Policing prostitution : regulating the lower classes in late imperial Russia / Siobhán Hearne.

9780191874512 (ebook) :

First edition.

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

1 online resource (240 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps (black and white).

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From the 1840s until 1917, prostitution was legally tolerated across the Russian Empire under a system known as regulation. Medical police were in charge of compiling information about registered prostitutes and ensuring that they followed the strict rules prescribed by the imperial state governing their visibility and behaviour. The vast majority of women who sold sex hailed from the lower classes, as did their managers and clients. This study examines how regulation was implemented, experienced, and resisted amid rapid urbanization, industrialization, and modernization around the turn of the twentieth century. Each chapter examines the lives and challenges of different groups who engaged with the world of prostitution, including women who sold sex, the men who paid for it, mediators, the police, and wider urban communities.

Oxford scholarship online.

Print version :

Books / Online

English

April 22, 2021

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Specialized.