nudism as an illegalism

Wholly political revolutions aren't very interesting. If anything, they're trash. There's nothing particularly admirable, or even that exciting, about the seizure of some institution or another by a different faction—unless, perhaps, you happen to consider yourself a part of that same faction (never mind that you may prefer to think of it as a “coalition”).

Cultural revolutions, on the other hand, are interesting—and consequential. (And please note, I don't mean the Cultural Revolution in China, which I would prefer to call by its full name in Chinese historiography anyway, i.e. “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”.)

All of the worthwhile revolutions, i.e. the ones that anarchists admire, had a cultural component to them. The most common element, as far as I can tell, has always been to demolish patriarchal, misogynistic norms that prevail in society. But at their best, a spirit of questioning takes hold with respect to all sorts of matters, the how and why of all of it, with a mind to doing things better, more joyfully, with more generosity—and it is usually in practical experiments of the kind that the enemies of revolution usually identify the greatest excesses of the revolutionary camp. This is where reactionaries mine the material for their arguments that the revolutionaries are disgusting, perverse, evil, crazy, or some combination of all of those things.

Thus a niche forms within any revolutionary camp, that of the conservative revolutionist, a pragmatic-minded naysayer who argues that cultural revolution can come later; that the exigencies of the political revolution are paramount; that a certain degree of accommodation to popular prejudices is necessary. Such a person, it should be said, usually has a point—but they also tend to betray the present for a wholly hypothetical future, often in accordance to their own unhealthy desires to control everything. It is worth saying, too, that it would be easy enough for a person who simply opposes a given thing to be dishonest about that fact (because it avoids anyone challenging them on their ideas, which may amount to nothing more than unexamined preferences) and couch their opposition as some kind of strategic concern.

My understanding is that, although the political side ended up quite tragic for anarchists, the Russian Revolution that began in 1917 had some interesting cultural components to it. The tsarist legal code was thrown out in its entirety, and thus a lot of things that had been criminal before—most famously homosexuality—ended up legal and remained so for some time. Articles were published in newspapers that questioned the institution of marriage, which prompted open debate on these subjects. I am sure there are many other interesting examples I could cite if I knew this history better, but I do know that, in the earliest years of the new regime, a movement mostly composed of women rode public transit with nothing but a red sash over their shoulders; their collectively upheld slogan was Down with Shame. During international nudist conferences in the 1920s, the Soviet delegations usually hugely outnumbered those from any other country, which implies at least some degree of real enthusiasm for social nudity in the Soviet republics at this time.

By the time Stalin came to power in the late 1920s, the Bolshevik dictatorship was already well-established (i.e. anarchists, and others, had lost the political revolution a while ago), but there had still been an atmosphere of cultural experimentation. Stalin put an end to this quickly. He reaffirmed many “traditional” institutions, from the primacy of the Russian language across the vast expanse of land ruled from Moscow, to the sanctity of monogamy within the context of a Christian idea of marriage, to the role of the authoritative father figure in the family.

I imagine that nudism also suffered for all this “reject modernity, embrace tradition” stuff within Stalin's cultural policy.

I'm a political history geek. I am interested in uprisings, demonstrations, and other events like that. As a result, I sometimes worry that I don't think enough about more modest projects of mutual aid, talking about how to do relationships differently, and so on, which I especially associate with “quiet” anarchist scenes—the places where a few chill anarchists are living, and doing some cool and nice and homey little projects, but where “things” (rowdy demos, direct actions, etc.) don't happen as much.

But focusing on the political game, without imagining how things could be different or trying to make things different and more joyous in our own lives, is a grave mistake. The good life is important.