ABSTRACT
It is noteworthy that post-Soviet Russia saw a “new” problem that officially did not exist in the Soviet Union, namely prostitution. Up until the mid-1980s, only occasional police or media reports mentioned “women of amoral behavior” but always did so with an implied understanding that such women were an exception rather than a reality of Soviet life. Because of the complete denial that prostitution existed in the Soviet Union, very little reliable data exist of this phenomenon during the Soviet days. It was only in the late 1980s that the so-called “night butterflies” received attention from first writers, journalists and filmmakers, and then from lawyers, social scientists, medical professionals, and finally law enforcement officials.
