On the issue of prostitution in Kazan

The widespread involvement of women in production and the complete elimination of unemployment have overcome and uprooted one of the most shameful legacies of the capitalist system — prostitution. And not only economic factors, but also the domestic and legal ones associated with them — the family and marriage regulations -deprive prostitution of the soil on which it could develop. Therefore, we are currently studying prostitution, taking into account and examining the results of socio-economic and sanitary-preventive measures, at the same time changing the line of our behavior in the main approach to the full recovery of this phenomenon. Our anti-prostitution activities went in different directions. Through special legislative provisions, women's participation in various types of production has significantly expanded; this has contributed to the complete elimination of female unemployment and the creation of skilled workers. Taking into account that, as a legacy of the old system, we met a culturally and politically backward declassified element among women, the health authorities organized medical and preventive institutions for this group of women-labor dispensaries. The tasks of the latter included both therapeutic functions, the sanitization of chronic infections, such as syphilis and gonorrhea, and labor political re-education, which aimed to give certain qualifications and introduce prostitutes to the production processes of the country. In addition to these measures, a punitive policy was applied in relation to everything that contributes to the involvement of women in prostitution (aiding and abetting, hotbeds of brothels, etc.). General social measures concerning the involvement of women in production are so prominently reflected in our daily reality that it seems to us completely superfluous to cite figures and facts proving this. But one point should be noted. If, according to various previous statistics, the peasant mass prevails among prostitutes, who came to the city to search for earnings, then with the change in the social structure of the village, with the introduction of planning in the use of labor, the village ceased to serve as a supplier of prostitution. In order to understand more clearly the socio-preventive measures that are dictated by the issues of combating prostitution in this reconstructive period, we would consider it appropriate to understand the accumulated material of the survey of prostitutes during the period from 1926 to 1931 in the mountains. Kazan.