For anything other than Dating used condoms in the USSR

Ask any person who lived in the Soviet years, what is a "product number 2", and he'll tell you right away: the so-called at that time condoms.

The fact that initially they were produced on one Bukowski plant in the suburbs, where there were only two types of products: condoms (product No. 2) and... gas masks (product No. 1). The rooms appropriated to the thickness of the rubber: the thinner, the more room.

Condoms sample, 1955.

Bukowski rubber products plant began working in the late 1930s. according to some sources, the production of condoms in the country was supported by a party leader and a close supporter of Stalin, Lavrenti Beria.

During the war the yard produced for military purposes and returned to the production of condoms in the mid-1950s In the year Bukowski plant was producing about 200 million pieces "products № 2". Later, the production of condoms started in Kiev and Armavir.

At the plant Bakovskaya

From today they differ greatly: condoms made from rubber without adding any lubrication. Instead, they are sprinkled with talcum powder to slip.

Under Khrushchev condoms were produced in three sizes, which added a piquant situations in the pharmacy queue where the buyers had to announce the desired size. One condom at a pharmacy was worth 10 cents. For comparison, a liter of milk 28 cents, a loaf of bread, 24 kopecks.

It looked like a condom 1968.

The quality of condoms was not high: many specimens were torn, and was just uncomfortable due to the thickness and stiffness. Only 80 years on Bukowski plant began manufacturing products made of latex, which was checked by the electronics. But before that, some Soviet citizens to buy better quality condoms on the black market.

The package of the condom, 1990.

Poster artist S. Markin in the exhibition of posters, February 1991.

In the country the use of condoms was under the auspices of protection from sexually transmitted diseases. But it turned out that this product has a lot of other purposes.

Poster artist A. Akmaev "better safe than sorry" at the exhibition of posters.

Condoms used very actively: first for canning with lids when there was a shortage, and secondly as galoshes my first bulldog on the legs — in the winter, when the streets are sprinkled with salt, says the Russian woman on the Internet.

Itself to buy such a number (need 8 units per day) I was embarrassed; the husband refused because needed the smallest size; the best friend from the doorway of the pharmacy screaming, "do you have condoms small size? I need 300 pieces!"

One of the exhibits of the Museum of erotica "Museros" on Ligovsky Avenue in Saint-Petersburg.

Condoms in the form of Gzhel toys.

Out of the crisis Bukowski plant tried many including the unusual ones — for example, condoms, toys, painted under Gzhel. At some point, the plant changed its production of balloons. But it still did not help — in 2019 Bukowski the factory was declared bankrupt and liquidated in March 2020.