Chapter 4
Explaining Prostitution

"Why did you come to Petersburg?" I began with a certain authority.
"I just came. . . ."
"But you were comfortable enough in your parents' home, weren't you? Warmth, freedom, your own corner —"
"Suppose I tell you that it was worse than here?"
Conversation between Dostoevsky's "underground man" and a prostitute, Notes from Underground

By examining prostitutes' social backgrounds and considering what it meant to labor as a female servant, seamstress, or factory worker in late Imperial Russia, we begin to gain insight into the situations which may have impelled some women to prostitution. Unemployment, hunger, and isolation could act alone or in concert to persuade a young woman that prostitution represented a viable or necessary alternative. At the same time though, because not all women in precarious socioeconomic situations wound up registering as prostitutes, we cannot call poverty the sole axis on which this choice turned.

Having conducted exhaustive studies of prostitution, observers at the turn of the century were aware that many factors contributed to the choice of prostitution. Nonetheless, they tended to approach the question of a prostitute's motivation from a static and linear point of view. At one end of the spectrum, observers dismissed social issues and rooted prostitution in the tendencies of some women toward vice. At the other end, both women and social issues were ignored, with third parties like

pimps and "flesh traders" taking the blame for dragging innocent girls into prostitution against their will. In between was a more persuasive explanation tying prostitution to broad structural causes linked to gender inequalities and Russia's social and economic system. But, like the observers who attributed prostitution to procurers or depraved women, those who relied on structural explanations were inclined to tailor complex realities to suit their comprehensive visions. Moreover, though observers asked many questions and even had at their disposal the subjects of their curiosity—the prostitutes themselves—they tended to distort and ignore the prostitutes' own voices when it came to explaining prostitution.

Speaking for Prostitutes

"She got that yellow ticket because my children were dying of starvation, she sold herself for us!"
Sonia's stepmother, Crime and Punishment

Marxists had the most all-encompassing explanation for prostitution: from their viewpoint it was endemic to capitalism. According to August Bebel, the authority most often invoked on this question by Russian social democrats, prostitution was "A Necessary Institution of the Capitalist World," no different than "the police, standing armies, the Church, and wage-mastership ."^[1] Friedrich Engels characterized the number of women who "surrender themselves for money" as "statistically calculable" within the capitalist system.^[2] In Russia, Aleksandra Kollontai echoed Bebel and Engels when she described prostitution as "the horror and hopelessness that results from the exploitation of labor by capital." Prostitution, wrote Kollontai, reflected the "hypocritical morality of the bourgeois structure." It was a requisite component of a system that "by the structure of its exploitative economy" drove women to the streets.^[3] In 1910 Kollontai gave historical immediacy to her analy-

[1] August Bebel, Woman under Socialism, trans. Daniel De Leon (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), p. 146 (emphasis in original).

[2] Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (New York: International Publishers, 1972), p. 139.

[3] Aleksandra M. Kollontai, "Prostitution and Ways of Fighting It," in Selected Writings, trans. Alix Holt (New York: Norton, 1977), p. 263.

sis by linking the expansion of prostitution in Russia with the economic crisis and government reaction in the wake of the 1905 revolution.^[4]

The tsarist policy of licensing streetwalkers and brothels made the Russian state vulnerable to more pointed criticisms from the Left about profiting from the business of sex and bedding down with prostitutes, pimps, and brothelkeepers. A. A. Kuznetsov, an Ekaterinoslav province social-democratic deputy to the State Duma, summed up the Russian socialist position in 1909 during a debate on a law designed to suppress the "trade in women." As a representative of the proletariat, "the consistent and stoic defenders of women's rights," it was his duty to expose the "pathetic, wretched creation of your bourgeois morality." Kuznetsov scorned the bill because the Duma's composition unfairly favored the propertied classes. It was "hypocritical" that the Duma was now talking about protecting women when his colleagues had acted so diligently to keep them out of government. If a female peasant or woman worker had been there, he declared ("to laughter from the Right"), then there may have been something worth discussing. Meanwhile, the government itself acted to degrade women—through permitting the rape of female political prisoners, through protecting and collaborating with brothelkeepers, and through the very process of subjecting prostitution to state licensing and regulation. The law under consideration, argued Kuznetsov, could be no more than a palliative, so long as the economic conditions that fostered prostitution among working and peasant women continued. The true culprit was none other than capitalism.^[5]

Surprisingly, revolutionary socialists shared common ground not only with liberals and moderates but with many conservative observers when it came to connecting prostitution with economic hardship. Economic misery among the peasantry and urban lower classes was so widespread in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russia that it indeed seemed responsible for the "ruin" of so many young women. Even tsarist bureaucrats could be satisfied with pure economic explanations. Dr. Vasilii Fon-Anrep, an Octobrist member of the State Duma and a former director of the MVD's Medical Department, attributed prostitution to "poverty, hunger, cold, and the frequent impossibility for a hard-

[4] Kollontai, "Zadachi s"ezda," p. 7.

[5] Another socialist deputy blamed prostitution on those gentlemen who persisted in practicing "gentry privilege" through the right of primae noctis, as well as those bourgeois who systematically lowered the wages of working women. Gosudarstvennaia Duma: Stenograficheskie otchety, pp. 893–98.

working woman to provide herself with a piece of bread."^[6] In 1906, a book published by the MVD's own press made a similar assertion: "The chief root of prostitution undoubtedly lies in our economic conditions. A woman sells her body for the sake of a piece of bread."^[7]

Of course, socialists and state officials anticipated different solutions, with tsarist bureaucrats relying on philanthropy and paternalism as palliatives, and revolutionaries awaiting a completely new order. Although socialists recognized that prostitution was woven into the moral fabric of a society that judged male and female sexual behavior and desire by different standards, like Kuznetsov they had faith that, "with the fall of the capitalist system, this disgrace will undoubtedly disappear."^[8]

Feminists were less optimistic. They, too, associated prostitution with structural economic factors, but they also focused on gender in terms of the role played by "unbridled male sexuality." Raisa Depp of the Women's Progressive Party first and foremost blamed prostitution on the "total economic precariousness and the difficult legal and everyday [bytovoe ] position of servants, tradeswomen, factory workers, and working women in general." But in second place were "the double standard, abnormal upbringing, and the excessive licentiousness of men's sexual instinct."^[9] The feminist physician Mariia Pokrovskaia declared that depravity (raspushchennost '), not physiology, sent men to brothels. She said it loud and clear in her 1902 On the Victims of Social Temperament (O zhertvakh obshchestvennago temperamenta ): "The slavery of women and the depravity of men—here in essence are the chief causes of prostitution!"^[10]

Feminists also accused the regulatory system of nurturing commercial vice by giving it semi-legal sanction. Strong feminist sentiments against regulation emerged simultaneously with the rise of an organized women's movement in Russia. At the opening of the 1910 Congress on

[6] Trudy s"ezda bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 32.

[7] V. Nedesheva, Nevskii prospekt (St. Petersburg, 1906), p. 11. In 1909, when the princess Elena Saksen-Al'tenburgskaia listed the reasons for prostitution in a memorandum requesting permission to hold what would be the 1910 congress, the ministry's reader made no marginal comments next to Saksen-Al'tenburgskaia's assertion of economic motives. This did not indicate a lackadaisical attitude toward the memo, however, for the reader did see fit to underline a potentially subversive remark about women's lack of rights and the need for "improvement of the legal position of women." TsGIA, Departament obshchikh del, MVD, f. 1284, op. 188, d. 135, "O pervom vserossiiskom s"ezde po bor'by s torgom zhenshchinami," letter of June 29, 1909.

[8] Gosudarstvennaia Duma: Stenograficheskie otchety, p. 896.

[9] Depp, "O dannykh ankety," p. 148.

[10] Pokrovskia, O zhertvakh, pp. 25, 31.

the Struggle against the Trade in Women, speech after speech unequivocally demanded the abolition of regulation.^[11] In some ways, this reflected the speakers' political pragmatism; it seemed more realistic to rid Russia of nadzor than to persuade men to avoid nonmarital sex or even to grant women equal rights. But the indignation aroused by the injustice of such a gender-based system occasionally served to reverse cause and effect. A woman named Mariia Vakhtina, for example, spoke passionately on behalf of the St. Petersburg Club of the Women's Progressive Party at the 1910 congress. To Vakhtina, prostitution orbited around regulation, rather than the other way round. "[A]s long as we have regulation and its satellite [sputnik ], prostitution," she cried, "not one woman can justly consider herself free under any circumstances!"^[12]

Feminists tended to keep gender central to their analysis of prostitution and they usually acknowledged economic issues. Some, however, joined more conservative members of Russian society in turning to an explanation that eliminated the prostitutes' conscious involvement in their trade—forced prostitution. According to this vision, women became prostitutes because they were defrauded, drugged, or coerced into selling sex. Though there were indeed many such instances, the focus on "white slavery" blurred the more prevalent issues and assuaged society's guilt about what prostitution was and how it functioned.^[13] Some feminists found white slavery a compelling notion because it completely divested women of any responsibility for their participation in prostitution. Conservatives gravitated toward it because it precluded thoroughgoing social and economic explanations. If commercial sex was something forced on innocent girls, then society had only to locate and punish the perpetrators. A collective sigh of relief could follow, and more troublesome questions about female agency and Russia's social and economic ills could remain unaddressed.

The question of immorality appeared in contemporary discourse as well, sometimes as the true cause of prostitution. But opinion diverged over who in particular was immoral. Was it men with their "depravity," women with their "indecency," or society with its "moral hypocrisy"?^[14]

[11] See opening statements by representatives from the All-Russian League of Equal Rights for Women, the Petersburg Women's Club, the German Educational and Auxiliary Society in St. Petersburg, and the Petersburg Club of the Women's Progressive Party, in Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 48–52.

[12] Ibid., p. 52.

[13] See chapter 5 for a discussion of "white slavery" in Russia.

[14] A House of Mercy representative faulted what she termed the "moral hypocrisy" of the Russian intelligentsia. Konopleva, "Otdelenie dlia nesovershennoletnikh," p. 307. Tolstoy accused women of "indecency" in The Kreutzer Sonata, p. 27.

Feminists denounced men for corrupting women, but one could also find observers (usually male) who complained that women themselves were to blame, such as Nikolai Zakharov who asserted that it was impossible to force a woman with "strong moral principles" into prostitution.^[15] Leo Tolstoy decried male lust in The Kreutzer Sonata, but he reserved his most strident words for women, who, "like queens, hold 90 percent of the human race as prisoners in slavery and hard labor." Women in the upper classes, with their "naked shoulders" and their "shamelessness," differed only in kind from prostitutes in brothels.^[16]

Others singled out what they perceived as lax morality within society in general. But depending on the point of view, immorality could be seen as specific to a particular social class: the decadent, self-indulgent, privileged classes with their romantic intrigues and pornography, or the sexually delinquent lower orders, or even both simultaneously.^[17] Among working-class and peasant families, communal sleeping arrangements, mixed sex bathing, and poor parental supervision were believed to create situations that prematurely aroused erotic sensations in the young and paved the way for a girl's first "fall."^[18] Dmitrii Dril', a legal consultant for the Ministry of Justice, cited "child neglect" for creating an environment ripe for prostitution, juvenile delinquency, and criminality.^[19]

Such an analysis was not limited to officialdom; the feminist Raisa Depp also referred to the "close quarters" of the poor as morally pernicious.^[20] In their blanket condemnations of capitalism, socialists might also portray the working-class milieu as a ripe breeding ground for prostitution and sexual vice. A Russian social-democratic newspaper published in Geneva, for example, described how a woman who indulged in occasional prostitution to supplement her income would find that "vice gradually sucks her in completely." The author grounded prostitution in economic inequality, but also blamed the communal sleeping habits of the poor and lack of parental supervision among the working

[15] Zakharov, "Prichiny rasprostraneniia prostitutsii nakhodiatsia ne stol' v ekonomicheskikh, skol' v moral'nykh usloviiakh," in Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 201.

[16] Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, pp. 27, 33.

[17] For an example of someone denouncing the moral caliber of both the poor and the rich, see Griaznov, Publichnye zhenshchiny, p. 16.

[18] See, for example, "K voprosu o merakh bor'by s prostitutsiei i sifilisom," Russkii zhurnal kozhnykh i venericheskikh boleznei, no. 2 (February 1901): 327–28.

[19] Dmitrii A. Dril', "Zabroshennost' detstva, kak mogushchestvennaia prichina detskoi prostitutsii," in Trudy s"ezda po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, p. 85. See Neuberger, Hooliganism, pp. 166-98, for a discussion of this issue.

[20] Depp, "O dannykh ankety," p. 141.

classes.^[21] The Bolshevik Anna Gurevich maintained that prostitutes' own families often pushed them into commercial sex. She too warned of the dangers from overcrowding and family sleeping arrangements .^[22] Such scenarios often reflected the intelligentsia's fears and fantasies, rather than reality.

A more sweeping form of moral explanation sprang from the school of thought that is inextricably linked in Russia with Veniamin Tarnovskii. Tarnovskii, who was born in 1837 to a small landowning family and lived until 1906, was Russia's chief expert on prostitution, at least as far as the tsarist administration was concerned. A world-famous syphilologist, Tarnovskii had studied medicine at Moscow University, begun his medical career in Kalinkin Hospital, and was on the faculty of the prestigious Imperial Academy of Military Medicine. As a strong advocate of women's education, he helped establish an institute in the 1860s for training midwives in the identification and treatment of syphilis in women and children. In 1872, he was instrumental in setting up women's medical courses at the Medical Surgery Academy, and in 1897 he participated in organizing the Women's Medical Institute. Tarnovskii was appointed to the MVD's Medical Council in 1896.^[23] Thus, Tarnovskii bridged the worlds of the Russian doctor and bureaucrat.

Anticipating the rise of anti-regulationist sentiment in Russia, in 1888 Tarnovskii had written Prostitution and Abolitionism (Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm ), a heavy tome that articulated his ideas about prostitution as a trade in need of close monitoring. Tarnovskii's ideas had additional "scientific" grounding in the research of his wife, Praskov'ia Tarnovskaia, whose work on female criminality and prostitution was known throughout Europe.^[24] Along with Italy's Cesare Lombroso, Tarnovskii

[21] L. Kruchinina, "Prostitutsiia i prestupnost'," Razsvet, nos. 6–7 (June–July 1904): 152–53. See also Gremiachenskii, Sovremennyi stroi i prostitutsiia, p. 19.

[22] Trudy po bor'be s torgom zhenshchinami, vol. 1, pp. 88–89. Another socialist author described how the "corrupting" influence of the work environment caused a woman worker to grow "indifferent to the question of sexual morality and in that way replenish the ranks of prostitutes." See "Nabliudatel'," "Pervyi s"ezd po bor'be s prostitutsiei," p. 4.

[23] For biographical information on Tarnovskii, see S. P. Arkhangel'skii, V.M. Tarnovskii (Leningrad, 1966), esp. pp. 5–22, 74. See also Arkhangel'skii, Gorbovitskii, Pavlov, Podvysotskaia, and Shteinlukht, "Kratkii ocherk razvitiia dermatologii i venerologii," p. 46; P. V. Kozhevnikov, "Veniamin Mikhailovich Tarnovskii," Vestnik dermatologii i venerologii, no. 3 (May–June 1951): 46–48. Kalinkin Hospital would be renamed in his honor.

[24] On Tarnovskaia's influence in Europe, see Corbin, Women for Hire, pp. 301–8. The works of Praskov'ia Tarnovskaia (known in Europe as Pauline Tarnowsky) include "Klassy vyrozhdaiushchikhsia v sovremennom obshchestve," in Vestnik klinicheskoi i sudebnoi psikhiatrii (1887); Étude anthropométrique sur les prostituées et les voleuses (Paris, 1889); and Les femmes homicides (Paris, 1908).

and Tarnovskaia were adherents of the school of "criminal anthropology" which held that social deviance derived from inborn genetic characteristics.

Tarnovskii attributed prostitution to a special type of female pathology stemming from a genetic predisposition and imbalance. Some prostitutes might seem physically attractive, but a closer look would reveal evidence of their "physical shortcomings"—improperly formed ears, different skull shapes, and so on.^[25] Prostitutes' personalities also betrayed their biological type. Though they could be compassionate and even self-sacrificing, prostitutes were nonetheless "moral cripples," different from "honest" women in their psychological and physical inability to engage in any other labor but commercial sex. "The core of prostitution," he cautioned his colleagues in 1897, "is always comprised of those . . . women who have a sick loathing toward any work and are so morally deadened that the disgrace of venal caresses is relatively less burdensome for them than any other occupation, any other wages."^[26] To Tarnovskii, the prostitute was a threat to society, "a morally depraved creature who for the most part is also physically abnormal."^[27]

In Prostitution and Abolitionism, Tarnovskii argued that regulation was the only way to keep such women under control. As he confidently entitled one of its chapters, "The Proper Regulation of Prostitution Reduces the Spread of Syphilis and Does Not, As the Abolitionists Believe, Promote Its Development."^[28] Tarnovskii drew his aggressive defense of regulation from current European debates over the efficacy of controlling prostitution. Borrowing arguments and statistical data from like-minded physicians in the West, he claimed that regulation's regimen of identification, inspection, and incarceration played a crucial role in preventing prostitutes from spreading venereal disease.

Prostitutes occupied a necessary rung in the social ladder as outlets for uncontrollable male desire, but they could not be trusted to care for their own health, nor had they qualms about infecting clients. Tarnovskii wrote, "Let the do-gooders and the compassionate people who are unacquainted with these matters think that one need only inculcate a prostitute with the principles of morality and give her honest wages, and

[25] Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, p. 187.

[26] "Protokoly obshchikh zasedanii,' pp. 10-11.

[27] Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, p. 243.

[28] Tarnovskii, "Pravil'naia reglamentatsiia prostitutsii umen'shaet rasprostranenie sifilisa, a ne sposobstvuet ego razvitiiu, kak utverzhdaiut abolitsionisty," in ibid., p. 10.

she will immediately become a dignified citizen and exemplary family member." Such "hypocrisy" and "naïveté" were contradicted by "history." It was neither ignorance nor insufficient moral guidance that prevented the prostitute from seeking medical treatment; rather, it was her own genetic makeup and evil proclivities.^[29]

The head of St. Petersburg's medical-police committee, Aleksandr Fedorov, also relied on a single-faceted moral explanation, but it was one that had little to do with Tarnovskii's convoluted venture into physiology and psychology. According to Fedorov, "statistics" proved that a woman turned to prostitution because she "'wanted to be a lady' or she 'went after the easy money.'" Writing from the standpoint of the committee, he maintained that women became prostitutes for one reason alone: "we from our angle recognize only [laziness]; all the other [motives] scarcely have any kind of significance."^[30] Fedorov had little evidence to substantiate his claim, but his conviction about prostitution as a result of sloth probably spared him (and the medical police) any anxiety over burdening desperate girls and women with a yellow ticket.

Fedorov, Tarnovskii, and House of Mercy and ROZZh members were well acquainted with prostitutes through their work in medical-police committees, hospitals, and philanthropic activities. Though it is unlikely that their experiences with prostitutes affirmed narrow models of "laziness," "depravity," "white slavery," or "moral laxity" as plausible explanations for prostitution, they nonetheless gravitated toward monochromatic answers that blamed individual women who either went wrong or were led astray. Other observers, particularly from the socialist and feminist camps, usually rejected views that ignored structural phenomena. Nevertheless, their abstract approach to prostitution and their determination to paint prostitutes as simple victims of capitalism or women's oppression also obscured the true picture. Reliance on one overarching reason to "explain" prostitution both weakened the observers' arguments and deprived prostitutes of their humanity. Privileged society lost sight of the prostitutes as individuals as it groped for rationales that served larger crusades for increased surveillance, political reform, tougher laws, socialist revolution, women's rights, and moral purity.

[29] Tarnovskii, Prostitutsiia i abolitsionizm, pp. 43, 133–40, 243.

[30] Fedorov, Ocherk vrachebno-politseiskago nadzora, p. 18.

Speaking for Themselves

God was angry with me—Now I seek oblivion in gaiety and wine.
St. Petersburg prostitute (1910)

When we look at the reasons women themselves gave to observers about their decision to become prostitutes, we develop a more nuanced picture of why they went down that "slippery slope." Although the answers prostitutes gave to interviewers about their motivation can raise as many questions as they answer, at the very least they tell us something about how prostitutes represented themselves to officials and members of the intelligentsia. Abbreviated phrases like "out of isolation" (odinochestvo ) and "I wanted to make money" only reflect one aspect of what was no doubt a large and complex truth, but they are a starting point for an understanding of these women's choices, and they put issues of causality in a clearer perspective.

Fedorov's list of motives from 146 women who were registered in St. Petersburg in 1888 markedly contradicts his assertion that laziness was the only true factor (see table 8). In fact, most of the women cited economic problems as the impetus for their choice. Despite overlaps and repetitions, the answers have been kept in their original form because Fedorov actually reproduced a prostitute's words rather than molded them to fit a predetermined category. I have divided the answers from all four sources into these categories of explanation: economics, personal reasons, external influences, family reasons, physical reasons, and (when relevant) denial.

Fedorov's study, Oboznenko's survey, which collected and synthesized answers from 4,220 prostitutes registered in Petersburg from 1891 to 1893, and the March 1910 House of Mercy survey, distributed to 600 prostitutes in St. Petersburg, suggest that economic factors were dominant (see tables 9 and 10).

The final survey reflects answers given by the 463 prostitutes who registered with the St. Petersburg medical-police committee in 1910 (see table 11). In contrast to the preceding three samples, most of these respondents simply stated a preference for prostitution over other forms of labor. If we take these answers literally, economic reasons (which have been tallied as anything related to need, wages, profit, poverty, and loss of job or breadwinner) assume first place in all but the last sample. In

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

Fedorov, although only one woman gave "extreme need" as the reason she became a prostitute, economic circumstances of one form or another influenced most of the stated motives. Essentially, 81 women (55 percent) told the medical-police committee that they became prostitutes because they needed or wanted money. Fedorov's total resembles that of the first House of Mercy sample, where 304 women (51 percent of the prostitutes surveyed) explained the choice of prostitution by virtue of responses related to their economic situations. Though their answers ranged from "poverty" to the more relativistic "it's easy work," economics were a clear motive. A smaller but still significant percentage of

(table continued on next page)

(table continued from previous page)

women (42 percent, or a total of 1,776) provided economic reasons in Oboznenko's study. Thus the figure of just 21 percent (96 women) compiled from interviews of newly registered prostitutes in 1910 stands in sharp relief to the other surveys.

In Fedorov, 40 women (27 percent) provided answers that indicated something more specific about their personalities. These answers ranged from vague assertions of "personal desire," how they "wanted to do so," and "glad to do it" (total of 22 women, or 15 percent), to their statements of a preference for "a gay life" (8 women, or 5 percent), to the self-deprecating "out of stupidity" and "frivolity" (6 women, or 4 percent). Despite Fedorov's association between prostitution and laziness, only 3 women (2 percent) gave answers that directly connoted sloth: they "got out of the habit of working" or "didn't want to work."

Oboznenko's sample also included a noteworthy number of women who worked as prostitutes out of "personal desire" (765 women, or 18 percent) and "stupidity and frivolity" or because they "wanted to lead a gay life" (155 women, or 4 percent). "Laziness" figured more prominently here, with 331 women (8 percent) giving answers categorized in

that manner. We must recall, however, that Oboznenko's study of 4,220 women was almost thirty times larger than Fedorov's. It made sense, therefore, for Oboznenko to conflate the responses into broad categories. As a result, categories like "personal desire" and "laziness" might incorporate responses that the other surveys conveyed more literally.

By contrast, relatively few of the women from the House of Mercy survey spoke of laziness (16 women, or just 3 percent) or even personal desire (15 women, or 3 percent). Nonetheless, if we add up the remaining answers—freedom or independence, "a wish to rest" (zhelanie otdokhnut '), finery (prel'stilas' nariadami ), "attraction to the depraved life" (vlechenie k razvratnoi zhizni ), "frivolity" (legkomyslie ), "bad tendencies" (durnyiia naklonnosti ), "isolation" (odinochestvo ), "bitterness" (s goriia and ozloblinnost ') and "complicated issues" (zaputannyia dela )—personal reasons account for another 56 women (9 percent) for a total of 87 women or 15 percent.

The greatest percentage of women who gave personal reasons came from the 1910 registration lists. There, 213 prostitutes (a conspicuous 46 percent) asserted their unwillingness to do permanent work (94 women, or 20 percent), their preference for the life of a prostitute (61, or 13 percent), bitterness (26, or 6 percent), feelings of boredom (11, or 2 percent), their tendency toward frivolity (11, or 2 percent), isolation (5, or 1 percent) and their desire for a constant change of men (4, or under 1 percent).

The set of answers from the 1910 registration lists is especially perplexing because of its overlap with the House of Mercy survey. Both were conducted under House of Mercy auspices, both were done in 1910, and both originated in St. Petersburg. Why, then, should the answers reflecting personal reasons appear as discordant as the House of Mercy's 13 percent and the registration list's 46 percent? By the same token, how can we explain the fact that the economic reasons are 51 percent in the House of Mercy sample and 21 percent in the other?

Part of the solution can be found in a consideration of the purpose of each survey. The first was spurred by a request to collect information on women's labor and prostitution from the International Abolitionist Federation (Mezhdunarodnyi soiuz abolitsionistov) to the House of Mercy's Board of Trustees (Popechitel'nyi komitet). The board, along with "many ladies [damy ] from different women's organizations," distributed questionnaires to prostitutes in the capital. Among the ladies who distributed the questionnaires was Raisa Depp, who presented the

results to the 1910 Congress on the Struggle against the Trade in Women.^[31] The collection of responses, therefore, involved female activists who had been instructed to determine how labor conditions impinged on the respondents' choice of prostitution. We are not privy to the questions they asked, but the overall focus may have elicited answers more oriented to economic issues. As we saw in the third chapter, these questions concerned the women's work history and experiences in close detail. It is quite possible that the questions themselves, as well as the questioners' expectations and communication of sympathies, affected a respondent's decision about how she would characterize her motivation.

The second survey also involved the House of Mercy's Board of Trustees, but in its capacity as having the right to oversee the inscription of all St. Petersburg prostitutes. Consequently, the answers derived from the information new registrants provided the St. Petersburg medical-police committee. The committee member responsible here was often a volunteer from the House of Mercy or ROZZh whose main role was to apprise new registrants of their option to enter a halfway house and to make sure that no one was entering prostitution against her will.^[32] Any woman who emphasized her economic desperation or reservations about prostitution would have been confronted with the (no doubt unwelcome) prospect of dealing with a lady intent on dissuading her from registering. As a member of the ROZZh reminded the city duma in a memo, "not one prostitute in St. Petersburg has been registered until a lady-patroness has had a face-to-face talk with her and has exhausted all her means to shake this girl's decision to break formally with honest labor once and for all."^[33] Under such circumstances, a registrant's characterization of her choice as a straightforward, personal decision would have been a less wearing strategy.

Fedorov and Oboznenko compiled their data based on medical-police committee registration lists as well, but their research preceded the permission given to the House of Mercy and ROZZh to attend registration interviews. The House of Mercy had the right as early as 1864 to send a member to medical-police committee meetings, but its opportunity to interview new registrants developed later, in conjunction with

[31] Depp, "O dannykh ankety," p. 137.

[32] Chapter 6 discusses the work of the House of Mercy and ROZZh.

[33] "Zakliuchenie Komiteta Rossiiskago obshchestva zashchity zhenshchin po dokladu Obshchago prisutstviia gorodskoi upravy 'ob organizatsii nadzora za prostitutsiei,'" Izvestiia S.-Peterburgskago gorodskoi dumy, no. 21 (May 1914): 2060–61.

a partnership with the ROZZh, which was not organized until 1900.^[34] Consequently, the prostitutes in Fedorov's and Oboznenko's samples supplied their reasons to an official with a different kind of stake in their responses.

Factors relating to the setting for the collection of the answers and the prostitutes' attitudes better illuminate these studies, but they do not necessarily help us determine how to weigh the question of economic versus personal reasons. A reminder about the class backgrounds of the respondents should provide some missing perspective: almost all of these women were from the peasantry and working classes. That is, we cannot discount financial motives, whether they were counted as primary or not. Although a large percentage of prostitutes did not trace their decision to economic need, some form of economic need—whether it was the desire for easy money or simply more money—informed most of their choices. The fact that a woman had to choose between a job that would not pay her even a subsistence wage and the "gay life" of a "fallen woman" was clearly an issue of privilege and class. Women at the top of the trade could earn upwards of 500 rubles a month. Even the poorest prostitute would net 40 rubles a month, more than twice as much as most working women.^[35] Thus, even when prostitutes would account for their choice with answers like "the life of a prostitute is gay," they were essentially depicting an economic situation. The decision stemmed from their inability as poor women to emulate the elegance of their well-to-do female employers and the wealthy women they admired on the street. In simple parlance, they "wanted to be a lady."^[36]

That is not to say that we should read all of the "personal" reasons as economic ones. Instead, we simply need to be aware of the complexity of these women's situations, as well as the circumstances under which they responded to the questions. Could a one-word answer or an abbreviated phrase accurately describe something that was often gradual and resulted from a confluence of factors? A vague response like "personal desire" might indicate a woman's reluctance to discuss her reasons for

[34] Oboznenko, "Obshchestvennaia initsiativa S.-Peterburga v bor'be s prostitutsiei," Vestnik obshchestvennoi gigieny, nos. 11–12 (November–December 1905): 1873.

[35] Fedorov, Pozornyi promysel, pp. 5–6.

[36] Such motivation differs little from that of prostitutes in the late Soviet era for whom, as one writer allowed, prostitution was the "single exit from poverty." Mark Popovskii, "Sovetskaia prostitutka—professiia, kotoroi net," Grani, no. 132 (April–June 1984): 131. I am grateful to Dena Schoen for this reference.

becoming a prostitute, defiance of the questioner, just as easily as it could reflect a plain reticence when it came to answering questions. As Christine Stansell perceptively argues about prostitutes interviewed in nineteenth-century New York City, such answers might also imply a rejection of the "paradigm of victimization," in favor of a woman's "own agency in entering prostitution."^[37] For some of these women, prostitution may have been a form of rebellion, one of the few paths that led women in a patriarchal culture somewhere new and exciting. One woman who registered in 1910 called prostitution her chance to live "independently and autonomously" (samostoiatel'no i nezavisimo ). In Richard Stites's words, "Motivations seem to have been a complex mixture of a milieu of poverty, a perception of poverty, rational economic choice, a feeling of hopelessness, and a spirit of rebelliousness against orderly society and its ways."^[38] Or, as a prostitute responded to one questioner, the issues were "complicated."

In the third grouping of responses, external influence, we see how many women attributed their choice to the influence and machinations of others—persuasion, bad influences, enticement, seduction, or some kind of coercion. Eleven prostitutes (8 percent) in Fedorov's sample fit this category, and 358 prostitutes (also 8 percent) surveyed by Oboznenko made similar claims. In these two studies, not one prostitute's trade was attributed to force. Conversely, 163 women (27 percent) from the House of Mercy survey answered that they had become prostitutes as a result of external influences, 6 of whom had been forced (1 percent). Ninety-six (21 percent) of those who registered in 1910 also referred to external influences. These respondents did not indicate force per se, but 21 of them (5 percent) noted how they had been "under the influence of madams, prostitutes, and pimps, and unable to refuse."

What can we conclude from these numbers? Most important, they demonstrate that society's fears about "white slaves," women who were sold into prostitution against their will, were way out of proportion to reality. A woman's choice of prostitution could be influenced by peers or even madams and procurers, but in the overwhelming number of cases the decision was within her power.

Third parties who stood to profit from a woman's turn to prostitution as a trade made a significant appearance in the House of Mercy survey only. In Fedorov, only 2 of the 11 women claiming external influ-

[37] Stansell, City of Women, p. 178.

[38] Stites, "Prostitute and Society in Pre-revolutionary Russia," p. 353.

ence (just 1 percent of the total) were "enticed"; in Oboznenko, 54 (also 1 percent) imputed their decision to a procurer; among registrants in 1910 the figure of 5 percent (for 21 women) was significantly higher. If we add the number of women who answered something about enticement, procurers, seduction, or force in the House of Mercy survey, however, we reach a more notable total of 96 (16 percent). Several questions are raised by this incongruity. Did the House of Mercy questioners encourage respondents to claim that their entrance into prostitution was against their will? Was there a difference between the attitudes of medical-police committee registrants and the more general sample of 600 prostitutes? Did women registering at the medical-police committee stress the voluntary nature of their decision so as to avoid further bureaucratic complications?

There were also relatively few women in the House of Mercy survey who turned to prostitution because of what I have classified as family reasons. In Fedorov, 6 percent (9 women) identified something relating to their family circumstances; in Oboznenko, 4 percent (167 women); 5 percent (28 women) in the House of Mercy survey; 6 percent (27 women) among 1910 registrants. Once again, though, economic problems could have been behind the conviction that prostitution represented a viable alternative to their present domestic situation.

A fourth category of answers involves health and alcoholism. Fedorov listed 5 answers of this sort and Oboznenko included 124 (3 percent of each sample), 27 of which covered what he or some women interpreted as "sexual need." The House of Mercy found only 13 women (2 percent) who connected their prostitution with alcoholism and listed another three (half of 1 percent) who became prostitutes because a sexual partner gave them a venereal disease. Thirty-one of the women who registered in 1910 (7 percent) attributed their motivation to alcohol and disease.

Unlike Fedorov, who as chief of St. Petersburg's medical-police committee, had an interest in representing registration as voluntary, Oboznenko and the House of Mercy listed reasons that have been placed into a fifth category of "denial." This included women who provided no reasons, did not identify themselves as prostitutes, or had been registered against their will. Oboznenko's grouping of "unknown reasons" (195 answers, or 5 percent) is an intriguing category. Unfortunately, we do not know whether the respondents provided this answer themselves or it simply reflected Oboznenko's lack of information. As for the 324 women (8 percent) who said they were not prostitutes, it is indeed plau-

sible that some had been inscribed against their will; the State Senate did not rule against involuntary registration until 1892, nor was its ruling consistently obeyed. There is also a possibility that such responses signified some women's way of registering a complaint. Also included here are the 25 women who registered because someone issued them a license, they had no passport, or "just in case." Only two women blamed the police for their yellow ticket in the House of Mercy survey, but one specifically attributed her registration to police persecution.

Regulation played an important role in closing the gap between turning a few tricks for "supplemental" wages and engaging in prostitution as a full-time trade. The medical-police system compelled those women reined in by policemen and medical-police agents to choose between one and the other. Abuses in the registration process eliminated that choice for the women who were given no option but to trade in their passport for a yellow ticket. Judging by the surveys, however, the percentage of women who explained their trade by saying "They took away my passport and gave me a ticket" is negligible compared to women who attributed their profession to more voluntaristic motives.

To attempt to explain why one woman would prefer to sweat for fourteen hours behind a noxious machine rather than work as a prostitute is really to venture into the murky territory of individual personality. It is helpful to consider the turn to prostitution according to what two British prostitutes in 1980 called "poverty and women's refusal of poverty."^[39] The second factor is central here for it takes into account the crucial elements of will and perception. Even the most insightful observers in prerevolutionary Russia stopped short, however, before acknowledging that prostitution may have represented a conscious and positive decision for some women—a refusal of poverty, rather than a mere consequence of it.

Prostitution can partly be explained in terms of how women perceived their economic position and how the alternative of prostitution may have looked from their particular vantage point. Desperation may have motivated some, even many women, but we have also seen that dire straits or workplace misery did not lie in every prostitute's past. It is, indeed, difficult to argue that a direct correlation existed between workplace exploitation and prostitution in light of the small percentage of former factory workers among registered prostitutes. The decision of

[39] Margaret Valentino and Mavis Johnson, "On the Game and On the Move," in Prostitutes—Our Life, ed. Jaget, p. 26.

some saleswomen to "increase their budget with evening strolls" also illustrates how prostitution did not necessarily spell the difference between starvation and survival. Instances where women turned to prostitution for reasons as noble or as desperate as those of Sonia, who "sold herself" to keep her family from starving, were not unknown. Nevertheless, they appear much less frequently than situations wherein prostitution was a conscious attempt not simply to survive, but to live what was perceived as a better life. As much as observers may have liked to find a Sonia (or her daughters) among the prostitutes they interviewed, she remained mostly a literary invention.

When one reads about conditions of female labor in tsarist Russia, it is tempting to ask why so few women traded their fourteen-hour jobs for the life of a "fallen woman." If workplace oppression was enough to send a woman to the streets, we might expect to see not tens of thousands of prostitutes, but millions. Relatively few women became prostitutes, though. The vast majority chose to remain at their regular jobs (as long as they could). This should tell us that individual characteristics also helped shape a woman's decision. Perhaps these "characteristics" can be found in a woman's familial background, sexual history, and workplace experiences, but they may also be more elusive.

In explaining prostitution, observers fell along a spectrum that ran from individual volition to coercion. Tarnovskii and Fedorov saw it as the result of individual failings of girls who had fallen, of girls endowed by their heredity with evil propensities, or of girls unable to resist the lure of the streets. These critics gave women full responsibility for their actions, thereby exonerating Russian society and all others who were implicated in the business of prostitution. Socialists like Kollontai and Kuznetsov chose to blame capitalism, while feminists like Pokrovskaia and Depp focused on the oppression of women. In contrast to Tarnovskii and Fedorov, they completely deprived prostitutes of agency. Other observers sought refuge in the most comfortable explanation of all: instead of involving bad girls, prostitution involved bad boys, a few criminals who forced women to trade in sex against their will.

All of these explanations eradicated the choices and constraints felt by women who became prostitutes and those who did not, making it seem as though entering the trade was preordained and random. The evidence, however, suggests that explanations are better found in seeing both the individual and her larger circumstances. Though we cannot

discount poverty and despair as weighty factors in determining how a woman would respond to her work situation, neither can we ignore other less tangible motives. Observers expected prostitutes to represent their motivation by mutually exclusive categories, when in fact prostitution reflected circumstances and perceptions that were mutually influential. Prostitution was not a dot along a linear spectrum; it was a synthesis—of situations, choices, attitudes, and misfortunes.