The issue of prostitution is an issue that been every human society from the Neolithic to the Present. However, its expression has been different in every society. In the Neolithic age, I believe that prostitution probably would have just been human versions of what we already see among animals that are close ancestors to us. However, with the rise of Stratified societies in human cultures, prostitution and the way it was being expressed by man was changing to fit needs in every empire, nation and culture.
My site focuses on the Byzantines but I sometimes talk about other cultures within the Orthodox sphere or anything that I find interesting and connect to the Byzantines. Russia is a country that I love and find so fascinating to write about and think about. They are on the periphery of Europe and yet they have this mixture of Eastern and Western culture that is truly remarkable to see. While the Western aspects in Russia are stronger now than during the times of the Tsardom of Moscow before the rise of Peter I and his many reforms, the Eastern aspects of Russian culture have stayed there and are an important aspect of Russian culture.
On the issue of prostitution in the Russian mind, the Russians have always been something of a strange people in this area. After the Soviet Union, the stereotype of blunt and highly experienced carnal women was a stereotype that western audiences saw in many movies. Before the 1990s, the Russians were seen as a prudish people who didn’t care for sex but romance. However, this was always an idealization by some Marxists and Socialists who wanted to hide away from human nature and make their system seem as if it was superior to the Captialists.
Human nature remains, no matter what political system it is.
While the Communists wanted to believe that they could transform man, it seems that gravity was pulling down the weight of the Soviet Union. Yama the Pit by the Russian author, Alexander Kuprin, was adapted into tv miniseries in 1991 right before the breakup of the Soviet Union into multiple states. The series was a wave of Russians now being able to express the true reality of human nature instead of having to be in the prison of idealism that would not allow for any acknowledge of immorality that would weaken the state.
Of course, the Imperial Russian State did not aspire for Utopian idealism like in the Soviet Union. It was an autocratic state that whose ideology was based on Orthodox Christianity and Autocracy. It wasn’t autocratic as the Qing Empire, whose state was much less forgiving to dissidents. While Tsarist Russia could be very brutal towards anyone was trying to overthrow the Empire, Imperial Russia was not a pagan state but a Christian state.
In the depictions of prostitution in Imperial Russia, the prostitutes in many novels are seen in this Victorian manner, while there is this undercurrent of using their transgressive status to say something about human nature. They are fallen women or they are public women. The legalization of prostitution in the Russian Empire in 1843 by the Czar Nicholas I, gave women in the profession legal recognition. However, they were still seen as outcasts and as essentially violating social order, so they were put into ghettos and were essentially not allowed to have interactions with society that would weaken the society outside of what they were providing to men.
Чистые 2024 is essentially a series that mirrors Yama: The Pit somewhat however, with a new modern sensibility. In the trailer for the series, which is premiering on the Wink Streaming service in Russia in June, we clearly see that series is going to be giving an indepth look at women n in an undergound brothel in one of the most sophisticated and prosperous cities in the Russian Empire, the city of St. Petersburg. In the scenes, we can clearly see that much attention was made to bring the series to life and bring viewers into the world of early 20th Century Russia.
I have been very interested in the premise of the series for some time. Its description seems to be quite Neo-Victorian. It talks about the purity of the women in the brothel, specifically their hearts. They may not be pure in the sense of some maiden in house and unable to interact with anyone but the women have this innate nature to be more than housewives.
Overall, I believe that a series should be great but yet people don’t really to seem to be hurting the Macedone.
Byzantine-Empire.com 