Anna Dobrowolska’s new book Polish Sexual Revolutions. Negotiating Sexuality and Modernity behind the Iron Curtain, published at the Oxford University Press this year, reveals fresh perspectives in the scholarship about the socialist states. In our podcast, she explains how Poland and Eastern Europe developed their own distinct approaches to sexual modernity under state socialism.
While Western observers assumed sexual liberation was incompatible with communist rule, Poland was quietly developing its own sophisticated approach to sexual modernity. In her book, Anna Dobrowolska aimed to map these differences and nuances.
Throughout the conversation, we learn that the conventional narrative of state oppression versus societal resistance proves to be inadequate when examining Poland’s sexual revolution. Dobrowolska’s archival research reveals a complex ecosystem of actors: sexologists, journalists, cultural institutions, who negotiated sexual discourse largely independent of central party directives.
These middle-level negotiations created unexpected spaces for sexual expression within the socialist framework, as the book shows. Perhaps most surprisingly, censorship archives reveal that sexual content often received official approval precisely because it served broader state modernisation goals. Conservative citizens frequently petitioned authorities for stricter moral oversight, only to find officials defending more liberal positions.
Anna Dobrowolska is a historian of modern Poland with a primary focus on the history of gender and sexuality under state socialism. In 2021, Anna defended her doctoral thesis at the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. Currently, Anna is a postdoctoral assistant in East European and Modern History at the Department of History, University of Basel. In the previous years, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the European University Institute, Geneva Graduate Institute and the University of Warsaw.
The interview was conducted by Adrian-George Matus. Alina Young edited the audio file.
