Prostitution

PROSTITUTION (from Latin prostituere - to publicly display, to put up for sale). A prostitute is a woman who sells herself to men as an object for sexual intercourse with them. The sexual life of a woman who engages in the sale of her body is almost always characterized by promiscuous intercourse with different persons (Promiscuitat). It is necessary, however, to avoid the substitution found in bourgeois literature of the concept of sexual commercializability with the concept of sexual licentiousness in the definition of P. Emphasizing the moment of 'licentiousness' in the concept of P leads to the fact that in the question of P the class origin and class character of this profound social anomaly, which are clearly expressed in the moment of buying and selling the body, are gutted, and the entire problem of P is incorrectly reduced to the level of the question of physiological and psychological characteristics of certain 'constitutions,' and sometimes even driven into a dead end by the doctrine of 'born prostitutes' (Tarnovsky, Lombroso and Ferrero). P did not exist in primitive society when sexual relations, unconstrained by anything, prevailed within the tribe, so that each woman belonged equally to every man, and every man to every woman. P as the buying and selling of the body could develop only with the accumulation of wealth, with the presence of commodity circulation, when the primitive community of women and community of men, passing through gradually narrowing forms of group and pair marriage, gave way to monogamy. And at the moment of its appearance and at subsequent stages of development of class society, this was monogamy 'only for the woman, but not for the man' (Engels). The existence of slavery alongside monogamy, the presence of slave women belonging to a man, determined the duality and internal contradiction of the monogamous family. Alongside the monogamous family, hetairism flourishes--extramarital sexual intercourse with men by unmarried women. In its origin, hetairism was a remnant of the sexual freedom that women enjoyed before the emergence of monogamy. But as an institution of class society, due to contradictions within monogamy itself, hetairism 'ensures the further existence of sexual freedom... in favor of men' and in its subsequent development 'more and more turns into open prostitution' (Engels).-The giving of oneself for money was originally a religious act. The first prostitutes were girls who dedicated themselves to serving the cults of goddesses of love and fertility in the temples of the ancient East and Greece. Priests widely used this religious hetairism, which degenerated into religious P, to supplement the temple treasuries with income from its exploitation. An example of the flourishing of this religious P, in which a woman is involved in debauchery in the name of serving a deity, can be the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, at the crossing of important trade routes of ancient Greece. According to the historian Strabo, in this temple more than 1,000 priestesses of Aphrodite prostituted themselves. In its further development, P sheds its religious shell and appears openly as a specific profession, specially regulated by state power. During the flourishing of slavery in Athens, under Solon, slave women were purchased for public brothels organized by the ruling power itself: their services could be used at an accessible price-for a small coin of one obol. In Rome, prostitutes were subjected to special registration, with which was associated 'legal disgrace' (infamia), the change of the former name to a dishonorable professional nickname, the replacement of the usual clothing of a Roman matron with a special toga of a prostitute ('toga meretricia') etc. Condemnation was always directed not against men who used P, but only against women: 'they are despised and cast out of society, in order to once again proclaim as the basic law of society the unconditional domination of men over the female sex' (Engels). A prostitute in Rome was subjected to unfettered exploitation in all sorts of private 'lupanars' (brothels). In medieval cities, P turned into a profitable article of urban economy. Following the initiative of Benedict IX, the Roman pope, who in 1033 set up a public house in Rome 'near the church of St. Nicholas,' medieval cities, competing in this with sovereign princes, developed the broadest activity in the establishment of 'brothels' [bordeau-house standing on the outskirts (bord) by the water (eau), i.e., by the city ditch, outside the city wall]. In medieval France, brothels were often called 'abbeys'; in Toulouse, a public house in 1201 received the name 'great abbey.' Such names as 'house of daughters,' or 'house of poor daughters,' 'free house,' 'communal hotel of beautiful girls' were also used. State regulation and control over public houses developed in medieval cities into a system worked out down to the smallest details. Starting from the 15th century, in many cities special brothel statutes were issued, regulating in detail the life of public houses. Surviving records of brothels in Mainz and Strasbourg show that about each of the prostitutes, as a profitable unit for the city, a kind of accounting was carefully kept with exact indication of the amounts they earned for the city and expenses on them, down to the last pfennig. Thus, according to the rules of the Ulm brothel statute, each prostitute had to pay a heller for a candle at night, and a man-had to add to it 1 pfennig. Each prostitute had to put 1 pfennig in a special box on Mondays; with this money a candle was placed in the cathedral on Sundays for the Virgin Mary. Like all urban craftsmen, prostitutes formed their guild. Theological authorities reconciled monogamy with P, pointing to the necessity of the latter, as a 'palace cesspool,' as a 'ship's drain for filth' (Augustine, Thomas Aquinas). The papacy-supported complacent attitude of the Middle Ages toward P met with protest from the ideologists of the Reformation, who demanded the decisive suppression of all forms of extramarital relations. This protest found support in the oppressed mood that was caused by the terrifying spread of syphilis in Europe from the end of the 15th century. Closely associated with P, syphilis imposed on it in history a new burden, giving it a special danger for public health. The prohibitive slogans of the Reformation found their expression in a series of police statutes and codes of Europe of the 16th-18th centuries. The system of unconditional prohibition of extramarital relations, without any exception in favor of prostitutes, found especially decisive and complete expression in Austrian legislation under Maria Theresa. The 'Commission of Chastity' with its monstrously arbitrary activity and the following ritual of humiliation of the fallen woman, which existed until the 1920s, characterize the measures of Maria Theresa as the last word of the strictly prohibitive system in relation to P. A prostitute tied up to the neck in a sack, with her head shaved by the executioner and smeared with soot or tar, was thrown before the porch of the church; after Mass the sack was untied before the festive crowd. There followed a public flogging of the offending woman, after which the mangled woman was taken out of the city on a cart, where at the boundary stone the executioner saw her off into exile with a kick of the foot, and burghers-with stones and dirt. The French ordinance of 1689 prescribes cutting off the ears of public women found in Versailles or within a distance of two leagues in its vicinity. Being the extreme limit in the humiliation of woman, the prohibitive system could not nevertheless suppress P, which grows from the basic contradictions of class society; with all its weight this system fell only on those layers of selling women from which, according to one of the historians of P, the police could not extract for itself 'neither gold, nor beautiful girls, nor precious stones' (Sabatier). The French Revolution made an attempt to throw away the prohibitive system: the Constituent Assembly by law of July 19-22, 1791, refuses to prohibit 'lewdness' and exclusive police measures against prostitutes. However, this principle of bourgeois 'freedom' in relation to P was very soon violated by the formation of the notorious 'police of morals': a prostitute received tolerance in the practice of her trade only on condition of her submission to a special exclusive regime of medical-police coercion. The characteristic features of this system: the official registration of women in the lists of prostitutes, the taking away from a registered woman of her ordinary residence permit and its replacement with a special medical certificate, the restriction of the freedom of movement of the supervised prostitute, the limitation of her choice of place of residence and finally the promotion of the concentration of P in special brothels-houses of tolerance. Having formed as a system of measures for medical-police supervision over P for the first time in France during the times of the consulate (on the orders of Napoleon for the purpose of sanitizing women who satisfied his army with their bodies), the institution of the police of morals gradually penetrated during the 19th century partly into administrative practice and partly into the legislation of most European states.-England until the 1860s avoided medical-police regulation, but in 1866.

"reglamentarists," i.e., supporters of morals police, managed to pass in the form of a special law about contagious diseases a system of morals police for a number of English military stations and ports. In protest against this "law about contagious diseases" in the 1870s, a liberal public movement arose in England, which set itself the goal of achieving the abolition of the morals police institution. Under the influence of this abolitionist movement, the English parliament in the mid-1880s abolishes the notorious act about contagious diseases. From 1886, Great Britain manages without exceptional measures of medical-police regulation regarding prostitutes, but in colonies the most crude form of government exploitation of women proves to be permissible; thus, in the 1880s the English government by circular instructed the military administration on the establishment of public houses, furnished with proper comfort, and on supplying the army with a sufficient number of "attractive" women who would be subject to daily examinations. At present, P. as a profession is prosecuted by law in some cantons of Switzerland (Basel-city, Bern, Lucerne, Tessin, etc.) and in the South African republic. In South Africa punishment threatens not only the prostitute herself but also her client, however only in the case if... a black man uses the body of a white woman. In Sweden and Finland and in many states of North America professional prostitutes are treated as vagrants. We find a system of regulated P. in France and Belgium: the elaboration of regulations is left to the municipal authorities. In Italy and Spain there exists a kind of "neo-regulationism" which amounts to the implementation of the abolitionist principle in more or less mutilated form; thus, in Italy compulsory registration of prostitutes is limited, but "houses of prostitution" are preserved. Particularly consistent system of regulation is carried out by the law of January 1, 1927, in Japan: P. is driven into certain quarters (548 "streets of pleasure") and officially recognized public houses; a secret prostitute is threatened with arrest up to 30 days. B., or m. consistent implementation of the abolitionist principle we have in England, Holland, Norway, Denmark (with the exception of Copenhagen), in Czechoslovakia, Turkey, in many states of North America and in inner China (in China's large port cities-regulation and brothels). In Germany the exceptional regime of morals police lost its right to exist with the enactment of the law against venereal diseases of February 18, 1927 (the so-called RGBG). Police regulation, by means of which it was possible to control more or less some ^h/₁₀ contingent of S76 professional prostitutes (and that unsuccessfully), gave way to the implementation of the principle of compulsory treatment for all patients, without distinction of sex (see Venereal diseases). Despite the fact that the application of the 1927 law gave favorable results*, as reported by the Berlin press, the Prussian commissioner Bracht is preparing the restoration in Berlin and other large cities of Prussia of the old morals police, by means of § 48 of the German constitution. Prostitution in Russia. In the 18th century a prohibitive system takes shape in Russian legislation. According to the military articles of 1716, "no harlots will be tolerated at regiments, but if any are found, they are to be stripped and openly driven out without consideration by the executioner (hangman)." The Senate decree of 1771 instructs the manufacturing college to unconditionally accept for work the "immoral girls" sent from the main police. Under Nicholas I in Russia a morals police is created on the French model. It continues to exist right up to the October Revolution. With submission to "open" medical-police supervision a woman received in exchange for a passport a special certificate, which life fixed the name "yellow ticket." This "yellow ticket" in most cases closed to the woman any access to working life. And since under conditions of dead seasons and unemployment or with a starvation wage she was forced to turn to P. as a temporary and auxiliary occupation, this yellow ticket attached her to P. The dependence of the supervised woman in her movements on the consent of the local police and following with a special pass blocked for her the possibility of turning to labor in each new locality. Renting an apartment to a supervised prostitute was permitted only with the permission of the police. In some places the duty of supervision institutions included "the care of placing, as far as possible, women who have finally surrendered to vice in special houses (brothels)": such a rule existed, for example, in the regulations of the Riga committee. A house of tolerance was the last link attaching the woman to P.: the conditions of control deprived women living in a private apartment of the possibility of combining labor with P.; the living conditions in a den eradicated in her the very habit of work and capacity for work. The class character of supervision over P. in tsarist Russia manifested itself openly in exceptional forms of crudeness. The circle of persons on whom supervision was calculated was long ago determined by the concept of "wandering, low and suspicious girls" (Art. 158 of the statute for the prevention and suppression of crimes). The regulations of individual cities deciphered this concept as follows. "The proper sphere of action of the commission (for the examination of wandering women)-the common people; persons of noble estate can be subjected to their action only in cases of clear and undeniable evidence regarding the spread of venereal diseases by persons of said estate" (Kronstadt). "Raid"-the taking of women for examination by police patrol-the most crude form of bringing under supervision, should be applied to women of the "lowest sort" (Petersburg). "Upon receiving information about the source of infection" the medical-police committee takes up the case and summons the indicated person only in the case that "it belongs to the lower classes of the population, i.e., to the number of artisans, servants, workers, working women, etc." (Riga). "To subject to examination... working girls or maids noticed in suspicious places without employment. Women of the middle class detained in matters not concerning their bad morals are not examined" (Warsaw). "Everywhere, so to speak, come under supervision less well-off prostitutes. Agents are not sufficiently skillful, and moreover sometimes do not have the opportunity to catch a high-class prostitute... The police, not wishing to take on extra trouble and get into unpleasantness, limits itself to only rounding up shabby and wandering women" (report of the representative of the Minister of the Interior Dr. Stürmer to the anti-syphilitic congress of 1897). The main contingent of supervised P. was provided by "the masses of peasant women and girls who came to the capital to seek earnings, who had spent their meager savings, who had not found a place and had fallen into extreme need; here there are also many adolescent girls, some accompanying their mothers, some having fled from the brutal treatment of masters and mistresses to whom they had been given for training in a trade." The city constable "decides the matter quickly and... without appeal: a woman taken by him on the street, in a corner or in a flophouse is considered a prostitute; she is treated as a dissolute woman, even if besides the lack of a definite place of residence and occupation there is not a single hint that she is engaged in vice" (Dr. Oboznenko). The study of the practice of regulation reveals its complete sanitary insufficiency. Medical reports from localities received by the medical department for the first anti-syphilitic congress of 1897 show that in a number of cities periodic examination of supervised prostitutes was carried out only "for the sake of official order," sometimes on bunks, on the "assembly point," in the dirt. In Astrakhan the examination point "is cramped, cold, poorly lit," "at the point women sit on a Vienna chair"; "no instruments." In Saratov during examinations "the uterine mirror is not used at all." According to the comprehensive report of Dr. Stürmer in general they examine "in premises where the prostitute cannot be undressed or her sexual organs examined. Often examinations are performed hastily, in a dark room, moreover by a paramedic or midwife." Even in Petersburg, with "model" supervision, in the central department of the committee "within 4 hours a doctor often has to examine 200 women, or even more than 300, and in exceptional cases up to 410-420, moreover under such conditions that the examined prostitutes sit directly on the examination chair in their outer clothing and galoshes. Very many come to examination drunk, and some right in the examination room urinate directly on the floor." Data collected in 1908 by the main administration for local affairs showed that with the transition to the "renewed" state system the matter with examinations did not improve; in some cities prostitutes are examined in prison cells, in the city of Omsk-in the city flophouse, and in the city of Syzran-in the morgue at the police station."

The situation with the treatment of supervised prostitutes was no better. Not to mention the provincial cities, where patients often had to be expelled from the city or sent by stages to the nearest provincial city due to the lack of local brothels or hospitals, even in such centers as Nizhny, Saratov, Tomsk, Kiev, and others, due to lack of space, not all prostitutes sent for treatment could be admitted to a hospital. In a number of cities, prostitutes were discharged from the hospital ahead of schedule, not fully cured, to free up beds more quickly. Even in the Kalinkin Hospital in Petersburg, patients sent by the medical-police committee are 'often put two to a bed, beds are placed in corridors and dressing rooms,' and despite this, a 'certain percentage of uncured prostitutes are discharged daily, among whom there are also syphilitics' (Stürmer). According to Dr. Oboznenko, prostitutes with urethritis, vaginitis, inflammation of the cervix, etc., are discharged from the hospital 'not in a week, but in two to three days.' Proponents of regulation sought to prove that among supervised prostitutes, venereal diseases were less prevalent than among the uncontrolled. However, according to data for all of Russia collected in 1909 by the Main Administration of Local Economy, the number of syphilis cases detected during medical examinations of prostitutes in brothels was 15.1%, among supervised single women - 14.9%, and among women detained on suspicion of secret prostitution - 9.9%. The number of other venereal diseases among brothel prostitutes was 25%, among supervised single women - 22.9%, and among those detained on suspicion - 13.7%. Refusal to support the morals police helps reduce some of the gross excesses of police arbitrariness, but it by no means can be considered a remedy against prostitution itself. Abolitionism, just like the prohibition system, is equally powerless against the social roots of prostitution. Growing on the soil of class oppression, prostitution captures the least stable layers of female poverty. If, based on data from a special survey of supervised prostitution in Russia and the first general census of the population, we compare the number of supervised prostitutes in selected branches of female labor with the total number of women in these professional groups, it turns out that out of every thousand of their number, factory workers gave one to prostitution, needle workers - 4.6, and domestic servants - 6 people. According to data from a number of Berlin surveys, compiled by Prof. A. Blaschko, over 44 years, from 1855 to 1898, the number of prostitutes previously employed in industry decreased from 71% to 43%, while the tribute that domestic servants pay to prostitution increased from 7.1% to 15.3%. When presenting these statistical data, which reveal the etiology of prostitution as the most characteristic, we must note that statistics can only inform us about the composition of the professional, predominantly registered by police agents, prostitution, but according to all observations, alongside professional prostitution, auxiliary and temporary prostitution is growing, fed by low wages insufficient for living and dead seasons affecting the largest branches of female labor in bourgeois countries, and by unemployment. The pressure of need is joined by the influence of demand. Demand has the opportunity to exploit the economic dependence of its maids and workers: according to data presented to the Reichstag in 1900 by August Bebel, out of 5,183 prostitutes, 1,718, i.e., about one-third, were first seduced by their employers. The erotic style of the street environment in the bourgeois city, its fashions and amusements, contributes to weakening a woman's resistance to the wiles of demand. At the disposal of demand is extensively organized intermediation. The large-scale entrepreneurial form of this intermediation is the international trade in women. The most important places of import are America and the countries of the East; the main suppliers are Galicia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, Romania, and Italy. Pre-revolutionary Russia stood in a class of its own in the export of 'white slaves': even for distant Argentina, it provided more victims of vice than any other country. The main center for the trade in women is New York: a significant part of the goods is sent by sea to South America and Asia. As Prof. Blaschko points out in his 'Hygiene of Venereal Diseases,' the traders in 'live goods' 'buy impunity for themselves not only by bribing police officials, both high and low, but also by promoting the political careers of some judges not particularly scrupulous in their choice of means.' The profits from the trade in bodies are so great that they more than cover all expenses, including election campaigns and bribing officials. In the criminal codes of capitalist countries, there are more or less severe penalties against recruiting women for prostitution (white slavery), involving them in prostitution and keeping them in a state of prostitution, against maintaining brothels and all kinds of other dens of vice, and against pandering. However, in practice, all these punitive norms do not and cannot lead to the eradication or significant reduction of intermediation. By establishing repressions against intermediation between supply and demand in the field of prostitution, bourgeois governments ensure complete impunity for the man who uses prostitution. As at the time of its origin, man retains the inalienable right in class society to buy a woman's body. By paying, directly or indirectly, the procurer and the keeper of the den, the madam and the pimp, the consumer remains the main and necessary spring that conditions and sets in motion the entire system of intermediation. The brokers and accomplices of prostitution, against whom the edge of criminal repression is hypocritically directed, are in essence of the relations nothing more than auxiliary instruments and assistants to the consumer in the matter of recruiting, involving, and keeping a woman in a state of prostitution. In a number of bourgeois states, brothels have been closed. However, it must be taken into account that in our time, brothel prostitution increasingly fails to satisfy even the undemanding consumer. According to data collected by Flexner, in Paris out of 6,000 registered prostitutes - in public houses only 387, in Vienna - out of 1,689 no more than 60. The consumer prefers the easy adventure of a 'chance acquaintance.' He hunts less for a professional than for a domestic servant, a milliner, and anticipates his prey among women thrown out of production by the crisis. The 'consumer' pays great attention to children. According to a nationwide survey, 23% of all girls who later joined the ranks of supervised prostitution were sold at an age under 16, and 3.6% (of the total number) before reaching 14 years of age. One in ten of the surveyed girls was deflowered before the appearance of menses; among girls deprived of innocence before the onset of menstruation, 29.9% were victims of violence. According to 1906 data (Netzel), the perpetrators of the deflowering of girls who subsequently ended up in Moscow brothels were in 64% of cases officers; merchants, officials, landowners, students. With prostitution along the entire front of the capitalist world, a 'struggle' is being waged. Special societies are organized, countless conferences and congresses are convened. V. I. Lenin in 1913 in the article 'The Fifth International Congress for the Fight Against Prostitution' ('Rabochaya Pravda', No. 1) characterized the 'work' of these congresses and the 'fight' against prostitution as follows: 'What means of struggle did the elegant bourgeois delegates of the congress demand? Mainly two means: religion and police. The most, so to speak, reliable and certain remedy against prostitution. One English delegate, as reported by the London correspondent of the Leipzig 'People's Gazette,' boasted that he had introduced corporal punishment for pandering in parliament. That is what the modern 'civilized' hero of the fight against prostitution is like... One can judge from this what disgusting bourgeois hypocrisy reigns at these aristocratic-bourgeois congresses. Acrobats of charity and police defenders of abuse of need and poverty gather to 'fight against prostitution,' which is supported precisely by the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie...' Prostitution can be overcome only after the elimination of capitalist production, 'when a new generation grows up: a generation of men who have never had to buy a woman with money or other social advantages in their lives, and a generation of women who have never had to give themselves to a man for any other motives than genuine love, or to refuse to give themselves to a loved one out of fear of economic consequences' (Engels).

A. Elpstratov. The Fight Against Prostitution in the USSR. The fight against P. in the USSR is based on the complete destruction of the causes and roots that feed P. in the process of socialist construction. This fight has been carried out since the first days of the October Revolution by involving women in all branches of Soviet construction, their economic and legal emancipation, the broad development of measures to protect motherhood and infancy, the improvement of women's labor qualifications, the elimination of unemployment and homelessness among women, and the widespread implementation of cultural and educational measures among the working population, which contribute to the fight against the demand for P. Along with these measures that prevent the appearance and spread of P., a whole series of sanitary-hygienic and administrative measures are also carried out, aimed at fighting the remnants of P. and protecting the health of the working population from venereal diseases, of which P. was a breeding ground. The implementation of these measures did not require the issuance of a special decree on the abolition of regulation: the USSR is the only country in the world where the regulation of P. has been completely and completely destroyed. The achievements of the October Revolution—the legal, economic, and family and household emancipation of women—made the existence of regulated P. unthinkable under Soviet conditions. The question of fighting P. during the years of the civil war in Soviet Russia could not arise, because during the period of universal labor service there could be no conditions for the development of P. To fight against the remnants of P. that had survived from the pre-revolutionary period, to carry out systematic sanitary-hygienic measures, and to coordinate administrative measures, at the end of 1919 a special commission to fight against P. was created under the venereal section of the People's Commissariat of Health, which was soon replaced by the Interdepartmental Commission to Fight Against P. under the People's Commissariat of Social Welfare. The work of this Interdepartmental Commission was limited to the development of the 'Regulations on commissions to fight against prostitution under the People's Commissariat of Social Welfare and provincial social welfare departments'; the sending of the first circular by the People's Commissariat of Social Welfare 'On measures to fight against prostitution' and the compilation of the first guiding theses on the fight against P., the main idea of which was to carry out the fight not against individual prostituting women, but against P. as a social anomaly. The unemployment that appeared with the beginning of the NEP among women with little or no qualification, the presence among them of homeless and abandoned women, and on the other hand, the appearance of demand for P.—served as reasons for some strengthening of P. and stimulated the intensification of the fight against it, led and directed in the future by the People's Commissariat of Health. On the initiative of the venereal section of the People's Commissariat of Health, in December 1922 a circular of the People's Commissariat of Health, the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions 'On measures to fight against prostitution' was published, sent for guidance to provincial executive committees and provincial trade union councils. In this circular, as measures to prevent P., the following were indicated: special care when dismissing women from work who are unprovided for, lonely, homeless, and have small children; the organization of production artels to fight against female unemployment, hostels for homeless girls and women, increased care for homeless adolescents, improvement of professional qualifications of working women, and agitation and educational work among the working population to explain the social significance of P. At the same time, administrative bodies were entrusted with the duty of strengthening supervision over places where women could be involved in P. and debauchery, strengthening the fight against keeping of dens, abetting, and intermediation in P.; at the same time, local health authorities were proposed to organize dispensaries for treating women suffering from venereal diseases. All these measures were carried out by provincial councils to fight against P. at the local level, which included representatives of provincial health departments, departments of administration, provincial trade union councils, and women's departments. The work of the provincial councils was coordinated by the Central Council (CS) to fight against P., consisting of the People's Commissar of Health, the head of the venereal section of the People's Commissariat of Health, representatives of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, and the women's department of the RCP Central Committee. On the initiative of the Central Council to fight against P., the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs in 1924 published the 'Instruction to police bodies on fighting against prostitution', and the People's Commissariat of Justice included in the Criminal Code articles 169-a ('Inciting a woman to enter into sexual intercourse with a person in relation to whom the woman is materially or dependent by position is punishable by the punishment provided for in article 169', i.e., deprivation of liberty for a term of not less than three years) and 155-a ('Intentionally placing another person through sexual intercourse or other actions in danger of contracting a venereal disease entails deprivation of liberty or forced labor for a term of up to six months'). With the assistance of the Central Council to fight against P., the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars 'On measures to fight against venereal diseases' (see Venereal diseases—legislation) of great importance in the fight against P. was implemented, and finally, on the report of the Central Council, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR in 1929 adopted the resolution 'On measures to fight against prostitution'. While noting the decrease in P., this resolution required increased attention from Soviet public opinion for the complete eradication of P. and, for this reason, entrusted a number of tasks to the people's commissariats of Labor, Social Welfare, Education, Justice, Health, Trade, and Finance. Basically, the following measures were to be implemented by these departments: retraining and teaching work, first of all, to unemployed women with children under one year of age; providing work to pupils of children's homes; priority provision of work to women leaving therapeutic and labor prophylactic institutions; expansion of the network of institutions for labor re-education for adults and adolescents, creation of special homes for homeless women, providing them with material assistance, strengthening the fight against keeping of dens, intermediation and abetting of P., strengthening propaganda, and finally, expansion of the network of therapeutic and labor prophylactic institutions attached to venereal dispensaries for homeless and unemployed women suffering from venereal diseases. Therapeutic and labor prophylactic institutions attached to venereal dispensaries began to be created in 1924. Setting as their task the treatment and labor re-education of prostituting or on the verge of P. women suffering from venereal diseases and unemployed, labor prophylactic institutions and venereal dispensaries gradually turn into cells that actually coordinate practical measures to fight against P. at the local level and unite around themselves the working public. The organization of production processes in prophylactic institutions eliminates any charity toward the admitted women: from the very first day of admission to labor prophylactic institutions, they are enrolled in work, paying for their food and accommodation; with the improvement of their qualifications, their earnings also improve; all working women over time become members of professional organizations and, after acquiring sufficient labor skills and physical health, they are transferred to production, remaining for the necessary time under the supervision of the social patronage of the labor prophylactic institution. Cultural and educational work is carried out both on an individual basis for the most backward women and in appropriate circles. Social patronage, relying on broad support from the working public, in particular on delegates from city and district council sections, carries out investigative work, attracting to prophylactic institutions and other labor institutions single and homeless women. The presence among these contingents of women connected with the criminal world and stubbornly evading work required the creation for them, as deserters from the labor front, of special institutions of a closed type with a corresponding regime; in these closed institutions, the main measure is also the re-education of interned women through labor processes. Since 1930, the Central Council to fight against P. has been one of the sections of the Commission for the Improvement of the Living Conditions of the Working Population under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The industrialization of the Soviet Union and the construction of state farms and collective farms, which required huge numbers of workers, completely eliminated unemployment in the USSR, in particular among women, and thereby eliminated the main cause of P. The widespread implementation by the Soviet power of the above-mentioned measures, the active support by the working public of measures for the labor re-education of homeless women and for fighting against demand, led to a sharp decrease in the number of prostituting women. Surveys conducted in large cities already at the beginning of the first five-year plan testified to the absence in the USSR of P. as a mass phenomenon. This is also evidenced by the sharp decline in P. as a source of the spread of venereal diseases. Thus, in 1914 in Moscow, the number of infections with venereal diseases from P. reached 56.9% of all infections, in 1924 (according to data from a model venereal dispensary of the People's Commissariat of Health)—31.7%, and in 1931 this number falls to 9.8%. During this time, the registration of venereal diseases also sharply decreased: in 1913 there were 383.62 patients with venereal diseases per 10,000 population, and in 1931—80.44. According to data from the Leningrad Regional Venereal Institute, the number of infections with all venereal diseases from P. decreased from 48.2% in 1928 to 15.6% in 1931.

According to data from the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Venereal Institute, the infection rate from prostitution in the industrial centers of the region constituted only 7% of all infections from all venereal diseases. The noted simultaneous sharp decrease in venereal diseases during the years of Soviet construction indicates that P. as a mass phenomenon in the USSR has already disappeared, and therefore in the plan for combating social anomalies during the second five-year plan, the fight against P. is positioned as the struggle for the complete eradication of prostitution in the USSR.

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s. Galperin. Lit..- Bebel A., Capitalism and Prostitution, M., 1917; he himself, The Position of Women in the Present and Future, P., 1919; he himself, Woman and Socialism, M.-P., 1923; Blokh I., History of Prostitution, SPB, 1913; Blyashko A., Prostitution of the Early 20th Century, SPB, 1905; Bronner V. and Elistratov A., Prostitution in Russia, M., 1927; Dufour P., History of Prostitution of the Romance, Germanic, and Slavic Peoples, SPB, 1911; Elistratov A., On the Attachment of Women to Prostitution, Medical-Police Supervision, Kazan, 1903; Kaplun S., Politov L. and Gotlib S., Materials for a Bibliography of Prostitution in the Russian Language, Social Hygiene Collection No. 6, M.-L., 1925; Kampfmeier P., Prostitution as a Social-Class Phenomenon and the Social Struggle Against It, M., 1923; Lenin, The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart (Complete Collected Works, 3rd ed., Vol. XII); he himself, V International Congress for the Fight Against Prostitution (Collected Works, 3rd ed., Vol. XVI); Teodorovich M., Prostitution (Bibliography in the Russian Language), Venereal and Dermatological Diseases, 1927, Nos. 6, 7, 8, 11; Flexner A., Prostitution in Europe, Moscow, 1926; Zetkina K., The Woman Question, 1925; she herself, Lenin and the Emancipation of Woman, M., 1925; she herself, Lenin and the Working Woman, M.-L., 1927; Blaschko A., Hygiene of Venereal Diseases, Lpz., 1920; Bloch J. u. Loewenstein, Die Prostitution, B. I-II, B., 1912-25; Haeusstein H., Die Geschlechtskrankheiten einschliesslich der Prostitution, B., 1926 (bibliography); Moll A., Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaft, Lpz., 1921 (bibliography).