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International and interfaith marriage: what do Russians think about it?
Our theme for today is "International and interfaith marriage: what do Russians think about it?".
And you have probably seen, according to the recent polls devoted to the issues of marriage and family, there a lot of people who oppose such marriages
However each third marriage in Tatarstan is international. That is worth discussing.
Olga Makhovskaya, senior staff scientist in the Psychology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
I have been studying the problem of international marriage since 1998.
At that time we were experiencing a divorce boom and to marry a foreigner was considered to be a chance
to save your own life and the life of your children.
At the time the most frequent were marriages with Western men,
men from Western Europe or America due to economic purposes.
In these years the marriage fashion has changed and today the most frequent are marriages between Orthodox believers and Muslims.
And some of these marriages we may also call international since, e. g., the Azerbaijani diaspora has grown so much.
If in the Soviet times there were about 3,000 migrants from Azerbaijan, we know now there are about a million of them.
So we should understand the scale of migration, including marriage migration.
This is Turkey and Syria first of all.
And I should mention that these marriages are more stable than marriages with westerners.
The main reason is, I might say, a cultural one.
The Orthodox and the Muslim family models are rather close to each other
and that explains why marriages to Muslims attract Russian women so much.
Evidently some of us are kept together by the common Soviet past,
Soviet education, the same language and the same life principles.
All these make such marriages more stable.
However, to be more exact, I should say that in both models the man is considered the head of a family
and if in the Orthodox one it’s rather formal and the real power and responsibility belonga to a woman,
in the Muslim model man have real power.
So perhaps that’s what today’s Russian woman needs -
stability and a man’s readiness to be responsible for his wife and children.
That’s the general situation.
Elmira Zaripova, the Head of the Acts of Civil Status Department of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Tatarstan
I’d like to say that the most common in Tatarstan are marriages between the main nations of the republic - Russians and Tatars,
but we do also have marriages between Tatars and Mari, Tatars and Udmurts, Udmurts and Mari.
If Russians register international marriages they prefer to marry either Tatars or Mordvins, or Chuvashes.
In the last two years marriages with the residents of the countries of
the Commonwealth of Independent States became more common.
Speaking about the marriages with foreigners I should say,
that the tendency is so, that the peak took place in 2007 when there were 850 marriages.
However it’s a small part of all marriages
since about 30,000 marriages are registered annually in Tatarstan, and 800 do not form even 1%. Today this tendency is on the decrease.
Only 200 such marriages were registered in this half-year.
Speaking about international marriages, I’d like to stress that there are no accurate statistics as ethnicity is marked in a passport of one’s own free will.
According to the 1997 Federal Law on the registration of civil status acts,
this may be stated voluntarily while registering a marriage or a divorce.
So all the figures that we are going to present today are based on the statistics of those marriages
during the registration of which ethnicity was stated voluntarily.
Even though we believe that these statistics may show the main trend in the present day demography.
So, dear colleagues from Moscow, we may see.
Pay attention that the red color demonstrates the administrative registration of marriages.
That means that in the Republic of Tatarstan we have a stable number of 29-30,000 marriages a year.
The yellow color at the bottom shows the percentage of international marriages.
Usually we have 21, 22, 23%, but I should underline that this number is based on the statistics of the marriages, while registration which citizens stated their nationality of their own will.
That means that each fifth marriage in the Republic of Tatarstan is international.
This is the tendency in marriage and I would like also to say some words about divorces
since some people believe that such marriages cannot be strong enough.
And what do the facts, the figures we are provided with tell us?
The administrative registration of marital breakup. Divorces.
We saw, that there are 30,000 marriages a year and 15,000, so the ratio is 1:2.
However if ten years ago international divorces formed 24%, now we have only 11%, so in this case the ratio is 1:4.
Only each fourth international marriage ends in a divorce.
Nailya Ziganshina, the Chair of the Union of Muslim women of Tatarstan
In our organisation we have opened a Family Creation Center.
We help men and women of all ages to create a family.
People of different nationalities come to us, they all have different wants and needs, but we work with them all.
So this center is, so to say, practically oriented.
We are trying to implement family values.
Not only do we help to create a family, but we also have a Divorce Center,
which helps people to save their family from a breakup.
If only first conflicts occur in a family, we start to work them out to prevent a divorce.
I would like to ask Olga Makhovskaya a question.
Why do so many people, at least in Moscow, do not appreciate international or interfaith marriages?
It's clear that the main reason is the fact that xenophobia is still widespread in our society.
Each foreigner, who dares to possess a Russian woman is facing intolerance or aggression.
The second reason is that international marriage has a rather bad record
Why?
Well, you see the situation in Tatarstan and the general situation in the world is actually different.
And it’s not clear, why in Tatarstan everything is so well, it’s very interesting and I hope we will discuss it.
But in general all those scandalous divorces with children taken away made the popularity of such marriages much lower.
Speaking about the Moscow region, we should bear in mind,
that here all the new-comers are very often facing intolerance
since the residents of Moscow believe that migrants occupies their space. That’s kind of complex.