ABSTRACT
In late 1985, the Soviet press began to broach the subject of prostitution, albeit with considerable caution and characteristic prudishness. An article in Sovetskaia Belorussiia on violations in currency transactions, attested to the existence of a special "foreign-currency" variety of prostitution, but cautiously avoided discussing the problem of prostitution itself. Indeed, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR and the analogous codes for the Union republics carried no penalty for prostitution. The number of articles in the criminal code that might have been used to bring charges against a woman practicing prostitution were quite limited. A. Grishchenko believed designating prostitution as a criminal act to be the most effective way of solving the problem that had developed. The real cause for concern, however, was the evident lack of alternative measures to criminal repression in the arsenals of the organs responsible for curing social ills.
