From Russia with love . . . Val Girilovitch is helping other Russians find their perfect
matches in what they see as paradise.
Era and Val Girilovitch . . . they've found love together and are spreading the word of what Russians and Aussies can otter each other.
click to enlarge |
By JANINE HILL
IMAGINE living in a country where a
kilogram of sausage costs half your
monthly income, where two or three
families cram into a two bedroom flat, and
lice run rampant in the overcrowded
conditions.
This is the picture Val Girilovitch paints of life in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. It's a life which many women are willing to pay to leave. Hundreds of women from Russia and the Ukraine are enlisting with introduction agencies in an attempt to find their perfect match — and paradise — overseas.
Mr Girilovitch, a former Glasshouse Mountains farm manager, runs one such agency. He established his Commercial Introduction Agency (CIA), about 12 months ago and has about 400 women on his books at the moment.
"To them, a country like Australia is paradise," he said.
Mr Girilovitch is anxious, however, to dispel any negative perceptions that the women on his books are only looking for a way out of their crisis-torn countries, rather than husbands. |
"The main reason they register is they want to meet men — men from overseas. They feel that men in Russia cannot offer them or their children what the average person over here can," he said.
Mr Girilovitch said introduction agencies were becoming common-place in Russia and the Ukraine.
"Because nobody can afford to go out, they go to introduction agencies to meet. Giving people the opportunity to meet people in Australia is a double bonus," he said.
Mr Girilovitch, who was born in Siberia but came to Australia 28 years ago with his family, married his own Ukraine bride, Era Torchinskaya, last month.
The two met when he stopped to ask her about an unusual mountainside monorail during a working holiday in Russia and the Ukraine in 1993.
Era has temporarily returned home to organise immigration for her five-year-old daughter by her first marriage.
She is also helping with the running of the CIA agencies in Moscow, Krasnodar, Saint Petersburg, Vladivostok and Kiev.
Many of the women on the CIA books are friends of Era, who was senior secretary at the University of Kiev before she wed her Australian husband.
Many are university educated, and one-third or more speak English.
Mr Girilovitch said Russian and Ukraine women were not unlike Australian women, but with a strong sense of culture and the spiritual.
"They're like women anywhere else in the world They want to marry and raise a family with their ideal partner They're culture makes them different," he said.
The Australian men who responded to advertisements for Russian and Ukraine brides were often professionals, mature men, or busy men who found it difficult to meet their ideal partner
The women pay a fee — the price of a softdrink in their home countries — to apply to the agency.
Men are charged a "modest" amount for an application and consultation. There is another fee for an introduction, and if assistance is needed with interpreting the language.
After the initial introduction, it is up to the couple to continue to correspond if they wish.
So far, three weddings are planned for next year.
Mr Girilovitch said there was evidence marriages involving Russian and Ukraine women were more successful than others involving overseas brides introduced by agencies.
SUNSHINE COAST DAILY, Saturday, December 17, 1994
