Soviet criminology textbooks claimed that prostitution was a social disease inherent in a society where rotting capitalism reigned and Soviet women were not able to sell for money. Experts say that the number of prostitutes is always the same. It's not about the social system. At all times there is a group of women who are ready to sell their love for money.
The beginning of prostitution in the USSR
After the February Revolution, sex workers (the so-called prostitutes) tried to create trade unions and somehow defend their rights. The time of brothels ended, there were no yellow tickets, prostitution in the USSR was no longer controlled by the police, so the market for intimate services began to live according to its own laws. The Bolsheviks solved the problem very simply: prostitution was declared one of the forms of evading labor service.
Representatives of the most ancient profession themselves, of course, have not gone anywhere. This activity was continued by those who used to work in legal brothels, and those who found clients in the streets. The ranks of women selling their own bodies joined the completely distant from this "case" of the citizen. In the afternoon, they worked on a typewriter in some new Soviet office, and in the evening they went to the panel.
Shooting and camps for priestesses of love
Lenin hated prostitution and considered such women a huge threat to society. During the time of war communism, he was always afraid of riots and uprisings. Once Vladimir Ilyich demanded to be taken out of Nizhny Novgorod and shot almost two hundred prostitutes, who, in his opinion, soldered the soldiers. In Petrograd, a special concentration camp was created for the priestesses of love. The penalties for prostitution in the USSR were harsh, but this did not help reduce the number of women who sold their bodies.
Bordel in Soviet Moscow
In the fall of 1925, investigator Leo Sheinin interrogated Antonin Apostolov, the widow of the tsar’s army general, who organized the first brothel right in the center of the capital. It all started with the statement of one angry Soviet official who came to visit and unexpectedly found his wife in the arms of another man.
This was the main principle of Antonina Apostolova: she selected women married, well-off, but frankly bored. Apostolova met with future priestesses of love from fashionable metropolitan fashion designers, in women's hairdressers and perfume shops. As a rule, these were the wives of the new Soviet nomenclature. Decent living space and abundance in the house did not make them happy.
Prostitution during the NEP
When Lenin introduced the NEP, the standard of living in Moscow increased significantly. Private shops and restaurants opened, men with money appeared and the number of prostitutes increased. The authorities were very inconsistent on the issue of prostitution in the USSR: at first they were shot for it, but then they simply turned a blind eye.
At that time, from 40 to 60% of the adult male population used the services of prostitutes. Against the backdrop of great demand in the market for paid intimate services, the organizational structure quickly recovered. Prostitution in the pre-perestroika period has become a punishable occupation since 1922, when the Criminal Code was adopted. Pimps and landlords were put in jail and property seized, but the number of brothels did not decrease.
According to all the laws of capitalism, several levels of prostitutes immediately formed. There were so-called professionals who dressed in coats and uniforms of employees. Prostitutes of a lower rank looked like gray mice and served their customers in the basements or just outside. In the twenties, priestesses of love served men even in the cemetery. For example, a gatehouse with girls was discovered at Pyatnitsky cemetery in Moscow during one of the raids.
The Case of Antonina Apostolova
The general’s elite brothel continued to work. The investigation against Antonina Apostolova began after a letter was discovered by one of the women. One of the best employees of the brothel was tormented by conscience for a long time. She was infinitely ashamed of her loving husband, who, of course, knew nothing. She could not admit, but did not want to live like that anymore. The woman decided to commit suicide.
During the investigation, Apostolova for a long time denied her guilt and did not want to give evidence. In court, when asked about how she classifies her profession, the general replied: "I don’t go to the dressmaker." The case was resonant. The ranger of the first known Soviet brothel for nomenclature was given ten years.
Labor re-education of women
Since 1929, severe persecution of prostitutes began. Priestesses of love were sent to a kind of labor dispensaries controlled by the NKVD. It was a cross between a prison and a hospital. As a rule, part of some dormitory or old shelters were assigned to them. Only in Moscow there were six such dispensaries.
Re-education began with a lecture on the danger of sexually transmitted diseases, then prostitutes were sent to some factory. It was assumed that advanced workers would favorably influence the representatives of the most ancient profession, but in fact it turned out that factory workers became prostitutes: prostitution flourished in the Soviet era. Even with such brutal methods, the authorities failed to fight girls who were ready to sell their love for money.
Punitive measures
The word "prostitution" in the USSR began to appear less and less in police reports and in newspapers. More streamlined phrases began to be used (for example, “morally unstable woman”), but at the same time, the attitude towards priestesses of love in society became tougher, and mores in the dispensaries began to resemble camp ones. Women were beaten, raped and humiliated.
The dispensary organized at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery was especially famous. It was rumored that prostitutes were forced to dig out the graves of famous people (buried in imperial times) in order to remove valuable jewelry. The arrested priestesses of love began to be sent to Solovki, but in the early thirties few more were familiar with the Gulag. In a few years, everyone will know what a camp is.
Spies for working with foreigners
Prostitution in the USSR was considered a crime, and if the sale of intimate services was carried out to foreigners, then an aggravated crime. Girls who entered into an intimate relationship with foreigners immediately fell into the sight of the KGB. They were not only watched and recruited, but also trained: they were real Soviet spies.
The first foreigners appeared in the Soviet Union in the late twenties, but in general, before the war, foreign guests were very exotic, so prostitutes worked mainly for the domestic consumer. Shortly before the war, there were much more foreigners. Friendship Houses were created, where foreigners were entertained, and prostitution in the USSR became almost legal. After the Second World War, all the women who were seen there were sent to camps.
In the mid-fifties, currency prostitution flourished. How was it in the USSR? Girls of easy virtue began to actively communicate with foreigners, and foreign guests fell into the epicenter of female attention. After two weeks of the World Festival of Youth and Students, many pregnant women appeared in the Soviet Union, who subsequently gave birth to black children.
The fight against sexually transmitted diseases
Until the mid-fifties, Soviet prostitutes practically did not use contraceptives. The result was a shocking statistic of sexually transmitted diseases. Millions of people suffered from relatively mild illnesses, but hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens suffered from syphilis. The statistics were immediately classified and began to actively fight, not with the disease itself, but with the sick. The doctor had the right to call the police if the patient refused treatment.
Prostitution during the years of perestroika in the USSR
Sex and perestroika are close concepts. In times of glasnost, the USSR had not yet begun to speak openly about sex, but there were already prerequisites. Sex and perestroika are all about the book by Vladimir Kunin, who followed the work of the prostitutes at the hotel for several months, and then brought to the editorial office a manuscript called “Prostitute.” They didn’t publish such a work, but after the change of name everything went smoothly: "Intergirl" blew up the Soviet Union, which had only a short time to live.
The truth about forced prostitution
In the first years of glasnost, society saw with different eyes the whole world around us, the history of the war, a lot of terrible and disgusting truths were revealed. Eyes were also opened on prostitution in the camps of the Gulag, more precisely, on how women were turned into wordless slaves, on whom the camp leaders made money.