January 30, 2001

Inside the Beltway

John McCaslin

Russian brides

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!
Russian women, that is —flocking to Washington in advance of Valentine's Day. And American men from around the country are arriving to meet these marriage-minded ladies.
"Quite honestly, we have found that many American men have become tired of dealing with the results of feminism," says Natasha Spivack, who drawing on her eight years' experience as a professor of Russian studies at Johns Hopkins University, matches "stunningly beautiful and intelligent" Russian ladies with successful American men.
American men, she says, "seek women with traditional family and religious values, exchanged many years ago in America for the pursuit of equality and a career."
In 1993, Ms. Spivack began helping friends in Russia find American husbands, and in the process of doing so founded Bethesda, Md.-based Encounters International. So far, the professor is responsible for 230 marriages and engagements, 42 babies, and 12 divorces.
Not bad, she says, considering her firm's divorce rate is "tenfold less" than the U.S. as a whole.