The kind of smart, sophisticated, educated Russian women who look for Western husbands today do it because they believe that men from Western countries are better for them.

From the perspective of a Russian woman, a Western husband would treat her like the equal she is. He would respect her opinion, share responsibility for child rearing, and do his part of the domestic chores. He would drink in moderation, avoid chasing other women, and be responsible about financial matters.

Some women want to have careers, some want to be homemakers, but in both cases having the choice is important. For a married woman in Russia, that choice is rarely possible. A Russian physician earns a salary of one hundred dollars per month, which is the same as the cost of an internet account in St. Petersburg. Western salaries, however, are much higher relative to expenses, so that a Russian woman who marries a Western man can expect to have either much more spending power herself, and therefore a better quality of life, or to be free to stay home and raise the kids.

A woman from Russia may feel that all Western men are suave and exotic. Few women living in Russia can afford to travel to the West, so the only Western men they meet in person are those who have travelled to Russia, and these are usually men with good incomes and good knowledge of how to behave. For that reason, there are now several thousand websites that have an in-person presence in Russia but an online presence in the West, and many of them specialize in helping women in Russia connect with men in the West. A number of those online contacts have led to marriage.

People are the same the world over, and women from Russia are no different. They want to be loved, they want to be comfortable in their relationship, and they want to have both emotional and financial security. Such things may be more available in the West. In Russian culture, the age at which a woman marries can be incompatible with finishing college first, while Western men are accustomed to women getting married after they graduate.

Trying to emigrate to the west can mean spending years in a queue, and the simplest way to shrink that waiting period is to marry someone who already has status in the West, but this doesn't mean that Russian women are just after the papers. These days they want stable, enduring marriages that enable them to have families.

And then, of course there is the old matter of personal preference. Russian women are individuals just like everyone else, and some of them may just like Western men better.