Sex and erotica in socialist Hungary

In Hungary, such as in most of the countries, talking openly about sex was extremely unfashionable for a very long time, though the youth really would have needed proper sex education back then. Porn used to be a big NO, but at least a sort of education was allowed in a Youth Magazine.

As we wrote it recently, discussing sex today does not count as taboo as it used to be 50-60 years ago. Intimacy is everywhere; not necessarily directly in the bedroom, but in films, posters advertising their products with half-naked women, and even porn can be accessed by almost anyone through the internet. Though all this material did not use to be this accessible, erotica did play an important role in the lives of youngsters of those times, despite being less talked about – as writes femina.hu.

In order to understand better the sexual life of the so-called Kádár-era of the ‘60s and ‘70s, we have to take a quick detour to the ‘50s, to the Ratkó-era. The 1950-1960s period was named after Anna Ratkó, the Cabinet Minister of health, who tried to motivate couples to have kids by using several measures. One of these decisions was to

illegalise abortion and to introduce a “childless tax” which was similar to China’s old one-child policy,

meaning that those couples or individuals who turned a certain age needed to pay higher taxes if they did not have children. Naturally, the population of the country increased significantly after this decade. Nevertheless, behind the back of the authorities still a lot of women decided to end their unwanted pregnancy for their personal reasons, which in many cases led to the death of the woman due to the unfavourable circumstances in which they needed to have the operation.

The revolution of 1956 ended the Ratkó-era and legalised abortion again, but still, women needed to go through a very humiliating process to grant the acceptance of terminating the pregnancy. They needed to stand in front of a commission asking to get the procedure.

It seemed like the issue of unwanted pregnancies was solved with lifting the ban on abortions, but actually, quite the opposite happened.

As young people had the option for the operation again, and with the lack of sexual education the “pull-out method” being left as the only safe way for sexual intercourse, women and young females entered the door after one another to face the commission mentioned above.

Based on the book of Eszter Zsófia Tóth and András Murai: “Sex in socialism”,

it was not uncommon that a woman would go through 10-15 abortions during her life, leading to the fact that at the end of the ‘50s and the beginning of the ‘60as more of these procedures were performed in Hungary than actual childbirth.