Part 1 of .. I don’t know!
Gentlemen, for those who might have an interest I will give one man’s opinion as to various aspects of today’s search for a Russian bride. My comments and opinions are not meant to be the source of flames or directed at anyone, or anyone’s approach, to this most wonderful of pursuits.
It should be noted that there is NO one “right way” in doing most things with this pursuit. Just as each man who is considering this journey is different, than so are the varied ways and methods of doing things. Today, approaching my 10th year involved with the pursuit for good Russian women, I see and speak of many things from a percentage perspective and point of view. Good case and point, as I am asked often, ‘Should I write one woman, visit one woman (wovo), or should I write many ladies, visit many ladies (wmvm).
The answer to me is simple, as this is very much a personal choice and decision, what are YOU most comfortable with? First try to define what you, the individual, are most comfortable with and then try to find the most efficient means in supporting your preferred methods.
Some men cannot write more than one lady at a time, cannot express sincere feelings to more than one lady at a time. So this man writes one lady, goes to see one lady. Maybe he marries her, maybe not, but for this type man the write one lady, visit one lady IS the best method for this man. Some men can write several ladies and narrow it down to seeing 3, 4 ladies on the same trip. Then this is the best method for this type man. Other men can write a lot of ladies, narrow it down to seeing 15 ladies on a trip. This is the best method for this man. And yet there are some guys who will write no ladies and go over and see 600 girls/women in three days in one of the social environments. With the over all type of women attending these socials today, I don’t feel this is the right method for ANY man! That is another story.
As someone who has done all three (wovo, wmvf, and wmvm) I found my personal most efficient method as wrote many, visit many. Today, from a percentage point of view, I see more men having the greatest percentage of success with the WMVM method. The more sincere ladies a guy can meet on any one given trip is going to increase his odds of finding the right lady one for him. It is work, it is an art and it is a science to be able to WMVM effectively. Some guys will have a very structured game plan with being able to meet several ladies upon arrival into a city, meeting four ladies a day at 11am, 2pm, 5pm and 8pm. Other guys will plan to spend one or two days with a lady before meeting the next lady and spending one or two days with her before meeting the next lady and so on. Every method has it’s plus and minus’s which can be debated and discussed later.
As I proceed with this one man’s opinion as to where we are today, I think it might be helpful to take a step back and see how all this got started. During the height of the cold war I think very few of us knew where the worlds most beautiful and sincere women were from. Many of us thought they were probably in Huntington Beach, or maybe the plains of Iowa or the English countryside, the Philippines or maybe she was a Scandinavian girl. As a child growing up watching news films of Russia, Uncle Sam was showing me the typical Russian woman to be about 5 ft 4, humped over, wearing big boots, tattered coat and scarf, a big wooly hat and two warts, one on one side of her face, the other on her nose. Then in 1991, the wall came down. Prior to the wall coming down, for generations, these ladies could only, for the most part, seek their own countrymen for marriage and to begin families. The communist times did not help to create the best of men, or husbands. Now we all hear about how bad Russian men are. Well there is some truth to that as there are certainly a lot of Russian men who are not the best husbands or fathers, as well we have many such men here in the states. And as though it is commonly mentioned that Russian men are bad, I assure you there are also a great many Russian men who are good and caring husbands and fathers. During the communist times men were paid the same no matter if they worked hard or not. Vodka was (and still is) so prevalent it was nothing for men to work till lunch, down a bottle of vodka and then go back to work. You didn’t get fired for being at work drunk; it was a way of life. Vodka just made it easier for these guys to cope with an everyday life that had no future. Every wonder why no one in the world, outside of Russia, would buy a Russian car or Russian furniture? Due to the quality of work, the quality of the product!
For a great many years it was common for a Russian man to have one, or two mistresses. Many men who exist in Russian culture often practice promiscuity, believe they should be allowed to have as many mistresses as they want and are often emotionally and physically abusive. The Russian woman had little choice, after all, its not like there is an over abundance of men in Russia. Due to several factors Russia has the largest age difference of any country in the world in which the average Russian man and woman die. The last figures I saw on this had the average Russian man living to be about 56.7 and the average Russian woman lived to be about 73.1. Regional conflict, hard life, alcoholism, serious illnesses are some of the factors. From Valery Stepanov of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology. "Russia has a specific mortality picture: The portion of young males among the dead is extremely high."
The 2002 census, conducted in October, counted 145.2 million people, down 1.3 percent from the last census in 1989. In 1992, for the first time since World War II, more Russians died than were born. In the years since, the gap grew from 220,000 people in 1992 to a record 677,000 in 2000. Women outnumbered men by 10.1 million in 2002, with males making up 46.5 percent of the total population, according to the State Statistics Committee. However, this number appears characteristic of Russia as in four previous postwar censuses, the ratio of males oscillated near 45 percent.
So after 1991, guess what? Russian ladies are free to marry men from anywhere in the world! I did not know this until after about 6 or 7 different Russian women told me this in the mid-90’s. “The world knows that men from America, Canada, Mexico, treat their women better than any other men on earth”. This was news to me but after I put some thought into it, after thinking of the culture and way of life people lived in the middle east, in China and the far east, India, Italian men, French men, etc, it did begin to make some sense. But until then I had never thought or considered this. It took several Russian women telling me that they heard and believed that men from North America treated women better than men from any other country on earth before I realized this was a common thought amongst a lot of Russian women.
Prior to 1991 you had a mail order bride business that was primarily focused on Asian and Philippine women. If you like this type of lady, this was the place to look. But what if you liked the tall, blue eyed, slender blonde? Or the slender, buxom, green-eyed Brunette? What were you to do?
In the 80’s there began a new company called Scanna, it began to list photos of marriage minded single Scandinavian ladies, ladies from Sweden, Denmark, Finland (see where the name Scanna comes from). For that man who dreamed of that tall, slender blue-eyed blonde, your day had come.
A short time after the wall came down a smart business man from Atlanta Georgia got the idea that we American men might like Russian women and the company European Connection was born. About the same time a well to do insurance man from Winchester Kentucky went on a Scanna social and met a woman 30 years his junior, married her and a short time later his child bride persuaded him to begin a new company (and giving her 51%), much like this new company European Connections. Thus we had the birth of Anastasia and combined with European Connection, Scanna, the Russian bride business had begun. In 1993, 1994 began the birth of the infamous “socials”. There was no Internet in the earlier years. At this time you had a lot, and I mean a lot, of companies who were publishing catalogs of beautiful Russian women. Club Prima, Scanna, European Connection, Anastasia, Confidential Connections, Cherry Blossoms, Russian Connections, to name a few (and I would have to go thru my old collections of catalogs to name others). If one were to read the Classifieds of the USA Today newspaper at this time he would have seen a few ads that read, “Meet 800 beautiful Russian women seeking American men. Call 800 xxx xxxx!” It looked very tempting. Many single men called, I did. If the ad looked tempting, wait until you saw one of their catalogs! You had never seen so many beautiful women before in your life. Most the ladies were from Moscow and St. Petersburg, cities we recognized. I had no idea that Russian women wanted and preferred men 15, 20, 25 even 30 years older than themselves! WOW, an old man’s dream! I will hand it to those earlier catalogs. They were very persuasive. What was written in those early catalogs (and even catalogs of today) made it sound so simple. These Russian ladies really preferred American men and men from the “west”. These young beautiful ladies really preferred older men, as we were more stable, and it did not matter what we looked like, we could be old, short, bald and fat and these ladies did not mind, as long as we had a good heart. {and there was certainly some truth in those feelings} And in Moscow we could meet 250 of these ladies on Friday, another 250 on Saturday and another 250 on Sunday. “Hot diggity dog, I’m going to Moscow! With that many young, beautiful ladies who want an American husband, I’m bound to be able to find me a fine wife! Got to go buy me an engagement ring!” And that is exactly what a lot of guys did.
In the early days, in 1994, 1995, 1996 things were very difficult in Russia, Ukraine, the FSU. But now there was something new and exciting to the scene, Western men, foreign men, American men! In the early days you really did have a lot of ladies who were so desperate to leave, any change in life would be better than what they were living. And a chance to get a man who was not a Russian man. In the early days it was very common to see an American man of 55, maybe not in the best of shape, bringing home a young Russian goddess of a woman. Just as the catalogs were telling us! Them catalogs must be right?
Well Baby, it ain’t 1996 , it ain’t 1998, and it ain’t 2000 no more!
Ok, enough of part 1.
