When Russia first met the West on television
Before the internet there was television. A few live broadcasts let Soviet and American audiences see each other for the first time, and one of them gave Russian a catchphrase.
Last reviewed: 2026-11-06
This article comes from the earlier life of this site. The Internet Archive captured the page on 10 April 2004, and the text dates from around 2004. We removed the original byline, reader testimonials, promotional passages and sentences that the old capture had broken. The remaining wording is the original’s, lightly corrected for typography. Where a statement is outdated or wrong, the fact check below says so.
The archive text
Television bridge-shows became extremely popular. Russian citizens were able to sit in a TV studio, watching a large television screen of people from other countries and being able to communicate with these individuals.
It was a very unusual and revolutionary show for those times and millions of Russians sat in front of their TV sets and paid a great deal of attention to the questions and answers between the Russians in the TV studio and their foreign counterparts. Keep in mind that for more than 70 years, Russia (Soviet Union) had closed borders and the citizenry of the times only knew and heard what the government allowed. So, it was with tremendous interest and curiosity that the Russian people wanted to know what went on in countries beyond the Russian borders. Mutually, many people from foreign countries wanted to know about their Russian counterparts. They wanted to know such things as their likes and dislikes. How did they live and work and so on.
This answer is well known and repeated throughout Russia, almost, from the beginning of Perestroika.
The tv shows host handed this woman the microphone.
Why does everybody know this phrase? Why has this phrase so touched the Russian psyche?
Fact check and what has changed
“A shy Soviet woman blurted out ‘Sex doesn’t exist in the USSR’ because she had misunderstood the question.”
The catchphrase is real. It comes from the words of a Soviet participant in the Leningrad–Boston tele-bridge Women Talk to Women, recorded on 28 June 1986 and broadcast on 17 July 1986. Why she said it, and what exactly she meant, is told differently in different accounts: some stress a misunderstanding about the word, others a remark about advertising. We have removed the passage of the archive text that told one version as certain. Treat any single retelling, including this one, with caution.
Source: Wikipedia, “There is no sex in the USSR” (secondary source)
“For more than 70 years the Soviet Union had closed borders and citizens only heard what the government allowed.”
Contact with foreigners and access to information were tightly controlled for most of the Soviet period. They were not perfectly sealed: foreign radio was listened to despite jamming, and some travel and exchange existed. “Closed” is a fair shorthand for the ordinary citizen’s experience, and an overstatement taken literally.
Source: General historical record; no single source for this summary
What the bridges changed
The telebridges of the mid-1980s put ordinary people on screens in front of each other, live, with interpreters. They did not create international marriages, but they made the idea of speaking directly to someone in the other country normal. After 1991 travel opened, and the first introduction agencies and, later, websites built on the same curiosity. Our guide What “mail-order bride” meant, and what it means now follows that path to the law of 2006.
How a famous anecdote travels
The archive text broke off at the point where it began to tell the story of the catchphrase, and the passage that survives from the old capture is only the set-up. That is a useful accident, because the story is a good example of how a claim spreads. Between the recording on 28 June 1986 and the broadcast on 17 July 1986 there were three weeks; since then the exchange has been retold in articles, memoirs, jokes and, eventually, in web pages like this one, each time a little shorter and a little more certain.
To check an anecdote like this, ask four things. Is there a recording or a transcript? Who translated it? Do the earliest accounts agree with the later ones? And what does the teller gain from the version they chose? The same questions apply to the claims you will hear about Russian women and marriage agencies, which is why this site puts a verdict and a source next to each one.
What to take from it today
The lesson of the anecdote is about translation. A word that means one thing in one language can mean another in the next, and a single sentence can follow someone for decades. When you talk to someone in your second language, assume that some of your meaning will be lost, and ask.