This presentation offers some findings of my research project in Social Anthropology, Aberdeen University, UK (MPhil, Social Anthropology).

1. MARRIAGE AGENCIES IN THE
TERRITORY OF THE RUSSIAN
FEDERATION
The results of the topical Internet search conducted in
2003, 2010 and 2012.
By Ekaterina Bartik, MPhil candidate
University of Aberdeen, Scotland
E-mail: r02esb8@abdn.ac.uk

2. Some facts and figures(2012)
 Over 600 bureaux listed online functioning across Russia (the
source of the data: Yandex maps app. and Yandex search; using
keywords: ‘’marriage agency + the town name’’);
 About 150 MAs** located in the largest, large and medium-sized
cities and towns (with some exceptions) broker internationally;
 St.-Petersburg, Moscow, Ekaterinburg (and Omsk) have the largest
numbers of the international marriage agencies: 18, 16 and 7 (both
in EKB and Omsk).
**Most likely, the numbers of the bureaux are much higher, since not
all of them post the information about the international
matchmaking on their sites. Besides, some of the bureaux do not
have websites at all (mostly, those brokering on the domestic
scene).

3. **Source: Shlyapentokh, 1984: 167.
City Domestic matchmaking International matchmaking
1983 2003 2010 2012 2003 2010 2012
St.-Petersburg No data 40 25 37 10 12 18
Moscow 17** No data 26 78 No data 4 16
Ekaterinburg No data 20 16 19 12 1 7
Three Russian cities with the largest numbers of the
international marriage agencies in 2012

4. The methodology of online monitoring
 While conducting the monitoring of the websites of marriage
agencies across Russia I located the bureaux via search engine
Yandex and surfed their websites in order to find the information
about the destinations in which the agencies broker.
 A large amount of regional IMAs do not advertise themselves on
Yandex maps app, but can be found through simple Yandex search
returning search results from the local web-boards and
publications in the regional press.
 In some cases I made follow up phone calls and asked the
managers of the agencies, what countries a particular agency had
links with. In spite of the obvious limitations, using this method
allowed to understand general trends of matchmaking industry
across Russia, in which there is a certain uniformity of the countries
of destination, which are more or less the same in all the regions.

5. The results of online monitoring of the marriage
agencies’ websites: geography
 The US along with the major West-European countries are the major
countries of destination for the Russian marriage migrants; 31 marriage
agencies in Russia list the US as the country of destination on their
websites. The most frequently mentioned European countries are: France
(28), Germany (25), Italy (18) - these are top three countries.
 The newly emergent destinations are: the countries of Eastern Europe
and Israel.
 Geographic distance does not play a very significant role in running of a
matchmaking business on the international scale, especially in the case of
the largest cities of Russia, which are normally connected with all the
major destinations of marriage migration.

6. The results of online monitoring of the marriage
agencies: the largest cities and towns
 IMAs in the largest Russia’s cities tend to serve the female
customers residing in both the neighbouring towns and across a
larger geographic region, i.e. – outside of the economic
agglomeration. That is, a SPB bureau provided the agencies in
Petrozavodsk, Murmansk and Riga with their networking services in
the international segment.
 In rare cases, the IMAs that I visited had female clients in rural
areas. At the domestic scene, men residing in SPB and EKB do not
show much interest in finding women from outside the cities
(sources – interviews with the marriage counsellors, analysis of
documents);
 Marriage migration into Russia is not part of the common tourists'
flows: there are foreign male clients, who travel to inner Russia in
search of the partners/wives. These men engage in migration for
the reasons that are different from mere tourism.

7. The results of online monitoring of the marriage agencies:
provincial towns in the inner Russia and in border regions.
 Provincial towns located on the country's borders will more
likely have international marriage agencies than provincial
towns in central Russia (for instance, Khabarovsk (4), Murmansk
(3), Kaliningrad (2), Vladivostok (2), Petrozavodsk (1).
 The destinations offered by the IMAs (the majority of them in
the largest cities of Russia) are more or less uniform,
irrespective of the location of the agency, that is, France is a
popular destination both in Nefteyugansk, St.-Petersburg, Ufa
and Chelyabinsk);
 The agencies in border regions sometimes establish links with
the neighbouring countries, exclusively. Thus, Khabarovsk and
Vladivostok have strong links with Japan and South Korea. Only
in rare cases the Westerners connect with the marriage
agencies in this region (source – a telephone conversation with
a manager of an IMA in Khabarovsk).

8. The results of online monitoring of the marriage
agencies: cities and towns profiles
 If we look at the top cities involved in the international marriage
migration which are not among the *largest cities of the country*
(usually with a huge surplus of women, Leizerovich, 2008), they are the
cities that:
 a) are on the country's northern, western, and north-western borders: Khabarovsk
(4), Murmansk (3), Kaliningrad (2), Vladivostok (2), Petrozavodsk (1);
 b) are the towns located on the southern borders of Russia, on the Black Sea.
Among them: Sochi (4), Krasnodar (3), Stavropol' (3), Pyatigorsk (1).
 All the top cities involved in the international marriage migration (aside
from the southern regions of Russia) in each Rosstat category (over
1.000,000; 500,000-1.000,000 and so on) are connected to the military-
industrial complex or are industrial towns.

9. The results of online monitoring of the marriage
agencies: links with the military-industrial complex
 Among such cities are:
 Tomsk (5) has a huge share of military-industrial complex enterprises
in the oblast‘s IRP. Source -
http://tomsk.gov.ru/ru/documents/?document=18559 (accessed
January, 2012)
 Saratov (4) (over 50,3% of the population were employed by the
military-industrial complex in 2000s, source – Yuriev, Osaulenko, 2003:
8);
 Izhevsk (3) (in Udmurtiia, of which Izhevsk is the capital, 55.3% of the
population were employed in MIC in 2000s, source – Ibid),
 Novosibirsk (2) (43.5% of the population of Novosibirskaya oblast'
were employed by MIC in 2000s, source – Ibid.) also Penza (3) and
Barnaul (2) (for more on this see Ouchakine, 2009);
 Novokuznetsk (2) (mining, metallurgy), Pskov (2) (Pskovskaya oblast' is
one of the poorest regions of Russia), Yoshkar-Ola (2) (industrial
region, for more on this see: Luehrmann, 2004).

10.  In 1970s the Soviet economists problematised the gender-
biased patterns of employment and, thus, settlement in
the Russian Federation and justified the surplus of women,
which was recognised at the time, by the necessities of the
reproduction of labour-force: since women had to leave
labour force at some point, the replacement was readily
available, and so the production did not suffer (Kotlyar,
1978);
 Up to date, in Russia, employment has been strongly
implicated by geography, that is, while the largest and large
Russian cities attract a lot of female workers offering
‘’female’’ workplaces, the traditional ‘’male’’ industries are
located in the gigantic eastern territories (mining,
metallurgy, military, etc. Leizerovich, 2008).
The results of online monitoring of the marriage agencies:
pattern 1 – geographic bias in the system of settlement

11. The results of online monitoring of the marriage agencies:
pattern 1 – geographic bias in the system of settlement and
the occupational gender gap (the case of Sverdlovskaya
oblast’).
 According to the 2002 Census of Sverdlovskaya oblast’, almost half of all the male population were
employed in the industrial sector (40.8%), 10,4% - in transportation industry, and 9,9% - in the
construction industry, and only 8.3% of the men are involved in wholesale and retail trade; 6.3 – in
communal services, the same percentage – in managerial jobs (vs. 4.8% in the women) (Zhenshchiny
Sverdlovskoi oblasti: Itogi Vserossiiskoi perepisi naseleniia 2002, 2008: 10).
 The largest share of the women of Sverdlovskaya oblast’ of the working age were still employed by the
processing industries – 27.1 %; the second most numerous group – those employed in wholesale and
retail trade and mending services –16,2%; the third group – women working in the sphere of education –
13,7%, the fourth – healthcare and social welfare – 11.2%, Communal services – 5.4%. Overall gender
imbalance in the oblast' is 18%, in Ekaterinburg – 10% (2008).
 According to the 1979 Census of Sverdlovskaya oblast’ the numbers of women involved in non-manual
labour has grown in the period from 1970 to 1978 at 74,000; in manual labour – at 36,000; similar data
for the men involved in non-manual labour was as follows: the growth in non-manual labour was at
22,800; manual – at 121,000.
 Conclusion: In Sverdlovskaya obast’, heavy industries are the major employers for men since 1970s (and
this finding is true for the regions outside of the central Russia, Leizerovich, 2008). Such a division has
important implications for the marriage market, in which there is an occupational gap between men
employed in lower qualified jobs in the industry and women employed in the newly emerging sectors of
the economy, even though in rank-and-file jobs, that are office-based.

12. The results of online monitoring of the marriage agencies:
pattern 2: the dissolution of the military-industrial complex
 After MIC collapsed in the Soviet Union, it has changed the landscape of
the world distribution of labour, since the Soviet Union played an
important role in the hi-tech competition with the countries of the
‘’capitalist camp’’, esp. the US, which, subsequently, fuelled the
development of the microelectronics industry across the world, and,
contributed to the reign of the ‘’information society’’ (Lyon, 1988).
 MIC was one of the USSR’s major employers: about a quarter of all the
population of the USSR of the working ages, were employed by the MIC in
the end of 1980s (including family members – every tenth citizen of
Russia) (Yuriev, Osaulenko, 2003);
 The economic transformation of the 1990s in Russia did not lead to the
strengthening of the industrial potential of the country: there was a
degradation of the industrial system, strengthening of the raw materials’
export orientation. The reasons for this are the availability of the raw
resources and cheap labour force (Romanova, Chenenova et al, 2003).

13. Conclusions
 To summarise: the distribution of marriage agencies in the territory of
Russia reflects:
 the patterns of the system of settlement, which remain intact up to date, long
after the collapse of the Soviet Union and characterased by the sex ratio
imbalance: the majority of the largest and large Russian cities have a surplus of
women, which is much higher than in the rural areas (Leizerovich, 2008);
 Geographic location strongy contributes to the patterns of marriage migration:
border regions have links with the neighbouring countries; there emerge new
types of relationships with the new types of boundary objects and subjects
involved (Star, 2004);
 Occupational imbalances might be another pushing factor of marriage
migration from Russia. The Soviet occupational segregation remains in power
because of the structure of the labour market in contemporary Russia and the
global division of labour.
 Ekaterina Bartik © All rights reserved.