Conclusion

This chapter provides a summary of the key arguments of the book: that reactions to regulation were complicated and multifaceted; that regulation varied widely from place to place; and that there was a huge gulf between the ambitions of the tsarist authorities for policing prostitution, and the corresponding reality. Thereafter, the chapter examines the abolition of the regulation system in July 1917 by the Provisional Government. The social and economic dislocation of the First World War, revolution, and Civil War undoubtedly saw many more women engaging in prostitution. After seizing power from the Provisional Government in October 1917, the Bolsheviks set out to eradicate prostitution as they regarded it as an unwanted remnant of the bourgeois, capitalist past. However, prejudices against women who worked as prostitutes that had been established under the regulation system were difficult to shift, particularly the perception that women who sold sex were responsible for the transmission of venereal diseases. These stubborn ideas meant that attempts to eliminate prostitution in the early Soviet period were destined to be unsuccessful.

Managing Commercial Sex

This chapter focuses on individuals who facilitated the commercial sex transaction in late imperial Russia, namely brothel madams, pimps, and those who rented their properties to registered prostitutes. It examines the complex relationship between brothel madams and the police, as well as addressing the various roles given to madams in official legislation: guardians of public health, watchdogs, and money-makers for the local government. Brothel madams provided lucrative income for the authorities, both formally through taxation and informally through bribes and cash gifts. The rules of regulation enforced a paternalistic relationship between madams and registered prostitutes, as well as providing ample opportunity for exploitation. Finally, the chapter examines hidden managers, in the form of pimps and procurers, and their cultural significance in the late imperial period.

Living with Commercial Sex

This chapter focuses on the experience of living in towns and cities in the late imperial period, when prostitution was a visible component of urban life. It examines the different unsuccessful policies employed by the imperial state to enforce the spatial segregation of registered prostitutes and attempts to render brothels invisible on the urban landscape. Official efforts to push lower-class sexuality to the spatial margins are also addressed, particularly policies of zoning and brothel ranking. Some landlords frequently complained to the police about the negative impact of nearby brothels on their rental prices, whereas others helped women who sold sex to resist some of the residency restrictions placed upon them by the police. Ultimately, officialdom’s attempts to limit the visibility of prostitution were spectacularly unsuccessful, as commercial sex was visible everywhere across the Empire’s towns and cities at the turn of the twentieth century.

Introduction

This chapter maps prostitution onto the shifting social, political, and economic landscape of modernizing Russia. It outlines the system for the regulation of prostitution in the Russian Empire and pays attention to the significant expansion of the system during late nineteenth-century industrialization and urbanization. The chronological setting of the study is analysed as a period of flux, in which social identities, cultural practices, and traditional gender roles were destabilized. Amid this fluctuation, the imperial authorities attempted to tighten their grip over the Empire’s vast lower class population, using emerging technologies (such as photography, fingerprinting, and statistical analysis) to ‘know’ and monitor those at the social margins. Women who sold sex were certainly one key focus of this attention, as local police forces attempted to compile accurate records of their names, ages, addresses, social classes, and ethnicities. Thereafter, the chapter explores how the Russian imperial state attempted to enforce a paternalistic relationship between those in authority and their subjects. Official approaches to the Empire’s lower classes combined strict discipline with custodial care and supervision. This paternalism was at the heart of the state regulation of prostitution, under which officialdom monitored the bodies and behaviour of registered prostitutes, and to a certain extent, their clients and managers.

Selling Sex

This chapter explores the lives and challenges of women who sold sex in the late Russian Empire by looking at the different ways in which registered prostitutes defined themselves, and how they were defined by those in authority. Some women who sold sex were urban workers who fought for their rights to be upheld and called out the illegal application of regulation. Others were migrant seasonal workers, who sold sex for a few months or weeks at a time, before moving on to a new place or job. The imperial police often conflated ‘promiscuous’ behaviour with prostitution and registered women as prostitutes against their will. This chapter incorporates women who sold sex into wider labour and migration histories of the late imperial period and pays attention to the interplay between policing practices and ideas regarding gender and sexuality.

Paying for Sex

This chapter focuses on men who paid for sex, a group that are often silent in histories of prostitution. It draws on letters written by male clients who denounced women as ‘clandestine prostitutes’ (as in, working outside the legal parameters of regulation). The chapter then moves on to address how the imperial state regulated the bodies of specific types of male client, including migrant workers and military personnel, for the purposes of public health. Rather than nameless and blameless clients, some men who paid for sex were regularly examined and their behaviour was scrutinized by those in authority. Finally, the chapter provides a case study of the regulation of male sailors within the Port of Emperor Alexander III in Libava (now Liepāja, Latvia).

Policing Commercial Sex

This chapter examines the institutions in charge of policing prostitution, namely provincial governments, municipal authorities, and medical-police committees. The devolved nature of Russian imperial governance meant that the severity with which regulation was applied varied widely from place to place, often depending on the specific economic, social, and environmental conditions of localities. The dynamics of medical-police committees are discussed, particularly the tension between the police and medical personnel. The chapter also explores the complex relationship between ‘policer’ and ‘policed’ in examining the (often informal) relationship between registered prostitutes and the police. Urbanization, limited resources, and the inability, or unwillingness, to enforce policy meant that regulation consistently failed to meet its medical and moral objectives. In the early twentieth century, the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars widened the gulf between state ambitions and realities even further.