The political exclusion and commodification of women - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 251

problematic' (Brunovskis and Tyldum 2004:17). This problem of differentia-
tion has been a topic of methodological discussion for the last fifty-five years.
I agree with the words of Askola who posits that 'approaches to trafficking in
women greatly draw from attitudes to prostitution in general, and these vary
greatly from one country to another' (Askola 2001:17).
In the era of the Soviet Union, the state declared that trafficking and pros-
titution would not be a problem. Women were deemed to be liberated and
free. They were socially active and independent.
The new socialist government of Russia believed that prostitutes were
the vestige of capitalism, so they became the first in the line of those for
whom the government was going to do a lot of good. It was officially
proclaimed that communism was the grave of prostitutio n. 1
Elizabeth Waters has noted that the dominant discourses surrounding an
understanding of the problem of prostitution in Russia are explicitly dif-
ferent from Western ones. After the October Revolution there was a period
where two coexisting points of view on prostitution existed: prostitutes as
villains and prostitutes as victims. The latter was reflected in the words of
Lenin, who wrote: 'prostitution is a great misfortune for humanity' (Lenin
quoted by Waters 1992:160). This understanding of prostitution did not
hold the day, however. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the West
(understood primarily as Europe and North America) appeared to address the
issue of prostitution quite differently than the Soviet Union. The Western
perspective developed as a result of the scientific and public debates on
sexuality, and the 'moral' side of the problem was reduced. In the Soviet
Union the morality of the issue became the crux of the problem. In the
West 'rescue work has been replaced by welfare, and prostitution redefined
as a medical problem … In the Soviet Union, this process was interrupted
by the repressive policies of the early thirties' (Waters 1992:174). Hence,
in the former Soviet Union prostitution was criminalized and prostitutes
were categorized as villains, not victims. As such, it is difficult to find any
evidence that prostitution and trafficking actually existed during the time
of the Soviet Union. While prostitution may not have been a mass or open
phenomenon, this does not mean that it did not exist at all, however, but it
was well hidden. Prostitution and pimping were called a 'parasitic lifestyle'.
The issue of trafficking was not taken into consideration by the USSR at
all. For example, in 1966 there was a discussion within the United Nations
about establishing a committee to address the problem of slavery and traf-
ficking in women. The response of the Soviet Union was as follows: 'the
Soviet delegate condemned slavery but insisted that apartheid, racialism
and colonialism were even more pressing problems and only these should
be regarded as manifestations of modern slavery' (Barry 1984:63). When,
many years later, the political situation drastically (and quickly) changed