UR TV CAST

“To expect that to happen now is too soon, it may happen when people who are now in their twenties and thirties are in their forties and fifties. But that’s why we shouldn’t have a downer on whats going on now.”. “it’s when the English men want to talk that I really can’t stand it!” beams Svyeta from behind her peroxide fringe. She grimaces in exasperation at English self-indulgence and lights a cigarette.

Svyeta is a 19-year- old from the industrial town of Petrozavodsk in Russia who has come to London to work as a prostitute. She arrived a week ago at the invitation of a friend who had started “working” when the boyfriend who had brought her here went to New York and never came back. The dangers and hardships of life in Moscow have brought hundreds of Russians to London over the past few years, including prostitutes seeking a less stressful life and women who, reluctant to go home, took to prostitution to pay the bills. Svyeta thinks there are at least a hundred Russian working girls in London, not including those from the other former Soviet bloc countries.
She pulls her cardigan off to reveal that she is covered in purple bruises “Of course nobody hit me!” she laughs “I had a goodbye party the night before I left. I don’t remember much of it but I think there must have been a fight.” So far she has dealt with only English clients who find her from the phone booth card that Tanya, her friend, and Oleg, their “little brother”, had made up for her before she arrived.

“It doesn’t say I’m Russian because I don’t have a resident’s visa and you never know who’s reading the signs. Also I don’t really speak English so if people ask me difficult questions I can’t defend myself. I think Oleg would disappear pretty fast if the authorities got involved!” she explains.Svyeta began a degree in engineering when she left school but was uninspired and desperate to get out of Petrozavodsk. She entered a local beauty contest and came third, but the organiser told her that if she accompanied him to Moscow he would get her a modelling contract “Of course he didn’t,” she says, without seeming to mind. “He just wanted a young girlfriend, but I was naive and I went with him I think my parents were pleased for me. He found me this horrible flat in the suburbs of Moscow living with another family who thought I was a tart and hated me. He came to see me a few times a week but I had no money and nothing to do and I got very depressed.

I told him I wanted to go out more so he bribed someone to get me membership at a gym in the centre of town that foreigners and hard- currency prostitutes go to. I met some of the girls and they said I could get away from him and earn lots of money. It turned out to be true.”But the dangers of living and working in Moscow began to make life difficult. “I didn’t have many clients but some of them were involved in all kinds of business and it made me nervous having them in my apartment. I had steel doors and bars on the windows and I lived with a girlfriend, but I knew a girl who got killed and I wanted to move. I wanted to come to London to see Tanya even before she started working here, but when she called I was really ready to get out.”Now she shares a small flat in the West End with Tanya, which they rent from Oleg, who has lived in London for five years “I love it here The English are funny clients They seem so shy all the time and they keep talking to me I can’t really understand them and it’s embarrassing anyway When they are quiet, I like them more than Russians. Also the money is good and I want to send a lot of it back home to my parents They think I am a dancer.

It would be expensive to live here but there are enough Russians in London for us to help each other out.”Tanya is distinctly less impressed with London life than her newly arrived friend. She slumps herself into the velour sofa still in her coat and scarf and scowls. “I hate Oxford Street on Saturdays,” she spits and reaches for Svyeta’s empty cigarette packet Tanya is older, 25, and speaks good English. She had a more glamorous life style than Svyeta back in Moscow and had not expected to have to work in London or to move into this relatively shabby flat.”Khachik was doing really well back at home, exporting timber.