| Popis: |
This chapter provides a summary of the key arguments of the book: that reactions to regulation were complicated and multifaceted; that regulation varied widely from place to place; and that there was a huge gulf between the ambitions of the tsarist authorities for policing prostitution, and the corresponding reality. Thereafter, the chapter examines the abolition of the regulation system in July 1917 by the Provisional Government. The social and economic dislocation of the First World War, revolution, and Civil War undoubtedly saw many more women engaging in prostitution. After seizing power from the Provisional Government in October 1917, the Bolsheviks set out to eradicate prostitution as they regarded it as an unwanted remnant of the bourgeois, capitalist past. However, prejudices against women who worked as prostitutes that had been established under the regulation system were difficult to shift, particularly the perception that women who sold sex were responsible for the transmission of venereal diseases. These stubborn ideas meant that attempts to eliminate prostitution in the early Soviet period were destined to be unsuccessful. |
