Russia’s Babylon

Abstract

This chapter explores how writers allegorically connected the city of St. Petersburg to the urban, registered prostitute. Built to resemble the capitals of western Europe, St. Petersburg looked and felt distinctly alien in the Russian landscape. Peter the Great's “Window to Europe” functioned symbolically as a passageway through which vice — and particularly prostitution — entered Russia. Cultural production turned to the image of the “fallen woman” (padshaia zhenshchina) to amplify the city's status as “fallen” in the eyes of God and the nation. But sexual commerce on the city streets, in particular Nevsky Prospect, and in the numerous cafés and taverns also offered St. Petersburg citizens a chance for adventure and sexual excitement. Examining the body of literature on prostitution in St. Petersburg shows how visual and print culture of the period mapped the duality of the city onto the prostitute's physical body and spiritual state.