Baltia Air Lines Inc. (fka BLTA)

[fazoolius]

Could be a good thing for Baltia,

American Lion Seeks Russian Lioness
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By JOHN VAROLI
Published: December 17, 2000

AS the lights dimmed, dozens of young women flooded into the Hollywood Nights club on Nevsky Prospekt on a Wednesday night early in December. The club's tawdry plastic and metal interior is decorated with film stills of Marilyn Monroe in ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,'' and at the entrance, each of the Russian women accepted a glass of Russian champagne. Some sipped nervously, considering where to sit. Others, who knew the ropes, sat confidently at tables.

The music was low to allow people to chat without shouting. And so the hunt began.

Men flitted among the women, eyes wide open, smiling, happy to be prized figures at this party, where some 20 American men enjoyed the company of nearly 120 Russian women between 18 and 45, many dressed in short skirts and tight pants.

It might sound to some like a brothel, but it was a mixer organized by a company based in Phoenix called A Foreign Affair, which describes itself as an international marriage agency. The party was one of many organized that week at Hollywood Nights by competing companies in the booming trans-Atlantic lonely hearts business.

Scores of marriage, dating and introduction agencies have sprung up in the last decade to cater to the demand of Western men for Russian wives and girlfriends. The business exploits complementary stereotypes: that Russian women are more passive and dutiful than their American counterparts, and that American men can offer Russian women economic stability and a lush life abroad.

The mail-order bride industry is at least as old as the 19th-century American West. What has sparked this boom is the Internet, which nearly all companies use to connect potential mates. Most agencies work similarly. Men view photos and descriptions of prospective brides on the Web, and read their comments (Sample: ''I am a pretty, long-legged blonde . . . I would like to meet a handsome, intelligent, warm and enterprising gentleman''), then request their addresses for a fee ($9 each for the first two from A Foreign Affair at www.loveme.com; $7 after that). The women are recruited through ads in local newspapers or by word of mouth. The companies organize tours to meet the women, like this month's two-week St. Petersburg visit for $3,250.

''There is a very big and growing demand for Russian women,'' said Larisa Buchinskaya, who is married to Andrei Yakovlev, a leading Russian ballet dancer, and who opened the St. Petersburg-based International Acquaintance Service (www.idealmarriage.com) in April after friends in France told her that interest in Russian women was strong in their country.

''In the past six months, and with almost no advertising except for just being on the Web, we have over 1,000 girls in our database, who are getting a total of about 200 letters a day from American and European men.''

An Internet clearinghouse for mail-order brides, goodwife.com, links to 137 agencies specializing in women from the countries of the former Soviet Union, up from 69 agencies in early 1998. Women from Asia, particularly the Philippines, are the next most popular.

Many men seeking wives among Russian women are swayed by stories of their beauty, femininity and devotion to husband and family, traits they say women at home lack.

''In Russia, most American men feel they are the big lion king, and there's a beautiful, tender lioness willing to share the lair with them,'' said Oliver Moensh, 63, a lawyer from San Diego, who attended the Hollywood Nights mixer. He was married to an American woman for a year 14 years ago, but is now looking for a wife in Russia. ''When I walk into the club, the choice of so many splendid available women makes me feel liberated,'' he said.

The wish of Russian women to leave for foreign shores is fueled by their country's poor standard of living, as well as by a Russian male population plagued by alcoholism, violent crime and a life expectancy of 59 years, and falling.

''The American man appears to be a knight in shining armor, who takes the girl away from this miserable reality,'' said Yana Hickman, a Russian who, with her American husband, James Hickman, directs Miss Russia Internet (missrussia.com), a Dallas-based marriage agency. It caters exclusively to millionaires, charging them $10,000 to meet five women on an eight-day visit to St. Petersberg, boasting that it screens all the women, unlike other agencies, whose women, the Web site states, are ''lured off the street by promotions that promise free food, drink and a ticket to America.''

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9904E1DD1639F934A25751C1A9669C8B63


If business was booming in 2000, imagine what it would be like in 2008 when Baltia flies directly to St. petersburg!!

-faz