It's Quantity, Not Quality, for Russian Libidos

The audience at the press conference listened to the news in shock. Some of the mostly Russian reporters, especially the women, reached for their notebooks to do long multiplication or else started frantically counting on their fingers.


"No," one woman whispered. "There must be some mistake!"


According to London International Group, a world leader in condom manufacturing which distributed the results of its third annual international sex survey Tuesday, there was no mistake. Russians, their survey said, are the second-most sexually active people in the world, trailing only the United States.


"Our survey will explode a lot of myths about sex," said Pauli Jakobsson, soft-spoken spokesman for LIG, which makes Durex condoms.


For Russians, the results of LIG's survey, except for the bulletin about the national average for frequency of intercourse, the news was almost uniformly bad.


Jakobsson, the manager for LIG in the region which includes Russia, opened his remarks by smiling and telling reporters that Russians were the second-most selfish lovers in the world.


According to LIG data, based on surveys of 10,000 people from 15 countries, 42 percent of Russians consider their own satisfaction the most important factor in lovemaking. In this sinister indicator they again trailed only the Americans, who broke away from the pack with an astonishing 61 percent.


Furthermore, although Russians claimed to have sex an average of 133 times a year, only two times less than Americans, the quality of sex was apparently poor. When respondents from each of the countries were asked to say whom they perceived to be the best lovers in the world, only 8 percent chose Russians, placing them second to last in the world, ahead of the Poles.


Even Russian personalities took a beating in the survey. While respondents asked to judge the sexiness of 15 international personalities placed Bill Clinton in the middle of the list, between debonair race car driver Michael Schumacher and flamboyant French soccer maybe, but tough all the same."


The survey also revealed a number of surprising results about other nations. Fully 13 percent of Polish respondents, for instance, claimed that they routinely carried condoms in their underwear. Except for the Italians, who trailed closely behind at 12 percent, no other country came close.


And respondents from Thailand, a country increasingly viewed around the world as a giant red-light district, emerged as the most puritanical of the group.


Thais said they had the least sex of any respondents, averaging only 64 times a year, while 81 percent of Thais said they always use condoms with casual partners, easily topping the list.


LIG data indicated that Canadians and Mexicans were the world's most sensitive lovers. Fully 51 percent of Canadians and 50 percent of Mexicans said satisfying their sexual partner was their top priority in bed. Women, incidentally, were revealed to be more selfish than men in the survey, with 31 percent viewing their own satisfaction as the most important factor compared to 25 percent of men.


For Russians, Strugatsky said, the survey made two things very clear: Russians need to use condoms more, and they need to talk about sex a little more with each other.


"Russia used to tell the rest of the world that it didn't have sex," he said. "Clearly we do, almost more than anybody. But we need to make discussions about safe sex a priority, or else we'll have a catastrophe -- especially if we're having sex as much as this survey indicates."