At least one purveyor of highly explicit glossies has managed to keep his business in Ukraine afloat with the imprimatur of the Justice Ministry
Publishers of erotic magazines in Ukraine are as much restricted by careful advertisers as they are by fickle state regulators.
Howeever, at least one purveyor of highly explicit glossies has managed to keep his business in Ukraine afloat with the imprimatur of the Justice Ministry.
Every month Czech national Petr Ladin obtains certification from the Institute of Forensic Expertise under the Justice Ministry confirming that his magazines – the bi-monthly Leo, quarterly Lolity (Lolitas) and Sosedki (Neighbor Girls), and monthly Intim-Kontakt – are suitable for Ukrainian readers.
Ladin is the director of Astra Media, a Ukrainian publishing house, which he co-owns along with the Czech adult media holding PK62.
Ukraine’s Justice Ministry has said the four titles published by the 30-year-old magazine man, whose father is from Ukraine’s Luhansk Region, do not fall under the purview of pornography.
“For pornographic images, detailed naturalistic scenes of intimate relations are typical, and are usually devoid of any artistic elements, and contain depictions of private parts in the process of sexual contact on a large scale,” reads one Justice Ministry certification of the August 2006 issue of Leo.
Ladin, who first entered the Ukrainian erotic publications market with Leo in August 2004, said that his magazines, which largely show nude and semi-nude women in various poses, are in line with Ukraine’s obscenity laws, and are far less explicit than their Czech parent publications, which used to be smuggled into Ukraine.
Prior to erotic magazine publication, Ladin said he made his first foray into the sphere of adult entertainment in Ukraine in 2000 with a failed attempt to promote the Czech beer Red Dragon by creating a girls’ and boys’ strip ballet, which performed numerous promotional parties in Kyiv’s nightclubs.
“All we do in our Ukrainian publications is show beautiful girls – all sexual activity has been removed,” said Ladin.
Nevertheless, police confiscations and low ad revenues may yet force Ladin to consider closing up shop.
In addition to the Justice Ministry, Ukraine’s National Television and Radio Committee (NTRC) has similar authorities over explicit materials in the country. According to the information and public morals protection department of the committee, some of the materials in Ladin’s publications can be deemed pornographic under Ukrainian law.
“At the request of police, we often conducted an expert analysis of Leo [and other magazines published by Ladin] only to find that some of the issues did contain pornographic materials,” said Yuriy Nedyak, the head of the information and public morals protection department at the NTRC.
Nedyak said that following an NTRC-conducted expert analysis, the police would often ask how Ladin received the permit for the publication from the Justice Ministry.
According to Nedyak, a large part of the problem with labeling a publication pornographic lies in the uncertainty as to which certificate-issuing body’s permits wield the greater authority.
Nedyak said he can only hope that the situation is resolved soon.
A third state body that was supposed to become the definitive authority on what constitutes pornography in Ukraine is the National Commission to Protect Public Morals. The commission was mandated by law in 2003 and scheduled to be set up in 2004, but it has yet to start operations.
Careful advertisers
Valentyn Karminsky, the chief editor of the Ukrainian edition of Penthouse, said that having the NTRC’s public morals commission approve each issue of Penthouse meant that the magazine could not even show as much as a hint of private parts.
Penthouse was re-launched in Ukraine in 2005 following a failed launch of a sexually more explicit version of the magazine two years earlier.
Karminsky said that obtaining certification from the Justice Ministry would have meant the opportunity for the Ukrainian Penthouse to be more explicit. He added, however, that becoming a magazine attracting the same readership as those attracted by Ladin’s publications would scare away advertisers.
Karminsky said that advertisers have only recently begun increasing the number of advertisements in erotic magazines, adding that he estimates current advertising revenues for erotic publications in the country at around $80,000 a month.
The Czech way
Even though Ladin, who said he came to Ukraine in 1999 to see the birthplace of his father, refers to his publications as Ukrainian, his Kyiv office is limited to distribution and printing of the magazines.
The editorial and production work, which includes using live models and visuals from Western European photo banks, is done out of Prague, Ladin said, since this lowers production costs. He said that models in Ukraine charge up to $100 for an hour of work, which is what he can pay a girl in Prague for an entire day. He said that some of the girls in his magazines are Ukrainian, but they are photographed abroad.
Ladin, who has permanent residency status in Ukraine, and Pavel Kvoriak, to whom Ladin refers to as the “Czech Porn King,” launched Astra Media in 2003.
According to Ladin, Kvoriak owns PK62, which has affiliates in 16 European countries in addition to Ukraine.
He said PK62 recently had to exit the U.S. due to the tough competition in that market. In its home Czech Republic, PK62 publishes 25 erotic and pornographic titles, a number of websites, and operates a chain of sex shops.
Despite all of his cost-saving efforts, Ladin said that three years after its launch, Astra Media is still operating at a loss, especially given the near absence of advertising revenues for Ladin’s four magazines, which largely attract ads from sex shops and phone sex companies.
“We hold talks with Kvoriak on whether to continue our business on an almost weekly basis,” Ladin said.
Nevertheless, he said that his publications enjoy great demand in Ukraine, boasting a circulation of 30,000 each.
In addition, the magazines receive about 1,000 letters a week from readers, including photographs of their private parts for publication in Ladin’s Intim-Kontakt acquaintance magazine.
He also said that while PF62’s magazines have a much higher circulation in the Czech Republic than do Ladin’s four Ukrainian magazines, the response from readers in the Czech Republic is much lower than in Ukraine.
Ladin said that part of his job as the head of Astra Media is figuring out how far he can go with content before his magazines violate Ukrainian law.
Coming from the Czech Republic, where porn was legalized years ago following the fall of the Socialist regime, Ladin said that the ban on porn in Ukraine is a violation of freedom of speech.
According to Ladin, his Ukrainian distributors have reported police confiscations on almost a monthly basis, despite all of the Justice Ministry certificates that accompany the magazines’ shipments.
“Sometimes, they [distributors] are so intimidated by the police that they are afraid to let us know, depriving us the chance to start legal action.”
Freedom of speech
“It is very important that publishers instruct vendors that such actions by the police are illegal, so that they report them immediately,” said Viktoria Siumar, the director of the Institute of Mass Information, a Ukrainian NGO specializing in the protection of freedom of speech in media.
While Siumar said that the distribution market for erotic and yellow press is still underdeveloped and “uncivilized” in Ukraine, she doesn’t believe that the confiscation of erotic publications is in any way connected to freedom of speech, or the overzealous protection of public morals, but is, rather, economic in nature.She said that police in all likelihood confiscate such materials to allow their sale elsewhere by police-controlled vendors, rather than destroying the materials as offensive.
