Lenin orders the massacre of sex workers, 1918

Mike Harman

You seem fixated on this idea that the prostitutes were simply alcohol suppliers, ignoring the much more common trope of an otherwise sober man being corrupted by women.

I'm not ignoring that "common" trope (which you articulated now for the first time). I never heard of the trope that prostitutes cause their clients to drink (and it is concretely the alcohol consumption which is here the problem, not any alleged loss of stamina from having sex).

Russian soldiers who had been through a lot of misery in the past years would be prone to drinking all by themselves. And if, indeed quite possibly, they at the same time also used prostitutes, then in reality it's more likely that they themselves would buy the prostitutes a drink during the evening to keep merry company (like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind), and not vice versa.

And then I think the prostitutes would be more used for the company than for the sex (if both were still able to do this after a whole evening of drinking). So I don't see the incentive for prostitutes to make their clients drunk, unless they're paid more to the extent that they keep company during the evening. But whereas Clark Gable was a well-off chap who could afford that, the soviet soldiers were not so well-off I think.

Noa Rodman

Mike Harman

You seem fixated on this idea that the prostitutes were simply alcohol suppliers, ignoring the much more common trope of an otherwise sober man being corrupted by women.

I'm not ignoring that "common" trope (which you articulated now for the first time). I never heard of the trope that prostitutes cause their clients to drink (and it is concretely the alcohol consumption which is here the problem, not any alleged loss of stamina from having sex).

Russian soldiers who had been through a lot of misery in the past years would be prone to drinking all by themselves. And if, indeed quite possibly, they at the same time also used prostitutes, then in reality it's more likely that they themselves would buy the prostitutes a drink during the evening to keep merry company (like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind), and not vice versa.

And then I think the prostitutes would be more used for the company than for the sex (if both were still able to do this after a whole evening of drinking). So I don't see the incentive for prostitutes to make their clients drunk, unless they're paid more to the extent that they keep company during the evening. But whereas Clark Gable was a well-off chap who could afford that, the soviet soldiers were not so well-off I think.

I'd have thought the association has to do with sex workers hanging round in bars, or the availability of booze in brothels. Spanish anarchists also often made these (to modern eyes) quite spurious seeming associations among 'vices': lumping dances, paying for sex, getting drunk together, so maybe it's a generic puritanical lefty trope from a hundred years ago. All the same, it doesn't take too much imagination to see why sex workers might think that a pissed man is more likely to spend money on sex than a sober one...

Danny

puritanical lefty trope from a hundred years ago. All the same, it doesn't take too much imagination to see why sex workers might think that a pissed man is more likely to spend money on sex than a sober one...

I may be lacking in imagination. All I can imagine is that soldiers are generally "DtF", and prostitutes want them to spend what little money they have just on them, and not waste it on booze.

Noa Rodman

I may be lacking in imagination. All I can imagine is that soldiers are generally "DtF", and prostitutes want them to spend what little money they have just on them, and not waste it on booze.

Ah, that'll be why they don't serve alcohol in brothels, and why, if johns can't find a brothel, they're more often than not tipped off by locals that they can find what they're looking for at a nearby Frogurt outlet, where ladies of the night wait in eager anticipation of Clark Gable.

While I can almost believe that you think it's impossible that there's any link between boozing and paying for sex, it's stretching it a bit to insist that Lenin must have shared your point of view and therefore can't possibly have meant what he said?

Prostitutes often work bars, need to get punters/soldiers spending to please the bar bosses who allow them use of their premises (and may allow them use of rooms upstairs). Drunks spend more freely, lose inhibitions, get randy etc. So, in Lenin's terms, "making drunkards of the soldiers". It ain't rocket science.

PLease, please, please, deliver the Cheka neckshot and put Noa out of his writhing, squirming, twitching misery!

By jove, what a wonderful day for running up to the Kremlin and shouting through one of the windows:" Is Len In?"
From the Thoughts of Chairman Doddy

I haven't really paid attention to much they've done since In Rainbows, so I'm not really qualified to comment on whether Noa's mam actually wants to execute Radiohead or if she just thinks they should be rounded up and sent to a labour camp instead, but as I understand it, Noa's main claim here is that, as the Bolsheviks were mainly concerned about preventing drunkenness, it would be stupid for them to actively repress other phenomena that were tangentially/culturally associated with alcohol consumption - which is fair enough, that far I follow - and so that it's implausible that anyone would actually make such a stupid decision. But surely a look at the history of state attempts to control and legislate intoxication shows states making such stupid decisions time and time again?
I offered the example of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act earlier, I don't have a Big Book of Incidental Casualties in the War of Drugs on hand to consult, but trying to think of other examples, the Met haven't actually managed to murder Radiohead yet, but from 2005-2017 they did have a special form targeting events that included "DJs or MCs performing to a recorded backing track". Admittedly, the excuse for that was gun crime rather than drugs/alcohol, but it's pretty similar in its stupidity.
So, if Noa wants to argue that Lenin (and/or their mum?) was much more sensible than John Major, and the Cheka were that much more sensible than the Met, so they wouldn't make the same mistakes, then sure, go ahead and make that argument, but if it's just meant to be "cracking down on [raves/prostitution/grime music] solely because they're tangentially associated with [drugs/drinking/gun crime]? What a crazy idea, no-one could possibly be that stupid, it must all be a big metaphor and not people meaning what they literally say", then that argument doesn't really work, because it's really easy to provide examples where people have done precisely that.

Danny

you think it's impossible that there's any link between boozing and paying for sex,

No, I said it's quite possible and that's why Lenin could say prostitutes as a shorthand for boozing/bars.

Red Marriott

need to get punters/soldiers spending to please the bar bosses who allow them use of their premises (and may allow them use of rooms upstairs).

See, I don't think it was that organised back then. Whatever vague stories we read is that things happened on certain streets/parks by women working on their own (who probably just recently were forced to take that path), or at train stations.

Battlescarred

PLease, please, please, deliver the Cheka neckshot and put Noa out of his writhing, squirming, twitching misery!

It's a cringe-worthy thread, I'll give you that. Perhaps Mike can add in the intro some of my literature references I gave though (like the Cheka report).

R Totale

then that argument doesn't really work, because it's really easy to provide examples where people have done precisely that.

Your interpretation is on the level of someone who's pointed to look at the moon but they stare at the finger. Of decisive importance is how the addressee of Lenin's message understood and implemented it, which was straightforward: ban on production/sale of alcohol, arrest of drunken persons.

Noa Rodman

Kollontai acknowledges some local authorities did consider them criminals and thrown into forced labour camps (I was not denying that, just would like to be sure about/know more of the specifics), but it's not a party line, nor one that she advocates. If there was a leading bolshevik who consciously argued that prostitutes should be round up as criminals, I think that would be more damning than the actual incidences of arrests by some chekists in a pretty undefined legal environment (i.e. revolution/civil war).

1: No that is not remotely what she's saying in that speech. She explicitly says its perfectly acceptable to treat sex workers like other `labour deserters` and put them in labour camps if it is deemed necessary. She's opposing making it a law not because she doesn't want sex workers in labour camps, but because she doesn't see how its possible to come up with a law against sex work that doesn't also criminalise wives and possibly husbands as well.

"A prostitute is not a special case; as with other categories of deserter, she is only sent to do forced labour if she repeatedly avoids work. Prostitutes are not treated any differently from other labour deserters. This is an important and courageous step, worthy of the world’s first labour republic."

"There were some on the commission who were in favour of this, but they had to give up the idea, which did not follow on logically from our basic premises. How is a client to be defined? Is he someone who buys a woman’s favours? In that case the husbands of many legal wives will be guilty. Who is to decide who is a client and who is not? It was suggested that this problem be studied further before a decision was made, but the Central Department and the majority of the commission were against this. As the representative of the Commissariat of justice, admitted, if it were not possible to define exactly when a crime had been committed, then the idea of punishing clients was untenable."

2: The very reason she is giving that speech in 1921 is to argue against a proposal by leading Bolsheviks to pass such a law.

"How should we fight this situation? The interdepartmental commission had to tackle the important question of whether or not prostitution should be made a criminal offence. Many of the representatives of the commission were inclined to the view that prostitution should be an offence, arguing that professional prostitutes are clearly labour deserters. If such a law were passed, the round-up and placing of prostitutes in forced labour camps would become accepted policy."

You keep framing your increasingly bizarre arguments as being as accurate as possible to the information, but here you've decided to give us your expert opinion when its quite clear you didn't even bother reading the text beyond the bit quoted above.

You are quite literally saying the opposite of what Kollontai is saying here. If this the standards you've been using throughout then that's very worrying.

The very reason she is giving that speech in 1921 is to argue against a proposal by leading Bolsheviks to pass such a law.

so she is against the view that prostitution as such should be an offence, do I understand it correctly?

Noa Rodman

The very reason she is giving that speech in 1921 is to argue against a proposal by leading Bolsheviks to pass such a law.

so she is against the view that prostitution as such should be an offence, do I understand it correctly?

No, no you don't. She says she opposed the proposed laws against sex work on the grounds that the proposals couldn't define what sex work actually was in a way that didn't apply also to every married woman. She also states that the proposals that advocating criminalising clients would also criminalise husbands.

She also argued that the proposals were unnneccesary since they could and did already send suspected sex workers to labour camps along with the other categories of labour deserters.

She's saying sex workers are commiting labour desertion and should be treated as such, not singled out..

Well seems I could be wrong about the level of organisation of prostitution back then in Nizhny.

The Nizhny Novgorod Fair was annually held in July. According to Russian wiki:

After the establishment of the Soviet power in the city, the fair continued to function for a while, but on January 17, 1918 the Nizhny Novgorod Soviets ordered to annex (?) the fair grounds to Nizhny Novgorod (city?) and abolish the meeting of authorized fair merchants and the fair committee.

The economic policy pursued by the Soviet government did not allow the functioning of normal trade relations. So in 1918 at the fair it was assumed that the goods would change only for bread, without cash calculations. As a result, the trade turnover amounted to 28 million rubles, while goods for another 40 million rubles were simply not realized.

A note to some 1910 report says that in Nizhny "at the time of the famous fair, where prostitutes from all over Russia gathered" (ежегодно приглашаемая в Нижний Новгород на время работы знаменитой ярмарки, куда съезжались проститутки со всей России).

Here's a 2016 article (in Russian) 'Sexual Rhythms of the Nizniy Novgorod Fair' (in the mid-19th century): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2866355

Abstract:
The article considers the issues related to the features of functioning of the market of sexual services during the Nizniy Novgorod Fair at early 1840s. On the basis of archival documents it can be traced the routs of movements, ethnic and social structure of the gangs of prostitutes, the peculiarities of the organizing the delivery of intimate services during the period of the fair. It is noted the behavioral specifics of prostitutes related to the trade cycles of the fair. It shows the attempts of the authorities to counteract the spread of immoral behavior.

Did they solve the problem for the future? No. Loving himself in the Volga expanses in 1858, A. Dumas wrote about the settlement spreading in the lowlands near Nizhny Novgorod:

"This town is entirely inhabited by women, that is, it's simply a town of prostitutes; there are from seven to eight thousand inhabitants who come here with the most philanthropic [love-of-mankind] goals from all parts of the European and even Asian Russia for six weeks of the fair. "

Seeing in the summer of 1861 another French writer T. Gautier, the priestesses of love demonstrated the same sexual practices of hunting for clients as their predecessors from 1843:

"Sometimes the drozhki carried more beautifully two painted and powdered women, as if they were idols, in bright clothes, crinolines. They smiled, showing their teeth, and looked to the right and left with the carnivorous looks of the courtesans, as if setting up nets for catching whenever possible all coveted looks on them. Fair in Nizhny Novgorod attracts these birds - robbers from all the bad places in Russia, and even from more remote places. Steamers bring them in whole flocks, they are given a special quarter. Insatiable debauchery wants its prey - more or less fresh meat. "

After a busy trading day, a vicious fun began:

"Through the open doors, the illuminated windows of houses, in the whirring of balalaikas, mixed with the guttural cries, the bizarre silhouettes of people appeared. On the narrow boards of the sidewalks the unsteady gait of the drunken shadow or the person in extravagant toilets moved, then drowning in darkness, then arising in a scourging light. "

Unlimited fun and a drunken frenzy grinded merchants' profits, fueling the vicious industry of sexual services.

Prostitution was highly state-regulated in pre-revolutionary Russia. If Nizhy's role as a centre of prostitution was well known even by foreigners it's most likely Lenin knew it too and that motivated his notorious order.

I think that twitter drama involving this is quite petty (including Libcom calling Lenin a "counter-revolutionary"), but as a native Russian speaker, I confirm the translation provided is correct. Prostitutes (who are making soldiers drunk), are definitely ordered to be deported and shot, while the soldiers themselves are not. (Edit: I think he's actually insisting that these prostitutes should be first deported somewhere outside the city (more like "taken out"), and then shot, although it's unclear why the order is reverse). But prostitutes are definitely the object of Lenin's ire here.

It is ambiguous whether "who are making soldiers drunk" is descriptive ("all prostitutes are making soldiers drunk, shoot them") or distinguishing ("shoot only those prostitutes who are making soldiers drunk"), since according to Russian syntax, a comma is needed to separate these clauses in both cases.

Another linguistic ambiguity is the fate of former officers (are they grammatically subordinated to "shoot" or "making drunk"), but the context makes it clear. This ambiguity is what Yerofeev, mentioned on Twitter, was probably mocking.

https://youtu.be/pcagF8gjNqc

Rurkel

I think that twitter drama involving this is quite petty (including Libcom calling Lenin a "counter-revolutionary"), but as a native Russian speaker, I confirm the translation provided is correct. Prostitutes (who are making soldiers drunk), are definitely ordered to be deported and shot, while the soldiers themselves are not. (Edit: I think he's actually insisting that these prostitutes should be first deported somewhere outside the city (more like "taken out"), and then shot, although it's unclear why the order is reverse). But prostitutes are definitely the object of Lenin's ire here.

Yeah appreciate your honesty despite your perhaps political disagreement.
I personally (admin: personal view) don't understand why some present-day supporters of Lenin are seriously trying to deny this order which he clearly and indisputably gave.
Anarchists have their problems, but I can honestly say I have never encountered an anarchist who, when confronted by, say an objectionable or anti-Semitic comment by Bakunin, has tried to deny he said it or claim that it was mistranslated. They have only said things like yes he said that, yes it was wrong, but there is still other useful stuff that he did say.

Mike Harman

If Rurkel or any other Russian speakers are still reading, I'd be interested on your views about claims that because Lenin used 'prostitute' as an insult against political opponents elsewhere, this must mean he's referring to political opponents here.

Lenin's political opponents were wandering the streets of the city offering drinks to Red Army soldiers? It contextually doesn't make much sense.