Moscow Hard-Liner Wages War on City’s Sex Industry

Russian Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov last summer was a leading hawk in a Kremlin Cabinet of hard-liners pursuing a war against separatists in Chechnya. But a year is a long time in Russian politics.

This summer, there is peace in Chechnya. Kulikov, now a lone figure in a new Cabinet of energetic young reformers, has been reduced to pursuing a very different war--against the prostitutes, known in Russian as “night butterflies,” who flit through central Moscow in ever-increasing numbers.

But Kulikov, a former Communist, has had little more success fighting the sex industry--which conservatives here see as one of the evils of capitalism--than he did earlier against the Chechens, who won a measure of self-rule last fall in a settlement that he opposed.

After a few weeks’ hide-and-seek in prestigious parts of the Russian capital, the garish throngs of prostitutes, pimps, madams and crooked police who have made central Moscow their business center since the collapse of Communism were back in several of their old haunts this week.

Moscow is spring-cleaning before its 850th anniversary in September. Nearly every street is getting new paint, new blacktop or whole new buildings. The pride of city officials is glitzy Tverskaya Street, leading down to the parliament building and the Kremlin.

But, while by day Tverskaya is home to elite stores and Versace-clad ladies who lunch, by night it is packed with prostitutes.

Kulikov has made it clear that his declaration of war on the prostitutes of Tverskaya has less to do with eradicating the causes of commercial sex--the poverty and unemployment that have accompanied capitalism--than with keeping the tourist zones of Moscow tidy.

The sex industry remains defiant.

“Kulikov’s a great guy,” said one muscle-bound pimp, whistling to a bevy of miniskirted girls in cars to take up their positions on the curb again. He would not give his name.

Behind him, a traffic jam of johns cruised the roadside. Madams in track suits counted money, prostitutes lined up in headlights to give their prospective customers a better view and pimps loitered in dark archways, smoking.

Three carloads of traffic cops nearby took no notice of the raucous bustle halfway up Tverskaya. Neither did two other police cars on the opposite side of the road. As before, the anonymous pimp said, the notoriously corrupt police get bribes to turn a blind eye.

“We have nothing against Kulikov,” he added, smiling. “But he’s a joke, and his campaign is a joke.”

Kulikov’s crusade began in June when his car arrived outside the lower chamber of parliament, the Duma. Located at the bottom of Tverskaya, the Duma and the Moskva hotel opposite had become a drawing point for sex-industry workers. A crowd closed in eagerly around the minister.

“I was nearly dragged out of the car. It was a good thing the doors were closed,” Kulikov said. “There were about 500 of them, and there were a few groups that were guarded by militiamen.”

Kulikov suggested that the prostitutes move to an embankment farther from the Kremlin and new capitalist shopping districts--the site of a giant Stalin-era apartment block for members of the old Soviet elite.

The children of Communist Party members and KGB generals who still live at Kotelnicheskaya Embankment were not pleased when hundreds of prostitutes took Kulikov seriously and turned up in their sedate neighborhood by night. They called the police to chase the newcomers away.

By this week, the embankment was as respectable as a month ago. Amid much public mockery of the authoritarian Kulikov, up to 40 women a night were arrested until the rest got the message and flitted off--back to Tverskaya.