A Girls’ Army of Vengeance?: Perceptions of Sexual Violence against Children in post‐1905 Russia

Abstract

Abstract This article offers a microhistorical reading of a criminal case of sexual violence in 1908 St Petersburg. It traces the re‐interpretation of underage girls from innocent victims to potential prostitutes and carriers of debauchery and disease. Furthermore, after this case, the perceptions shifted from pitied victim to source of threatening vengeance. This discursive shift took place in newspapers, court procedures but also in charity organisations encountering victims of sexual violence. While vengeance is usually reserved as a trope for framing the actions of adult victims of sexual violence, here it was explicitly applied to underage girls, thereby rendering victims of sexual violence a threat to Russian society.