Chapter 5 …show more content…
As the regime believed that one’s specific behaviors to his or her peers, friends, family, and loved one defined a real Soviet person, the youth’s introduction of new interpersonal relationships broached a new battle between individuals and the state. Sex and love posed a particular threat to the Soviet leadership. Individual friendship also challenged comradeship that was essential to the Soviet ideology. The chapter shows that the war introduced new behavior codes in the postwar Soviet. While the state intervened more frequently in personal relations during the war, more unsupervised interpersonal connections emerged. The officially unacceptable social values, gender identities, and sexual behaviors continued to grow in the following decades