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Abstract
Prostitution flourished during Russia's First World War. Mass mobilisation and the displacement of millions of the empire's population challenged the tsarist state's ability to control both the movement and bodies of those buying and selling sex. In light of this, military and medical authorities shifted their attention more directly onto regulating men's bodies. Wartime social turmoil also increased the visibility of prostitution, which saw many enlisted men lament the apparent ‘moral decline’ that they witnessed on the front. This article examines how the tsarist authorities grappled to control the bodies of its populace on Russia's western front, and how the conflict had an impact upon ideas of morality and sexuality.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank her two reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. She is also grateful to Sarah Badcock, Nancy M. Wingfield, Nick Baron and Maroula Perisanidi for their insightful comments and close reading of earlier versions of this work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributor
Siobhan Hearne is a doctoral candidate at the University of Nottingham, writing her thesis on female prostitution in urban Russia, 1900-1917. Her research interests include gender and sexuality in late imperial Russia and the early Soviet Union.
Notes
1. Kreslavka is now Krāslava, and Dvinsk is now Daugavpils. Both are located in southern Latvia. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi voenno-istoricheskii arkhiv (RGVIA), f. 2106, op. 8, d. 387, l. 11.
2. For a study of imperial regulation see Bernstein, Sonia's Daughters.
3. Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Sankt-Peterburga (TsGIASPb), f. 595, op. 1, d. 568, l. 5.
4. Figures vary from source to source. Professor Ivanov, a venereologist, estimated that there were 4,263,742 registered cases of syphilis across European Russia between 1902 and 1907 (70.5 cases per 10,000 people). The number of unregistered cases may have been higher; Ivanov, Voina, 8. A survey published in the Russian Journal of Skin and Venereal Diseases claimed that syphilis accounted for 10 per cent of all registered diseases across the Russian empire in 1911, beaten only by influenza (21 per cent) and malaria (19 per cent); ‘Otchet o sostoianii narodnogo zdraviia i organizatsiia vrachebno pomoshchi v Rossii za 1911 god,’ Russkii zhurnal kozhnikh i venericheskikh boleznei, nos. 11–12 (1913): 412. A 1914 survey stated that every tenth person in the Baltic port of Revel’ was infected with venereal disease. The survey also claimed that over six per cent of all St Petersburg inhabitants and almost five per cent of all Moscow residents were infected; I. I. Truzhemeskii, ‘Nekotorye dannye o rasprostranenii venericheskikh boleznei v Revele,’ Russkii zhurnal kozhnikh i venericheskikh boleznei, no. 4 (1914): 395–96.
5. In October 1913, the St Petersburg Club of the Women's Progressive Party, under the leadership of Dr Mariia Pokrovskaia, submitted a bill to the State Duma drafted by Professor Arkadii Elistratov entitled ‘on the abolition of the medical-police supervision of prostitution and the closure of brothels.’ The bill attacked regulation on moral grounds and branded brothels as ‘hotbeds of syphilis’; Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 1075, op. 2, d. 41, l. 7.
6. Bland and Mort, ‘Look Out for the Good Time Girl’; Harrison, ‘The British Army’; Taithe, Defeated Flesh; Timm, ‘Sex With a Purpose’; Wingfield, ‘The Enemy Within.’
7. See chapter six in Levine, Prostitution, Race and Politics.
8. Bernstein, Sonia's Daughters, 42–44; Clinton, Public Women and the Confederacy.
9. Harris, Selling Sex in the Reich; Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women; Lie, ‘The State as Pimp.’
10. Gatrell, Whole Empire Walking; Prusin, ‘The Russian Military’; Lohr, Nationalising the Russian Empire; Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse; Sanborn, ‘Unsettling the Empire.’
11. Healey, ‘Love and Death,’ 153–62.
12. Astashov, ‘Seksual’nyi opyt’; Seniavskaia, ‘Bez baby.’
13. Stoff, Russia's Sisters of Mercy, 266–94; Healey, ‘Love and Death,’ 155.
14. This region was known as the eastern front by Western European Allies and the north-western front by the Central Powers.
15. See the collection edited by Retish et al., Russia's Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–1922, Book 1.
16. The edited collection by Astashov and Simmons, Pis’ma s voiny, contains 1600 letters from RGVIA.
17. Holquist, ‘To Count, to Extract, and to Exterminate,’ 115.
18. Lohr argues that this desire for information was prompted by the counter-intelligence disasters of the Russo-Japanese war; Nationalising the Russian Empire, 18.
19. For a comprehensive discussion of ‘spy mania’ see Fuller, The Foe Within.
20. These included Lieutenant-Colonel Sergei A. Miasoedov, who was executed in spring 1915 and Vladimir Sukhomlinov (Minister of War, 1909–15), who was accused of treason in March 1916. According to Fuller, these men were vilified across all sections of Russian society and their names ‘became synonyms for traitor.’ See Fuller, The Foe Within, 8.
21. Lohr, Nationalising the Russian Empire, 19.
22. Sanborn, ‘Unsettling the Empire,’ 306.
23. Novoaleksandriia is now Pulawy in Poland. Gatrell, Whole Empire Walking, 17–18.
24. Lohr, ‘The Russian Army,’ 410–11.
25. Ibid., 404, 406.
26. RGIA, f. 1298, op. 1, d. 2400, l. 194.
27. The Second Army issued a directive on 27 December 1914 that ordered the deportation of all German men over the age of 15 to areas ‘beyond the Vistula river,’ which runs through Warsaw. One month later, the same army ordered that this be extended to ‘all Jews and suspicious people’; Sanborn, ‘Unsettling the Empire,’ 307.
28. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiisskii Federatsii (GARF), f. 220, op. 1, d. 1645, l. 1.
29. An 1889 empire-wide survey edited by A. Dubrovskii also indicated that 18 per cent of registered prostitutes in Warsaw province were Jewish. Polish women accounted for 75 per cent of all registered prostitutes across the province; Dubrovskii, Prostitutsiia, 26–30.
30. GARF, f. 220, op. 1, d. 1645, ll. 32–33.
31. GARF, f. 220, op. 1, d. 1645, l. 5.
32. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 217, l. 9.
33. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 217, l. 24. Disna is now Dzisna in Belarus.
34. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 217, l. 24.
35. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 261, l. 9.
36. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 217, ll. 15–17. The territory of Grodno province now comprises mainly Belarus, but also smaller parts of Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. The cities of Slonim and Polotsk are now located in Belarus. Belostok is now the city of Białystok in north-eastern Poland.
37. Vejas, War Land on the Eastern Front, 60.
38. Bernstein, Sonia's Daughters, 164.
39. Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State, 95–96.
40. Sanborn, ‘Unsettling the Empire,’ 309–10.
41. Parrott, ‘Baltic States,’ 136.
42. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Arkhangel'skoi oblasti (GAAO), f. 37, op. 1t2, d. 4163, ll. 6, 45, 197, 207, 238.
43. Henriksson, ‘Riga,’ 179–80; Hamm, ‘Riga's 1913 City Election,’ 442.
44. Raun, ‘The Estonians,’ 290.
45. Rahvusarhiiv (EAA), 242.1.800, l. 46.
46. EAA, 330.1.2395. This file includes countless referrals written by the Iur’ev medical-police committee that sent women with venereal diseases to Iur’ev city hospital for treatment throughout 1916. The involvement of the committee in this matter suggests that these women were working as prostitutes.
47. GAAO, f. 37, op. 1t2, d. 4163, ll. 243–52.
48. Latvijas Valsts Vēstures Arhīvs (LVVA), f. 51, op. 1, d. 23555, l. 159. Riga's prostitute population was 1207 in 1914 according to the records of the city's medical-police committee; d. 23557, l. 394.
49. LVVA, f. 51, op. 1, d. 273, l. 85.
50. Dubrovskii, Prostitutsiia, 14.
51. Eight-five women were sent to Khar’kov, 30 to Ekaterinoslav and 30 to Orel. Ekaterinoslav is now Dnipro in Ukraine.
52. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 54–55.
53. Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 77.
54. Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 120–21.
55. ‘Pogovorili i Zabyli,’ Severnoe utro, 12 December 1915, 3.
56. ‘Venericheskie Zabolevaniia,’ Arkhangel'sk, 26 June 1915, 3.
57. ‘Bezhentsy v Arkhangel'ske,’ Severnoe utro, 19 August 1915, 1–2.
58. ‘Den’ za dnem,’ Arkhangel'sk, 18 December 1915, 3.
59. Sanborn, Imperial Apocalypse, 162.
60. Gatrell, Russia's First World War, 65.
61. Bernstein, Sonia's Daughters, 60–61.
62. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv voenno-morskogo flota (RGAVMF), f. 949, op. 3, d. 4, l. 35. The fortress was known as the Port of Peter the Great.
63. Wingfield, ‘The Enemy Within,’ 571–72.
64. Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorichnyi arkhiv Ukrainy m. Kyiv (TsDIAK), f. 2090, op. 1, d. 96, l. 26.
65. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 2236, l. 53.
66. Mazanik, ‘Sanitation,’ 89.
67. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 2510, l. 1.
68. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 2510, l. 8.
69. Nancy M. Wingfield discusses rumours of soldiers ‘shirking’ by deliberately contracting venereal disease in wartime Austria; see Wingfield, ‘The Enemy Within,’ 577.
70. Bourke, Dismembering the Male, 81–83.
71. RGAVMF, f. 949, op. 3, d. 4, l. 2.
72. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 2510, l. 29.
73. RGAVMF, f. 949, op. 3, d. 4, l. 37.
74. RGAVMF, f. 949, op. 3, d. 4, l. 37.
75. RGAVMF, f. 949, op. 3, d. 4, l. 38.
76. For example, lectures delivered in the Baltic port of Libava in the early 1910s promoted sexual continence as an ideal for sailors; RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 1658, ll. 117b, 114. Likewise in pre-war Britain, the promotion of continence, sexual self-control and a more tolerant attitude to the marriage of military personnel emerged in military literature, apparently in the hope that ‘marriage would discourage more casual liaisons’; Harrison, ‘British Army,’ 137.
77. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 2877, l. 1.
78. Petrone, The Great War in Russian Memory, 108.
79. Cited in Astashov, ‘Seksual’nyi opyt,’ 373.
80. In 1914, between 80 and 90 per cent of recruited soldiers were peasants and 70 per cent were married; Astashov, ‘Seksual’nyi opyt,’ 368.
81. Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness, 186.
82. For a comprehensive study of female industrial workers see Glickman, Russian Factory Women.
83. Ransel, ‘Infant-Care Cultures,’ 116.
84. Young men targeted young girls who had illegitimate children. Practices included the defacing of their parents’ property or public defamation of character through the loud singing of mocking songs and rhymes; Worobec, ‘Masculinity,’ 83–84.
85. Engel, Between the Fields and the City, 8–9.
86. Stoff, Russia's Sisters of Mercy, 266–67.
87. Letter 1224, 9 January 1916, Pis’ma, 582.
88. Stoff, Russia's Sisters of Mercy, 285.
89. Letter 1321, 1 October 1916, Pis’ma, 619.
90. Letter 1338, 15 November 1916, Pis’ma, 626.
91. RGVIA, f. 2106, op. 8, d. 387, l. 11. See also Stoff, Russia's Sisters of Mercy, 282–84.
92. Stoff, Russia's Sisters of Mercy, 292.
93. Ivanov, Voina, 17.
94. Ivanov, Voina, 17. For a discussion of elite attitudes to lower-class sexuality, see Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness, 191.
95. McDermid and Hillyar, Women and Work in Russia, 144.
96. Ivanov, Voina, 17.
97. In a comparative context, Lisa Todd explores the perceived moral breakdown in Germany during the First World War. She argues that ‘discourses of fear’ during the conflict were centred on the consequences of female promiscuity; Todd, ‘The Soldier's Wife,’ 257–78.
98. Ivanov, Voina, 18.
99. Ivanov, Voina, 20.
100. The quotation reads ‘odno bezobrazie mat’ rekomenduet svoiu doch’ soldatu’ and there are clear sexual connotations. Letter 1296, 23 July 1916, Pis’ma, 608.
101. Letter 1219, 26 December 1915, Pis’ma, 580.
102. Letter 1347, 10 December 1916, Pis’ma, 629.
103. Gatrell, Whole Empire Walking, 120–21.
104. Letter 1243, 10 March 1916, Pis’ma, 587.
105. Letter 1257, 10 April 1916, Pis’ma, 593.
106. Letter 1255, 4 April 1916, Pis’ma, 590–92.
107. Letter 1255, Pis’ma, 590–92.
108. Letter 1245, 10 March 1916, Pis’ma, 588.
109. RGAVMF, f. 408, op. 1, d. 1658, ll. 114, 117.
110. RGVIA, f. 2018, op. 1, d. 322, l. 13.