Currency, Control, and Stigma: The Complex Lives of Soviet Ukraine's Currency Prostitutes

This article discusses the phenomenon of currency prostitution in Soviet Ukraine in the late 1980s, a period marked by glasnost – a policy of wider dissemination of information initiated under Mikhail Gorbachev – and increased public discourse on sexuality. The growing visibility of currency prostitutes in the mass media – predominantly women who engaged in relationships with foreigners in exchange for hard currency – challenged the state’s narrative of economic equality and justice. Drawing on declassified Soviet archival materials, media reports, legal decrees, and Soviet-era films, this study examines how hard currency prostitution was framed in Soviet moral discourses. The analysis shows that the regulation of hard currency prostitution was aimed not only at controlling the illicit economy but also at preserving socialist ideological stability. Both the Soviet authorities and the press sought to portray sex workers engaged in hard currency prostitution as morally corrupt figures who threatened public morality and undermined the image of the Soviet people. The study also demonstrates how single mothers were subject to special state control and policing under suspicion of prostitution. The study contributes to the existing literature on prostitution in socialist societies by demonstrating how prostitution functioned as an ideological battleground that reflected Soviet ideological anxieties.