Russia must find a civilised way forward for divorcees

Yelena M

It all started with a heart-rending letter in a Moscow tabloid - a cry straight from the heart of Yelena M about her shabby treatment as the ex-wife of a Russian steel tycoon.

In her lengthy open letter - addressed to all Russian women - she proposed creating not just a first wives club, but a whole political movement, devoted to fighting for the rights of former wives.

Yelena tells an all-too familiar tale, of the sacrifices she made during her 10 years of marriage, setting aside her own career plans to support her husband, Alexei.

While he slaved as a minion in the local steel factory in a town 600 kilometres (373 miles) north of Moscow, she worked as a cleaning lady to finance his upward mobility.

She nursed their baby son through several illnesses and spent long periods alone at home while her husband travelled.

Mistresses

As Alexei's career progressed, wrote his ex-wife, she even gave him her wages so he could go to Moscow and socialise with the right people.

According to Yelena, often he did not come home at all, preferring to spend his evenings with a string of lovers.

Tycoon Boris Berezovsky left his wife for a younger woman

When Alexei finally made it - becoming director of the steel plant, and a wealthy influential man - she was dropped for a younger woman.

"I'm not a feminist," she wrote, "but Russia must find a civilised way forward for divorcees."

In her final divorce settlement, she said, she and her son Ilya received a small flat and a broken-down old car, a Lada - hardly the status symbols the ex-wife of an oligarch might expect.

And worse was to come.

By now Yelena was working at a bank - one owned by her ex-husband.

Soon after the divorce, she lost her job - with no explanation - and has not found one since.

Nobody in her town, she said, wants to get on the wrong side of her influential ex-husband.

All property is not equal

Yelena's story will strike a chord with many Russian women - wealthy or not.

New legislation passed in 1995 in theory should mean that money and property are divided equally.

But many Russian women - rather like the Russian taxman - have little idea of what their husbands really earn.

Nor, in the case of wealthy new Russian oligarchs, do they know which foreign bank accounts might be harbouring their husbands' wealth.

Yelena may well find she has started something; several other prominent Russian men such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky also found their new wealth coincided with a new wife, leaving a large pool of disgruntled exes.

It may be that Russia's oligarchs might actually need their phalanx of bodyguards not to protect them from political rivals but from their own angry ex-wives.