Thin, small, in ragged pants and dirty feet - not a man, a dream. And women different countries- two at least. At 34, he already has a gray head, a bunch of hungry relatives and there is always no money. Another would drink in his place, and the Tajik Nigmatullo asks to call him Sanya and exudes such unshakable confidence in his own irresistibility that one involuntarily ceases to be surprised at his male demand both in Tajikistan and in Russia.
“I don’t love my wife, I love Fatima! Peter - best city on the ground!" - he shouts to the whole yard on the outskirts of Dushanbe. “Yes, yes, she doesn’t like it, everyone knows that,” the neighbor nods, “only every year she gives her a child and goes back to Russia to Fatima.”
There are about a million labor migrants from Tajikistan in Russia. They lay asphalt and tiles, clean streets and entrances, work in supermarkets, build dachas and dig vegetable gardens. Their remittances to their home countries account for 60% country's GDP- According to the World Bank, in terms of remittances to GDP, Tajikistan ranks first in the world. Tajikistan also broke into 1st place in another ranking - in terms of the number of abandoned women. Previously, the “country of abandoned wives” was called Mexico, also famous for its cheap labor force, now it is Tajikistan.
Before the collapse of the Union, the Tajik diaspora in Russia was 32 thousand people, now it is seven times larger and growing by leaps and bounds. Last year, according to official figures, Tajiks played 12,000 weddings with Russians. “Every third Tajik who leaves for work in Russia will never return home,” the IOM (International Organization for Migration) researchers came to this conclusion. 90% of Tajiks settle in Moscow and the region, 5% in St. Petersburg, the rest go to the Volga region and the Far East.
Fatima, beloved woman of the Tajik Sani, is actually called Sveta. She is 29, works as a nurse in a children's hospital, lives in St. Petersburg with her mother. “She helps me in Russian, and I live with her for this,” explains Sanya, “I want a residence permit for Peter, and her mother, Lyuda, is evil, doesn’t want me.” He has been in St. Petersburg for eight years already, living a little less with Fatima-Sveta. Over the years, she converted to Islam and moved to his rented apartment. After work, he cleans up and cooks not only for Sanya, but also for his uncle and brothers - there are eight of them in the "three rubles".
Once a year, Sanya visits Dushanbe, to his legal wife and children - he has four of them, the last one is only a year old. There are no children with Fatima. “Ah-ah, she wants to,” the Tajik rolls his eyes languidly and kisses the photo of his dark-haired lover on the phone. Sooner or later they will get married and have children, Sanya has no doubts, and "evil Luda" will register him in her apartment.
Sanya is a decent man: every month he sends home transfers for 5-7 thousand rubles, calls regularly and, albeit rarely, comes. And he is well, and his wife is happy. Most Tajik women, knowing perfectly well about the second "Russian families", in Once again seeing off their husbands to work, they are waiting with horror for an SMS-divorce. “Talaq, talak, talak!” - and everything is free. SMS-divorces swept the country, and politicians were divided into two camps: some demand to recognize such a divorce as legitimate, others - to ban it as disrespect for a woman and Sharia laws: according to the canons, "talaq" must be spoken personally.
Love with a spark
Abandoned women - thousands. Someone from hopelessness and self-doubt becomes suicidal. Someone goes to Russia for her husband or tries to get at least alimony. 28-year-old Latofat from Dushanbe filed a lawsuit against her runaway husband and is now waiting for an absentee decision on alimony. “He left to work 1.5 years ago,” she says. “At first he called, then he was imprisoned in Russia for six months for theft, but a few months ago he disappeared altogether.”
Latofat lived with her mother-in-law - by old tradition A husband always brings his wife to his parents. By new tradition while the husband is at work, a disgruntled mother-in-law can easily drive her daughter-in-law with children out into the street - just call her son and say that she does not like her.
Before the wedding, Latofat did not know her husband - their parents betrothed them. “He turned out to be a drug addict, he beat me constantly, and when he left, his mother-in-law began to beat me,” the woman recalls, lowering her eyes. As a result, she returned to her family with two children. She cannot get a job - she graduated from only four classes of school. “Then the war started, they were shooting day and night, and my parents stopped letting me go outside,” says Latofat. “They reasoned that it would be better for me to be alive than educated but raped or dead.”
“There are thousands of such girls without education in the villages,” says Zibo Sharifova from the League of Women Lawyers of Tajikistan. - They are all disenfranchised slaves of mothers-in-law, they endure as much as they can, and then - into the noose. Recently, the sister of one such suicide turned to us for help. In the morning I got up, milked the cows, cleaned the house, cooked breakfast. And then she went into the barn and hanged herself. Husband in Russia, two children left.
In the north of Tajikistan, a canister of gasoline is used - there are more and more people who want to set themselves on fire to spite their abandoned husband or hated mother-in-law. About 100 such suicides pass through the burn center in Dushanbe a year, half of them are the wives of migrant workers. 21-year-old Gulsifat Sabirova was brought from the village three months ago in a terrible condition - 34% of her body was burned. after six plastic surgery it's still scary to look at.
“He tortured me, beat me, and then he said: either you will kill yourself, or I will strangle you,” she barely whispers with burned lips. After another quarrel she went with her husband to the barn and poured a can of gasoline over her head, and then threw a match.
Husband Gulsifat also worked several times in Russia and by all standards was a prominent groom. Gulya is the youngest of eight children, the most beautiful and modest. He had just returned from another job, when he saw her in the village reading the Koran, he fell in love and sent matchmakers. “Though she will not starve,” said her parents, marrying her off. Five days after the wedding, the husband again left for Russia, and Gulya stayed with her mother-in-law. Then he returned, but together they did not live even two months. Already in the hospital it turned out that Gulya was pregnant.
“He really loves her, and when he comes, she becomes so joyful, active,” says Zafira, the head nurse of the department. - For 14 years that I have been working here, for the first time I see that my husband takes care of the patient like that. He is waiting for her from the hospital, making repairs in the room, and her parents - in none. They think he should be jailed."
Nurses, despite her terrible appearance, even envy Gulya: marriage for love, even if it resulted in such a monstrous tragedy, is still a rarity in Tajikistan. Most unions fit into a simple circuit: married - children were born - went to Russia - left.
Husbands for hire
The farther from Dushanbe, the more often donkey-mobiles drive towards you instead of cars. The wagons are women and children. The road is in perfect condition - it was built by the Chinese, on credit. Now, to get from Dushanbe to Khujand (former Leninabad), you have to pay - there is simply no free alternative. There are only women in the fields with freshly blossomed cotton.
“Thank you Russia for giving our husbands a job!” - the oldest of all shouts to us. One did not see her husband for five years, the other three, most - at least two. For a month of work under the scorching sun (45 degrees on the thermometer), they will receive a bag of potatoes, onions and carrots. The salary will be enough for exactly two kilograms of meat. But there is still no other work, so everything is in the field.
In the villages, which modern manner called jamaats, men have long been out of count. Alovedin Shamsidinov from Jamaat Navgilem 72, sons have long been in Rostov-on-Don, after the death of his wife, daughter-in-law Makhin with children returned back to look after him. In Russia, she lived with her husband for eight years, worked as an operating room nurse in a hospital, then decorated cakes.
“In every way, we tried to get citizenship - no matter what they lie on TV, they don’t give it,” Makhina says, taking a flatbread full of heat from the tandoor. - The only one the right way- marry a Russian, so there are a lot of fictitious marriages. On the other hand, all Tajiks living in Russia have local girlfriends. And many other marriages - Muslim, "nikoh" is called.
Mahina wants to go back to her husband. “I want to leave, I really want to - but my grandfather won’t be!”, and you can’t leave him alone - relatives will peck. And the husband has nothing to do in the village. Navgilem is located 2 km from the city of Isfara, before there were factories - chemical, hydrometallurgical, distillery, and factories - sewing and spinning. And now there are 100 jobs for the entire district. And it’s bad without a husband - and you don’t want your own people to be cursed if they leave their father-in-law.
“We still have wild customs here, no one knows their rights,” Suyasar Vakhoboeva, deputy chairman of the jamaat for women and family affairs, sighs heavily. She is like a justice of the peace - in case of family conflicts, she calls the parties for negotiations and explains that the daughter-in-law is also a person. - No matter how hard the authorities try, girls in the villages are still not allowed to go to school and are married off at the age of 14-15. And then - a vicious circle: he will come for a short time, make her a child - and back to Russia. “Maybe they would let the girls go to school, but often there is not even money to buy a uniform and pack a satchel,” says Mavlyuda Ibragimova from the association for the protection of the rights of women migrant workers.
"Straw Wives"
“A woman without male affection languishes and becomes like a dried apricot that grows in our garden,” 46-year-old Vasila waves her hand to the side tall tree. Vasila has a round, smooth face, dense sides - not like her friend Malohat, from whom her husband left for Russia many years ago, also started a family and has never been in the village since then. “Our neighbor returned from the Hajj, I went to him without asking, for five minutes - and because of this, he divorced me, and was left alone with four children,” Malohat sighs heavily. There are half a village like Malohat, and Vasila is the only one in the whole district.
Vasila from the Chorkuh Jamaat was fed up with the fact that her husband was always at work, and sent crumbs of money, and when he came to visit her, she simply locked him in the house. “He worked in Syzran, in Ivanovo, I tortured him all the time: do you have anyone there? He is not! And then, when I threw a tantrum on him and said that I wouldn’t let him go anyway, his “wife” started calling me and demanding him back, here’s the dog! - Vasila - hands on hips, golden teeth glitter in the sun - a fighting woman, with higher education, a foreman in the field, bought it herself and drives a "six". She has not let her husband go for three years. “My daughters won’t get enough of dad, I took him to my brigade - well, let him earn almost no money and moan that he wants to go to Russia, but I’m with a peasant.”
Chorkuh rests against the mountains, a muddy ditch runs along the low dusty houses, in which the entire population of Chorkuh, women and children, washes dishes and feet. Elders sit near the old mosque - they make sure that the girls, going with buckets to the pump, do not look too much around. One of their words - and if a groom appears in the village, he will never look into her yard.
In the village of Shakhristan, in the north of Tajikistan, morals are not so harsh, and there are even fewer peasants. Here the work is even worse, and the only way to survive is to go to Russia. Mavluda Shkurova wears a dark dressing gown and a white headscarf, she is in mourning - six months ago her husband Rakhmat was hit to death by a minibus. He was 44 and left four children. Three more men returned to Shahristan last year in coffins.
“Rakhmat was standing at a bus stop in Shchekino near Moscow, next to the cold storage facility where he worked and lived,” says his brother Nemat. “Alexander Sukhov knocked him down, he didn’t even give money for a coffin - anyway, he said, they’ll put him in jail.” For the nine years that Rakhmat was in Russia, an old house completely fell apart, and the new one did not work. Now his eldest son has gone to work shift - he is not yet 17, he just finished the 9th grade. “The only hope is for him,” Movlyuda almost cries. The second son walks nearby - he is a disabled child. - I called the other day - they worked with the guys at the Armenians in the country, but they were not paid. He was crying out of resentment, I was crying too.”
Khabiba Navruzova, a Russian language teacher, has been living without a husband for six years with five children. Younger son never saw his father. She gave her eldest daughter in marriage - according to all the laws, this should be done by the father. And the mother-in-law herself buried - the husband, although he calls sometimes, says that there is no money to come. Even for funerals.
“Traditions, on the one hand, are still strong, but on the other, they are being desperately violated,” says Zibo Sharifova of the League of Women Lawyers of Tajikistan. “Before, it was impossible to imagine that our parents were abandoned, but now the elderly themselves turn to us for help - to file a lawsuit against their son for alimony in a fixed amount.”
Khabiba, on the other hand, firmly believes that a little more - and her husband who has gone on a spree will return. “I called recently, now he promises in September,” Khabiba convinces us. “He will return, wait until he becomes quite old and useless!” - tease her neighbors. She is not offended - there are "straw wives" in every yard.
Fatima-Sveta from St. Petersburg is preparing for a Muslim wedding - "nikoh" - Sanya-Nigmatullo proposed to her by phone. Soon the “uraza” (post) will end, and he will return to St. Petersburg again. “Tajiks are responsible, they don't leave their own,” Fatima is convinced. She does not worry at all that she will be a “second wife” - the main thing is that she is beloved, she says.
DUSHANBE, April 17 - Sputnik, Andrey Zakhvatov. At present in Tajikistan, as it was in Soviet period, the trend towards an increase in the number of interethnic marriages does not change.
As the Tajik sociologist Sofia Kasymova notes, in the early years Soviet power interethnic and interfaith marriages were even welcomed and encouraged by the authorities, especially since the majority of Tajiks did not interfere with international marriages.
two waves
First a big wave interethnic marriages in Tajikistan occurred in the second half of the 40s of the XX century. Tens of thousands of participants of the Great Patriotic War and members of the labor front.
Thousands of Muslim fighters came to their homeland with Christian wives. In almost every district center and in many villages one could meet a native European countries- they successfully worked in hospitals, schools, taught Tajik children the Russian language and raised their light-eyed and fair-haired children.
The second and also quite significant wave of interethnic marriages was noted in the 50-60s. last century when sent to study at Largest cities Russian Tajik students married Russian women. This was especially noticeable among large Soviet party and economic workers in Tajikistan - a significant part of their wives were Russians.
In this regard, the love story of a Tajik and a Russian woman, similar to a legend, is very interesting - a story that half a century later I can already tell in the press, and exactly as her veteran of Tajikistan's foreign intelligence told me 40 years ago.
History-legend
In the 50s, a young officer, a Tajik, married to a young Russian woman, was in the service of foreign intelligence. A wife with a child lived with her husband's parents in a village near Dushanbe and was waiting for her husband from another long business trip.
But circumstances developed in such a way that while working abroad, for unknown reasons, he was arrested and ended up in a strict regime prison in one of the Central Asian Muslim countries. passed long years, but there was no news from the officer. Without waiting for their son, the parents left for another world, but managed to tell the Russian daughter-in-law not to wait for their son and get married.
And so it happened. IN new family two children were already growing up, and her legitimate, living husband, imprisoned in a foreign country, somehow managed to transfer a note to the Soviet embassy. And the then head of the Soviet government Alexei Kosygin was able to agree on the release of the intelligence officer.
The officer returned to Tajikistan sick, with seriously impaired health, and learned that his wife obeyed his parents, remarried and was raising children. Hearing about the return of a loved one, the Russian woman said to her new husband: "It would be more humanely correct if I return to him." And he didn't dare say anything to her.
They did not live long - the scout soon died of an illness. But everyone who knew this case treated the heroes of this story with great respect, first of all, a Russian woman who fell in love with a Tajik.
Alexandra from Khur village
In August 2011, when I was visiting my friend Amirali, headman of Khur village in Gorny Karategin, located 10 kilometers from Tavildara, the owner of the house warmly received me and said: "Andrey, today you are not the only guest from Russia. There are others, tomorrow I'll introduce you!"
While they were having dinner, young guys came up who came on vacation to their parents from earnings in Russia: they worked at a construction site on Russky Island on Far East. They said that more than 15 people are working on the construction of a unique bridge and other facilities from the village of Khur. I asked them if their families also live in Russia? Young people laughed it off: they said that almost everyone there has a girlfriend.
Young people could be trusted - in the early 2000s, when labor migration from Tajikistan grew from year to year, an alarming process began in the country, according to demographers. The mass departure of young men to work has greatly complicated the process of creating families - in 2010, about half a million young girls of the republic experienced difficulties in finding a life partner. Meanwhile, in Russia, the number of interethnic marriages of Tajiks with Russian women, legal and civil, was noticeably growing.
The choice of young Russian women in favor of guest workers who came to work was explained simply: the vast majority of Tajiks are hardworking, work honestly, practically do not drink alcohol, do not use foul language, and quickly learn the Russian language.
There are no exact statistics of interethnic marriages of Tajiks in Russia. However, by expert opinion, among several hundred thousand citizens of Tajikistan who received Russian citizenship after 2000, up to now, from 40 to 60 thousand Tajiks have married Russian women.
By 2013, the situation had become so complicated that Saodat Amirshoeva, a member of the Tajik parliament, said that religiously mixed marriages could destroy the gene pool of the Tajik nation.
But marriages in Russia and in the Tajik diasporas abroad continue to be concluded not only by Tajik men. Over the past 15-20 years, demographers have noted an increase in the number of Tajik women who marry foreigners, and not only from Asian countries but also from Europe and America. In Tajikistan, for example, a recent case is widely known when Russian TV presenter Alexander Gordon married a 20-year-old student from Tajikistan.
The next morning, my friend Amirali, as promised, took me to introduce me to other guests from Russia. It turned out that one of the young men, who has been living and working in St. Petersburg for 6 years, brought his lawful wife Alexandra and children to the village for the first time and introduced them to their parents.
The young woman willingly told that she met her future husband in the dining room. Relations in the family are excellent, two sons are growing up. She admitted that her husband's parents and relatives hospitably and kindly met her and the children, looked at the photos from St. Petersburg with interest, and asked about the plans of the young family.
Alexandra allowed her to be photographed, but not for the press. And she gave the green light to the publication of a photograph of her husband with children. The Tajik chose his burned-out car as the background for the photo.
"Only one day I was able to ride it - the car was blown up during civil war in the 90s," he explained, adding that heavy fighting took place in these places of Gorny Karategin.
Will interethnic marriages continue to grow in Tajikistan? In all likelihood, yes, they will. And not only with foreigners from Europe and America, but also from China. How this will affect the structure of the population of Tajikistan - demographers do not yet give such forecasts. However, according to the well-known Tajik scholar Rahmon Ulmasov, mixed marriages between Tajiks and foreigners should be treated calmly and with understanding.
Izvestia: Tajiks change their wives for Russians
Thin, small, in ragged pants and dirty feet - not a man, a dream. Moreover, women from different countries - at least two. At 34, he already has a gray head, a bunch of hungry relatives and there is always no money. Another would drink in his place, and the Tajik Nigmatullo asks to call him Sanya and exudes such unshakable confidence in his own irresistibility that one involuntarily ceases to be surprised at his male demand both in Tajikistan and in Russia.
“I don’t love my wife, I love Fatima! St. Petersburg is the best city in the world!” - he shouts to the whole yard on the outskirts of Dushanbe. “Yes, yes, she doesn’t like it, everyone knows that,” the neighbor nods, “only every year she gives her a child and goes back to Russia to Fatima.”
There are about a million labor migrants from Tajikistan in Russia. They lay asphalt and tiles, clean streets and entrances, work in supermarkets, build dachas and dig vegetable gardens. Their remittances to their homeland make up 60% of the country's GDP - according to the World Bank, Tajikistan ranks first in the world in terms of the ratio of remittances to GDP. Tajikistan also broke into 1st place in another ranking - in terms of the number of abandoned women. Previously, the “country of abandoned wives” was called Mexico, also famous for its cheap labor force, now it is Tajikistan.
Before the collapse of the Union, the Tajik diaspora in Russia was 32 thousand people, now it is seven times larger and growing by leaps and bounds. Last year, according to official figures, Tajiks played 12,000 weddings with Russians. “Every third Tajik who leaves for work in Russia will never return home,” the IOM (International Organization for Migration) researchers came to this conclusion. 90% of Tajiks settle in Moscow and the region, 5% in St. Petersburg, the rest go to the Volga region and the Far East.
Fatima, beloved woman of the Tajik Sani, is actually called Sveta. She is 29, works as a nurse in a children's hospital, lives in St. Petersburg with her mother. “She helps me in Russian, and I live with her for this,” Sanya explains, “I want a residence permit Peter, and her mother, Lyuda, is angry, doesn’t want me.” He has been in St. Petersburg for eight years already, living a little less with Fatima-Sveta. Over the years, she converted to Islam and moved to his rented apartment. After work, he cleans up and cooks not only for Sanya, but also for his uncle and brothers - there are eight of them in the "three rubles".
Once a year, Sanya visits Dushanbe, to his legal wife and children - he has four of them, the last one is only a year old. There are no children with Fatima. “Ah-ah, she wants to,” the Tajik rolls his eyes languidly and kisses the photo of his dark-haired lover on the phone. Sooner or later they will get married and have children, Sanya has no doubts, and "evil Luda" will register him in her apartment.
Sanya is a decent man: every month he sends home transfers for 5-7 thousand rubles, calls regularly and, albeit rarely, comes. And he is well, and his wife is happy. Most Tajik women, knowing perfectly well about the second "Russian families", once again seeing off their husbands to work, are waiting with horror for an SMS divorce. “Talaq, talak, talak!” - and everything is free. SMS divorces swept the country, and politicians divided into two camps: some demand to recognize such a divorce as legitimate, others - to ban it as disrespect for a woman and Sharia law: according to the canons, "talaq" must be spoken personally.
Love with a spark
Abandoned women - thousands. Someone from hopelessness and self-doubt becomes suicidal. Someone goes to Russia for her husband or tries to get at least alimony. 28-year-old Latofat from Dushanbe filed a lawsuit against her runaway husband and is now waiting for an absentee decision on alimony. “He left to work 1.5 years ago,” she says. “At first he called, then he was imprisoned in Russia for six months for theft, but a few months ago he disappeared altogether.”
Latofat lived with her mother-in-law - according to the old tradition, a husband always brings his wife to his parents. According to the new tradition, while the husband is at work, a disgruntled mother-in-law can easily kick her daughter-in-law with children out into the street - just call her son and say that she does not like her.
Before the wedding, Latofat did not know her husband - their parents betrothed them. “He turned out to be a drug addict, he beat me constantly, and when he left, his mother-in-law began to beat me,” the woman recalls, lowering her eyes. As a result, she returned to her family with two children. She cannot get a job - she graduated from only four classes of school. “Then the war started, they were shooting day and night, and my parents stopped letting me go outside,” says Latofat. “They reasoned that it would be better for me to be alive than educated but raped or dead.”
“There are thousands of such girls without education in the villages,” says Zibo Sharifova from the League of Women Lawyers of Tajikistan. - They are all disenfranchised slaves of mothers-in-law, they endure as much as they can, and then - into the noose. Recently, the sister of one such suicide turned to us for help. In the morning I got up, milked the cows, cleaned the house, cooked breakfast. And then she went into the barn and hanged herself. Husband in Russia, two children left.
In the north of Tajikistan, a canister of gasoline is used - there are more and more people who want to set themselves on fire to spite their abandoned husband or hated mother-in-law. About 100 such suicides pass through the burn center in Dushanbe a year, half of them are the wives of migrant workers. 21-year-old Gulsifat Sabirova was brought from the village three months ago in a terrible condition - 34% of her body was burned. After six plastic surgeries, she is still scary to look at.
“He tortured me, beat me, and then he said: either you will kill yourself, or I will strangle you,” she barely whispers with burned lips. After another quarrel with her husband, she went to the barn and poured a can of gasoline over her head, and then threw a match.
Husband Gulsifat also worked several times in Russia and by all standards was a prominent groom. Gulya is the youngest of eight children, the most beautiful and modest. He had just returned from another job, when he saw her in the village reading the Koran, he fell in love and sent matchmakers. “Though she will not starve,” said her parents, marrying her off. Five days after the wedding, the husband again left for Russia, and Gulya stayed with her mother-in-law. Then he returned, but together they did not live even two months. Already in the hospital it turned out that Gulya was pregnant.
“He really loves her, and when he comes, she becomes so joyful, active,” says Zafira, the head nurse of the department. - For 14 years that I have been working here, for the first time I see that my husband takes care of the patient like that. He is waiting for her from the hospital, making repairs in the room, and her parents - in none. They think he should be jailed."
Nurses, despite her terrible appearance, even envy Gulya: marriage for love, even if it resulted in such a monstrous tragedy, is still a rarity in Tajikistan. Most unions fit into a simple scheme: they got married - children were born - went to Russia - left.
Husbands for hire
The farther from Dushanbe, the more often donkey-mobiles drive towards you instead of cars. The wagons are women and children. The road is in perfect condition - it was built by the Chinese, on credit. Now, to get from Dushanbe to Khujand (former Leninabad), you have to pay - there is simply no free alternative. There are only women in the fields with freshly blossomed cotton.
“Thank you Russia for giving our husbands a job!” - the oldest of all shouts to us. One did not see her husband for five years, the other three, most - at least two. For a month of work under the scorching sun (45 degrees on the thermometer), they will receive a bag of potatoes, onions and carrots. The salary will be enough for exactly two kilograms of meat. But there is still no other work, so everything is in the field.
In kishlaks, which in a modern manner are called jamaats, men have long been out of number. Alovedin Shamsidinov from Jamaat Navgilem 72, sons have long been in Rostov-on-Don, after the death of his wife, daughter-in-law Makhin with children returned back to look after him. In Russia, she lived with her husband for eight years, worked as an operating room nurse in a hospital, then decorated cakes.
“In every way, we tried to get citizenship - no matter what they lie on TV, they don’t give it,” Makhina says, taking a flatbread full of heat from the tandoor. - The only sure way is to marry a Russian, so there are a lot of fictitious marriages. On the other hand, all Tajiks living in Russia have local girlfriends. And many other marriages - Muslim, "nikoh" is called.
Mahina wants to go back to her husband. “I want to leave, I really want to - but my grandfather won’t be!”, and you can’t leave him alone - relatives will peck. And the husband has nothing to do in the village. Navgilem is located 2 km from the city of Isfara, before there were factories - chemical, hydrometallurgical, distillery, and factories - sewing and spinning. And now there are 100 jobs in the entire region. And without a husband it’s bad - and you don’t want your own to be cursed if you leave your father-in-law.
“We still have wild customs here, no one knows their rights,” Suyasar Vakhoboeva, deputy chairman of the jamaat for women and family affairs, sighs heavily. She is like a justice of the peace - in case of family conflicts, she calls the parties for negotiations and explains that the daughter-in-law is also a person. - No matter how hard the authorities try, girls in the villages are still not allowed to go to school and are married off at the age of 14-15. And then - a vicious circle: he will come for a short time, make her a child - and back to Russia. “Maybe they would let the girls go to school, but often there is not even money to buy a uniform and pack a satchel,” says Mavlyuda Ibragimova from the association for the protection of the rights of women migrant workers.
"Straw Wives"
“A woman without male affection languishes and becomes like a dried apricot that grows in our garden,” 46-year-old Vasila waves her hand in the direction of a tall tree. Vasila has a round, smooth face, dense sides - not like her friend Malohat, from whom her husband left for Russia many years ago, also started a family and has never been in the village since then. “Our neighbor returned from the Hajj, I went to him without asking, for five minutes - and because of this, he divorced me, and was left alone with four children,” Malohat sighs heavily. There are half a village like Malohat, and Vasila is the only one in the whole district.
Vasila from the Chorkuh Jamaat was fed up with the fact that her husband was always at work, and sent crumbs of money, and when he came to visit her, she simply locked him in the house. “He worked in Syzran, in Ivanovo, I tortured him all the time: do you have anyone there? He is not! And then, when I threw a tantrum on him and said that I wouldn’t let him go anyway, his “wife” started calling me and demanding him back, here’s the dog! - Vasila - hands on hips, golden teeth shine in the sun - a fighting woman, with a higher education, a foreman in the field, she bought and drives a "six". She has not let her husband go for three years. “My daughters won’t get enough of dad, I took him to my brigade - well, let him earn almost no money and moan that he wants to go to Russia, but I’m with a peasant.”
Chorkuh rests against the mountains, a muddy ditch runs along the low dusty houses, in which the entire population of Chorkuh, women and children, washes dishes and feet. Elders sit near the old mosque - they make sure that the girls, going with buckets to the pump, do not look too much around. One of their words - and if a groom appears in the village, he will never look into her yard.
In the village of Shakhristan, in the north of Tajikistan, morals are not so harsh, and there are even fewer peasants. Here the work is even worse, and the only way to survive is to go to Russia. Mavluda Shkurova wears a dark dressing gown and a white headscarf, she is in mourning - six months ago her husband Rakhmat was hit to death by a minibus. He was 44 and left four children. Three more men returned to Shahristan last year in coffins.
“Rakhmat was standing at a bus stop in Shchekino near Moscow, next to the cold storage facility where he worked and lived,” says his brother Nemat. “Alexander Sukhov knocked him down, he didn’t even give money for a coffin - anyway, he said, they’ll put him in jail.” In the nine years that Rakhmat was in Russia, the old house fell apart completely, and he never made money on the new one. Now his eldest son has gone to work shift - he is not yet 17, he just finished the 9th grade. “The only hope is for him,” Movlyuda almost cries. The second son walks nearby - he is a disabled child. - I called the other day - they worked with the guys at the Armenians in the country, but they were not paid. He was crying out of resentment, I was crying too.”
Tajkistan / Society / Seven habits of Tajik wives that any man will like
To be real oriental woman it is not enough to be born in this side of the world and possess characteristic appearance; to meet this definition, a woman is supposed to follow strict rules of conduct.
Asia Plus partner Open Asia Online has collected some of the habits of Tajik women who traditionally have Eastern wives in our region.
Refers to her husband as "you"
Almost all Tajik women, with rare exceptions, address their spouses as “you”, and call their husbands not by their first names, but “master”, “father of my children”, etc. However, in the north of Tajikistan, both men and women turn to “you” to everyone without exception, even to their small children.
Any Tajik can cook well
A Tajik woman who does not know how to cook, and not just cook, but create real culinary masterpieces, is nonsense. Any Tajik woman does an excellent job with the dough and can cook delicious pilaf. Mothers from childhood instill in their daughters a love of cooking, because if a young girl comes to her husband's house without these skills, then shame will fall on her entire family.
By the way, Tajik women also masterfully cope with other household chores, whether it is ironing clothes or cleaning the house.
The bride's family buys clothes for the groom
Buying an outfit for the groom wedding ceremony This is the responsibility of the bride's family. Moreover, everything necessary for family life home belongings, including furniture, are also purchased at the expense of the bride's parents; from the groom only housing is required. Therefore, often before the wedding, the girl's relatives, inviting guests to the ceremony, order gifts for them. For example: the Iskandarov family - a carpet, the Ismoilov family - a food processor, etc.
Never be alone with another man
Even if this man is a relative. A Tajik wife will let a man into the house only on the condition that she is not alone. Otherwise, even the husband's brother was barred from entering the apartment: "wait for the owner." And until now, at any event, women and men in Tajikistan traditionally sit at different dastarkhans, in different rooms. And men are engaged in serving the male dastarkhan (serving dishes on the table, cleaning dirty dishes).
Lives with mother for 40 days after birth
From the maternity hospital, the Tajik wife goes home to her mother, especially if the first child is born. Here she will live exactly 40 days, during which the mother will teach her daughter all the intricacies of dealing with the baby; in addition, the woman's family will purchase everything necessary for the firstborn at their own expense. After such a master class, the husband will never see the helplessness of his wife in dealing with the baby, because taking care of the child is the direct responsibility of the woman.
Does nothing without the consent of her husband
Even the most harmless business, for example, buying clothes or visiting parents, the Tajik wife is obliged to coordinate with her husband. Not to mention more serious decisions. Ask permission from your husband Tajik woman- it's not embarrassing at all. It's embarrassing when the opposite happens.
About 800,000 Tajik migrants live and work in Russia, but little is known about their personal lives. For the past 12 years, sociologist, RIAC expert, head of the SHARK research center in Tajikistan, Saodat Olimova has been studying the sexual behavior of Tajiks working in Russia and its connection with the outbreak of the HIV / AIDS epidemic in the republic. She told how migrants buy cheap love in Russia, why visitors commit sexual crimes and what to do if you work at a logging site surrounded by only men for a year and a half.
Sexual infections transmitted in the absence of wives
Lenta.ru How diverse is the sexual life of Tajik migrants in Russia?
Olimova: About 90 percent of the migrants surveyed were married, but only 5 percent took their wife with them to Russia. Another 3 percent take their wife with them for a while.
Talking about my sexual life, 38 percent of respondents reported that they did not have sex at all on the road; another 22 percent had sexual relations with casual partners; 11.5 percent - with regular partners (girlfriends); 10 percent with sex workers; 8 percent - with his wife; 6.5 percent - with kept women.
Of those who have not had sexual intercourse, about five percent reported that they solve the problem through masturbation. About one percent of the respondents admitted to having homosexual contacts. Perhaps not everyone answered this question frankly, but I think the level of homosexual relationships is still no higher than the standard four to five percent.
Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov / Kommersant
What did those who confessed to having homosexual relationships say in interviews?
There may be several options for such connections. Firstly, it can be forced contacts - like in prison. For example, in logging teams, when long time there are no women. We were told about a case when 62 people worked at a logging site for a year and a half, and two of them became a couple. Another option - in large Russian cities, young guys get in touch with Russian homosexuals. There are times when they are offered good conditions life, Russian citizenship, money.
Such stories are kept in the strictest confidence, since Tajiks have a very negative attitude towards homosexuality, and migrants often come to work in teams of relatives and neighbors.
Why did you even decide to turn to the topic of the sexual life of migrants?
The fact is that earlier in Tajikistan the problem of HIV and STDs was not acute. HIV circulated in relatively small group drug users and was transmitted mainly by injection. But since 2002, along with the rise in labor migration to Russia, the number of reported cases of sexually transmitted infection among migrants returning from abroad has sharply increased. Practitioners began to sound the alarm, and turned to the IOM and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and they decided to conduct a study to clarify the situation. In 2010 and 2014, we did the same work again to track the dynamics.
Does the current sexual behavior of Tajik men differ from what it was 15-20 years ago?
The number of people who carry their wives with them has slightly decreased - from seven to five percent. Secondly, in 12 years, the number of people entering into casual relationships has almost doubled. At the same time, it is surprising that the number of those who use sex services does not change over time: they are always about ten percent.
The number of marriages and long-term relationships with Russian women has decreased. In 2002, there were quite a lot of them, because people, to some extent, continued to feel like citizens of the USSR. Now Tajik migrants are at the bottom of the social ladder, so it is difficult for them to find a partner for a long-term relationship. Tajik is already almost a social status.
Rapes are considered casual relationships
What form of commercial sex do migrants prefer?
Different. Most often they turn to the services of “call girls”, whom they invite to their place: in 2010, 52 percent of migrants who used sex services reported this. 16.4 percent of people in this group go home to a sex worker; 9 percent visits brothels; 7 percent - massage rooms; 5 percent paid for sex to female employees in the workplace. The rest named saunas, “special apartments”, cars.
I saw two examples of how sex services were organized. In one case, this happened in the center of Moscow at a construction site. There was a small trailer where three or four women worked - one of them was for the local leadership.
Usually pimps negotiate with foremen and bring several women to the facilities. Apparently, such a scheme is well organized and has been used for a long time. Girls change often - they have many clients, working conditions are very difficult.
For the second time, I watched a minibus parked at the construction site, in which the girls served the builders. Most likely, such services are inexpensive.
Migrants who work in the transport sector pick up "shoulders" on the highways - these are girls who provide sex services to truckers.
What then is meant by random connections?
They are very varied. It can be sex at the workplace, most often with the same guest workers - Moldovans, Ukrainians, Russians, that is, internal migrants, one-day girlfriends - sex at night. These may be workers hired for a day or two to perform certain work on the construction and decoration of the house. Random connections can also happen in workshops, for example, in the production of furniture. Migrants spend the night right at work - both women and men. Everything happens there.
For example, Tajiks repair country houses and dachas, and people come to them local girls. People may know each other for a day or two.
Random connections are more typical for workers in the transport sector. These are taxi drivers, truck drivers. Among them, the proportion of those entering into casual relationships is much larger than in other areas.
Why has this become common?
The flow of migrants has partly changed. After the crisis of 2008, the proportion of very young people increased markedly - up to 25 years. They do not always consider actions and sometimes act impulsively. Although now the share of young people is declining along with a decrease in the number of labor migrants in Russia.
Are sexual crimes among such casual relationships?
Most likely, out of those 22 percent, some may be rapes. But I don't think this is a common occurrence. Such crimes are committed - including by Tajiks - for several reasons. First, they are young men without wives. They do not have the opportunity to find a partner, as they are often isolated from society. It marginalizes them. In the army, for example, they used to give bromine. And then it all turns into aggression.
Second, there are cultural differences. What is normal for Russians is read by Tajiks as a signal of accessibility or even as a call. In Tajikistan, girls don't walk around in revealing clothes, don't enter into conversation with men, and - most importantly - don't drink with them. It takes a lot of time, especially for young people, to understand what and how is customary in Russia.
There are cases when Russian women had sex with migrants under the influence of alcohol, or it was spontaneous sex, and the next morning she accused him of sexual violence.
Mutually beneficial sexual relationship
You have also studied the phenomenon of migrant cohabitation. What does this relationship look like?
More than 11 percent of our respondents said that they live with a friend and have a common household with her. These stories usually begin with business relations: at first they work together, and then somehow it turns out by itself that people rent an apartment and start living together.
Usually several couples live in one apartment - it can be three or four couples in two-room apartment.
That is, relations with Russian women rarely happen?
They also visit Russian girls, but most often the “friends” of Tajik migrants are migrant women working next to them from other countries - from Ukraine, Moldova or Kazakhstan, or Russian women who come from the regions. All of them are united by a joint migrant business - construction or trade.
Is their relationship like family?
Tajiks treat these women not as wives who need to be provided for, but as equal partners, companions. Therefore, they often share the budget and treat their partner with respect. At the same time, they are not responsible for this woman. Initially, cohabitation is temporary and does not provide for the birth of children.
Condom is embarrassing
How do migrants feel about contraceptives?
70 percent of all migrants who come into contact with irregular partners (casual relationships, sex workers) use contraceptives. Problems arise in relationships with regular partners, because when a migrant starts living with a girlfriend, he gradually begins to perceive her as a wife and stops using condoms. However, these unions are temporary for both him and her: the situation changes, someone leaves, a new partner or partner appears. In such short-term relationships, the likelihood of infection increases dramatically.
Also, I'm not sure that migrants who use condoms always do so.
So it's the women's fault?
The link between HIV/AIDS and migration is a common problem for the whole world. Mobility always entails the expansion of sexual relations and their short duration. At the same time, people do not understand that a condom is important and not at all ashamed, they do not have safe sex skills, no one taught them this. Therefore, both partners are to blame, as well as states that should inform their citizens.
The work of Natalia Zotova and Viktor Agadzhanyan says that among the representatives Central Asia Tajik women are protected more often than others and are less likely to get sexually transmitted infections. This is true?
Basically, I agree with their conclusions. The fact is that among Tajik women, women over 35 almost always go to work - either widows or divorced. These are grown women - they understand what they are doing.
Of course, they try to establish long-term relationships. 40-year-old women do not do spontaneous stupid things. But they are far from always able to force a partner to use a condom and agree to its terms.
It's better for the wife not to ask anything
Were there men who had children in Russia among your respondents?
Infrequently, but they do happen. In this case, a whole tangle of problems appears. The migrant needs to somehow legalize this child so that he bears his last name. For example, through marriage. As a result, difficulties begin with a wife in Tajikistan, divorces and at the same time attempts to keep both families in different kind marriages - official and Sharia.
Photo: Dmitry Lebedev / Kommersant
They come to their homeland and just put their wife before the fact?
They may not say. But more often parents are informed about grandchildren who have appeared in Russia, and there the information will reach the wife. Nevertheless, wives often put up with the appearance of another family.
The departure of her husband to work abroad for a Tajik woman is a real tragedy. He is always absent, it is impossible to have a lover, his mother-in-law, sister-in-law and other relatives are always somewhere nearby. Wives wait for their husbands for years. If only the husband returned, at least some - and that's good.
He will come with children and diseases, but will he still be welcome?
Certainly. She works from morning to evening in the field, looks after the children, takes care of his parents. But she knows that her husband went to another country to work hard and hard to provide her and the children with everything they need.
Is there any male solidarity among migrants when they return home? For example, do rumors reach the wife about the sexual adventures of her husband?
As far as I know, they are all silent, like partisans. Men are in approximately the same position and do not talk too much about life in migration.
At the same time, migrant groups in Russia usually have an older, authoritative migrant who is responsible for everyone. If someone got into trouble, contracted HIV or an STI, then in Tajikistan they believe that the elder is to blame, who did not see it.
When a man returns to Tajikistan, does he have any sexual habits fixed in Russia?
They bring home not only money, but also new experience sexual relations, new ideas about what is permitted and forbidden, but most of them - 78 percent - are returning to the socio-cultural norms adopted in their homeland. What was in Russia remains in Russia. The rest, upon their return, implement the patterns of behavior that have developed in Russia.
And how do mothers feel about the fact that their son can cheat on his wife?
Mothers send their sons on a very dangerous and difficult journey, so everything is forgiven them. Extramarital affairs - this is what accompanies making money in another country. The general opinion is this: returned alive and with money - already good. And it's better not to ask about anything else.
It turns out that over the past 15 years, the only thing that migrants in Russia have borrowed is intimate sphere, it is sexual infections?
Our research shows how sexual practices change over the years - the "rules of the game" and ethical standards legalizing the previously “inadmissible” (extramarital sexual relations, eating forbidden food, violations of marital behavior).
At the same time, new stable models of sexual and marital behavior of migrants are being formed as part of their adaptation to Russian reality. Gradually, an implicit social recognition of second marriages on the road, a neutral attitude towards cohabitation and temporary partnership are being formed. Thus, the boundaries of what is permitted expand, become mobile, but the orientation to the socio-cultural norms in force in the homeland is preserved.
Nevertheless, under the influence of large-scale labor migration, there is an implicit expansion of the range of sexual practices and relationships in Tajik society as a whole. This process is viewed by society as the destruction of traditions, the decline of morality, so there are discussions about polygamy, abandoned wives and children, divorces over the phone, guest marriage. From my point of view, this reflects the process of changing sexual and family-marriage ethics. It should be recognized that the sexual practices of Tajik migrants in Russia are part of the mechanism of adaptation to the conditions of migration and to the host society.
Lenta.ru expresses its gratitude to the Russian International Affairs Council for assistance in preparing the interview
