In one country, women and children grabbed a handful, but young men were rarely seen.
Women are not saltless, the country is famous for its beautiful women, girls here meet the image of exotic beauty in the minds of many men, some blonde, some brown hair and brown eyes, high nose, deep eyes and thin lips, tall and slender.
The war and the exodus of labor took away most of the country's young and middle-aged men, resulting in a proliferation of widows and unmarried women, a total population of 9.75 million, 4.7 million women, 800,000 of whom were widows, becoming a veritable "widow's country".
This country is known as Tajikistan, known as the poorest former Soviet republic, and has one of the lowest GDP per capita in the world.
Why do countries rich in beautiful women still fall into the dilemma of female excess, and where did the "widow curse" come from? What is the miserable plight of women in this country?
Why is the country of beauty deeply under the "widow curse"
If you ask Tajiks what they think about the collapse of the Soviet Union, I believe many people will give different answers.
The collapse of the Soviet Union allowed them to establish their own independent state, but as the saying goes, steel needles are rare to have two tips, sugar cane cannot be sweet at both ends, and if you get some, you are destined to bear the price of losing some.
The good news is that the Soviet Union is gone, and they have ushered in independence.
The bad news is that Tajikistan's national economy has also turned into a bubble, and a series of crises such as war, poverty, and chaos have followed.
Because in the past, Tajikistan's national economy was supported by Soviet subsidies and economic aid, but now it is really self-reliant.
Therefore, it is difficult to evaluate whether the collapse of the Soviet Union was not worth the loss for Tajikistan.
Unfortunately, Tajikistan failed to stand up, because after losing the Soviet Union, they had no pillar industries to support the economy, and a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a full-scale civil war broke out in Tajikistan.
The war made the country even worse, falling into economic collapse, declining production and construction, and chaotic social order.
At the same time, the five-year civil war has left Tajikistan with another scar that is still difficult to heal.
The war also claimed the lives of many men, who died and ran.
According to statistics, during the civil war in Tajikistan, about 600,000 people ran, most of them men, of which about 300,000 were highly educated intellectuals.
The massive attrition and exodus of the male population left widows and unmarried women behind after the war.
However, this is only the beginning of the "widow curse".
When the civil war ended in 1997, President Rahmon resolved to rebuild the domestic economy and implement a new economic policy.
Although on this basis, a few years have passed, Tajikistan's economy has grown to a certain extent, but has not ushered in a substantial leap, not only in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries in the ranks of the ranks, has always been at the tail level of the crane, but also the poorest country in the entire Central Asia, and the gap with other Central Asian countries is getting wider and wider.
Even if everyone goes to farm, 93% of the country's land is mountain lakes, and arable land resources are extremely scarce, resulting in an increasing saturation of agricultural labor, and a large number of agricultural people face the dilemma of having no land to cultivate.
It is hard to believe that such a poor country was once part of the former superpower Soviet Union.
Rahmon is also well aware that if Tajikistan wants to rely on its own resources and national strength to solve inflation, foreign debt burden, and the historical legacy of the Soviet Union, it is tantamount to shaking a tree, and it must find another way.
So Rahmon set his sights on Russia.
Because Russia has developed well, the social environment is stable and superior, and the economic development is also good, the only drawback is that the land is vast and sparsely populated, which has attracted a large number of Tajik laborers to run to find work and employment.
On the one hand, there are many resources, but there is a shortage of labor, on the other hand, there are few resources, but there are so many people that they have to overflow.
Therefore, under the impetus of the policy, following the wave of population migration in the civil war, Tajikistan once again set off a large-scale wave of labor migration.
The first wave was due to the war, when Tajikistan's population export should be called refugees, and the nature of this second wave of export changed, from refugees to labor.
Men in Tajikistan have left their homes to work in neighboring countries such as Russia and Kazakhstan.
According to statistics, as of 2016, about 5.6 million Tajikis went abroad to work, of which only 80,000 were women, which means that most of the country's migrant workers are still men.
The single have no worries, one person eats and the whole family is not hungry, while the married leave their wives and children at home and regularly remit the money earned from working outside the home on a regular basis.
Remittances from labour migrants have gradually become the main source of national income in Tajikistan, accounting for nearly half of GDP.
Labor migration has had a positive impact on Tajikistan's socio-economic development, such as alleviating the pressure of overpopulation in Tajikistan.
But the negative effects were also costly, and this cost was for the Tajik women who had been left behind in the country, and the "widow curse" was truly released.
Abandoned Tajik women
The negative impact is first and foremost reflected in the rising divorce rate in Tajikistan.
"My husband called me and asked for a divorce so he could get Russian citizenship, but I refused," a Tajik woman said of her experience.
"So we kept arguing, and I asked him to have to choose between me and that Russian woman."
The girl, named Malohart, got married at the age of 22, and it would have been a happy marriage for her, and she was happy with everything.
It wasn't until shortly after the marriage that her husband suddenly confessed to her that he also had an unregistered wife and two children in Russia.
It was then that she learned that her husband had worked and lived in Russia for a long time before they got married, and had started a family there, which frustrated her, but she later figured it out that he was now living with her anyway and decided not to blame for these things.
They continued to live in Tajikistan for some time and gave birth to a son, and soon after, the husband went to work in Russia again.
Gathering less and leaving more became the norm for the couple, who only communicated via phone and text message, but soon learned that her husband's Russian wife had given birth to a third child.
Every time she asked for money on the phone, the argument began, with Malohart asking for money to make ends meet and pay for her children's school fees, and the man complaining about having no money.
Later, the man called for a divorce, he finally chose a Russian wife, and Malohart returned to his mother's house.
The Tajik woman's experience also reflects a social phenomenon in which marrying a Russian woman has become commonplace for Tajik men working abroad.
The best shortcut for Tajik men who want to improve their lives abroad and legalize their stay in Russia is to marry a Russian wife.
According to statistics, about 12,000 male citizens of Tajikistan marry Russian women every year, including many married men who have started a family in their country.
If they want to marry a Russian wife, they will resolutely break up with their Tajik wives, and they don't even bother to rush back in person, and take the divorce process away, often with a phone call, a text message, and simply and rudely "suspend the book".
Many men who work outside the home will increasingly look down on the wives of the chaff in their hometown after seeing the world, feeling that they not only have a low level of education, they only know how to reach out for money, and they can't give any other substantial help, which makes them very impatient.
Being abandoned became the fate of many Tajik women who stayed in their hometowns because their husbands went out to work.
The rising divorce rate has made the Tajik government anxious, and even enacted a law prohibiting men who go to Russia to work in the form of phone messages to notify their wives of divorce.
But treating the symptoms but not the root cause, once a man's heart runs far, it is difficult for the law to pull back.
Anyway, the emperor is far away, the men have been living outside for a long time, basically do not come back, all rely on telephone communication, as long as they unilaterally do not return calls and do not return text messages, cut off this only contact, where else can they find someone?
The original partners who stayed in their hometowns not only had no money, but also pulled their children, and basically had no money and no energy to run to Russia to find a husband and cry.
Therefore, Tajikistan is called the "country of widows", not because the men have died, the war has indeed taken the lives of a large number of men, leaving many lonely widows, but for those women whose husbands go to Russia to work and never return, this widowhood is not a widow?
Marry a widow with a husband
Originally, because of the civil war, Tajikistan has lost a lot of men, and now they are not willing to stay in their own country, and they have run away, and many of them are unwilling to return after staying outside for a long time.
It's good to be able to go out with their husbands to work, but what about Tajik women and unmarried single women who can't afford to go out and stay at home?
There are more girls and boys, there is a surplus of single women, more and more women are over 30 years old, if there are not enough single men, then what should they do?
Faced with this growing social problem, some non-governmental organizations believe that it is time for the Tajik authorities to develop a policy of polygamy.
Polygamy is when excess single women form a second family with married men and become their second wives.
Although the government does not explicitly make it a legal act, there is even a criminal provision in the penal code that punishes men who live in a household with two or more women with a fine of $2,000 or up to two years in prison.
That is, polygamy is a criminal offence in Tajikistan.
There are both voices of support and opposition to polygamy in Tajik society.
But both supporters and opponents share a common understanding that polygamy has become a fairly common phenomenon in Tajikistan, and even some high-ranking officials have begun to marry second wives.
It is difficult to determine the true scale of this phenomenon, because many people live this life only in seclusion, and as long as the husband, eldest wife, and second wife have no objection to it, then no one will report it.
The massive exodus of male labour from Tajikistan and the increase in the number of divorces have undoubtedly contributed to polygamy.
Many men work in Russia, forget their wives and children back home, start new families in Russia, and unilaterally end their last marriage with just one text message.
But what about the abandoned wife?
They took their children and lost their husband's financial resources, their in-laws did not want her, and their mother-in-law could not take her in, and they really had nowhere to return.
So Tajik society generally believes that polygamy is a good thing, it has saved thousands of Tajik women who have been left alone by the civil war and the large-scale export of young male labor, and it has given those who are helpless a chance to have a family again.
But is it really so optimistic?
In fact, the second wife who marries in has no status and security at all, and becomes the second wife of a married man, what do they get?
There is indeed a shoulder to rely on, and there is also some financial assistance.
But there are still some things that cannot be ignored: there is no officially registered marriage, a husband with an uneven bowl of water, a big house that may come to the door at any time to make a fuss and threaten the husband to break up with his second wife...
The second wife is completely dependent on her husband, and if the man wants to break up with her, then she may get nothing.
Children born in such a slightly deformed marriage may face being swept away with their mother and left with nothing.
A Tajik widow explained why she agreed to become a second wife: "I didn't have an official registration, but I really needed money, and this marriage gave me the opportunity to rely on and financially support." ”
She was one of the tens of thousands of widows left behind by the Civil War, in which her husband died leaving her with only two children, and herself, as a widow, had no job and no source of income.
So soon she agreed to marry a husband with a wife.
But her marriage didn't last long, and the man's original partner soon learned that her husband had a second family outside, so he made a fuss and threatened to write a statement to law enforcement.
The man, who held a position in the government, feared that he would be reported, so he was forced to break up with the widow and leave her.
Their marriage was not officially registered, so widows did not have the right to apply for alimony from men, although men sometimes provided them with food and other help.
The rights of second wives were not protected by law because their existence was inherently illegal.
But sadly, although the society is well aware of polygamy, when it comes to public showdowns, women become the culprits, suffering from various accusations and white eyes, and invectives such as "second milk" and "mistress" are constant.
Tajik society is facing a completely new problem, which is extremely difficult to solve in the current conditions of national development, and there are not enough men in the country, both for social production and life.
Resources:
JIAO Jingdan. Labor migration export and its impact in Tajikistan[J].Russian Studies,2018(06):89-119.)