North Ossetia's Secret Sin

St Petersburg drug addiction specialists Marina and Sergei had a rude awakening on their first night in a hotel in the North Ossetian capital Vladikavkaz.

“I couldn’t get back to sleep because a pimp was having a loud row with a prostitute in a room next door. He yelled at her to go to a client, while she cried and kept saying she wouldn’t work that night,” Sergei said.

“Other nights were no better,” complained Marina. “Shrieking girls ran up and down the stairs, and we got several phone calls from pimps offering us sexual services.”

Sergei expressed bemusement at the experience. “I never imagined that there would be prostitutes here,” he said. “I thought that trade was under a strict ban.”

Prostitution is rife in North Ossetia - but nobody will acknowledge its existence. This very traditional society has simply elected to pretend that the problem does not exist.

But sociologist Marat Edzoyev told IWPR, “It would be irresponsible to deny the existence of prostitution as a social phenomenon in North Ossetia. It exists all right, and depends in no small degree on society’s attitude to it.”

A spokesperson from the interior ministry explained, “We hardly ever discuss prostitution - only on those rare occasions when we get news of a brothel being busted. And even then, we are more interested in detaining drug addicts and delinquents.”

And Vartanush Muradian, who heads North Ossetia’s juvenile delinquency department, said, “I don’t deny that there is prostitution in our republic, but I can’t give you any specific figures either.”

It’s almost impossible to monitor the scale of the industry. Prostitution is not a criminal offence at present, and is punishable only by a fine or a small detention period.

With the sex trade so clandestine, many respectable-looking saunas and hotels can hide dark secrets.

One security guard, who did not want to be named, told IWPR that he had worked at a seemingly upmarket hotel for more than a year. “The things I saw there!” he exclaimed.

“The place was crawling with prostitutes. Some worked the street outside the main entrance after dark, while others arrived with hotel guests. Particularly large numbers of hookers would be present when groups of visitors came to the republic - especially athletes.”

One law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, “I hate to admit it, but prostitution in North Ossetia has gone up exponentially. There are prostitutes in restaurants and bars - both girls on regular staff there, and those who come to get picked up. They work the streets as well, mainly outside hotels.”

Some prostitutes do not fit the conventional social stereotype at all. Divorcee Veronika, a 30-year-old from the capital, initially took a job as a waitress to provide for her young son, but found it hard to cope financially. “At first I tried to brush off indecent propositions from men – but eventually I risked it,” she said.

“My son doesn’t know what I do. But now he has a computer and goes to a good school, and I am saving up for his university education. In five years, when he’s 17, I’ll have enough money for him to go to a law school and then I’ll quit this profession.”

The secrecy surrounding the sex trade resulted in the shock of his life for Marat, a young Ossetian man. “My ex-fiancée came from a good family - she’s well-educated, beautiful, clever and has good manners,” he said sadly.

“But every time I tried to get intimate with her, she always said we had to wait till we were married. So the day was set, and everything was arranged.

“My friends decided to throw a stag party for me and dragged me to a sauna. There we had a few drinks and ordered some prostitutes. To my great horror, one of the women was my bride-to-be.”

Such secrecy has led to a lucrative ancillary industry - the surgical restoration of “virginity” for as little as 2,000 rubles (just under 70 US dollars).

Alexander, a gynecologist, claims that he carries out this procedure so well that nothing is ever detected and some young women use his services more than once.

Bella, another doctor who performs such operations, told IWPR, “We restore virginity because a bride’s value based on her purity in our republic. But it doesn’t matter whether you’re a real virgin or not – it’s only important that your husband thinks you are.

“I’m so glad I don’t have a son. If I did, he could bring a ‘sewn-up’ girl into the house. I think girls should be honest with their husbands instead of pretending.”

Yanna Voitova is a freelance journalist based in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia