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Despite cold war images of the "enemy" in the form of a Red Commissar, or a slinky blonde Russian woman spy, exploiting a fat capitalist or war-crazed Pentagon general, American and European men have been dating Russian women and falling in love and marrying through good times and bad. Indeed, US-Soviet tensions were assumed to be an integral part of dating Russian women. Stereotypes die hard. Prior to glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union, dating Russian women was a risky business, subject to fluctuations in the political barometer and to the whims of bureaucrats in both countries.
In the 1920s and early 1930s, socialist idealists, children of Russian Jewish emigres and ordinary Americans flocked to Russia to help build a socialist utopia. Many ended up dating Russian women, as did many American journalists posted to Moscow. But getting an exit visa for a Russian woman bride proved far from easy, and many couples suffered from harassment, surveillance and years of separation. American men were often not allowed to reside permanently in Russia, or were forced to renounce their US citizenship. In the late 1930s and during the postwar period, a freeze in Soviet-American relations discouraged western men from dating Russian women, as did the 1947 law forbidding Soviet citizens to marry foreigners, though a few exceptions were made prior to the law's repeal following Stalin's death in 1953.
Russian migrations to the US after WWII and the Russian -Jewish exodus which began in the 1970s made dating Russian women a viable enterprise. In the 1960's and 1970's, detente brought widened possibilities for student, cultural and business contacts. And, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the easing of travel restrictions, more and more American diplomats, journalists, performers, teachers, students, scientists, athletes, businessmen and tourists have been dating Russian women and finding love and marriage on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The rapid development of cultural and commercial ties has produced a large group of American expatriates who have participated in dating Russian women and marrying Russian women. Today, home for these couples can be Moscow just as well as New York.
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