Americans are well aware of Russia’s high-profile problems, but most are ignorant about her advantages. Any New Yorker can tell you all about Russia’s filthy streets, but he knows nothing about the veritable goddesses who tread upon that filth.
The young women of Primorye are one of this nation’s best-kept secrets – a secret rendered all the more intriguing by the sad coincidence that good Russian men are in short supply.
This part of the world is a sociological curiosity. In no other place but Primorye do beautiful, well-educated, long-legged women in mini-skirts walk the streets hand-in-hand with out-of-work men wearing army fatigues and five-o’clock shadows.
It seems to me that the admixture of intoxicating women with a population of men who want nothing more than to be intoxicated is an unhealthy combination. It begs another Russian-American trade agreement: We send you a few billion tons of barley, hops and malt and you send us a couple hundred thousand 18 to 25-year-old women. Everybody’s a winner!
The idea isn’t as hair-brained as it may sound. In fact, Primorye has been advertising its most marketable resource by Internet for years now. There are numerous web sites that showcase the aesthetic charms of this region’s finest to any marriage-minded male who’s shopping. Computer technology has revolutionized the match-making industry while giving countless Russian women an opportunity for a better life. The exodus of pretty young females from Primorye resembles the “brain-drain” migration of scholars from all parts of Russia.
“I wanted to stay in Russia, but I found no one reliable enough to marry,” said Masha Kavalevskaya, a former resident of Dalnegorsk. “My son Misha is six, and I needed a decent man with a good job to provide for him. I found such a man in Japan,” she said.
Masha is now a citizen of Japan, a full-time mother to a happy boy and the wife of a Japanese businessman who, evidently, was unable to find the blue-eyed blonde of his dreams in Hokkaido.
Naturally, it is not just economic security that Russian women look for in a mate. There are also personality traits that make foreigners attractive.
“Russian men are very aggressive,” complained Alina Kravchenko, a student of science at Far Eastern National University. “Men in Vladivostok are too bold toward women who make eye contact with them. We must be careful not to smile too much in public,” she added sadly.
Interestingly, American men often find Russian women to be more comfortable with their identities than American women. Well-educated and strong yet remarkably feminine, Russian women are an appealing option for American men who are accustomed to defiantly independent women in this confusing age of gender rights.
For the time being at least, it appears that the unspoken trade agreement between Primorye and the rest of the world will continue.
