It is clear that pre-revolutionary Russian religious culture was heavily dependent on a neo-Platonic version of Christianity received through Byzantium. Whereas Aristotle focused his attention in large part on the material world, Plato’s concerns were more ethereal and focused on the idealized and perfected forms of the physical. It is arguable that Russian Orthodoxy experienced a much more powerful influence of Neo-Platonism than Western Christianity, so it is no surprise then that Russian culture dictated much narrower boundaries for public discourse around sexuality and the “flesh” than its Western counterparts.

It is not hard to see examples of these boundaries in Russian art. Andrei Rublev’s iconic representations of human and divine forms (such as his Trinity) are markedly non-naturalistic: one can observe in them what Orthodox theologians call “spiritual flesh,” that is, the bodies look incredibly light, frail, and unearthly. Familiar Western tableaux with Madonnas represented as full-bodied wives and mothers are conspicuously absent within Russian art. These carnal prohibitions were very conscious, intentional, and resistant to change. Even the slightest violation of this tradition caused great unrest among the church hierarchy. A more realistic representation of iconic images would enrage the religious sensibilities of the public.

Much of Russian culture, and in particular, Russian literature was informed by Orthodox Christianity in one way or another, and as a result, was by definition anti-carnal. Pre-Christian Russian literary epics had been relatively more open to sexuality, and sometimes were even obscene, but they had little or no direct impact on what we know today as canonical Russian literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The golden age of Russian literature was marked by an idealized approach to matters of the flesh and sexuality, an approach that resembled little of what actual human sexuality looks like.

Some have argued that the traditional cannon’s avoidance of sexual topics could be a result of one of the long-held cultural myths of Russia, the idea of the “chastity of the common Russian people.” It is not hard to draw a direct line from such cultural myths and the Skoptsits of Tsarist Russia, a heretical Christian sect which was infamous for encouraging self-castration among its members. Fostered by a general blindness to sexual matters imposed by a predetermined religious narrative, Russian religious convictions informed Russian cultural convictions which naturally dictated Russian literary tastes. Once the Russian people understood themselves as eternally chaste, there was no need to speak about sexuality in the Russian language – the unchaste were not Russian and not of the “chosen people.” Beyond these religious concerns, any frankness in describing human sexuality through literature was all but certain to be considered as an insult to the chaste Russian national identity, inviting severe social and political consequences for any writer who dared.

As a result, the classical Russian cannon lacks any well-developed literary treatments of the forbidden in human life. The guilt, shame, and atonement that were the essence of the relationship between body and soul for Catholic clerics in the West are completely absent in the classical Russian cannon. The legacy of this literary deficiency can easily be seen in Russia today. In the West, the social-sexual ethic has continued to progress and expand to include an ever-increasing diversity of manifestations of human sexuality and sexual identity. The centuries-old limits placed on public discourse of sexuality and carnal desires in Russia, however, has stifled the openness seen in the western world, and thus, has led to difficulties for the younger Russian generation attempting to join an exceedingly more and more Western world.