1. Funding Phase C07

Guardians of Socialist Morality: Prostitution and Vigilance Practices in Czechoslovakia (1945/48–1989)

Principal Investigator

Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel

Researcher

Dr. Christiane Brenner

Project Description

Officially speaking, there was no prostitution in socialist Czechoslovakia. However, from the sixties onwards, the existence of prostitution was an open secret. The exchange of sex for money or other benefits amounted to a violation of social norms in two respects: it was a transgression against the general obligation to “work productively”, as well as against long-standing sexual morals. Those who were caught engaging in such “deviant” behavior, were punished with the intention of re-educating. Experts, local institutions, and members of the public were called upon to help enforce “socialist morals” and to assist with the reintegration of “deviant elements” into Czechoslovak society.

The project aims to research the attention given to prostitution as an unacknowledged and, for the most part, invisible phenomenon. In the project’s first phase, the juridical, institutional and discursive development surrounding the topic of prostitution from the years 1945 to 1989 will be explored. In the second phase, vigilance practices will be reconstructed. Using source-based case studies, the interplay of centrally controlled surveillance, the role of experts and the participation of the general public in the exposure, control and sanctioning of prostitution will be reconstructed. Public awareness of prostitution either tolerated by the state or instrumentalised for political purposes will be questioned and explored.

The goal of the project is to clarify to what extent vigilance paid to prostitution, and the sexual expectations and norms revealed through attention to this particular form of exchange contributed to or disturbed the inner coherence of socialist society in Czechoslovakia.