Sennaya Square, 5, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 190031
In the cramped courtyards and alleys of Sennaya Square, taverns, gambling dens, and brothels settled. According to some data, around the turn of the century, up to 30 brothels operated in the area. In 1843, one of the most important events in the market’s history occurred — the “conservative” Nicholas I Palkin legalized prostitution to reduce the spread of syphilis. The number of brothels then exploded — there are no exact figures available.
“Malinnik” was a building that existed in the 19th and early 20th centuries in Saint Petersburg, housing a tavern and serving as a legendary and one of the largest brothels. It was located at house No. 5 (modern address; postal address in the 19th century was Sennaya Square, house No. 3) on Sennaya Square between Demidov (formerly Konnym) and Spassky alleys. After the division of the corner plot between 1809 and 1822, confusion arose in house numbering, and in some sources, “Malinnik” was designated as house No. 3. It originally belonged to Anastasia Balabanova. According to contemporaries, it was a dirty yellow three-story building with partially broken, boarded-up, and fabric-covered windows. Another popular name for the building was “Sadok” (Little Garden). It was located in the modern house No. 5 on Sennaya Square — the building, by the way, has hardly changed. Only now, on the windows of the former brothel, there is a sign saying “Khachapuri.” The building survived the Soviet era and was significantly rebuilt and extended by two floors, becoming part of a residential complex in the Stalinist neoclassical style. The name “Malinnik” came from criminal slang: “malina” referred to prostitutes and easily accessible girls, and their workplace was called “malinnik.” This is where the phrase “in the malina” originated — meaning surrounded by girls, i.e., prostitutes.
On the first floor of Malinnik, there was a small goods shop and a flour warehouse, and on the second floor — a tavern. Today, the rooms of the brothel are the halls of Khachapuri Mariko, where tourists eat khinkali.
The rest of the building was occupied by 13 cheap dens, each managed by a “bandersha” (female gang leader). According to eyewitnesses, these rooms were dark, dirty, damp, infested with insects, and moldy. The rooms were divided into small cubicles about two arshins (approximately 1.4 meters) in size by thin wooden partitions; renting a cubicle cost 7 rubles per month. The prostitutes of “Malinnik” received clients on beds or on boards covered with fabric. About a hundred public women lived there constantly with their clients — poor and homeless. They went down to the lower floors to find and lure clients and persuaded visitors to buy alcohol, which was profitable for the establishment. The tavern itself was divided into two parts — prostitutes were forbidden to enter the “clean” section.
A vivid description of the establishment, neighboring the tavern, small goods shop, and warehouses, was given by V.V. Krestovsky in his documentary novel “Petersburg Slums”: “On Sennaya Square, behind the guardhouse, between Konnym and Spassky alleys, there is house No. 3... Its three-story building and eight windows on the facade, with a high blackened roof, have a rather primitive and rather clumsy appearance. This very house is the famous Malinnik.”
“The upper floor under the tavern and the three other courtyard wings — all divided into fourteen apartments — are occupied by thirteen dens of the darkest, most terrible debauchery. Stench, suffocating rot, lack of light, and deadly dampness fill these dens... apparently preventing any possibility for a person to live in this den, yet at night dozens of vagrants nest here, driven by debauchery and unceasing drunkenness. And each such den necessarily contains several back-alley cubicles separated by thin wooden partitions. A shabby bed or two boards laid on two log planks make up all the furniture of these cubicles... But if anything produces an unbearably heavy impression on the soul, it is the women nesting in the Malinnik establishment. The price of these women’s services did not exceed 50 kopecks. On holidays, a prostitute from “Malinnik” often served up to 50 people. The girls in such establishments dressed not only poorly but also indecently primitively. Sometimes their clothing consisted only of a dirty towel wrapped around their hips. Often, to please sailor clients, the girls covered themselves with tattoos.”
“Malinnik” housed prostitutes of the lowest rank — “slum girls” (homeless, often without passports) and “gnilushnitsy” (vendors of cheap vegetables and fruits). Many of them had previously worked in more respectable or even expensive brothels but had aged and contracted venereal diseases. On holidays, they could serve up to 50 clients a day. The women themselves wore shabby and simple outfits, sometimes just dirty towels wrapped around their hips.
We know the name of one of the “slum girls” thanks to the memoirs of Nikolai Sveshnikov. Sasha Stolbovaya, nicknamed “Cork,” who looked either 40 or 60 years old, dirty, perpetually drunk, with a knocked-out eye and a face disfigured by beatings, worked from youth in Malinnik, then simply in the alleys, and later begged from merchants at Sennaya. Out of pity, they threw her scraps: herring tails, trimmings, rotten vegetables — she collected all this and sold it among the inhabitants of the Vyazemskaya Lavra, living off that.
“Malinnik” became an unofficial club and the main gathering place for St. Petersburg thieves and criminals. The building gained a reputation as one of the most dangerous places in the city, where criminals of various kinds were regulars. Murders could happen in broad daylight. Citizens were afraid to approach this building, and even police officers avoided it, fearing for their lives. Those who accidentally entered were drugged with a stupefying drink, stripped, and then driven out; the police did not accept complaints from victims and expelled them from the station, accusing them of “wandering where they shouldn’t.” In the backyard, along the facades of the wings, there were “galdareiki” — passageways that allowed free movement to any part of the house. Criminals used them to hide from the police. The second meaning of “in the malina” — “to hide from the police” — also originated here. Fugitives and criminals hid here; it was dangerous for outsiders to enter, and with the hostess’s permission, they were drugged and robbed.
And no matter how poorly this all fits with the neat and wealthy “thieves’ malina” portrayed in various films, this is exactly what the first real Malinnik looked like.
Opposite Malinnik — literally across the square — was the Vyazemskaya Lavra.
Sources:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Малинник_(Санкт-Петербург)
https://statehistory.ru/books/N-B--Lebina--M-V--SHkarovskiy_Prostitutsiya-v-Peterburge
Mikhnevich. Ulcers of Petersburg. — 1886.
https://vk.com/wall-189507809_12035
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