By Britt Kramvig and Kirsten Stien
Together with researcher Larissa Riabova at the Kola Science Centre in Murmansk, we are carrying out a pilot project, which
was initiated by the Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. The project explores the consequences
of Russian prostitution in Finnmark, the northernmost region of Norway. We are looking at the work being done at the moment
and we will point out areas where further research is needed, as well as suggest various actions to be taken. In this article,
we will place the current debate on Russian prostitution in a historical framework and discuss the new discourses and counter-discourses
which are being established from an urban-rural/centre-margin perspective.
The background to these developments can be found in the political changes that took place in the whole of Eastern Europe
in the early 1990’s. In various public fora, these changes were described as “the fall of the iron curtain”. As the metaphor
suggests, there had been in the west a perceived insurmountability and impenetrability of the borders with the countries in
the Eastern block. In Norway, the changes that came with the fall of the “curtain” were perhaps most dramatic for Finnmark,
the region that shares a border with both Russia and Finland in the north. During the cold war there had been some bilateral
cultural exchange between east and west, but there had been no focus on or experience of the world that existed beyond “the
iron curtain”. However, after the fall of the communist regime, Finnmark suddenly found itself in a new and extended regional
context, with large military bases and nuclear plants and a city the size of Oslo within a few hours drive from the border.
Not least, the opening of the border meant that the inhabitants of the region were confronted with massive differences in
the standards and ways of living on either side of the border.
From enemies to neighbours
The establishment of new relations between former enemies was part of the institutional and individual challenge that the
political changes resulted in. The need for a development of the Barents region was met with great enthusiasm, and implementation
of political, financial and cultural co-operation across the existing national borders was strongly emphasised. However, there
were also expressions of a certain apprehension and fear of the consequences of the opening of the border; especially concerning
social and cultural conditions. The new situation lead to an increased flow of people and goods in the region, and this flow
of bodies created an opportunity for the exchange of power and sexuality which was also the basis for the establishment of
a whole new set of human relationships across the border. The negotiations between the various actors in the development of
border exchange was characterised by optimism, but also by a lack of predictability and by fear. Within a context which was
characteristically random and uncertain, the focus on Russian prostitution became a way of highlighting and discussing these
complex and contradictory circumstances - and further, for maintaining and strengthening the established discourses on north
and south (regions of Norway, ed) and between the urban and rural masculinities.
In the beginning of the 1990’s, an extensive Russian market trade in glass and porcelain, uniforms and clothes, crafts and
embroidery, as well as in legally imported quotas of cigarettes and alcohol started up outside established shopping centres
in both smaller and larger communities. Very soon, demands for the curtailment of these activities were made, and the arguments
used were connected to the view that it included the unwanted and immoral trading and selling of sex, alcohol and cigarettes.
The fact that shopkeepers also regarded this market trade as competing with their own business most certainly contributed
to its closure. The official explanation was that the Russians entered the country on a tourist visa and did thus not have
the work permit needed for running a sales business. However, seen from a northern regional perspective, these trade relations
and the establishment of various forms of contacts were not a new phenomenon.
The Pomor trade
The flow of goods, services and people, which was called the Russian trade (Nielsen, 1992) or the Pomor trade, has a long tradition in the northern regions of Scandinavia and Russia and has probably taken place since the end of the 17th century. It started when people from the east, in exchange for fish, began bringing goods that were needed in Finnmark: rye flour, sailcloth and ropes, and later also oats, barley, hemp, birch-bark and timber. The trade grew to such an extent that it developed its own specific language, called “Russian Norwegian”, which facilitated the necessary negotiations. The 1917 revolution brought an abrupt end to this trading co-operation. However, because of the proximity of Russia, these contacts never entirely disappeared. Many marriages had taken place across the national borders. We cannot disregard a certain feeling of community based on the experience of similar living and political conditions in this peripheral arctic region. During the Second World War, young men from Finnmark received military training in Russia and fought as northern partisans for the liberation of Norway. During the escalation of the Cold War, these alliances proved to have almost disastrous consequences for the individuals involved, since they were regarded as enemies to the state of Norway. The issue of a politically motivated surveillance of Norwegian and Sámi (moderate) left wing politicians which has been revealed only during the last ten years, is part of that same history.
These circumstances indicate that many of the inhabitants of Finnmark have occupied a different position in relation to their neighbours in the east than has been the case in the rest of Norway. The geographical proximity coupled with the fact that “the Russians” have not just been an abstract category, but a community of people one has interacted with, make the antagonisms that exist in the region today seem paradoxical. This is clear when a difference is established between national Norwegian media perceptions of the situation and those of the various local media (Rossvær, 1998).
Five discourses on Russian prostitution
Dag Stenvoll (2002) has identified five different discourses on Russian prostitution through an analysis of reports and articles
published in the Norwegian media since the beginning of 1990.
The first discourse focuses on the fear of organised crime, where prostitution, despite the fact that it is not criminalized, is seen as a possible and probable invasion of criminal
and mafia-related activities in Norway. This discourse also includes the fear of increased trading in drugs from Russia.
Fear of contamination as a result of open borders is the second discourse. Throughout the 1990’s this has been connected to the fear of tuberculosis
contamination from Russia, but particularly to the fear of sexually transmittable diseases such as gonorrhoea, syphilis and
HIV. In contrast to other discourses on sexually transmittable diseases, the solution presented here is not campaigns for
the use of condoms to limit the risk, but restrictions in the traffic across the border. It is the social and moral health
of the community that is at risk, not merely the biological one.
Fear of moral and social collapse of the local communities where this activity takes place forms the third discourse. In the public accounts, the focus has
been on maintaining good environments for bringing up children as well as harmonious local communities, which through the
effects of this traffic are facing social and moral breakdown.
The fourth discourse describes how perceptions of prostitution have lead to bullying and stigmatisation of Russian women and children who have settled in northern Norway for reasons other than prostitution. As Stenvoll claims,
prostitution is singled out as the reason behind this stigmatisation and the solution, accordingly, is to get rid of prostitution.
The fifth discourse tries to direct attention away from prostitution and instead focus on the new opportunities that “new
neighbour relations” represent both culturally and socially and, perhaps not least, also financially.
“We” and “the others”
Concepts that are repeatedly used within the first four discourses are characterised by the words flow, flood, invasion, explosion,
hordes – all of which suggest a process which is out of control and to an extent which is threatening or destructive both
socially and morally. The problem-oriented discourses constitute the Russian woman/Russians/clients as “problems” which need
to be solved by taking certain negative actions. These discourses are not only part of and maintain the difference between
us and the others, they also define what is seen as the moral community and what are “normal” activities for “Norwegian” women
and men.
The establishment of the concept of buyers of sex as a synonym for bachelors in Finnmark can be regarded in relation to these
popular myths. They form a moral category in the negotiations of a local moral order in a region where extensive changes are
taking place. At the same time, the category of bachelors in Finnmark is implicated in the negotiations of masculinities,
which bring to the fore the relation between the urban and the rural (which in a Norwegian context is also the relation between
the northern and southern parts of the country). Men at the periphery become the other, in contrast to whom new and urban
masculinities are established.
These discourses also indicate that the fear of Russia as the enemy has been incorporated into the concept of Russia as neighbour.
Thus the image of an enemy and the discourse on the relation between Russia as a superpower and Norway as a potential victim
are reproduced. This image of the enemy is also expressed in accounts of Russian prostitution. This was illustrated in a media
presentation of our project, where a journalist alleged that we had said that “there is trend that the extent of the sex trade
carried out by the women from the superpower is moving further south in Norway” (Nordlys 19 March 02). Treating Russian women
in Norway as representatives of a superpower is indicative of how collective fear seeks new images of the enemy, which appear
through national accounts of them.
“They are human beings too”
The validity of these discourses was seen during our fieldwork in Finnmark, in our encounters with the local community, and in conversations with men who buy sex from Russian women. Simultaneously, we observed local attempts at renegotiating established discourses. Both the geographical and the social proximity to the Russian people’s struggle with their living conditions can result in putting a pressure on the community’s perceptions of its humanity and thus the stereotypical images disseminated by popular myths needed to be revised and renegotiated. This took the form of what we would like to call a counter-discourse, where the agenda includes a re-humanising of the Russian women. One of the perspectives within this discourse is that “they are human beings too”. For the men, this perspective also served as an argument for inviting these women to their houses. This re-humanising can be seen as a reaction to the de-humanising that both Russian women and bachelors (buyers of sex) in Finnmark have suffered in the national public arena in Norway, especially in the media. However, we are faced with a paradox in this situation. When Russian women are described as victims who need to be protected, they are also given a role which is passive and de-humanised. It tends to limit their opportunities for acting as a subject, which in turn is the basis for being able to take on other roles which are normally available to women and men. The process of de-humanising also forms a basis for how people behave socially in encounters with these Russian women. Many stories are told of Russian women who have been denied entry to restaurants or have been bullied in public places because of suspected prostitution.
“Ordinary women”
We found clear tendencies towards a situation where the notion of Russians as enemies is upheld in many contexts and is used
as a basis by which the category of Russian women/Russian women in prostitution is constructed and maintained. However, there
are attempts at counter-discourses. These are partly found within the stories of the new neighbour relation, but we saw it
most clearly in the many efforts to describe Russian women as ordinary women. The bachelors in Finnmark have not however been
the object of a similar re-humanisation. A possible explanation to this might be that this category is part of many different
contexts where the concept is used to negotiate the relations between east and west (Russia-Norway), between north and south
(in Norway), and between urban and rural masculinities.
In this article, we have put forward the argument that the national Norwegian rhetoric connected to the situation before “the
fall of the iron curtain” has lived on after the fall since the notion of Russians as enemies has continued to exist in the
new connections that have been established, especially in the prostitution trade. However, in some various local publicities,
Russian women and men have been ascribed the same form of humanity as the local actors associate with themselves. At the breaking
point between a national Norwegian public arena and local publicities, hegemonic positions can be challenged and made the
object of new stories as to what kinds of perception we are to hold about ourselves and the other.
Britt Kramvig is researcher at the NORUT Finnmark Research Institute. Kirsten Stien is researcher at the Center of Child Welfare Research in Northern Norway.
Notes
Nielsen, J.P 1992. ”Norge og Russland i nord” [Norway and Russia in the north]. In Ottar 4/192 nr 192.
Rossvær, Viggo 1998. Ruinlandskap og modernitet [Landscape of ruins and modernity]. Pax forlag
Stenvoll, Dag 2002. “From Russia with Love? Newspaper Coverage of Cross-Border Prostitution in Northern Norway, 1990-2001”.
In The European Journal of Women's Studies Vol 9 (2), pp. 143-162.
First published in NIKK magasin 1 2002 © NIKK
