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There are several reasons Russian and Ukrainian women would like to marry Americans, Canadians, Englishmen, etc. First, they see men from these countries as making much better husbands than men in their own countries. For example, it's a well-documented fact that Ukrainian men die ten years earlier than their American counterparts, due to three major factors, 1) alcoholism, 2) violent crime, and 3) suicide. It's only natural for Ukrainian women, who generally marry men significantly older than they are, to want their husbands to live as long as possible. In addition, Americans and other Westerners are perceived as more sensitive and caring than the men in their own countries. Whether this is true or not is debatable-their impressions are based largely on what they've seen in films and on television-but it is nevertheless a perception that many of them hold. It's certainly true that feminism has affected countries of former Soviet Union much less that it has Western countries.

The second reason that these women are interested in Western husbands is because of poor economic conditions in their homeland. Though most of them do not live in abject poverty, they lack many of the modern conveniences that we now take for granted. For example, most live without the aid of dishwashers, microwave ovens, vacuum cleaners, electric can openers, or even washing machines and dryers (they wash all their clothes by hand and hang them outside to dry, even in the winter). "American housewives don't have to do anything but push buttons," was the comment one awed Russian lady made after visiting the United States. It is common thing in Ukraine, to go without hot water the entire month of June every year, because all the apartment buildings have centralized boilers (no one has their own hot water heater) and they have to shut down the systems for routine maintenance. The vast majority of these women live in cramped 2 and 3 room apartments with other family members, and very few of these families possess automobiles. To many of them, the life of an average, middle class American or Englishman is that of a fairy tale.

Also, many of the people in these countries are highly educated, but due to the poor economy, can do very little with their degrees. It's quite common to see dentists driving taxis, engineers peddling souvenirs, and lawyers working as receptionists. Though most of the women are not career-oriented, they are accustomed to working (under the communist system, both women and men were expected to work full time), and most want to work at least part-time after their children are in school. They see very little opportunity for challenging work in their own countries and feel that they will have a much better chance in America and elsewhere.

The third reason is political instability. Even the ladies in the tiny upper-class strata of Ukraine have a dim view of their future. Revolutions and military coups are an integral part of their culture, and most of them feel that the new "free market" economies will undergo tremendous upheaval before everything settles down, if ever. Thus, moving to a country with a stable economic and political environment is very attractive to them.

However, having said all this, it is important to remember that the vast majority of these ladies do not view themselves as "desperate" and would only marry a man with whom they were deeply in love and with whom they believed they had the highest chances of building a happy marriage and family. The citizens in these countries have been living in more or less the same way for centuries, and they do not view themselves as living under tremendous hardship, as a Westerner might. As mentioned previously, the vast majority of these ladies are not living in poverty-they lead comfortable but meager lives. They are proud of their cultures, and they have every right to be. Few of them would uproot themselves from their family and their lifelong friends and move to the other side of the world unless they truly believed that had a chance of lasting happiness.