A growing number of Australian men are turning to Russian women for relationships and marriage. But there are risks for both sides.

Perth Airport, 6am. Elena Polyanskaya walks through the arrivals gate wearing dark jeans and a pale blue top, her fine, blonde hair cut boyishly short.

She is exhausted after a 54-hour journey from her Russian hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, but the moment Richard Bosward sees her, he decides she is beautiful. Her eyes are wider and brighter than in the photos she had sent him and, when she sees him, she grins broadly. Then for a moment, things are awkward. Do they kiss? On the lips? On the cheek?

On the way home, Polyanskaya asks Bosward to take her to the beach. As they drive they talk about the emails they have been sending each other and the awkwardness slowly ebbs.

It is just six weeks since Bosward first tapped "Russian brides" into his computer and paid $100 to Elena's Models, an internet site that listed Polyanskaya's email address.

"I'm too old for this," he remembers thinking as he clicked on photos of smiling women with exotic names such as Natalia and Olga and Elena. But he was lonely, his life felt incomplete, and none of the Australian women he dated was prepared to commit herself to a more permanent relationship.

"I'm an accountant, 53-years-old, five feet ten inches, 96 kilos, good health, Australian born," he typed. "I live in Perth near the beach, have a degree in commerce, a son and a daughter. I've been divorced 10 years and I want to start again. Please let me know if you want to talk to me."

"Wow. I have a letter from Australian man," replied Polyanskaya, a 37-year-old accountant and divorced mother of two. "You cannot image how much I am glad. Good morning. Send us a picture. I like your first message. Keep writing."

Two days later, on Valentine's Day 2002, Bosward sent Polyanskaya a bunch of red roses and offered to buy her a flight to Australia. He had read plenty of stories warning about internet scammers, so he knew that acting so hastily wasn't smart. But it felt like the right thing to do and he reasoned it would be worth the airfare just to find out for sure if they had a future together.

"We both knew we were looking for partners," he says. "There's a coldness about that but there's an efficiency at the same time. If the two intellects fit, you're most of the way there. You just have to see if there is a physical attraction."

Polyanskaya stayed in Perth for 10 days and at four o'clock one morning they both woke and Bosward asked her to marry him.

She paused — "I hadn't had time to think" — but she said yes.

"In Russia, nobody asked me to marry them," says Polyanskaya today. "People wanted to meet me, maybe go out. But there weren't any serious offers. I didn't like this. I'm family oriented. I prefer to live with a husband and children."

Polyanskaya flew home, quit her job, and enrolled in a full-time course in English, along with her 16-year-old daughter Genya and her son Vasily, 12. The couple was married at Bosward's home on September 28. It was a perfect sunny Perth day. The icing on the wedding cake depicted the Russian and Australian flags.

"Since marrying Lena, we've gotten to know four or five other Australian/Russian couples — guys pretty much my age, who've been married before and have found it very hard to get any Australian woman to marry us," says Bosward.

"I don't believe it is any reflection on us. I don't have two heads. I just think some Australian women have a hang up. They like to have a man, but, at a distance, a sort of three-quarters-time guy."

Australian men aren't the only ones finding it difficult to convince women to settle down, says John Adams, co-founder of A Foreign Affair, the world's largest website devoted to Russian brides.

The Russian bride business has been booming in America since the mid 1990s. In the past decade, according to Adams, as many as 10,000 American men have married Russian women.

"A lot of the men want to have families," says Adams, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with his Russian wife, Tanya. (The other two men with whom he founded the business have also married women from Russia.)

"It is difficult for them to find women who want to start a family in the same age range. In Russia, women are very interested in Western men and they don't worry about the age stigma. They want men who are 10 to 15 years older."

In the past few years, Australian men such as Bosward have begun to get in on the act. In the 12 months to the end of June last year, 191 Russian women were granted prospective spouse visas in Australia. That places Russian brides fifth on the list of spouse visa recipients, behind only women from Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and China.

Perhaps even more significant is the manner in which Russian brides are marketed. Internet sites that promote Russian brides tend to imply — or state outright — that there is a problem with Western women that makes them unsuitable for marriage. Feminism gets the blame while Russian women are presented as family oriented, traditional and submissive.

"The Russian woman's attitude about herself is feminine," boasts one Russian brides site.

"She expects to be treated as a lady. She is the weaker gender and knows it. The Russian woman has not been exposed to the world of rampant feminism that asserts its rights in America. She remains sweet and tender with a softness that is absolutely desirable."

If would be funny if it weren't so alarming a message, says Sheila Jeffreys, a spokeswoman for Coalition Against Trafficking of Women and an associate professor of political science at Melbourne University.

Jeffreys says men who go on sex tours in Asia also argue that feminism has made it hard to get women at home. "We do actually have an interesting problem in relations between the genders in Australia," she says.

"A lot of men aren't able to let go of their privileges and relate on an equal level with women. They expect the women to fit into the traditional family that the man controls, and sometimes controls through violence."

Jeffreys has noticed an increase in domestic violence against Russian women reported through women's networks. Some high-profile cases have also hit the headlines.

A couple of years ago, a 22-year-old Russian student was bashed to death in her home in Mount Druitt in Sydney's West. Her 64-year-old Australian husband has been charged with the murder.

In a recent case in America, a Russian bride was kept in a cell by her husband, who posted pictures on the internet of them having sex. She escaped when her teenager daughter intervened.

Thankfully, those Russian women who do find themselves in abusive relationships are fairly well protected under Australian law, says Jeffreys. If they leave their husbands after alleging domestic violence, they are not barred from applying for permanent residency and remaining in the country.

But the system is also open to manipulation. Last year, the television current affairs program 60 Minutes ran a story that alleged that three Russian women had accused their husbands of violence to secure independent residency.

"It gave the totally wrong impression," says Jeffreys. "It showed the women exploiting the men. The story simply assumed that because the men were acquitted the women were lying."

The horrific stories of women who are bashed or murdered can, according to Jeffreys, serve to obscure a more everyday trauma — that of economic exploitation.

Jeffreys says Russian brides who stay in relationships with Western men are vulnerable to myriad forms of subtle abuse. "The power dynamic is inevitably unequal," she says. "The woman comes from a situation that she is desperate to leave economically. She is forced into a situation where she will be sexually used for a living. There cannot be equality, and for some men this is actually terribly exciting."

Vladimir Korovine, owner of the Melbourne-based Russianbrides.com.au website, admits some of his clients might end up trapped in unhappy or abusive marriages. But that is a private matter, he says, and not something he can, or believes he should, control.

For $39 a month, he sells Australian men the contact details of hundreds of Russian women who are looking for spouses. He urges caution and will provide help if clients request it — including a private detective service. But the final relationship is a matter for consenting adults.

Korovine, a geologist who was born in Siberia and moved to Melbourne eight years ago, set up his Russianbrides.com.au site in 2001 and works out of a small room above a printing shop in South Melbourne.

His business is simple: a computer on a desk that has been pushed against a wall to make room for a laminating machine owned by the printer downstairs.

Korovine has about 400 male clients in Australia, no alluring soft-focus pictures of Russian women on the walls, and says he sleeps soundly at night because he does everything in his power to protect his clients.

"I stress that people shouldn't rush into things," he says. "If they have any doubts, they should contact the agent. And they should check things out, it is possible to check things out."

He says there are two reasons Russian woman are attracted to Western men. One is undoubtedly economic. There may be opportunities in Moscow, but, in many Russian villages, there are none: nothing to do, no work. There are also problems with alcoholism and crime.

The second attraction of Western men is that many Russian women still find it hard to find a man in Russia. In many parts of Russia, women still outnumber men and women who are over 25 are often considered too old for marriage.

Korovine says most Australian men want Russian women because they have given up hope of finding a local bride. He has clients who live in rural areas and find it hard to convince women to live with them, he says. Others are workaholics and are fed up with the inefficiency of the dating scene.

But, underlying all this, is another insistent message: many men say changes in relations between men and women, brought about by feminism, have killed off romance.

"The women here, they might be beautiful, but the culture of total equity and absolute competition in every field, it is good for business but I'm not sure that it is good for family," he says.

"From my point of view, OK, she is beautiful, like a goddess, but she is outspoken. I'm not saying that I have to have women under my thumb. No. Nothing like that. But if I need a mate I will go to the pub and drink beer with my mate. But I don't need this kind of person in my family as my wife. That is ridiculous."

The idea that Russian women embody some sort of long-lost traditional femininity might sound far-fetched, but according to Judith Armstrong, an expert in Russian studies at Melbourne University, it is also, more or less, true.

Men have been in short supply in Russia since more than 20 million were killed under Stalin during and after World War II. It has deeply affected women's attitude to marriage, work and family life.

"Men were prized, but they weren't asked to do very much," says Armstrong. "Often after they came back from the war they were shattered. They easily became alcoholic and women just got used to carrying on. The standard picture of a Russian family was a grandmother, a mother and a child. A husband might or might not be there."

Armstrong says the absence of men increased the importance of family to Russian women. Under the Soviet regime, Russian women had access to work, but even those who were doctors were lowly paid and career was not as important as it was in the West. Instead of coveting a good job, Russian women set their sights on the chance to have children and become the head of a household.

"They just assume that work is drudgery," says Armstrong. "They've been doing it for years. But, at home, women always had all the power. They would always make all the decisions. That was the kind of power they were always interested in." Thus, according to Armstrong, it is hardly surprising that women who are in their late 20s or early 30s and unmarried would search for men in other countries. But that doesn't mean they are going to be submissive, and Australian men who assume otherwise will be in for a rude shock.

Elena Petrova is typical of the young Russian women who decided to look for spouses overseas. She was 28-years-old and working as a regional manager in a large marketing company when she decided to sign up with a marriage agency. She had 150 people working for her and an income that placed her among the richest 10 per cent of the Russian population. But her family and friends had already written her off as an "old maid".

"The only reason I did not feel happy was that I could not find a husband," she says. "And yes, finding a husband and starting a family was very, very important to me. In Russia, a girl feels incomplete if she doesn't have a family. She can have the greatest career but she will still be unhappy if she isn't married and doesn't have a family."

Petrova decided to join a marriage agency much in the way you might purchase a Lotto ticket — she didn't really expect to find a husband. Then she met a 43-year-old South African divorcee through a personal advertisement he had taken out in a Russian newspaper.

"I wrote him a letter," she says. "He responded with a short note, but, after that, he wrote a six-page letter. We wrote to each other for a while and then he was travelling in Europe and he came to meet me at my house."

Their fist date was a disaster. Petrova had to rush to meet him after work and was flustered, without make-up and her good clothes. She can't remember anything they said to each other over their first meal together, a bowl of soup. But, after a few more dates it ceased to matter. They were in love.

Since marrying John — Petrova declines to give his last name — the couple have moved to the Gold Coast where they now run a Russian brides website, Elena's Models.

"I am proud of what I am doing," Petrova says. "I am not in the mail-order bride business. I am in the dating business. I am helping people find their love and I hope with my input there will be a few less lonely people in the world and a few more happy couples."

And maybe, just maybe, sometimes it can work. More than 18-months after they were married Richard Bosward talks about his "beautiful wife" Elena with the tender enthusiasm of a man who still cannot believe his luck.

His son Richard gets along well with his new Russian brother and sister. Elena works at her husband's accounting firm and, when it is not busy, reads Russian novels during the day. She has also added a small fish pond to the Bosward backyard and a few plants that she waters every morning.

"On the weekends, we go to Sorrento beach. I sit in a chair and read the paper while Lena swims," Bosward says. "If it is really warm, I will swim with her. It is special to us. It is the same beach I took Lena to when she was fresh off the plane on her first visit."