Siobhán Hearne
Prosecuting Procurement in the Russian Empire
Hearne, Siobhán
Authors
Abstract
Concern about the issue of forced prostitution reached its height in the Russian empire (as elsewhere in Europe and the Americas) at the turn of the twentieth century, as part of the wider international “white slave” panic. In 1909, new antiprocurement statutes were incorporated into the Russian empire’s Criminal Code to ensure that those who forced, coerced, or encouraged young women to enter the commercial sex industry felt the full force of the law. This article uses a case study of the Russian empire’s Estonian provinces (Estliand and Lifliand) to highlight the regional nature of Russian imperial experience. Prosecuting procurement was aligned with the priorities of local government, and the authorities in Revel’ (Tallinn) and Iu’rev (Tartu) used the issue of procurement to bolster their revenue. Here, the statutes gave the authorities additional tools for targeting individuals, such as managers of unlicensed brothels, who deprived the government of the income it generated from regulating the commercial sex industry. Drawing on court cases from the early 1910s, this article also examines the interaction of lower-class people with the state, their engagement with the legal system, their knowledge of the law, and the rhetorical strategies they employed to in their attempts to secure specific outcomes.
Citation
Hearne, S. (2020). Prosecuting Procurement in the Russian Empire. Journal of Social History, 54(1), 185-209. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shz040
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Online Publication Date | Jul 18, 2019 |
Publication Date | 2020-09 |
Deposit Date | Jul 19, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Jul 18, 2021 |
Journal | Journal of Social History |
Print ISSN | 0022-4529 |
Electronic ISSN | 1527-1897 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 54 |
Issue | 1 |
Pages | 185-209 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shz040 |
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This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of social history following peer review. The version of record
Hearne, Siobhán (2020). Prosecuting Procurement in the Russian Empire. Journal of Social History 54(1): 185-209 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shz040
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