SEX & THE SOVIET MAN

When I studied at Leningrad University five years ago, Soviet newspapers and officials routinely denied the existence of prostitution in the USSR. Like all visitors, I rapidly discovered that these denials were absurd: prostitutes worked quite openly and aggressively in the major hotels catering to foreigners, such as the Evropeiskaya on Leningrad’s Nevsky Prospekt. Yet Soviet officialdom stubbornly clung to its doctrine. As one Moscow bureaucrat declared, “It does not exist here—that is why it cannot be prohibited.”

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Laurence Anthony

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SEX & THE SOVIET MAN

When I studied at Leningrad University five years ago, Soviet newspapers and officials routinely denied the existence of prostitution in the USSR. Like all visitors, I rapidly discovered that these denials were absurd: prostitutes worked quite openly and aggressively in the major hotels catering to foreigners, such as the Evropeiskaya on Leningrad’s Nevsky Prospekt. Yet Soviet officialdom stubbornly clung to its doctrine. As one Moscow bureaucrat declared, “It does not exist here—that is why it cannot be prohibited.”