Chapter 6
Saving Fallen Women

"I will sit at my pictures, you shall sit by me and inspire my work, while you are busy with sewing or some other handicraft . . ." "Indeed," [the prostitute] interrupted his speech with an expression pd scorn. "I am not a washerwoman or a seamstress who has to work!"
Nikolai Gogol, "Nevsky Prospect"

Saving prostitutes was a "favorite theme" in medieval Russian ecclesiastical stories. In the seventeenth century, a secular version of the redemption tale circulated in Russia, that of the "pious" man who saved a prostitute from damnation by marrying her.^[1] Russian literature and life pursued this motif with a vengeance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet with ever increasing pessimism over the possibility of truly "saving fallen women." As the head of the Legal Department of the ROZZh confessed in 1910, "it is very difficult, almost impossible, to return a woman already infected by prostitution to an honest life."^[2]

Educated society's conceptions of prostitutes and prostitution revealed themselves most vividly in the movement to rehabilitate prosti-

[1] Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900–1700 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989), p. 74.

[2] Viktor A. de-Planson, "O deiatel'nosti Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin za pervye desiat' let ego sushchestvovaniia," Trudy s'ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 41.

tutes and prevent women from turning to prostitution as a trade. At the turn of the century, feminists, society ladies and gentlemen, moral crusaders, and other members of the Russian privileged classes devoted thousands of volunteer hours and rubles to this goal. By 1905, Russia could boast of a national philanthropic network designed to aid repentant prostitutes and protect women in danger of succumbing to prostitution; almost every major city in the empire had its own branch of the ROZZh. During its heyday, the organization founded women's employment agencies, sponsored lectures to educate the public about prostitution, posted volunteers at urban railway stations to assist newly arriving peasant women, maintained a representative on St. Petersburg's medical-police committee, and administered halfway houses for former prostitutes.

Russian society achieved an unusual harmony of purpose in the movement to rehabilitate prostitutes. Journals and dailies joined the crusade, publicizing the need for philanthropic agencies and running articles about the "trade in human flesh." Stodgy government bureaucrats, radical feminists, members of the high nobility, and liberal professionals found themselves united around the cause to halt prostitution and "rescue its victims." They might quarrel over the roots of prostitution and the utility of regulation, but few would dispute the need for shelters or the necessity of rescuing "white slaves" from pimps and other exploiters.

Indeed, the rehabilitation of prostitutes was such a popular activity that it was not incongruous for the police themselves to join in. The salvation spirit reached even the city governor of St. Petersburg. In 1900, he ruled that copies of religious journals like The Russian Pilgrim (Russkii palomnik ) and The Wanderer (Strannik ) be provided to the capital's brothels.^[3] The chief of police in Kazan, influenced by the Kazan Society for the Protection of Unfortunate Women, did his part by distributing a circular to public houses that listed prostitutes' "rights" and referred women in need to the Kazan Society. Apparently, he had heard "rumors" that the "debauched and drunken life" had become burdensome for some prostitutes, but they feared to leave their "dens of commercial love." Could anything be worse, he asked, than engaging in a "hateful" trade that "corrupts their body and soul"? In return for their sexual services, prostitutes received "room, board, seductive clothes,

[3] Kleigels, "O deiatel'nosti sostoiashchago pri upravlenii S.-Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika."

and a gay and disgraceful nickname." In the future, however, only "the hospital and a crippled life" awaited them.^[4]

Attempts to save fallen women usually floundered. Though salvationists were sincere in their desire to help, they tended to be as naïve, if not as tactless, as the police chief from Kazan. By condemning prostitution and relying on a dull combination of prayers, drab gowns, and menial work, salvationists underestimated the complexity of the issues and betrayed their own confusion and self-righteousness. Moreover, their identification with official Russia and the regulation system that kept prostitutes in tow cast them more as adversaries than allies.

Houses of Mercy

[F]ar from the noisy streets, there's a house where a girl can find shelter, a bowl of cabbage soup and a piece of bread, and delicious pie on Holidays, when she wearies of her licentious life, of drunken, disgraceful orgies, of all the debauchery that strongly holds her in its clutches.
House of Mercy (1910)

"Aline is in charge of a wonderful asylum for fallen Magdalenes. I went to visit them once. They are disgusting. After that visit I couldn't stop washing myself."
Nekhliudov's aunt in Tolstoy, Resurrection

Philanthropic efforts to aid "the fallen" began in Russia as early as 1833, when two women, S. A. Biller and A. F. Mikhel'son, established the Magdalene Shelter (Magdalinskoe ubezhishche) in St. Petersburg "to promote the return of repentant public women to the path of honest labor." In an institutional structure not unlike Magdalene houses in western Europe, residents (theoretically) redeemed themselves through a strict regimen of hard work and religious devotion. During its first eleven years of existence, this organization reportedly provided 446 women with temporary housing and moral support. In 1844, Biller transformed the Magdalene Shelter into the Holy Trinity Community of the Sisters of Mercy (Sviato-Troitskaia obshchina sester miloserdiia), another institution designed to house and assist former prostitutes. According to one source, Some 700 women had taken ad-

[4] Reprinted in Baranov, V zashchitu, pp. 153–62.

vantage of the agency's charity before it closed in 1863, its services now rendered by an institution organized by the countess E. E. Lambert and Father Stefanovich, a priest who worked at Kalinkin Hospital. The countess and the priest had set up their own women's shelter in 1862, first on hospital grounds and then in a private home on Furshtadt Street. It was also administered according to a formula of salvation through worship and labor. During the next six years, it aided 266 women, half of whom were reported to have returned to an "honest" life. In 1868, it merged with St. Petersburg's newly established House of Mercy.^[5]

The House of Mercy had illustrious beginnings indeed. Following in the footsteps of her philanthropic-minded grandmother, in 1857 Tsar Nicholas I's daughter Mariia donated the money necessary to establish a shelter for penitent prostitutes in St. Petersburg. Initially located in a small dacha in a forest north of the city limits, this institution devoted itself exclusively to the care of a few child prostitutes, working in cooperation with the medical-police committee to root out juvenile prostitution where "vice harbors itself" But in 1868, the House of Mercy, already a three-story building with a six-bed infirmary, a church, and beds enough to hold fifty or sixty girls, joined forces with the countess and priest to take in adult women as well.^[6] Administrators and wards from the former shelter on Furshtadt Street helped set up the new adult division in a large house on the capital's Petersburg side. By 1873, it had its own church and space for forty women.^[7] The House of Mercy continued to expand. One year later, it opened a house designed to care for up to ten aging prostitutes. This agency widened its functions even further in 1877, establishing a new division for girls whose situations appeared to portend "inevitable ruin."^[8] Thus, with its clientele of girls and young and old women, the House of Mercy worked both toward preventing vice and redeeming those already perceived as lost.

In the years that followed the assassination of Alexander II (after 1881), the House of Mercy began to suffer from serious financial woes.

[5] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1865, 1867.

[6] Ibid., pp. 1866, 1873–74. Juvenile inmates could not leave until they turned 18. Bentovin, "Spasenie 'padshikh,'" pp. 332–33.

[7] With the help of another member of the nobility, Mariia Nikolaevna secured a dacha for the juvenile division on Bol'shaia Ob"ezdnaia Street at a third of its market value; the adult division was on Barmaleev Street. Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1866–67.

[8] Oboznenko repeated this with a certain amount of irony, following the House of Mercy's word "inevitable" with a parenthetical exclamation mark. Ibid., pp. 1867–68.

Not only did it lose several thousand rubles a year in private and government subsidies, its membership slipped from the twenty-six paying members of 1880 to a mere six in 1890. Despite this loss of crucial income, the board of directors continued to display what Petr Oboznenko termed "an unusual eagerness for construction," building a new church to accommodate 500 worshippers in 1886 and constructing living quarters for a priest in the juvenile division. While attention to what the board viewed as the wards' spiritual needs conformed with House statutes, such unrealistic budgetary priorities proved disastrous. In 1895, funding problems eventually compelled the board to cut back on the number of beds in the adult division.^[9] Not until it received financial assistance from the Charitable Society of Kalinkin Municipal Hospital (Blagotvoritel'noe obshchestvo pri kalinkinskoi gorodskoi bol'nitse) in 1899 was the shelter on the Petersburg side revived—albeit now without the ward for aging prostitutes and with fewer beds in general.^[10] Funding became more secure when just one year later, the House of Mercy entered a new phase of existence as a sister organization of the fledgling ROZZh.

St. Petersburg was the first, but not the only city in the Russian empire to give birth to institutions designed to wrest prostitutes away from their trade. By the turn of the century, similar organizations could be found in Nizhnii Novgorod, Odessa, Warsaw, Riga, Revel', Kiev, Kazan, Tiflis, and Moscow, where in 1866 Princess Ol'ga A. Golitsyna (née Shcherbatova), a bishop, and several members of the nobility opened their own halfway house.^[11] Moscow's Shelter of Saint Mary Magdalene (Ubezhishche sv. Maril Magdaliny) generally drew its clients straight

[9] The board's decision to spend funds on church construction is reminiscent of a similarly disastrous policy decision of Ivan Betskoi, the founder of Russia's foundling home system, in the late eighteenth century. Rather than devoting much-needed funds to infant care, Betskoi spend thousands of rubles on a foundling home's impressive church. See Ransel, Mothers of Misery, p. 53.

[10] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1868–7.

[11] Golitsyna's sister opened her own shelter in Kiev. A partial list of organizations that provided housing for repentant prostitutes includes the Miasnitskaia Hospital Shelter for Women, the Charitable Society of Miasnitskaia Hospital, Moscow's Society for the Improvement of Women's Lot, Nizhnii Novgorod's Society for the Aid of Needy Women, Odessa's Society of Saint Magdalene, Warsaw's House of Care of our Lady the Virgin, Riga's Society of Betabar, Revel's Estonian Society for the Care of People Given to Drunkenness and Prostitution, Revel's Evangelical Society, St. Petersburg's Evangelical-Lutheran Refuge of Saint Magdalene, St. Petersburg's Industrial Home of the Annunciation, St. Petersburg's Evangelical Society for the Protection of Women, Relief to Poor Women in St. Petersburg, and Tiflis's Religious-Philosophical Society.

from the ward in Miasnitskaia Hospital for diseased prostitutes, but the Moscow police and some families could also dispatch girls there for rehabilitation.^[12] Women themselves might also apply, such as the one who pleaded in a letter to the shelter, "For God's sake, put me in that house so that I will be able to turn over a new leaf and become a human being."^[13] Wards, who had to be under the age of 20, were expected to remain for a full three years.^[14]

Dr. Ivan Priklonskii, who worked in Miasnitskaia Hospital, publicized the shelter's work in The Return of Fallen Girls to an Honest Working Life (Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek k chestnoi trudovoi zhizni ) and described the facilities. Just opposite the Church of St. Nicholas on Dolgorukov Street, the main building contained rooms with beds for the thirty residents, several common areas, a kitchen and cafeteria, a laundry, and private rooms for the administrator and her assistant. The shelter also had a well, a garden, outbuildings in the courtyard, good ventilation, and a stove that provided adequate heat. Equating austerity with virtue, Priklonskii wrote, "everything is clean, extremely simple, and without any luxury."^[15]

It is difficult to determine precisely where these houses' inmates wound up after their stays, but overall, "redemption" was a rarity. Publicists for the Moscow shelter cited glowing figures about its successes, but these reflected the initial placement of women into jobs, rather than their long-term fates.^[16] Priklonskii confessed that the majority of girls who entered the shelter did not remain for the full three years of training: it was the girls' own fault, since many of them "could not be called fully normal."^[17] The House of Mercy had a similar attitude, attributing the high incidence of recidivism to the inmates' "deep-rooted habituation to idleness and drunken orgies, as well as their aversion for physical labor." Such proclivities "force them to plunge anew down that well-worn path of debauchery to illness and death."^[18]

Veniamin Tarnovskii used the House of Mercy's poor track record to

[12] Ivan I. Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek k chestnoi trudovoi zhizni i deiatel'nost' ubezhishcha sv. Marii Magdaliny v Moskve (Moscow, 1900), pp. 15, 32.

[13] Quoted in ibid., letter of 1898, p. 33.

[14] To accommodate more inmates, another shelter opened in 1880 Okorokov, Vozvrashchenie k chestnomu trudu, pp. 6–7, 11; Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, pp. 21, 29.

[15] Ibid., pp. 19–20.

[16] See Okorokov, Vozvrashchenie k chestnomu trudu, p. 7; Belyia rabyni, p. 34.

[17] Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, pp. 22–24.

[18] Quoted in Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," p. 1876.

support his theories about prostitution as a congenital defect. "Just as it is impossible to persuade a seasoned drunk to stop drinking hard liquor voluntarily or to substitute champagne for vodka, so is it impossible," he declared, "for a habitual prostitute voluntarily to change the form of the manifestation of her depravity." His reading of House of Mercy data from 1869 to 1885 allowed him to characterize only 28 percent of 425 residents as genuinely reformed. An 1880 follow-up investigation of ten former residents who had originally been counted among the rehabilitated compelled him to revise this figure downward, for only one had actually succeeded in staying away from prostitution. Extrapolating from these ratios, Tarnovskii estimated that just one in twenty-nine of the House of Mercy's wards could really hope to be "redeemed."^[19]

When Oboznenko wrote about the House of Mercy seventeen years later, he estimated more modestly that between one-half and three-quarters of the House of Mercy's wards would eventually wind up back on the streets. For the period from 1878 to 1900, House records showed that almost half of the House's residents had been expelled or had left of their own free will; Oboznenko presumed that most of these women returned to prostitution. While the data characterized 44 percent of the former residents as "rehabilitated" (that is, as having found jobs, returned to their village, or gotten married), such a percentage was deceptively high because subsequent research revealed that half this group ultimately wound up registering as prostitutes. The fact that some of the women signed themselves onto medical-police committee lists for the first time suggested to Oboznenko that their stay at the House of Mercy may have even served to weaken their resolve to keep away from full-time prostitution. He also noted that many others undoubtedly went on to engage in clandestine prostitution, thereby remaining outside of official studies. Oboznenko concurred that the House of Mercy had failed to rehabilitate most of its clients, but he disagreed with his former professor about the reasons. Unlike Tarnovskii, he joined other critics in shifting the blame to the House of Mercy itself, with its alienating and depressing internal regimen.^[20]

A look at the daily schedule of the House of Mercy supports Oboznenko's explanation for the high rates of truancy. Girls in the House of Mercy's juvenile division woke up at 6:00 A.M.; stood through morning

[19] Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, pp. 149–50.

[20] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1873, 1879–94. In marked contrast, the Kazan Society for Unfortunate Women believed that "the less inhibiting the regime, the better." Baranov, V zashchitu, p. 91.

prayers, cleaned their rooms, drank tea, and ate black bread; worked at sewing, laundering, or cleaning between 8:00 and noon; had dinner and took a walk at 12:30; attended classes from 1:30 to 4:00; ate coarse bread and drank tea, worked, or had choir practice from 5:00 to 8:00; ate supper, and then went to sleep. The adults engaged in similar activities, but their work period lasted much longer than the juveniles'.^[21] As for the curriculum, it consisted of instruction in elementary reading and writing, housework, training for handicrafts and trades, Bible lessons, and religious-moral conversations.^[22] In the words of one resident, the teaching of the "religious-moral" instructor "doesn't allow us to sin in peace."^[23]

Moscow's shelter adhered to strict rules as well. Beginning at 7:00 A.M., each day included a full six hours of work; only two hours a week were devoted to studies. Priklonskii nonetheless credited religious and ethical training for playing the most crucial role in effecting a girl's rehabilitation. To rectify the fact that many of the wards possessed only a "primitive understanding about God and His holy commandments" and that they were generally ignorant about the "correct, honest life," authorities at the Moscow shelter conducted talks about the Orthodox faith, religious history, and the difference between good and evil. Like the teaching program at the House of Mercy, the curriculum included only the most rudimentary literary skills and fundamental religious teachings. More attention was paid to job training and busy work. Apart from their spiritual lessons, girls learned crocheting, sewing, laundering, knitting, and cooking. At the close of their three-year stints, graduates would receive between 15 and 25 rubles as a "reward" for their labors.^[24]

In June 1902, a prostitute interned in Kalinkin wrote a letter to the medical assistant, Tat'iana Baar, begging for help in entering a halfway house so she could "be a human being." But, evidently, she had quickly become discouraged, for a second letter, written just six days later, asked Baar to ignore her request. "Please forgive me," she wrote, "but I want

[21] While a 1910 description of the adult division asserted that two hours a day were devoted to instruction in reading and writing, Bentovin claimed that the sole literary training lasted only two hours a week and was devoted exclusively to the Bible. Bentovin, "Spasenie 'padshikh,'" pp. 334, 336–37; Elena A. Voronova, "V zashchitu ustroistva domov miloserdiia," Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 297.

[22] According to the annual report published in 1911, daily activities for the juveniles consisted of reading, writing, sewing, darning socks, and keeping house and garden. Otchet popechitel'nago komiteta, p. 50.

[23] Quoted in Voronova, "V zashchitu," p. 297.

[24] Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, pp. 22, 27–28.

to tell you that I will not become a penitent because I heard that they don't do anything besides sew, wash clothes, and scrub floors. I can't do this. . . . I can repent on my own."^[25] The numbers of prostitutes whose previous jobs had been in domestic service and the needle trades should certainly have given administrators pause about their training programs. Oboznenko not only considered the schedules in these institutions "extremely monotonous," he questioned the value of instructing residents in sewing, washing, and laundering. He thought it "dubious" that women lacking work experience would "develop any kind of training for labor here. Scarcely any woman who is accustomed to idleness would willingly and gladly engage in such dirty and wretched labor." Moreover, the majority of inmates knew how to sew and clean before they were admitted. "From personal experience," he remarked facetiously, these women "know just how well these trades can provide them with a tolerable existence."^[26]

But physical labor apparently had another role for halfway house authorities. The language and tone of institutional reports suggest that the function of hard work was to repress, discipline, and punish. One annual report referred to manual labor as "the most useful method of distracting [the wards] from recalling their past."^[27] At the 1910 congress, the House of Mercy's Nikolai Zakharov named "heavy, physical labor" as vital for the "pacification" of the wards' sexual passions.^[28] Serafima Konopleva, who headed the St. Petersburg facility for juveniles, believed that the House of Mercy would help her wards develop a "love for work." If that failed, "at the very least" they would have a "consciousness" of their "debt."^[29]

House of Mercy rules almost guaranteed that residents who quit before the administration judged them fully reformed would be left with few options. Most significantly, as though the wards were still prostitutes, their passports were retained by the St. Petersburg police. In this respect, the House of Mercy had several things in common with the brothels that some women were trying to leave behind: both had official relationships with the dread medical-police committees, both could use the absent passports as leverage, and both kept the women locked into grueling schedules. But where brothels contrived to be sensual and gay,

[25] Quoted in Bentovin, "Spasenie 'padshikh,'" pp. 337–38.

[26] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1876, 1888, 1894–95.

[27] Quoted in ibid., p. 1876.

[28] Zakharov, "Istoriia S.-Peterburgskago doma miloserdiia," p. 292.

[29] Konopleva, "Otdeleniia dlia nesovershennoletnikh," p. 303.

redemption houses strove to be solemn and modest. Residents of the House of Mercy were issued identical ouffits—"grey uniforms as grey as their existence," in the words of Bentovin—designed to contrast with their former finery. Inmates enjoyed "neither laughter nor games nor fun. . . . Everything is in order, everything is for the sake of order. Nothing is for joy or for the true needs of young girls' spirits."^[30]

Not surprisingly, rigid constraints did less to imbue young women with gratitude than they served to foster resistance and rebellion. Even an 1866 report admitted, "Naturally, [the wards] see the House of Mercy as a prison."^[31] For children and teenagers in particular, this grim institution was slated as their "home" until maturity, whether they liked it or not. Zakharov admitted that many juveniles escaped as soon as they could. But he did not trace their behavior to the day-to-day routine of the House of Mercy; rather he attributed it to sexual desires that had been stimulated by "defloration" prior to sexual maturity. The inmates' looks—"small, pale, with a tired appearance"—were deceptive; it was impossible to tell by looking at them how much they desired a "dissolute life." Such sexual "agitation" would cause them to provoke arguments and violent fights, as well as flee "to those dens where they are able to find a man." Sometimes they would satisfy themselves (and here Zakharov had to take refuge in Latin) with masturbatio or cunnilingus .^[32] The Moscow shelter apparently suffered from similar problems. Though he was a fervent devotee of the shelter's work, Priklonskii admitted that girls had trouble adjusting to the change from a "disorderly life" to the "quiet and religious one of the refuge." Thus, the administrator had to serve not only as parent and teacher, but as disciplinarian.^[33]

Annual reports outlined some of the ways wards resisted. In 1910, Konopleva recounted that the girls under her care refused to work in the garden. Until a new instructor won them over, the girls insulted the gardener and complained that they had no desire "to dig in the dirt" and spoil their hands. An especially difficult nine-year-old appeared in several descriptions of problems besetting the juvenile division. An "expert" (virtuoz ) when it came to escaping, she ran away four times in one year alone, climbing out a tiny ventilation pane and sliding down a drainpipe from the second floor when the institution's doors were

[30] Bentovin, "Spasenie 'padshikh,'" p. 337; rules on uniforms in Ustav S.- Peterburgskago doma miloserdiia (St. Petersburg, 1902), p. 2.

[31] Otchet soveta S.- Peterburgskago doma miloserdiia za 1866 g., p. 6, quoted in Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, pp. 154–55.

[32] Zakharov, "Prichiny rasprostraneniia prostitutsii," p. 202.

[33] Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, p. 25.

locked. Her behavior also caused problems on the ward itself, for she reportedly encouraged the other inmates to masturbate and engage in other sexual activities. Once, she "maliciously" slammed an instructor's fingers between two doors.^[34]

Disorders and rebellions periodically forced the St. Petersburg juvenile division to suspend operations. Sometimes, fights between the girls would snowball into larger battles that pitted the residents against their keepers. The House of Mercy's annual report for 1914 described incidents of open disobedience, damage to property, and threats of violence against administrators, as well as against those wards who refused to participate in the unrest.^[35] In 1909, a 14-year-old who ran away told the person who brought her back, "If I had an axe, I'd kill you."^[36] According to reports on the behavior of 152 former House of Mercy wards, 68 "behaved well," 14 "kept to the rules," 50 "behaved badly," 10 "tended to drink," and 10 were singled out for laziness. Yet this information gave no indication of a woman's future conduct. Often the best-behaved former wards wound up back on medical-police committee lists and conversely, the biggest troublemakers were able to retain "honest" jobs.^[37]

The lack of direct connection between unruly or rebellious behavior in the institution and recidivism suggests that institutional authorities grossly misread the inmates' conduct. Their sense of a woman's reform actually involved something that combined social acquiescence with sexual indifference. In many respects, an active sexuality constituted the wards' worst crime, particularly when it manifested itself within institutional walls. Although the women and girls were worthy of help and pity, their sexual experiences had tainted them in some fundamental way. They had "crossed that border between good and evil, which separates shame from shamelessness, morality from immorality. For the [fallen girl], there is no difference, for she has lost her principles and her life has turned solely toward its physical side."^[38] Priklonskii explained that some inmates remained impervious to even the most dedicated efforts because they were "deeply perverse."^[39]

[34] Konopleva, "Otdeleniia dlia nesovershennoletnikh," pp. 304, 306; Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., p. 70.

[35] Zakharov, "Prichiny rasprostraneniia prostitutsii," pp. 202. See also Otchet o deiatel'nosti Petrogradskago doma miloserdiia za 1914 g., p. 9.

[36] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., p. 70.

[37] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," p. 1889.

[38] Otchet popechitel'nago komiteta, p. 45.

[39] Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, pp. 22–23.

Some descriptions of inmates sound as though their keepers actually believed them to be beyond redemption. As early as 1866, a House of Mercy report complained how the juvenile prostitutes "do not yield to the House's gentle measures. They constantly dream about the time when they will be able to return to their former way of life so attractively painted by them in their sick, depraved fantasies."^[40] Nearly fifty years later, Konopleva echoed this sentiment at the 1910 congress. She described the minors in her division as possessing varying qualities of "vulgarity, insolence, utter dishonesty, and laziness." Most remained "indifferent" toward their own fall and still touched by "depravity."^[41] Paradoxically, though, the girls had angelic moments. One observer praised the way they "really love" listening to religious stories and "really pray" in the House's church.^[42]

Although it is likely that many of the girls and women in these institutions suffered from psychological problems, it appears that their behavior was interpreted according to a single formula: sexual desire and sexual frustration indicated illness; lack of desire indicated health. But this constant emphasis implies that sex was at least as much a preoccupation of the keepers as it was of the wards. Confusing and double-edged attitudes of pity and scorn toward former prostitutes prevented reformers from examining their own attitudes and left them to retreat to convenient explanations about the incorrigibility of girls they could not reach. Ironically, halfway house rules created such a sterile and austere atmosphere that they may have contributed to an equation in the wards' minds between sexual freedom and freedom itself.

Reformers missed the mark by struggling to convince prostitutes to accept their absolute moral visions. For girls and women who chose prostitution, morality was rarely more than a secondary issue, subordinate to much more pressing questions of survival, wages, clothes, and freedom of a sort. A conversation between a 12-year-old prostitute who specialized in "satisfying the unnatural urges of elderly erotomaniacs" and a "lady-patroness" from the House of Mercy illustrates this gap quite well. When the lady admonished her about the "vileness" of prostitution, the girl took it to mean the specifics of her sex with old men.

[40] Otchet soveta S.-Peterburgskago doma miloserdiia za 1866 g., p. 6, in Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, p. 154.

[41] Konopleva, "Otdeleniia dlia nesovershennoletnikh," p. 303.

[42] Voronova, "V zashchitu," p. 298. These contradictory descriptions resemble the characterization of the prostitute created and popularized by Parent-Duchâtelet in mid- nineteenth-century France. See Corbin, Women for Hire, pp. 7–8.

"Why, you know quite well," the girl snapped, "that now I'm making a lot more money than walking the streets like everyone else."^[43]

Despite repeated scandals and a high rate of recidivism for wards, the House of Mercy governing board did not attempt to rethink House policies. In 1914, newspapers dubbed the House of Mercy a "torture-chamber shelter" and accused it of "systematic cruel treatment toward the wards." The House's annual report, however, maintained that it was sometimes necessary to isolate new girls and women "with the goal of gradually accustoming them to discipline and to adherence to the institution's established rules of order." When disorders would assume an "especially threatening character," the leaders might be isolated in "makeshift" (sluchainye ) lodgings.^[44] An investigative committee convened by the Chief Prison Administration (whose representative, Mikhail Borovitinov, also sat on the House of Mercy's board of trustees in an apparent conflict of interest) exonerated the House of all wrongdoing. Concluded the committee, "All administrative and medical personnel treat the shelter's wards with sincere love and compassion, taking all measures for their moral rebirth." That very year, the trustees proceeded with plans to build a special isolation ward for difficult cases.^[45] Rather than examine how the internal structure acted to thwart House of Mercy goals, the trustees emphasized additional discipline and order.

Halfway house administrations failed to recognize the most important reasons for the high rates of recidivism. Even if a woman could endure house rules, at best administrators could promise no more than to send her back to the family situation or the domestic, trade, and factory job she had fled in the first place. With that in mind, it is surprising that any woman over the long run chose to give up prostitution for "honest labor."^[46] Wedded to the idea that given a chance to earn an honest wage, prostitutes would willingly give up a life of sin, salvationists avoided several uncomfortable features of the nature of prostitution. Notions of "sin" and "debauchery" often touched a prostitute less profoundly than did the reality of 12- to 16-hour-days hunched over a

[43] Bentovin, Deti-prostitutki, p. 16.

[44] The House of Mercy repeated the newspapers' charges in Otchet o deiatel'nosti Petrogradskago doma miloserdiia za 1914 g., pp. 10–11.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Even the MVD offered its criticism of the ways Russian society treated the problem of salvation. In 1906, it published a pamphlet in which the author argued that Russia needed more than mere palliatives like houses of mercy. What it really needed were "radical reforms of the economic conditions of our life"! Nedesheva, Nevskii prospekt, p. 20.

sewing machine or the endless drudgery and degradation of domestic service. Because most reformers could not think beyond training former prostitutes for low-paying, menial jobs, rates of success were doomed to remain very poor.

Lofty goals about filling a fallen woman with some "understanding about good and evil, about the feeling of debt, honesty, and about the purpose of being a woman," or inspiring residents with a "love for work" could rarely compete with economic realities.^[47] Even armed with the 15- or 25-ruble "reward" that three years of hard work yielded her, a woman who completed her stay at the Moscow shelter had little more to offer the labor force than when she came in. Although some women had succeeded in finding work as nurses, experience in washing and sewing clothes pointed women more in the direction of menial jobs as domestic servants, seamstresses, or unskilled factory workers. That is, as Oboznenko recognized, they went right back to the work they had escaped to begin with. Thus, the preoccupation of salvation societies with their graduates' spiritual redemption often served, paradoxically, to guarantee that at least half the women who passed through halfway house doors would eventually find themselves back on the streets.

The Russian Society for the Protection of Women

Sonia sat down, practically shaking with fright, and glanced timidly at the two ladies. It was obvious that she herself did not understand how she could sit beside them.
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

The ROZZh, like the House of Mercy, also incorporated into its ideology and institutions the contradictions that notions of a "fall" and "redemption" engendered. Repeated calls for a "healthy understanding" of morality and an emphasis on sexually segregated activities suggest that prostitution was not the sole "social evil" with which the ROZZh was concerned—illicit sex in general was also a target. Yet the broad definition of what constituted a "fall" also allowed the ROZZh to expand its interests beyond prostitution to include areas of concern to all working women. Efforts to prevent them from turning

[47] Priklonskii, Vozvrashchenie padshikh devushek, p. 24.

to prostitution often addressed the very real needs of Russia's female working class.

The largest and most powerful group in Russia to organize around the issue of prostitution, the ROZZh was as socially remote as it could be from the women it attempted to help. A membership roster that included such dignitaries as Princess Evgeniia Ol'denburgskaia, Princess Elena Saksen-Al'tenburgskaia, Princess Mariia Dolgorukova, Countess Vera Tolstaia, and Count Vladimir Musin-Pushkin attests to the enormous social and economic chasm that divided the ROZZh from its clients. The ROZZh made no bones about its class affiliations, charging five rubles as an annual membership fee and holding public lectures in locations as lavish as Prince Aleksandr Ol'denburgskii's Petersburg palace.^[48] In the eyes of Social Democrats, the ROZZh was comprised of "lady-philanthropists," of individuals from the "usual cast of ladies' charities with a strongly pronounced bureaucratic aftertaste."^[49]

The gap between the ROZZh and the objects of its philanthropic attention hindered many of the organization's best efforts and doomed its weaker ones to dismal failure. At the same time, however, the ROZZh's aristocratic nature ensured the society official recognition and enabled it to engage in activities that the tsarist state might otherwise have prohibited. With so many members in court circles and in government service, the ROZZh was able to venture into broad areas of philanthropy and conduct business more smoothly than social organizations which lacked such illustrious connections. The ROZZh could not free itself from attitudes that bespoke condescension toward prostitutes and working women, but the very origins that made it so high and mighty rendered it effective in ways that other groups in tsarist Russia were not.

The ROZZh developed out of the 1899 London Congress on the White Slave Traffic.^[50] Here, various state officials, members of the European nobility, religious leaders (including Quakers from the United States), and anti-vice crusaders met to establish grounds for interna-

[48] Bogdanovich, Bor'ba s torgovlei zhenshchinami, p. 39. By contrast, the Kazan Society for the Protection of Unfortunate Women was founded in 1899 on the contributions of seamstresses, male and female students, teachers, printers, priests, medical assistants, professors, soldiers, lawyers, and the editor of the local newspaper. Baranov, V zashchitu, pp. 6–9.

[49] "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Vozrozdenie, no. 8 (May 15, 1910): 70; Iu. Chatskii, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Nasha zariia, no. 4 (April 1910): 26.

[50] Otchet o mezhdunarodnom kongresse po voprosu o torgovle zhenshchinami, p. 12. Preserved in TsGIA, Ministerstvo iustitsii, f. 1405, op. 542, d. 1303, "Po voprosu o bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami v tseliakh razvrata."

tional cooperation in fighting "the traffic in girls for immoral purposes."^[51] In his account of the congress, State Secretary Andrei Saburov retold what was becoming a familiar story in the press: Russia and its neighboring states were under siege by traders who "recruit women, promise them profitable jobs, sometimes marry their victims under assumed names, and, upon transporting them to South America, transfer them to a brothel directly from the ship."^[52]

Saburov and the other Russian delegates had fairly tricky roles to play at the congress. As subjects in an autocratic state, they could neither introduce legislation nor speak for the tsar. Characteristic of what would come to typify the ROZZh's approach to political issues, one of its aristocratic founders quoted to the London congress these lines from a German poem—"We must limit ourselves, if we want to accomplish anything."^[53] In this spirit, when the other participating countries chose sides over whether to endorse regulation, Russia safely straddled the fence.^[54] Upon returning home, Saburov appears to have settled on flattery as the best strategy for winning Tsar Nicholas II's support. In Saburov's account of the congress, Russia's emperor was hailed as "the monarch whom Europe is more and more accustomed to regarding as the leading herald of thankful beginnings for all higher moral issues common to humanity." Other European countries remained indecisive regarding their mission. It was up to Russia, then, to take the initiative.^[55]

Thanks to its ties with members from the titled nobility and officialdom, Russia's national committee succeeded in organizing the ROZZh ahnost immediately following the congress. In December of the same year, no less a personage than "Her Highness," the princess Evgeniia Ol'denburgskaia, requested permission from the MVD to establish a philanthropic agency designed to carry out the London congress's mandate.^[56] The state moved quickly to approve the ROZZhs statutes. In early 1900, the St. Petersburg organization was cleared "to assist in the protection of girls and women from the danger of being

[51] Congress on the White Slave Traffic, p. 9.

[52] Otchet o mezhdunarodnom kongresse, p. 4.

[53] Congress on the White Slave Traffic, p. 112.

[54] Otchet o mezhdunarodnom kongresse, pp. 6–8.

[55] Ibid., p. 12. Russia's delegation included Andrei Saburov, Sergei Volkonskii, Elizaveta Saburova, Vladimir Deriuzhinskii of the Ministry of Justice; Sergei Iurevich, Baroness Mariia von Engelhardt, Mariia Bubnova, Ekaterina Gardner, Elena Kozakevich-Stefanovskii, Ol'ga Nechaeva, and Anna Artsimovich.

[56] TsGIA, Ministerstvo iustitsii, 1405, op. 542, d. 1303, letter of December 17, 1899.

enticed into debauchery and to return already fallen women to an honest life." By 1905, ROZZh branches had been founded in Aleksandrovsk, Vilna, kiev, Minsk, Odessa, Riga, Sevastopol, Rostov-on-the-Don, and Kharkov.^[57]

The ROZZh's first annual report reveals grandiose plans to establish an organizational center which would supply needy women with material and moral support. The society committed itself to opening branches in ports and large industrial centers, making contacts with established philanthropic organizations, and sending representatives to international congresses. Most ambitiously, the ROZZh intended to publicize the perils of debauchery and (with the permission of the authorities and in compliance with extant laws—no small feat in tsarist Russia) organize lectures and publish relevant literature toward this end.^[58] To its credit, the ROZZh took earnest steps toward fulfilling these goals, approaching the issue of prostitution from various vantage points, not the least of which recognized that working-class women needed legal, social, and economic assistance.

The ROZZh represented Russian philanthropy at its most determined and creative, but the organization's history demonstrates how the best of philanthropic intentions had sharply delineated limits. Even its scope, power, and riches did not mean that the ROZZh could have much of an effect on prostitution. The ROZZh provided important services, but from another perspective the society barely scratched the surface of the problems besetting prostitutes and female workers. On one hand, given the magnitude of the problem of prostitution, it is not surprising that the ROZZh had only limited success. But on the other, the way in which the ROZZh defined and approached prostitution contributed to its failure.

The "most important preventive weapon" in the ROZZh's arsenal was affordable housing.^[59] The same year as the society's founding, the princess Elena Saksen-Al'tenburgskaia helped supply its Department of Prevention (Otdel preduprezhdeniia) with funds for a dormitory on St.

[57] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity v 1900 i 1901 gg., p. 8. Plans were underway for expanding to Irkutsk, Plotsk, Poltava, Saratov, Grodno, Zhitomir, Orenburg, Slonim, and Ural'sk. The ROZZh also had corresponding members in several other cities. The Kiev branch is described in Vera Kliachkina, "Deiatel'nost' zhenskikh blagotvoritel'noprosvetitel'nykh obshchestv v g. Kieve," Trudy pervago vserossiiskago zkenskago s"ezda pri Russkom zhenskom obshchestve v S.-Peterburge 10–16 dekabria 1908 g. (St. Petersburg, 1909), p. 49.

[58] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1900 i 1901 gg. pp. 8–9.

[59] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., p. 41.

Petersburg's Ligovskaia Street at which women could stay for a reasonable five kopecks a day. The ROZZh designed this facility especially for women who had recently arrived in the city and had nowhere to turn; its purpose was to keep them from winding up in dangerous flophouses, in "corners" of apartments, and in taverns surrounded by drunks, beggars, vagrants, and prostitutes. One member described the "Ligovka" dormitory as spacious and well-ventilated, with nice beds covered by clean linen and warm blankets. The cafeteria, which served nourishing meals at low prices, earned additional praise.^[60]

Another ROZZh section, the Investigative Department (Otdel razsledovaniia), charged with helping women find jobs, dispensing medical aid, and rendering financial assistance, also built a small dormitory. Its quarters housed up to ten women in order "to protect them from the many temptations that at every step confront a woman who settles in single rooms with strange families."^[61] If hunger and seamy environments created prostitutes, then the ROZZh would remove their specter from at least a few of the working-class women in Petersburg.

Affiliated organizations built dormitories in other Russian cities. The Kiev branch of the ROZZh proudly reported that its facility housed a total of ninety-three women and one child in 1908. Odessa's sanctuary reached out to a broad clientele of new arrivals, unemployed women, deserted wives, and girls with no means of support. There, bed and board cost 30 kopecks a day.^[62] In Vilna, the local facility fulfilled a dual role as both dormitory and halfway house. This lodging accepted not only unemployed women and new female arrivals to the city, but also those who wanted to leave their brothels. For a nominal fee, residents received a bed, dinner, and tea. Under special circumstances, some women even received free room and board.^[63]

But serious problems limited these dormitories' effectiveness and appeal. In Vilna, the ROZZh believed it necessary to house the brothel prostitutes separately and remove them to a shelter or to their families as rapidly as possible because they served as a bad influence on the other women.^[64] At the Ligovka, residents were segregated according to social class: one section of the building accommodated homeless working

[60] Aleksandra G. Borodina, "Tsel' i zadachi 'Obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin,'" Trudy pervago vserossiiskago zhenskago s"ezda, pp. 57–58.

[61] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1900 i 1901 gg., p. 30.

[62] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., 19, 28.

[63] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1913 g., p. 42.

[64] Ibid.

women, while the other provided more permanent housing for female students. Reinforcing the class divisions, Ligovka administrators fed each group in separate cafeterias.^[65] Despite the general shortage of housing for working-class women, observers complained that the working-class part of the Ligovka facility frequently remained only half full. One ROZZh member blamed the high vacancy rate on the difficulty of informing new arrivals about the availability of housing, but even when provided with word-of-mouth information, new arrivals tended, in Petr Oboznenko's words, to be "ignorant and extremely suspicious, inclined to see fraud and traps everywhere. [These women] tended to trust their fellow villagers who already lived in the capital, chance acquaintances they made on the road, and clever landladies at inns more than they did announcements and lady-agents of the society."^[66] Apparently it was not always enough to offer assistance. Factors of class and cultural allegiance could also determine how aid would be received.

Despite studies that showed most women who became prostitutes had lived and worked in urban areas for significant amounts of time, members of the ROZZh stubbornly saw peasant new arrivals as the women in the gravest danger. For them, the first moment of arrival constituted an extremely critical "psychological moment" for an ignorant and helpless girl who knew nothing of life beyond her country backwoods (derevenskaia glush ').^[67] In the eyes of the ROZZh, pimps, white-slave traders, and procuresses lurked in every railroad car, train station, port, and employment agency, just waiting to lure some wide-eyed country bumpkin (dura derevenskaia ) into the arms of a brothelkeeper.

The Department of Prevention attempted to assist new arrivals by posting announcements about ROZZh dormitories in Petersburg railway stations and third-class train wagons. Since written announcements only helped the literate, the ROZZh also strove to post volunteers at St. Petersburg's various points of entry.^[68] Nonetheless, the ROZZh could not find sufficient personnel to staff the capital's railway stations around the clock. One indefatigable philanthropist, Countess Sofiia Panina, campaigned to post full-time, paid staff members at Petersburg train

[65] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zkenshchin v 1909 g., p. 41.

[66] de-Planson, "O deiatel'nosti Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin," p. 40; Oboznenko, "O zashchite priezzhikh devushek," p. 7.

[67] Sofiia V. Panina, "Zaboty o devushkakh, pribyvaiushchikh v gorod na zarabotki," Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 234.

[68] Oboznenko, "O zashchite priezzhikh devushek," pp. 5–6.

stations, but she did not receive sufficient funds to carry out her goal until July of 1914, when the duma set aside 2,000 rubles annually.^[69]

In conjunction with the House of Mercy, the ROZZh established a facility in 1903 whose functions fell somewhere between that of a halfway house and a dormitory for working women. The "Shelter" (Ubezhishche), located on Petersburg's fashionable Nevsky Prospect, stood to help women "in obvious danger of falling into disgrace," as well as those who were "already fallen" but wished to return to "an honest life." As one report stated, "Neither nationality, nor religion, nor lack of documents, nor even the most humble condition of its finances, prevents the Shelter on holidays, on weekdays, at any time of day, from taking on if need be the protection of a girl who is threatened by the danger of disgrace or moral ruin."^[70]

The twenty-five residents at the Shelter took turns doing housework, cooking, laundering, and scrubbing floors. At Christmastime, in keeping with what a trustee called the Shelter's familial character, residents would exchange gifts. They could also receive legal assistance from the Shelter's staff, dowry money, and clothes and shoes to help them when they found jobs.^[71] From annual reports, it appears that residents met with more success at integrating themselves into the female work force than did the House of Mercy's former wards, having taken "enthusiastically to the rhythms of a measured life."^[72]

Although the ROZZh portrayed the Shelter as one of its most successful ventures, it too had its problems. While it was not a halfway house, its schedule nevertheless resembled the strict regimen at the House of Mercy's other institutions. For one thing, punishments could still be meted out to residents.^[73] Moreover, each day brought a full schedule of prayers and work, broken only by the visit of a priest every Tuesday evening, occasional lessons, church on Sunday, and bimonthly visits to families. The success rate for the Shelter's graduates was more promising than that of the House of Mercy, but this is partly explained by the composition of the inmates. In marked contrast to the House of

[69] "Po khodataistvu Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin ob ezhegodnom assignovanii emu 2,000 r.," Izvestiia S.-Peterburgskoi gorodskoi dumy, no. 32 (July 1914): 431–36. It is likely that the war, which began the next month, interrupted this service.

[70] Otchet popechitel'nago komiteta, pp. 63–64. Its address was Nevsky Prospect, 139.

[71] Natal'ia N. Fon-Den, "Otchet o deiatel'nosti ubezhishcha dia devushek,' Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 311.

[72] Otchet popechitel'nago komiteta, p. 62.

[73] In the words of the 1910 report, "punishment is almost unknown." Ibid., p. 65 (my emphasis).

Mercy, a significant number of residents were not only not prostitutes, but sexually inexperienced: in 1910, forty of the eighty-four women who sought refuge were classified as virgins. Nonetheless, many Shelter residents left or were transferred to other institutions, including the House of Mercy itself.^[74]

The ROZZh's Department of Charity for Unwed Mothers (Otdel prizreniia devushek-materei) also had a facility for Petersburg women, but this one was located in the countryside and designed to provide single mothers with food, shelter, and child care to prevent them from taking "desperate measures" to feed themselves and their children. As an annual report of the ROZZh stated, single parenthood often compelled a woman to resort to infanticide, to abandon her child at a foundling home, or to turn to prostitution, where "the filth dirties not only her, but also her child."^[75] The head of this department, Elizaveta Kalacheva, believed that unwed mothers could be redeemed from their moral fall "on the basis of the love for their children."^[76]

With the help of a 600 ruble annual grant from the Ministry of Agriculture, Kalacheva set about training her wards in poultry breeding, gardening, and agronomy. Though this program had more potential than the usual routine of sewing and laundering, the attempt to build a thriving agricultural colony of working mothers and their babies did not succeed. The women here evidently looked upon agricultural labor as degrading, a step back to the peasant village from which they or their parents had migrated. Like the girls in the House of Mercy who had refused to plant a garden for fear of spoiling their hands, the women at this facility complained about having to chase after chickens all day. Because the majority of residents were illiterate, it was also impossible to teach them anything more than the most elementary agronomist techniques. Gradually, the emphasis shifted toward training women in kitchen work and laundering for eventual urban jobs.^[77]

A "labor colony" (koloniia truda ) for girls aged 11 to 15 in danger of certain "ruin," established by Countess Mariia Orlova-Davydova in 1906, also had a disappointing record. The countess housed her wards on the upper story of a large wooden house on Galernyi Island (near

[74] Of these eighty-four women, twenty-three were sent to other shelters (including both houses of mercy) and ten were thrown out. Twelve women found jobs and another nineteen were in school or apprenticing for jobs. Ibid., pp. 65–70.

[75] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., p. 47.

[76] Borodina, "Tsel' i zadachi," p. 59.

[77] Ibid., pp. 58–59.

Kalinkin Hospital) and helped fund a training program in the trades. She also supplied them with chickens, cows, and a garden so that they might never be "idle." But this venture failed when Orlova-Davydova went abroad and left things in the hands of another ROZZh representative who was unable to handle the responsibility. When the countess returned, she cut off her personal contributions and the colony had to be closed, just two years after its inception.^[78]

Although the ROZZh did not overtly discriminate against Jews, its activities unabashedly reflected the ethnic and religious backgrounds of its leading members. For example, at the opening celebration of the Ligovka dormitory, an Orthodox priest blessed the new facility with a prayer. The Shelter was open to women of all religious backgrounds, but its regimen nevertheless included Sunday trips to church and weekly visits from a priest to give the girls "the warm words of the spiritual father."^[79] It is unlikely that Jewish women would have felt comfortable in such a Russian Orthodox milieu.

Under the leadership of Baron Goratsii Gintsburg, a philanthropist and leading member of the capital's small Jewish community, a ROZZh branch to provide Jewish women with recreational and educational activities was born. The Department for the Care of Jewish Girls of the City of St. Petersburg (Otdel popecheniia ob evreiskikh devushkakh g. S.-Peterburga, hereafter OPED) committed itself to guarding young women "from those harmful influences surrounding them with respect to the moral conditions of life and to support their moral development."^[80] While the OPED was known to help Jewish prostitutes, the bulk of its work was preventive, devoted to creating a wholesome community in which Jewish women would take part. In February 1901, Gintsburg organized day-long Saturday meetings for working-class Jewish girls and women which combined lessons in Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Torah, history, geography, literature, and arithmetic, with lectures, music, and dancing. In addition, the OPED sponsored a variety of cultural, recreational, and social services: outings to museums and exhibitions, a camp at which St. Petersburg Jewish women could rest for two or three weeks during the summer months, free medical care, an employment agency for women seeking work, a cheap cafeteria, a

[78] Ibid., p. 60.

[79] Otchet popechitel'nago komiteta, p. 65.

[80] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1900 i 1901., p. 37. The OPED had headquarters on Ofitserskaia Street, 42.

work relief bureau, a library featuring hundreds of books, and free Passover seders for residents of the OPED's two dormitories.^[81]

By paying 20 percent of the reportedly well-stocked treasury to its mother organization, the OPED was able to take advantage of its links to the well-placed ROZZh in order to administer an agency that operated to assist, educate, and support Jewish working girls and women in St. Petersburg at a time when the state was clamping down on private Jewish philanthropies.^[82] The OPED had great success in drawing young Jewish women under its wing. In 1910, a member of this organization reported that an average 140 girls attended each Saturday meeting and that the OPED's dormitories housed a total of 69 women.^[83] But whether it assisted prostitutes is a different matter entirely. Though hundreds of Jewish women in the Russian empire were registered as prostitutes, at least at the time of the 1889 census, very few had yellow tickets to work in St. Petersburg. That year, not one of the empire's 504 Jewish prostitutes officially worked in Petersburg brothels and, of the 351 registered odinochki who were listed as Jewish, only 12 had been registered in St. Petersburg province. No doubt Jewish women earned money at prostitution clandestinely, but they and the great majority of other Jewish prostitutes lived in provinces within the Pale of Settlement.^[84] The OPED also restricted the breadth of its clientele by maintaining a strict religious orientation. One observer criticized it for helping only Orthodox Jews and actually turning away girls who did not "spend their Saturdays in synagogue."^[85]

In keeping with the general notion of prostitution as an act of desperation rather than a realistic choice, members of the ROZZh's Investigative Department tried to combat what they perceived as two major pre-

[81] For the origins of the OPED, see Otchety otdela popecheniia ob evreiskikh devushkakh g. S.-Peterburga za 1905 i 1906 gg. (1907), pp. 12–13; Dora F. Ziskand, "O deiatal'nosti otdela popecheniia ob evreiskikh devushkakh goroda S.-Peterburga," Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 252–55; Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, pp. 267–68.

[82] See Adele Lindenmeyr, "Voluntary Associations and the Russian Autocracy: The Case of Private Charity," The Carl Beck Papers, no. 807, pp. 30–31. The MVD shut down the OPED in 1905, but meetings and activities resumed when the restrictions were lifted. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, p. 268.

[83] Ziskand, "O deiatel'nosti otdela popecheniia ob evreiskikh devushkakh," p. 253.

[84] When counted according to religion, Jews had no place in Petersburg brothels. When counted by nationality, one lone Jew appeared. Dubrovskii, Statistika Rossiiskoi Imperii, pp. 20–21. Given the relatively low numbers of registered Jewish prostitutes outside the Pale, it does not appear that Jewish women routinely applied for a yellow ticket simply to circumvent residency restrictions.

[85] Borodina, "Tsel' i zadachi," p. 64.

cipitants: workplace harassment and sexual exploitation in workshops and factories. Patrons and staff from nine of St. Petersburg's districts made it their business to visit local work sites to assess conditions and talk with bosses and managers about the treatment of their female workers. In extreme cases, delinquent bosses would be reported to the police.^[86] In 1913, the ROZZh turned to the central government for help in alleviating conditions for women in the tobacco industry. Indeed, tobacco workers suffered tremendous oppression, laboring 16- and 17- hour days for between three and ten rubles a month. Prompted by its branch in Sevastopol, the ROZZh wrote to the government about the necessity of creating a female factory inspectorate for all women workers and asking for a law to protect women on tobacco plantations. But the tenor of the request hinted of Great Russian chauvinism and racism. Quoting liberally from an 1899–1900 MVD investigation, the ROZZh referred to how plantation bosses and foremen, many of whom were Turks and Tartars, "boundlessly and arbitrarily" exploited young Russian female workers and "turned to them as instruments for the satisfaction of their unbridled animal instincts."^[87]

The Investigative Department duly championed working women's rights, yet its orientation remained extremely narrow and, ultimately, self-defeating. For the ROZZh, sexual temptation and harassment—not low wages and long hours—constituted the greatest dangers to young women workers. The society favored improving conditions for female workers, but it remained mute on the subject of class exploitation and never allied itself with labor organizations. True to the privileged status of its leadership, the ROZZh never issued a comprehensive analysis of the exploitation of labor in general or female labor in particular. Furthermore, the Investigative Department had no real authority over bosses and foremen. Russia's factory inspectorate could not enforce the empire's labor legislation; it was unlikely that the ROZZh could command greater obedience.

One ROZZh program paid tribute to the unique position that the sewing machine occupied in Russian society's views of prostitutes. In 1863, Nikolai Chernyshevsky's influential novel What Is to Be Done ? portrayed three women who had been "leading bad lives," but quit their trade when given the opportunity to join a sewing cooperative.^[88] Ever

[86] Ibid., pp. 57, 63; Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1681–82.

[87] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1913 g., pp. 17–22.

[88] Chernyshevsky, What Is to Be Done ? p. 210.

since then, the sewing machine, that perfect marriage of technology and female labor, figured as a symbol of rehabilitation and hope. Along these lines, in 1901 the Investigative Department began leasing out sewing machines for an initial ruble and then a reasonable 20 to 50 kopecks a month. This way a woman could develop a private business as a seamstress, even buying her own machine at the rate of two or three rubles a month. The ROZZh also opened a sewing workshop that sold goods in a special store on St. Petersburg's Zhukovskaia Street. With material provided by the society and under the supervision of a ROZZh member, unemployed female workers would make blouses, bonnets, undergarments, and children's clothes. Women were also allowed to work at home so that they would not be "torn" from their families, which often included children in need of supervision. In Kiev, the ROZZh branch started a sewing workshop and dormitory for seamstresses in 1906.^[89]

By the turn of the century, however, the notion that it took only the provision of honest labor to reform a prostitute seemed less credible than it had in Chernyshevsky's day. Anton Chekhov for one, in his short story "A Nervous Breakdown" (1888), snidely referred to the "regulation sewing machine" in reference to rescuing women from prostitution. When a male student in Iama (1912) coaxed a prostitute from her brothel, his roommate cynically asked, "Are you going to buy her a sewing machine?" Even the well-known abolitionist and feminist (whose name was conspicuously absent from the ROZZh membership roster), Dr. Mariia Pokrovskaia, scoffed at the idea that a sewing machine might play a positive role in the rehabilitation of a prostitute; in a 1901 book Pokrovskaia pointed out that it was the difficult life of a seamstress that often drew women to prostitution in the first place.^[90] Sewing machines certainly helped women determined to earn money as seamstresses, but it was unlikely that they would persuade a full-time prostitute to abandon her trade.

An examination of the ROZZh's most powerful arm, the Committee (Komitet), provides a clear gauge of the society's range—and its limitations. At various times, members included such notables as Countess Sofiia Panina, State Secretary Andrei Saburov, Princess Elena Saksen-Al'tenburgskaia, Princess Evgeniia Ol'denburgskaia, Professor Vladimir

[89] Borodina, "Tsel' i zadachi," p. 58; Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1913 g., pp. 88–90; Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., pp. 21–22; Kliachkina, "Deiatel'nost'zhenskikh blagotvoritel'no-prosvetitel'nykh obshchestv," p. 50.

[90] Chekhov, "A Nervous Breakdown," p. 173; Kuprin, Iama, p. 157; Pokrovskaia, 0 padshikh, p. 20.

Deriuzhinskii, Count Vladimir Musin-Pushkin, Petr Oboznenko, and the editor of the MVD's 1910 study of regulation, Nikolai Di-Sen'i. Minutes from a 1903 meeting reflect the ROZZh's broad scope of activities, but they also reveal how closely the Committee remained bound by traditional forms. References to the royal members appeared complete with long titles rendered in upper-case letters to designate "HER HIGHNESS" (Princess Elena) and "MOST AUGUST CHAIRWOMAN" (Princess Evgeniia). Ties between the tsarist administration and the society could not have been closer, given such distinguished members, several of whom held positions in tsarist ministries. These gentlemen and ladies could mix easily with officials from the MVD and Petersburg's city governor, for they would know how to move in high society; more important, they would know when to retreat.

In 1903, the Committee would not even venture to suggest the abolition of brothels; it remained content with recommending to move (udalit ') three that stood too close to a school.^[91] By 1912, the Committee was a bit more bold; it was ready to condemn state-licensed brothels, but not to demand an end to regulation. At that time, it submitted a lengthy commentary by the MVD official Nikolai Di-Sen'i to the St. Petersburg duma on a proposal for reforming medical-police nadzor. The comments displayed the ROZZh's concern for prostitutes caught in the regulation system, but also its tacit acceptance of medical-police surveillance. Nadzor, in the Committee's opinion, needed improvement so as to lessen its "insulting significance for the dignity of women." Consequently, nighttime roundups of suspicious women had to be eliminated from the point of view of "public morality and maintenance of women's rights," and the city had to dispense with a clause allowing a woman to be inscribed on the basis of an agent's proof. The Committee wanted to see conscious emphasis on the hiring of women as both doctors and agents and a specific requirement for the use of a microscope to confirm the existence of venereal diseases. That way, the number of women held on "suspicion of illness" could be greatly reduced and fewer women would be incarcerated in the hospital. In keeping with ROZZh concerns for minors, the commentary spoke of the need to separate girls under 18 from other women arrested by medical-police agents and of the impropriety of allowing girls under 18 to register.^[92]

[91] "Zhurnal zasedaniia Komiteta Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin."

[92] "Zakliuchenie Komiteta Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin," pp. 2055–56.

The comments acknowledged the existence of strong anti-regulationist sentiment within the ROZZh's ranks, but maintained that the Committee "considered it more appropriate at this time to abstain from any final conclusion on the question of the desirability of retaining registration."^[93] On one hand, it made sense for the Committee to use the opportunity to influence the shape of St. Petersburg nadzor. On the other hand, the Committee was proving itself willing to compromise with a system that oppressed, rather than protected women. The OPMD and the St. Petersburg Club of the Women's Progressive Party both refused to submit proposals to the duma because they unequivocally opposed any form of nadzor.^[94] To them, there was no way the "protection of women" could be reconciled with a system that persecuted them so blatantly. The ROZZh stood even closer to the regulatory system by virtue of its representative who attended medical-police committee meetings in St. Petersburg.^[95]

The right of ROZZh and House of Mercy volunteers to interview every woman who attempted to register as a prostitute furthered the association between the philanthropies and medical-police authorities. According to Zakharov, only 10 percent of new registrants accepted this "helping hand." A common retort to the volunteer was: "You'll find me a permanent job for 20 rubles a month. But now I earn 200–300 rubles and I'm living gaily and carefree like a fine lady [barynia ]."^[96] In fact, the real percentage of recruits for the House of Mercy appears to have been even lower. In 1908, only 44 (6 percent) of 756 women refrained from registering; in 1909, 45 (8 percent) out of 545 heeded the representative's advice; and in 1913, only 31 (7 percent) of the 463 women who had attempted to register reversed their decision.^[97] Moreover, many of the women who accepted a place in the House of Mercy did not remain there. Prostitution may have seemed a welcome alternative after a sampling of the House of Mercy's schedule and living arrangements.

[93] Ibid, p. 2056.

[94] "Soobshchenie obshchestva popecheniia o molodykh devitsakh," pp. 2054–55; "Zaiavlenie S.-Peterburgskago kluba zhenskoi progressivnoi partii," Izvestiia S.-Peterburgskoi gorodskoi dumy, no. 21 (May 1914): 2063.

[95] Power, however, was only "consultative," for the city governor could overrule any recommendations. As early as 1902, their priorities clashed when the medical-police committee decided that the landladies of registered streetwalkers should maintain surveillance over their prostitute-tenants. The Legal Department of the ROZZh developed a counter-proposal that finally won approval from the city governor, but it never made its way into committee policy. Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa," pp. 1678–79.

[96] Zakharov, "Istoriia S.-Peterburgskago doma miloserdiia," pp. 278, 290.

[97] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1913 g., p. 98.

One problem may have been related to the fact that a large percentage of new registrants had taken that "fatal step" already. But another reason for the lack of success stemmed from the clash of privilege and poverty, an inevitable consequence of matching a "lady-patroness" with a peasant or working girl. The social dynamics of an encounter between an educated, well-dressed, and well-meaning society lady and someone she defined as a "fallen woman" must have been complicated indeed. Could pleas for morality and decorum from philanthropists really have much impact on women who lacked the privilege to advocate the virtues of chastity? Some individuals in the ROZZh may have been able to blend compassion with their sense of moral superiority, but some may have also approached prostitutes and sexually experienced young women with a combination of pity and contempt. Absolute moral standards are not solely a function of class, but class nevertheless plays a role in determining sexual mores and the way that these values will be interpreted and communicated.

Working-class women who took advantage of the ROZZh's preventive services faced less of an ambivalent attitude from their would-be saviors. So long as a woman conformed to the philanthropist's image of an innocent young girl, she might benefit. Yet all-women dances, women's dormitories, and other female-only activities also represented the ROZZh's attempt to save working-class women not only from prostitution, but from sex itself. Sexually segregated activities may have served to build a community of sorts in the big, frightening city, but philanthropic efforts to remove sexuality from the working women's world in another sense helped foster prostitution. By polarizing women into good girls and bad girls, salvationists helped reinforce the stigmatization of those who did engage in sex. When reformers referred not only to prostitutes but to all girls and women with sexual experience as "fallen," they did more than evoke a metaphor. They also created a world from which few could return unscathed by social disdain and pity.

A review of ROZZh activities between 1901 and 1914 shows that the ROZZh enjoyed moderate success in fulfilling the preventive components of its original goals. It did indeed conduct public lectures, provide aid to young girls in need, build dormitories, establish sister organizations throughout the empire, maintain international contacts, and organize services for new arrivals. Through its most political wing, the Department for the Struggle against the Enticement of Women into Depravity (Otdel bor'by s vovlecheniem zhenshchin v razvrat), the ROZZh convinced the MVD in 1901 to raise the minimum age of

brothel prostitutes to 21 and succeeded in pushing a bill prosecuting "flesh traders" through the State Duma in 1909.^[98] But the ROZZH could not boast of much more than this. In fact, its members had to reconcile the contradiction between a law prohibiting the recruitment of women for the purposes of prostitution and the reality of a system that still tolerated brothels. They also could not claim to have lowered the number of registered prostitutes or influenced the rates of disease. Nor could they profess to have instilled in society a "healthy understanding" of morality and the dangers of debauchery.

The ROZZh is not entirely to blame for its failures—prostitution was as much a part of the system as the ROZZh. The majority of prostitutes would have remained beyond the reach of even the most enlightened philanthropic agencies. Furthermore, the extent of urban and rural poverty in Russia defied even the most creative and energetic philanthropic ventures. In 1905 and twice in 1917, revolution seemed like the only possible answer to the misery of the working classes and peasantry. ROZZh members blamed lack of funding and shortage of volunteers for the shortcomings of their program, but the problems went much deeper.^[99]

In addition to confronting a socioeconomic reality better suited for revolution than reform, the ROZZh had to operate within a state that obstructed most independent efforts by civil society with enormous administrative obstacles. Despite its exalted station, the ROZZh had to obey the intricate rules of the tsarist bureaucracy and navigate the oceans of red tape. The trouble involved in organizing the 1910 congress is a perfect example. In order to hold the meeting, the princess Elena had to write to the MVD for permission to hold such a meeting several months ahead and delineate all the organizational and programmatic information. The MVD then passed her request between its branches, the Department of Police and the Department of General Affairs, as well as to the St. Petersburg city governor. Because the event was to take place in his area of jurisdiction, the latter required a copy of the congress program and a complete list of participants—in advance. During the congress proceedings, the MVD had an official there, S. P. Beletskii, to make sure that the discussion stayed within the prescribed guidelines.

[98] Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 g., p. 6.

[99] For example, at the 1910 congress Aleksandra Borodina of the Investigative Department complained that the ROZZh had "many speakers, but few workers." Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 232.

And another spy was on hand who reported directly to the city governor.^[100]

The ROZZh also defeated itself. Though its members recognized that there was a direct correlation between prostitution and poverty, they could not bring themselves to acknowledge the appeal of commercial sex. To Andrei Saburov, "dens of depravity" were "morally and physically burdensome to such an extreme that the overwhelming majority of [prostitutes] would be glad to be freed from this life."^[101] As Priscilla Alexander has suggested in a recent essay, "Any programs set up to help people involved in prostitution must acknowledge and deal with the positive attractions of prostitution."^[102] But Russia's salvationists did not attempt to compete with the "wages of sin" and they refused to acknowledge that the prostitute's lifestyle had any redeeming qualities. As we have seen, "salvation" often meant nothing more or less than moral redemption. In order for rehabilitation to be successful, a former prostitute was expected to internalize the moral values of the House of Mercy and the ROZZh, renouncing her past and accepting the definition of herself as a fallen woman.^[103] Once in this category, she could only hope for forgiveness; genuine redemption was beyond the grasp of the new Magdalenes.

The ROZZh misread prostitution and the women who engaged in it. Women did not need to be saved from prostitution; they needed to live in a world of economic, social, political, and gender equality. Of course, if the ROZZh had faced up to the enormity of its task, it would have had to admit that the battle was a losing one—and that the members from the Russian elite were standing on the wrong side. It was no wonder that socialists like Lenin repudiated the whole salvationist enterprise as "disgusting bourgeois hypocrisy."^[104]

[100] The ROZZh's decision to change the congress date prompted even more correspondence. Documents in TsGIA, Departament obshchikh del, MVD, f. 1284, op. 188, d. 135, and TsGALO, Kantseliariia Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika, f. 569, op. 13, d. 91, "Delo po bor'be s torgom zhenshchin i ego prichinami."

[101] TsGIA, Ministerstvo iustitsii, f. 1405, op. 542, d. 1303, letter of October 9, 1899.

[102] Priscilla Alexander, "Prostitution: A Difficult Issue for Feminists," in Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, ed. Frederique Delacoste and Priscilla Alexander (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1987), p. 206.

[103] According to Walkowitz, "It is unlikely that prostitutes fully internalized the notion of being 'fallen' when they knew they could 'rise.' again." Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society, , p. 203.

[104] Vladimir I. Lenin, "Fifth International Congress against Prostitution,' from Rabochaia pravda, no. 1 (July 13, 1913), in On the Emancipation of Women (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), p. 32.

Salvationists and Socialists

Return the prostitute to productive work, find her a place in the social economy—that is the thing to do.
Vladimir Lenin (1920)

The first (and last) gathering of its sort in Russia, the 1910 All-Russian Congress for the Struggle against the Trade in Women and Its Causes drew together feminists, physicians, bureaucrats, and gentry, as well as representatives from Russia's liberal and radical intelligentsia. To the radical Left, the congress was an "unpleasant opportunity to rub shoulders with assistant-directors, counts, and ladies from high aristocratic circles."^[105] As one "Observer" wrote, the congress amounted to "splendidly attired, satisfied ladies" and "careerist officials" obscuring more "important measures" in the struggle against prostitution with "various philanthropic tricks."^[106]

As the congress's sponsor, the ROZZh set the tone and tenor for what turned into sharp conflicts with participating social-democratic representatives. To begin with, admission cost five rubles and the official invitations included only other salvationists and representatives from medical organizations, universities, temperance societies, and municipal and district councils. Factory and workshop owners also filled the bill, since they had the "possibility to bring improved sanitation into the workers' midst through judicious measures."^[107] The ROZZh reserved the right to invite other individuals, but the approved categories left no room for workers or labor representatives. (As for including prostitutes, the thought never seems to have crossed the organizers' minds.)^[108]

Workers received permission to attend only two weeks before the congress's opening. The Social Democrat Aleksandra Kollontai exhorted labor organizations to protest their initial exclusion, caustically remarking that the organizers of the congress seemed determined to arrange things "so that the disturbing voice of life does not infringe on

[105] B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Pechatnoe delo, no. 20 (May 6, 1910): 4.

[106] "Nabliudatel," "Pervyi s"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," p. 2.

[107] Quoted in Chatskii, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," p. 27. The author remarked that everyone knew that the "judicious measures" of factory owners only led to "demoralization, not at all to 'improved sanitation.'" A copy of the official invitation is in TsGIA, Departament obshchikh del, MVD, f. 1284, op. 188, d. 135, letter of June 29, 1909.

[108] Aleksandra Dement'eva from the OPMD was the only congress participant to comment on the absence of prostitutes. Dement'eva, "Otritsatel'nyia storony," p. 506.

the impartiality of its bureaucratic erudition."^[109] She was joined in her reproach by two feminist participants. During the organizing phase for the congress, Dr. Mariia Pokrovskaia also criticized the ROZZh's restrictive invitations, asserting publicly that "representatives of workers and their organizations absolutely must be participants in the congress for the struggle against prostitution."^[110] Zinaida Mirovich from the League of Equal Rights for Women complained that the congress did not even deserve the title "All-Russian," since participation had been strictly restricted.^[111]

Working-class and socialist representation suffered even further when the few Petersburg workers who had received permission to attend declined at the last minute, frustrated by their small numbers and arrests associated with a December congress against alcoholism. The workers had reason to be wary of further exposure, particularly as a leading participant in the upcoming congress was Professor Dmitrii Dril,' a ROZZh Committee member and Ministry of Justice official who had aided the police with the alcohol congress arrests.^[112]

The ROZZh did little to assuage worker nerves. When A. A. Kuznetsov, the social-democratic Duma deputy who had mocked the ROZZh-sponsored 1909 bill to suppress the "trade in women," attempted to gain entrance, the congress organizers at first claimed not to recognize him. Then his colleague in the Duma, the Octobrist Vasilii Fon-Anrep, a former head of the MVD's defunct Medical Department and himself a representative on the ROZZh Committee, found specious means to block Kuznetsov's entry—the socialist representative had failed to register in advance. Fon-Anrep, who chaired the congress's general assembly, exacerbated the situation when he refused to read aloud Kuznetsov's protest about his exclusion. Mikhail Borovitinov, another government official with a leading role in the ROZZh, disingenuously defended the

[109] Nikolai I. Letunovskii, Leninskaia taktika ispol'zovaniia legal'nykh vserossiiskikh s"ezdov v bor'be za massy v 1908–1911 gg. (Moscow, 1971), p. 44; Kollontai, "Zadachi s"ezda," p. 16.

[110] Pokrovskaia, "S"ezd po voprosu o prostitutsii,"Novaia Rus ' (April 23, 1909), preserved in TsGALO, Kantseliariia Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika, f. 569, op. 13, d. 91, "Delo po bor'be s torgom zhenshchin i ego prichinami."

[111] N. [Zinaida] Mirovich, "Po povodu pervago vserossiiskago s"ezda dlia bor'by s torgom zhenshchinami," Zhenskoe delo, nos. 17–18 (May 25, 1910): 6.

[112] Chatskii, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," pp. 31–32; B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Pechatnoe delo, p. 4; B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Golos portnogo, nos. 1–2 (May 10, 1910): 6; Letunovskii, Leninskaia taktika, pp. 37, 42; V. Ezhov, "S"ezd po bor'be s p'iantsvom," Vozrozhdenie, no. 1 (January 10, 1910): 79–90.

exclusion of the Duma deputy by proclaiming the need to keep out the "street."^[113] "And so," commented a reporter from a printers' newspaper, "the congress bosses [khoziaiva ] got rid of their first awkward guest."^[114]

That left only five working-class delegates—Zinaida M. Ivanova and Georgii M. Bek, from the Moscow trade union of tailors, seamstresses, and furriers; Zinaida A. Golovacheva, trade union representative of Moscow manufacturing workers; Petr G. Goncharov, from a trade union of tea packers; and Pavel S. Pavlov, secretary of the Moscow printers' union—amid nearly 290 members of privileged society. Led by Pavlov, the congress's enfant terrible,^[115] the Moscow union representatives more than compensated for their small numbers, waging a fierce ideological battle that sounded the tenets of the minimalist platform of Russian social democracy. Since prostitution was an integral component of capitalism, it could not really be eliminated until the entire social, political, and economic system had collapsed. But workers needed the freedom to organize in defense of their interests in order to bring this about, and therefore they needed to protest the repressive policies of Russia's autocratic state. Accordingly, the Moscow delegates used the congress as a platform to press for radical reforms and to rail against restrictions on speech, assembly, the press, and workers' organizations.

Dmitrii Dril' pleaded for "cooperation" at the congress, but harmony was unlikely given the workers' dedication to revolution, not charity and reform, and their commitment to disrupt the proceedings.^[116] yet interactions between the five labor representatives and the majority followed a peculiar pattern of open hostility, conciliation, and occasionally even united defiance of the authorities. Workers and congress participants generally shared a desire for a Russia without autocratic rule, a Russia that enjoyed the civil liberties of most western European states. At times, participants from the upper classes displayed a brand of "radi-

[113] See Borovitinov's statement in Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 2, pp. 559–60.

[114] One article referred to Fon-Anrep as "leader of that unprincipled group, the Octobrists." See Chatskii, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," pp. 27–28. The quote is from B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Golos portnogo, p. 6; and B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Pechatnoe delo, p. 4. A reporter named Leontina M. Shurpitskaia of Pechatnoe delo was on the city governor's official list. TsGALO, Kantseliariia Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika, f. 569, op. 13, d. 91.

[115] Pavlov was described with these words in Bentovin, "Na s"ezde dlia bor'by s torgom zhenshchinami i ego prichinami," Prakticheskii vrach, no. 20 (May 16, 1910): 339.

[116] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 130; Pavlov, "O polozhenii zhenshchiny-rabotnitsy," pp. 129–30.

cal chic" in their support for workers and labor causes. But when issues breached dangerous boundaries, the congress either opposed the workers outright or retreated safely behind verbal barriers enforced by the police.

Notwithstanding the tactics of tsarist officials like Fon-Anrep, Borovitinov, and Dril', participants at the congress initially seemed to bend over backward to make the worker-delegates feel welcome. The opening session of a section on the causes of prostitution named Pavlov its first chair and supported several of his proposals, even after Pavlov locked horns with Dril' over specific measures to alleviate working-class misery.^[117] It took the MVD representative, S. P. Beletskii, to step in and block a vote on Pavlov's "political" resolution to eliminate child labor for those under the age of 15, institute compulsory education, elect factory inspectors from the working class, and mandate an eight-hour workday. A revised version by an official from the railway administration scarcely resembled the original—it spoke only of how the "absence" of an inspectorate for trades, industry, and domestic labor involving women and children contributed to the development of prostitution. As for the eight-hour day, the wording was changed to the more acceptable "normalized workday."^[118]

The least ambiguous battle lines stood between the five workers and the police. Two days into the congress, the spy from the city governor's office noted the workers' unexpected presence in a secret memo, spurring a warning to the ROZZh Committee about participants who were not on the advance list.^[119] A more blatant confrontation between the authorities and workers took place in the congress's general assembly when Pavlov put to a larger audience several controversial measures that had been voted in by an earlier section, including a revived demand for an elected factory inspectorate "wholly independent and free from police functions." His words earned a sharp rebuke from the police, followed by another for the bold assertion that measures to prevent prostitution depended on the existence of strong trade unions that possessed

[117] See Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 81, 118–20.

[118] Ibid., pp. 118–21. Beletskii, who was named deputy minister of internal affairs in 1915–16, was implicated in a failed plot to kill Rasputin engineered by A. N. Khvostov. In 1918, he would be executed by the Cheka. On Beletskii see Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February Rovolution: Petrograd 1917 (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1981), p. 45; George Katkov, Russia 1917: The February Rovolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 472.

[119] TsGALO, Kantseliariia Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika, f. 569, op. 13, d. 91, report of April 23, 1910; memo to Committee of April 24, 1910.

freedom of agitation and that could unite in an all-Russian trade organization.^[120] A worker exit precluded police action, but the very next day Beletskii closed down a session after the worker-delegate Zinaida Ivanova asked support for a resolution stating that the measures against prostitution could only work in the presence of freedom for unions and freedom of speech and assembly.^[121]

Moments when participants went out on a limb to defend the workers were few, but occasionally, the heavy-handedness of the police created unlikely comrades. Displaying a peculiar change of heart, in his capacity as chair Fon-Anrep leapt to Pavlov's side in response to one police accusation that "limits" had been transgressed. "I beg you," Fon-Anrep interjected, "to allow me to judge which proposal under discussion oversteps or does not overstep the limits of the congress program." His objection inspired a warning, but the congress proceeded to affirm the embattled demand for an autonomous factory inspectorate.^[122] During one section meeting, Beletskii's protest against a demand for freedom of unions and tolerance of ties with international labor organizations met a similar fate when the section voted for the resolution and punctuated its rebellion by designating Pavlov as spokesman for the congress's upcoming general assembly.^[123]

Another meeting of the same section yielded similar defiance on behalf of the congress participants. A joint proposal by the Bolshevik Anna Gurevich, Ivanova, and a member of the Women's Progressive Party for eliminating all restrictions on professional, cultural, and social organizations induced Beletskii to assert that a March 4, 1906 law already provided freedom for educational societies. The section showed how little it thought of the law's effectiveness when it voted in favor of the proposal anyway.^[124]

Even Dmitrii Dril' defied the police in one instance, protesting censorship of Ivanova's call for free speech on the grounds that it was impossible to deny the "close link existing between the desperate economic position of the woman worker and prostitution." Thus encouraged, the union representative Georgii Bek raised the cry for "civil liberties," only to be cut off mid-sentence by a policeman who insisted that Ariadna

[120] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 2, pp. 576–77.

[121] Ibid., vol. 1, p. 181; S. Bobrinskii, "Pervyi vserossiiskii s"ezd po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami," Russkii vrach, no. 27 (1910): 963.

[122] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 2, p. 577.

[123] Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 132–34.

[124] Ibid., pp. 219–20.

Tyrkova, the meeting's chair, deprive Bek of the floor. Tyrkova, a member of the League of Equal Rights for Women, declared herself unwilling to censor anyone, asking facetiously for participants to "control" themselves in deference to the authorities' physical strength. On the grounds that Tyrkova was not fulfilling her responsibilities as chair, the police shut down the section.^[125]

A paper by Nikolai Zakharov created strange bedfellows among congress participants. Zakharov antagonized many listeners with his contention that "moral" explanations for prostitution were more pressing than social and economic ones. The conservative House of Mercy secretary attacked not only socialist doctrines of "free love," but secularizing and democratizing trends that followed the French Revolution. Such reactionary ideas did not sit well, even among nonsocialists. Zakharov's outspoken endorsement of censorship and restrictions on minors served, like Beletskii's interference, to inspire spontaneous alliances among his otherwise disparate listeners. Dril' himself retorted that prostitution was rooted in economic problems.^[126]

Prior to the congress, Kollontai had claimed that the organizers would retreat to theories about prostitutes' hereditary predilections in order to spare themselves the discomfort of confronting prostitution's economic roots.^[127] But she was wrong here: the late nineteenth-century characterization of the prostitute as a "morally depraved creature" had few adherents among congress participants. In fact, issues pertaining to women's "genetic predisposition" to prostitution did not even appear among the list of the causes of prostitution in the program for the congress. These instead leaned toward social and economic explanations.^[128]

[125] Ibid., pp. 179–81. According to an account in the St. Petersburg city governor's files, the policeman responded to Tyrkova, "Physical strength isn't an issue here, but the law of March 4 is." TsGALO, Kantseliariia Peterburgskago gradonachal'nika, f. 569, op. 13, d. 91. See also B——, "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Pechatnoe delo, p. 6; B—— "S"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," Golos portnogo, p. 8. Zinaida Mirovich complained about police interference when conference participants attempted to link prostitution with the socioeconomic conditions in Russia. Mirovich, "Po povodu pervago vserossiiskago s"ezda," p. 6.

[126] Zakharov, "Prichiny rasprostraneniia prostitutsii," pp. 204–6; Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 214–18.

[127] In an article about the congress, Kollontai devoted several pages to disputing the theory of women's "genetic predisposition" to prostitution. By 1910 this amounted to beating a dead horse. Kollontai, "Zadachi s"ezda," pp. 11–12.

[128] One author for a printers' newspaper admitted that "genetic predisposition" as a "reason" hardly saw the light of day at the congress. Nabliudatel', "Pervyi s"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," p. 4. For the list of causes, see Rossiiskoe obshchestvo zashchity zhenshchin v 1909 godu, p. 13.

Ironically, Pavlov was one of the few congress participants to resurrect Tarnovskii's school of thought and place himself on the side of those who subscribed to moral and physiological explanations for prostitution when he referred to the prostitute as a "creature extremely ignorant, sick, morally paralyzed." His comments were immediately countered by a male physician who pointedly reminded him of Bebel's description of prostitutes as kind and intelligent in Woman under Socialism .^[129]

There were, however, several issues that brooked no compromise. In a congress section devoted to strategies for preventing prostitution and "saving fallen women," the worker-delegates in attendance voiced their disdain for any charitable measures. Bek, for example, made light of a proposal to institutionalize a regular leisure day for domestic servants. "Why in the name of servants," he asked, "when the woman worker has a greater need of it?"^[130] In concert with Goncharov and Ivanova. Bek also contemptuously dismissed a proposal by the feminist Anna Miliukova to convene a commission to educate the public about issues concerning prostitution.^[131] During a later meeting of the general assembly, Pavlov insulted just about everyone in attendance when he decried the "sentimental hypocrisy" of individuals involved in the struggle against prostitution and called their efforts "insincere and worthless."^[132]

Conflicting class and gender issues also challenged congress unity. During the proceedings, the worker representatives mocked not only the participants' reformist proposals, but the entire concept of any special organizations for women. In the words of one worker, the very idea of women's labor organizations was merely an "invention [Vydumka ] of bourgeois ladies."^[133] For her part, Ariadna Tyrkova alienated the workers when she came out in favor of a class-based franchise, so long as it included women.^[134] She also invited friction by joining another female participant in castigating European trade unions for discriminating against female members. When she reminded the congress that as recently as 1908, women from Moscow had been expelled from unions in the graphics industry, three workers defended the "scientific-socialist" bases of the Russian labor movement and spoke of the "identical inter-

[129] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 149–50.

[130] Ibid., p. 258.

[131] Ibid., p. 231.

[132] Ibid., vol. 2, p. 576.

[133] Ibid., vol. 1, p. 132.

[134] Beletskii backed by Dril' and the session chair terminated this discussion. Ibid., pp. 169–70; Bobrinskii, "Pervyi vserossiiskii s"ezd," p. 963.

ests" of male and female workers.^[135] But Tyrkova supported the workers' proposal to ban women from labor hazardous to their health, while feminists like Mirovich and Mariia Pokrovskaia believed such a practice would restrict women's employment options even further.^[136] The prohibition of women's night work, on the other hand, met only a single objection—from Pokrovskaia. Her desire to see gender-blind labor legislation for men and women lost before Pavlov's contention that night work was damaging for women "from the view of sexual morality."^[137] On this issue, he was at one with the more conservative congress participants.

The most sparks flew when the worker-delegates pushed for measures that exceeded the congress majority's vision for a free and democratic, but not socialist, Russia. Dril' attempted to narrow one discussion to exclude those measures "obviously impractical under the present state of things." Dril' was all in favor of legislation for the "weak and unprotected," but not of "a war involving everyone against everyone."^[138] Fon-Anrep backed Pavlov in regard to the factory inspectorate, but as chair he conspicuously ignored the call for free unions. When Pavlov drew attention to this oversight, thereby provoking a second and final warning from the police, Fon-Anrep silenced him, later explaining that the resolution was political and thus exempted from a vote. At this point, Pavlov announced that the workers were walking out in protest.^[139] (Curiously, Fon-Anrep pushed aside the worker-delegates' demand in order to discuss Tyrkova's no less political resolution about opening government organs at all levels to female participation.)^[140] On the third evening of the congress, Fon-Anrep refused to put a resolution on the eight-hour day up for a vote. This time, Pavlov, Bek, Ivanova, Goncharov, and Golovacheva made a dramatic and final exit.^[141]

But by then their work was essentially done. Not only had they made congress participants aware of the social-democratic program, they had upset the general atmosphere of complacency and privilege. The union representatives raised important questions about the utility of philanthropic approaches to prostitution and the "narrow-mindedness" and

[135] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 131–32.

[136] The resolution won with a vote of 58 to 32. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 577–79.

[137] Ibid., p. 577. On the question of night work, see Glickman, Russian Factory Women, pp. 148, 158–60, 251.

[138] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 130.

[139] Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 579–80.

[140] Ibid., p. 579.

[141] Ibid., pp. 590–91.

"utopianism" of privileged society, and they kept the question of female labor central to the debate. Despite the confluence of many socialist and nonsocialist views, no doubt most congress participants breathed a sigh of relief when the door dosed behind the last worker.^[142]

But what had the worker-delegates revealed about socialists and prostitution? First, they had ignored one of the most controversial questions of the day – the issue of government regulation of prostitution. Their proposals and their failure to attend any of the congress sessions devoted to this question suggest an unwillingness to see the question of regulation as significant. Yet as we have seen, through its mechanisms of police interference into working-class communities, regulation served to oppress the young working women who were under constant suspicion of engaging in unlicensed prostitution, as well as full-time prostitutes.

Second, their total rejection of philanthropic aid indicates deliberate insensitivity to the problems facing working women. In reality, charities were the only agencies in tsarist Russia committed to extending helping hands to women from the lower classes.^[143] As Rose Glickman has shown and Ariadna Tyrkova pointed out at the congress, labor organizations often excluded women from their membership.^[144] Even when membership remained open to women workers, gender-related burdens—domestic responsibilities, sexual harassment, hostility from male coworkers, lack of education, pregnancy and maternity—generally kept women from joining unions or participating in mutual aid funds. Philanthropies at least tried to rectify some of those problems by teaching women to read and write, by providing child care and cheap housing, and by organizing evening and Sunday programs. In contrast, Russian socialist and labor organizations, fearful of feminism dividing the working class and led by men who essentially configured the proletariat as male, offered women only vague promises about a glowing egalitarian future.

Third, Bek and Pavlov contradicted themselves about labor issues

[142] A Soviet author who went so far as to count their number of comments described the tremendous "agitational significance" of the workers' participation. Letunovskii, Leninskaia taktika, pp. 47–49.

[143] On charity, see Adele Lindenmeyr, "Charity and the Problem of Unemployment: Industrial Homes in Late Imperial Russia," The Russian Review 45, no. 1 (January 1986): 1–22; Lindenmeyr, "Voluntary Associations and the Russian Autocracy"; Lindenmeyr, "The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia," Journal of Social History 23, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 679–94.

[144] For a discussion of the failure of the Left to address the needs of women workers, see Glickman, Russian Factory Women, pp. 242–80.

affecting women. When Bek rejected out of hand a proposal to help domestic servants, he overlooked the fact that servants too were workers and that most prostitutes actually came from their ranks. Pavlov's aggressive endorsement of restrictions on women's night work and work in hazardous industries evinced his failure to see how the narrowing of women's job options could result in more prostitution, not less. Moreover, Pavlov's claim that a prohibition on night work would protect women's morality demonstrates his failure to challenge the prevailing sexual model of female victimization. Pavlov saw women as in need of protection, rather than as capable co-workers who could make their own choices. At the same time, Pavlov distinguished himself as unusually sensitive to some issues of labor and gender. For example, he made an uncommon admission in a paper he delivered at the congress: unlike the optimists who saw only harmony among a unified working class, he conceded that "cultural backwardness" (i.e., sexual harassment) from male workers could serve to thwart their female co-workers and push them toward prostitution. Twice during the congress, he made an association between prostitution and women's low wages, citing how women workers made 11 rubles to men's 28.^[145] Nonetheless, of all the proposals he put forward, equal pay for equal work was never among them.

Fourth, the congress proceedings reveal fundamental points of agreement between the worker-delegates and the majority of participants in several areas. Despite the worker-delegates' professed antipathy for liberal society, they often found themselves on the same side of the fence as reformers, feminists, and philanthropists. Indeed, congress participants demonstrated at least token support for Pavlov by electing him as the chair and spokesman of the section on prostitution's roots. Furthermore, they were in favor of the workers' measures on behalf of labor in general and female labor in particular, they shared the workers' disdain for the authorities' interference, and they also endorsed the expansion of civil liberties. On occasion, Pavlov et al. could even count tsarist officials like Dril' and Fon-Anrep as allies.

Finally, it is obvious that the union representatives were less concerned with prostitution per se than they were with promoting the Social Democrats' general agenda and needling privileged society. Their comments and proposals primarily centered on class oppression and government repression, not commercial sex. Prostitutes and prostitu-

[145] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 127; vol. 2, p. 576.

tion seemed to fade into the background as the worker-delegates dismissed philanthropy, promoted a shorter workday, and decried the obstacles facing unions and other organizations. The fact that prostitution suggested something fundamental about gender, not simply class, eluded the Left completely.

By this reckoning, working men could play no role in prostitution whatsoever. In Kollontai's naïve words, prostitution could not "take root where men and women undergo identical exploitation, where the struggle for joint interests unites both sexes on the principles of comradeship and solidarity."^[146] But as we have seen, male proletarians purchased the sexual favors of their proletarian sisters with as great enthusiasm and impunity as men from the privileged classes. Pavlov himself admitted that working men, particularly those with families in the countryside, were patrons of prostitutes.^[147]

According to some sources, male socialists could also succumb to the attractions of commercial sex. In 1909, a prostitute who sent a letter to Anna Miliukova mentioned one gentleman who told her that prostitution was a "social evil" that would disappear under socialism. When she asked him what he himself was doing in a "public house," he had no answer.^[148] In The Dark, a 1907 novella by Leonid Andreev, a 26-year-old revolutionary hides from the police in a brothel. The protagonist is a virgin and intends to remain one, but in the service of his masquerade he follows a young woman named Liuba to her room. Liuba cannot believe that her would-be client is not interested in sex and responds to his sympathy for her degradation and his protestations of sexual innocence with an indignant slap. Struggling to do the right thing, the confused young celibate lets himself be seduced. But Liuba recognizes this as more of the same "fineness"—just another sample of his deep self-righteousness and superiority. Prostitutes required comradeship in "the dark," not pity.^[149]

Andreev based The Dark on a story Maxim Gorky told him about the Socialist Revolutionary Petr Rutenberg who had indeed sought refuge from the police in a house of prostitution.^[150] When one of the women

[146] Kollontai, "Zadachi s"ezda," p. 15.

[147] Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 127–29.

[148] "Pis'mo prostitutki," p. 11.

[149] Leonid Andreev, The Dark (Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1922), p. 40.

[150] Rutenberg is best remembered as the assassin of Father Gapon. On Rutenberg, see Abraham Ascher, The Revolution of 1905: Russia in Disarray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 99–100.

there expressed concern for Rutenberg's safety, he countered with a "sermon on morality." The prostitute in turn slapped him—"a smack perfectly deserved," as Gorky put it. Rutenberg "realized the whole crudity of his mistake, apologizing to the prostitute and kissing her hand."^[151] Gorky was so disturbed to see this tale appear in print, "distorted" and full of "weird details," that his relationship with Andreev suffered as a result.^[152]

But the unfolding of Rutenberg's adventures and their appearance in Russian fiction did more than damage the friendship between two writers. They also reflected the Russian radical intelligentsia's discomfort and lack of insight into prostitutes, prostitution, and sex in general. Radicals were as confused as conservatives when it came to "the dark," and their social analyses were as sophisticated as they were naïve. Lurking close behind comradely good will toward "fallen women" were guilt and condescension. Prostitution made them as flustered as Petr Rutenberg, who answered a smack to his face with an apologetic kiss on the hand that slapped him. As the revolutionary authorities who confronted the problem of Russian prostitution after 1917 would realize, when it came to prostitutes, socialists could be as inept as philanthropists and the police.

"This is your dawn, Liubochka! This is the start of your new life. You will lean bravely on my strong arm. I will load you on the road of honest labor, face to face on the path of a struggle with life!"
Likhonin, in Iama

Outraged by the degradation of prostitution, Chekhov's protagonist Vasiliev in "A Nervous Breakdown" contemplates the things that could be done to save its victims.^[153] He rejects the notion of personally taking a woman from a brothel; in such cases the would-be rescuer invariably winds up sleeping with his grateful

[151] From Maxim Gorky, Reminiscences (New York: Dover Publications, 1946), pp.180–81.

[152] James B. Woodward, Leonid Andreyev: A Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 178.

[153] In Chlenov's survey of Moscow University students, one respondent swore that after having read Chekhov's story, he would never go to a brothel. Chlenov, Polovaia perepis', p. 52.

charge and as soon as he becomes bored, discards her into someone else's arms.^[154] Vasiliev also rules out the option of providing a brothel prostitute with her own place and the "regulation sewing machine." Under those circumstances, the woman would become restless and start receiving men again, perhaps returning to her brothel, "where she can sleep till three in the afternoon, drink coffee, and have plenty to eat." Vasiliev realizes that it would be most noble to marry a prostitute—"And when this brazen, crushed, spoilt or stupid animal has become a wife," she could eventually be transformed. But Vasiliev admits to himself that he is not selfless enough to go through with such a marriage."^[155] Besides, his sacrifice would rescue only one woman from prostitution; how many more would replace her in the ranks? Frustrated by the magnitude of the problem and his own inability to do the right thing, Vasiliev suffers a nervous breakdown.^[156]

As would-be saviors quickly learned, "salvation for the fallen woman" was a tricky business that defied ideologies and good intentions. Prostitution occupied an ineradicable place in Imperial Russia, as the doomed Vasiliev so painfully realized. Although the Russian empire required sweeping reforms before redemption could become more than a dim hope, most salvationists were not prepared to support broad programs of political or social change. At the same time, while fundamental issues concerning the entire structure of gender relations lay at the heart of the problem of prostitution, salvationists also showed little interest in questioning sexual roles or male supremacy. Morality was really besides the point. Rather, both the narrowness of the salvationists' vision and the enormity of their task ensured that the objects of their charity would confound them in one way or another.

Efforts to save fallen women evince the competing definitions of gender that informed Russian views of prostitution. According to the state's interpretation, some women were bad and therefore society needed to contain them to avoid disease and disorder. Regulationists sent this mes-

[154] Kuprin pursued this theme in his 1909 novel by portraying a male student who grew bored with the woman he had "rescued" from a brothel. Although Chernyshevsky's hero, Kirsanov, did not treat the prostitute he rescued quite so heartlessly, he did make her his mistress, later realizing that his primary feeling for her was pity as she was not equal to him in "mental development."

[155] A House of Mercy worker described a man who, inspired by Tolstoy's Resurrection, decided to save a fallen woman by marrying her. But the marriage ended in divorce—the "inequality" of their respective "development" proved insurmountable. Voronova, "V zashchitu," p. 299.

[156] Chekhov, "A Nervous Breakdown," pp. 159–79.

sage through the yellow ticket and the disciplinary mechanisms that it engaged. House of Mercy salvationists reinforced the message by expecting that the prostitutes who were at heart good women would abandon prostitution when given the chance to undergo the institution's purifying regimen. By extension, though, the women who refused salvation had to be as bad as the regulationists made them out to be. Their obstinacy seemed to prove that women could indeed be divided into those who needed supervision and those who did not. Having implicitly asked whether prostitution was the result of a bad society or bad women, House of Mercy salvationists found for the latter. In saving a few women, they condemned the rest to the status of perpetrator, not victim.

The ROZZh did something similar. By establishing preventive services and extending a philanthropic hand, it conceived of itself as giving women an alternative to prostitution. The women who rejected its offers could therefore be seen as having consciously chosen to fall or at least to risk falling. In any case, society was not at fault in this regard. Where society failed to do its part was by leaving women vulnerable in ways that men were not. The ROZZh addressed this inequity by lobbying the state for laws and provisions designed to protect women from abuses. In so doing, it could absolve itself from blame for Russia's overall poverty. Prostitution was an evil thing in an otherwise good world that the ROZZh hoped to make even better.

The socialists went further along the path of examining the role of society by making the economic and social argument that prostitutes were made, not born. They also tackled the role of the autocratic state, inasmuch as it prevented male and female workers from taking the most rudimentary steps toward their own protection. But the ultimate socialist solution involved eliminating the economic roots of prostitution, therein ignoring how prostitution was culturally as well as economically constructed. By expecting prostitution to fade away with the demise of capitalism, socialists ignored issues of gender. Just as the ROZZh circumvented the issue of prostitution by focusing on how to prevent vulnerable women from falling, the socialists sidestepped prostitution by turning their attention to capitalism and the Russian state.