Natasha Spivak, owner of Encounters International, points to couples she has successfully united.
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Natasha Spivak, owner of Encounters International, points to couples she has successfully united. |
By Laura Bailey
At age 25, Tatiana Kalashnikova, a cheerful casino dealer from Moscow, was on her way to becoming, at least by Russia’s standards, an old maid. But she wasn’t going to settle for just any man. He had to be kind. He had to be smart. He had to want children. Most of all, he had to be foreign. Someone from Europe would be good. Perhaps a German or an Italian so she wouldn’t have to move far away from her family. If necessary, an American would work.
But absolutely no Russians.
So following her friends’ lead, Kalashnikova grabbed some pretty snapshots of herself and took them to one of the many international marriage agencies in Moscow. A few weeks later her pictures were on the Web for men all over the world to see. Within a month she had a taker - Brian Jackson, a 34-year-old computer specialist from upstate New York. She and Jackson corresponded through letters and phone calls, and eventually her potential groom booked a 10-day trip to Moscow. Six months after the start of their epistolary romance, Kalashnikova secured a 90-day fiancée visa and boarded a plane to the United States - intending to marry her American sweetheart.
“I was interested in meeting a man who definitely decided to have a family, not a man who wanted a relationship only,” she says about her choice to use the marriage agency, adding that dire economic conditions and widespread alcoholism have deterred many Russians from marrying. “In Russia, nobody wants to have babies because they don’t know what will happen tomorrow. They don’t think about the future, only about how they can help themselves today.”
Kalashnikova is one of thousands of Russian women who are part of the exploding international marriage industry. Not long ago, those involved in matching Western men with brides from overseas specialized in importing Asian and Latin American women. But thanks in part to the Internet and the new market of Caucasian women created by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “mail-order bride” business - which nearly doubled in size in the last decade - is a booming industry. In 1998, between 4,000 and 6,000 couples were united, according to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
But the rapidly flourishing trade that brought Kalashnikova to the United States has triggered criticism from government agencies, as well as refugee and women’s rights organizations, some of whom have claimed that it is demeaning to women and rife with dangers of spousal abuse. The brides come from impoverished countries, and their economic situation pushes them to search for better lives, a fact that those who study the industry say often leads them into violent relationships.
There are now hundreds of online businesses - many of them specializing in promoting Russian women. Almost all of the marriage agencies post catalogues of women with photos and short profiles on websites. American men can spend as little as $5 for the address of a foreign woman, or thousands of dollars for personalized services that help them develop long distance relationships. If they are in a hurry, men can sign up for one of the stop-and-shop “romance tours” to Russia. These tour packages include several “introduction parties” where men interview hundreds of women - and come away with fiancées if they are lucky.
Julie Checkoway, a professor at the University of Georgia who is writing a book about mail-order brides, notes that while it’s common for these women to come from countries in economic decline, the business is “proliferating in the former U.S.S.R. because it’s a Western country with access to the Internet.”
But while Russian women may think they’re trading up for family-oriented American husbands, they are bargaining for partners who may be worse, claims Dorchen Leidholdt, co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, an international group of feminist organizations opposed to prostitution and sexual trafficking of women.
Leidholdt is also the director of the Center for Battered Women’s Legal Services in New York, which has dealt with several abused foreign brides. According to Leidholdt, the women leave everything behind believing they’ll have better lives, but instead they often end up being abused.
“These women are treated as commodities. They are dehumanized, and once
that happens the rest comes easy - the rest being violence, abuse and degradation,”
she says.
Many Russian bride agencies advertise that Russian women are “traditional,” and want to stay at home to raise families. Women are portrayed as the feminine, family-oriented, old-fashioned counterparts to their less-agreeable, career-oriented sisters in the United States. When agencies market women as submissive and docile, abuse is predictable, says Leidholdt. Often the women - many of whom speak little English and are completely unfamiliar with their new countries - are dependent on their husbands or fear deportation. Many of them don’t report abuse to authorities; others flee with the hope of returning to their own counties.
Such concerns prompted Congress to pass a law in 1996 that requires marriage agencies to provide foreign women with information about issues like domestic abuse, marriage fraud and legal residency. The INS, however, is still in the process of drafting the rules that the agencies would need to follow. Critics of the marriages say the INS should play more of a role in screening the men seeking foreign brides, but INS spokeswoman Elaine Komis says the federal agency is primarily concerned with whether a marriage is genuine, not whether it is abusive, and adds that the agency is not in position to regulate the mail-order bride business. Leidholdt, however, claims that the marriages are fraudulent by their very nature, and should receive greater attention from the INS.
“If a man is bringing a women over to abuse her because he wants a servant, then I don’t think that that’s a bona fide marriage,” says Leidholdt.
While no one has tracked abuse rates in “mail-order” marriages, a 1998 report commissioned by the INS at Congress' request found that men who use such agencies tend to “have control in mind rather than loving and enduring relationships.”
Owners of companies that specialize in long-term correspondence say they are usually able to weed out potentially abusive clients. They say that loving relationships - not abusive ones - are the norm, because clients get to know each other well before getting engaged.
For example, Natasha Spivak, the Russian owner of Encounters International, a Bethesda, Md.-based matchmaking company, said that couples share their most intimate thoughts with one another through letters, faxes, e-mails and telephone calls before meeting. And at some point in the long-distance romance, the man journeys to Russia or Ukraine to meet his sweetheart - a mandatory trip, as the INS requires all international couples to meet their potential spouses at least once before marriage.
“No decent woman will say ‘yes’ to spending the rest of her life with a man who she has just met,” Spivak says, noting that the couple learns a great deal about one another through writing. “They know each other’s vulnerabilities.”
* * * *
Ed, who doesn’t want his last name to be used, is young and witty with good looks and charm that could hold up to the likes of Pierce Brosnan. He’s the sort of guy who has no problem finding a date. Yet, as a potential client of Encounters International, he is thinking about dropping a few thousand dollars in fees and travel expenses just to find the right woman.
He says he is considering using the agency because of his dissatisfaction with American women. According to him, women are too wrapped up in their careers and too embittered by previous relationships. And he doesn’t want a wife whose career will compete with his own. It also doesn’t hurt that the women in the catalogs are dressed to kill and drop-dead gorgeous.
“I wouldn’t mind having a trophy wife,” he says with a smile.
But Leidholdt wonders, “Why aren’t they able to have relationships with women here?” The answer, she says, is that they can’t handle equal relationships with women. “They have a lot of hostility toward women and think ‘that kind of women over there in that county is going to be better,’ meaning more pliable, more submissive.”
Spivak says she started her business in 1993 because she felt that the industry, especially the romance tour operators, were too much like wholesalers trafficking in women.
“It’s just a pure transaction,” Spivak says about “cattle call” romance tours that take groups of men to Moscow for mate hunting. The men see the women as something they can buy, she adds.
“They think, ‘I paid for the product and I have to get this product. Otherwise I’m ripped off.’”
Spivak admits that cases of abuse do exist, and says that some women have come to Encounters International to meet new spouses after fleeing abusive husbands they met through other agencies. Today, with a success rate of 230 marriages and only eight divorces, Spivak says her agency is safer than others because it has close contact with all of the men. While she does not do background checks, Spivak screens her clients through extensive telephone calls and consultations.
For $1,850, Spivak guarantees success within a year and gives highly personalized service. She offers advice to each man in selecting compatible women and then helps them develop a relationship by forwarding and translating letters, giving cross-cultural advice and arranging for gifts to be sent.
“We are not just a regular dating service; we really protect our women here. We really try to take care of their interests,” she says.
And because her clients must invest great amounts of time and money before
they find a wife, they are much more likely to be serious about finding a loving
relationship, Spivak says.
But Leidholdt remains unconvinced.
“I don’t think that’s going to protect the women at all,” exclaims Leidholdt about the long-term personalized service and correspondence that agencies like Spivak’s and Deckinger’s offer. In fact, two of the abuse cases that she dealt with at the legal center involved women who had corresponded with their husbands through agencies that offered personalized service.
* * * *
Jackson, who married Kalashnikova last March, says he was not looking for a submissive woman or a housewife. He would prefer it if he could support the family without Kalashnikova having to work, but says he wants her to make her own decision about a career. And, he says, they share household responsibilities equally.
Jackson wasn’t even searching for a foreign bride when he began writing to Kalashnikova. While hunting for American dating services on the Internet, he stumbled upon LoveBridge.to and decided to give it a try.
“In my current situation, I wasn’t meeting lots of people,” he says. “I just figured I was going to try something.”
Laura Bailey is a freelance writer who lives and works in Washington, D.C.
Encounters International
10419 Snow Point Dr.
Bethesda, MD 20814 USA
Phone: (301) 530-7759
Fax: (301) 530-5564
E-mail: natasha@encount.com