ABSTRACT
As the Russian Federation evolved from the ashes of the Soviet Union, an emerging phenomenon appeared to take shape in the form of an increasing tendency to tolerate the ‘sex industry’, ‘trafficking’ and ‘prostitution’ and to accept them as essential parts of post-Soviet society. At the same time, Russian society has also appeared to reject, if not ignore, such notions as ‘violence’, ‘discrimination’, ‘inequality’ and ‘sexual harassment’. Attitudes towards sex since the fall of the Soviet Union provides just one example of how women have been commodified in post-communist Russia. At the same time, women's participation in democratic processes, as well as attitudes towards such participation, has been very poor. In combination, the democratization processes taking place in Russia have not had a positive effect on women and women's security. Russian democratization has been operationalized largely through an assumption that periodic elections combined with an unregulated market economy leads to democracy. In this chapter I wish to raise the conflicting issues around democratization processes and how this has affected women, in particular with regards to attitudes towards the sex trade. The prognosis does not look promising for Russian women and their overall security. I argue here that we need to look into Russia's past, and the attitudes inherited from the USSR, to understand how attitudes towards women have developed over time. I then examine this issue through an analysis of the relationship between economics and the concept of ‘democracy’ occurring at both the state and individual levels, as well as through concepts within liberalism (negative and positive freedom). Thereafter I discuss current state policy, what values are reflected in these policies towards prostitution and trafficking, and how this relates to what democracy means in Russia.
