is always more than he is, in Lacans expressions. 13 That is to say, that as a result of ingrown structure of the national imaginary in his inner structure of mens subjectivity the Ukrainian poet turns into a unique hypermasculine personality, stressed by Andrukhovich in an Arian name of the Ukrainian character (Otto von V.) definitely on purpose, and which is to mark the character of the novel both as an heir of literary traditions of Taras Shevchenko and Nikolai Gogol and bellicose traditions of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army: only being a successor of the latter one, the character can stand alone, in Andruchovichs view, against not only hostile moskovki, but also against the agencies of the Soviet partocracy, the militia and the KGB (which he meets in his dramatic struggle for national and artistic identity) during his adventures in Moscow. According to the common logics of national imaginary in Andrukhovichs novels womens subjectivity is also marked through binarism of logical opposition our alien, where mens sexuality towards the ethnically alien women is expressed through possession of a woman, which Andrukhovichs characters put into words to have a woman. There is an episode in the novel, where four men, sitting in the pub, discuss mens national identity, denoting the latter just through possession of a woman, by placing in the basis of the national the sexual. There
13 Jacques Lacan, Nisproverzhenie subjecta ( Overthrow of Subject), in Jacques Lacan, Instanzia bukvy, ili sudba razuma posle Freud (Instance of Letter or Fate of Reason after Freud), Moscow, 1997, 148-183, 155.

are four of us now and each of us had a woman once There are four of us and we represent four nations at the minimum 14 Thus having sexual relations with Moscow women, Andrukhovichs character displays unjustified at the first sight rudeness and cruelty towards them. For example, when the character comes to his Moscow lover Galya (typical moskovka), she gives him some dinner, washes him, has an oral sexual intercourse with him, and he declares that in Moscow he has had tons of such katsapki as she is and before he takes a leave he beats her cruelly. Regarding Moscow women as ethnically alien, Andrukhovichs character describes them as disgusting, obscene, and aggressive: They are a true beauty of the blessed city. They wear loose unzipped pants. They have half bald heads and they are proud of being beaten and swollen. They stink with garbage. Their legs are hairy as of the queen of the Soave. They are ready to have sex even with a dog.15 Moreover, in the characters view, those moskovki who look different, behave haughtily and arrogantly and pretend unapproachable, are actually lecherous, full of lust, false and treacherous, as for instance his Moscow lover Galya who, in Ukrainian poets opinion, pretends caring, but actually constantly deceits him, she is also a hypocrite, which the author of the novel emphasizes through her job: she is a professional snake hunter. However, indecency and baseness of the ethnically different katsapki, as Andrukhovich states, is not manifested simply in their sexual dissipation and perversity, but, what seems to the character the most horrible, in their corrupt relations with the imperial totalitarian power with the police, the KGB, security agencies, where many of them serve as informants, as, for example, the very same Galya who, as finally appeared, is co-worker in the KGB, simultaneously serving the authority as informant and sexual object. After the character left Galya, he encounters her again during his adventures, when he gets at some secret party meeting a l Gogol in the Moscow underground, where a new imperial conspiracy of totalitarianism is being prepared, which moskovki attend in national sarafans, worn on naked body, so that as Andrukhovich expresses it to screw them straight away. Since obscene Moscow women present simultaneously a threat and aggression, and their image appears, as we have seen it, in association with something appalling and sinister, then the adequate sexual reaction towards them seems to Andrukhovchs character to be rape. As a result the scene when the Ukrainian poet takes a shower in the dorm and hears behind the wall womans singing can be called a symbolic climax of the novel. Being unable to suppress his sexual arousal, which suddenly seized him, the character of the novel bursts into the shower
14 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12,54. 15 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12, 50.

room for women, rapes a girl left there alone, and quickly disappears. It is not accidental that the singing girl raped in the shower turns out to be a dark-skin student from Africa, who as he declares gave in to him as slave girls do.16 We think that this episode of the novel is significant first of all because Andrukhovich complements the nationalistic principle of gender discrimination towards the ethnically different women with racialist principle of gender regulation, which does not recognize any restraining interdictions towards the womens otherness in the post-Soviet practices of representation of mens national subjectivity. Since the rape of the African student in the shower is in the viewpoint of Andrukhovichs character an absolutely just and adequate sexual act towards an ethnically alien womens subject, then Andrukhovichs nationally aware character in contrast to deprived Soviet men is not ashamed of it at all and moreover, he is even proud that he commits an act of violence towards a woman of different race For a couple of unforgettable moments I connected with my member far continents, cultures, and civilizations,17 the Ukrainian poet boasts and that she, up to him, recognized in him a man equal to god (in the characters view, the dark-skin girl thought that a spirit of god of fertility had come to her.)18 One can say that Andrukhovichs character unlike the Soviet mens character expects from a woman neither reciprocal caress nor love, but he is longing exclusively for satisfying his feeling of hatred, which he has towards the ethnically different sexual object. As a result his new national consciousness is free from that existential split, from which the Soviet Ukrainian character of the story by Gutsalo suffered. In his novel Recreations (1992) Andrukhovich presents a completely different strategy of the attitude of mens character towards ethnically ours women, who in contrast to the ethnically alien deserve an absolute respect and love, being represented in the novel as well as in the poetic works by Andrukhovich through personalities of Virgin Mary and Shevchenkos Katerina symbolizing high values of national culture and womens image of Ukraine itself. What do Andrukhovich and his characters value the most in the structure and practices of representation of the ethnically ours women? If in the Babylonian fornicatress Moscow, women are dissipated and degraded beings, attending the authorities at the same time, then in an idyllic and patriarchal Ukraine where, as Andrukhovich expresses it in his poetry, Christmas brings things mysterious and eternal, the womens is presented exclusively through lofty symbolic personalities: it is definitely in
16 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12, 26. 17 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12, 68. 18 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12, 26.

Ukraine where according to Andrukhovichs poetic line, the image of Mary shines sacredly. This womens poetic image corresponds a feminine and tender Ukrainian language a gentle nightingale song, which is the second in its melodious sounding in the world (?!) and with which Andrukhovich compares a crude Russian, which takes, according to him, the 34 th place shared with Mongol and Swahili in its sounding (?!).19 However, the main characteristic of the Ukrainian womens subjectivity in the novels by Andrukhovich is a feature of selflessness up to self-sacrifice, when all the strivings of a Ukrainian woman in the contrast to, for example, aggressive and hostile to the character katsapki in the novel Moskowiada in face of whom he should desperately stand for his own identity, are intended, as it appears in Recreations, exclusively for support of uncertain mens subjectivity, anxious about its intellectual identification. For instance, in Recreations the image of simultaneously sublime and sacrificial Ukrainian woman is embodied in an ideal image of the Ukrainian poet Martoflyaks wife Marta. Though Marta is a beautiful, educated, and smart woman, no less gifted, as her husband, nevertheless, her function in intellectual and existential search for identity is emphasized to be secondary in comparison with her husbands search, defeats, and acquirements. One can assert that according to Andrukhovich the primary function of this wonderful woman is to unselfishly support and console her husband. Martas husband experiences a crisis in his intellectual activities in the novel, complex relations with his friends, seeks, as the young Ukrainian poet in Moscowiada, different ways to realize his poetic identity, turning at that to traditions of West Ukrainian carnival culture, undertakes various life and creative experiments, has relations with other women, deceiving his wife, etc. The wife has nothing else left as to serve his home front, his support, to wait in the night for her husband exhausted in daily intellectual battles and defeats; but, exactly due to this, as Andrukhovich thinks, she is extremely happy. The mechanism of such attitude to the womens is well studied: its basic regularity can be expressed through the following wording: the higher symbolic position of women, the worse their real status is. Isnt the same new (instead of the old Soviet one) sublime symbolic image of mythological Bereginya (Ukrainian pagan goddess, who symbolizes caring and support for the house and family) offered today by nationalist ideology to Ukrainian women, which dissembles an actual catastrophic status of women in a post-communist Ukraine, impoverishment of womens mass, its diminution to satisfaction of basic needs, what Julia Kristeva called sado-masochist exploitation of the womens?20 After all the described by
19 Andrukhovich, Moskoviada, see note 12, 111. 20 Julia Kristeva, Sily uzhasa: esse ob otvrashenii (Povers of Horror. Essay of Objection), Moscow/Kharkov, 2003, 163.

Michel Foucault in his Discipline and Punish paradox of functioning of violence in modern culture consists in the fact that symbolic violence is estimated within it as all-penetrating, and thus more acute and more brutal than a direct physical violence.21 Conclusion As a result of this comparative analysis of two different types of mens sexuality we can conclude that despite their differences, both observed types of mens subjectivity are shaped within the discourse of the Soviet/post-Soviet power, where womens subjectivity is not represented in a form of an independent subject, moreover, it is an object for violence. At that, the peculiarity of attitude towards the female in the late Soviet period lays in the fact that the rhetoric of love and caring can dissemble direct, hidden at the level of the discourse, types of violence, and in the post-Soviet period that firstly Soviet practices of violence against women are aggravated by practices of nationalist and racist violence, escalating national conflicts in the post-Soviet societies, and secondly, the ambivalent attitude towards the ethnically ours womens subject that simultaneously acquires a high status of the symbolic object, but actually is reduced to the victim, is legalized. Therefore the main question of this article emerges: do and can other alternative, non-violent logic possibilities exist for representation of mens subjectivity and sexuality within the discourse of post-Soviet culture?

21 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, London et al. 1991 (Reprint).