Republic Stirs Debate By Allowing for Multiple Wives

Ruslan S. Aushev, president of the Russian republic of Ingushetia, says he doesn’t need a second bride, because his wife has already given him a male heir.

But that shouldn’t keep other men from taking additional wives, he says, and so he signed a decree last month legalizing the practice of polygyny--that would be multiple wives, of course, not husbands--in his southern Islamic republic.

“I am still getting letters from young girls saying how great the president is and offering to become my second or third wife,” the 44-year-old Aushev said. “If I did not have a son already, I am dead sure I would take advantage of the decree myself.”

But Aushev’s presidential order has deeply offended women elsewhere in Russia who protest that it treats women as if they are the property of men.

“The country is obviously sliding into the Stone Age,” said democratic activist Valeriya I. Novodvorskaya.

The decree also is a direct challenge to Russia’s federal government as it struggles to hold together an increasingly diverse collection of 89 republics and regions across 11 time zones. Top Russian officials expressed their indignation but have taken no action to overturn the law. Russia’s Constitution prohibits polygyny, but the criminal code does not provide for any penalty.

“I respect various religions and traditions, but as a woman I am outraged by the very possibility of one man having several wives,” said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko. “This is amoral and offensive for women. Why should we be subjected to this?”

Labor Minister Sergei Kalashnikov protested that allowing men in Ingushetia to have harems sets a precedent of “two incompatible legal systems operating in Russia at the same time.”

An impoverished province in the tumultuous Caucasus Mountains, Ingushetia is one of the most independent of Russia’s republics. Aushev earlier struck a deal with Moscow that gave him control over the region’s police and courts.

Bordering on Georgia and the rebellious republic of Chechnya, Ingushetia has been the scene of numerous kidnappings for ransom. Ingush nationalists also have engaged in frequent skirmishes with forces from the neighboring republic of North Ossetia in an ongoing boundary dispute.

A former Soviet general who earned the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, Aushev has been president since 1993, when he was elected with 99.94% of the vote.

At a Moscow news conference, Aushev said his order merely legalizes a practice that has long existed in the region, predating even the conversion of the Ingush people to Islam 150 years ago. He estimated that 1% to 2% of the families in Ingushetia are polygynous.

Usually, he said, it is wealthier men who take more than one wife--often because the first wife has given birth to girls but has not produced a son. Apparently, the news has yet to reach Ingushetia that scientists discovered in 1959 that the father’s contribution determines a child’s sex.

“For every one of us, a wife is a symbol,” Aushev said. “Children are also a symbol. The more boys there are in a family, the better. And when a man has bad luck with these symbols, he puts his head between his hands and thinks about what is to be done.”

Supporters of polygyny point to the family of Bernsako Marzabekov as an example of its advantages. Marzabekov, 83, who lives in Nazran, the Ingush capital, recently celebrated his 60th wedding anniversary with his first wife--and his 50th anniversary with his second.

Marzabekov said he was compelled to take a second wife because his first was childless after 10 years of marriage. Both wives helped raise the seven children--including four sons--born to the second wife.

Aushev said a man also might choose to take another wife because his first wife has fallen ill or because he has fallen in love with another woman. The women’s rights are not violated, he averred, because each marriage must have the approval of all the spouses and the wives’ relatives.

The arrangement benefits women who would otherwise never have the chance to have a husband and children, he insisted. In Ingushetia, women often live in isolation and marriages are arranged for them. An unmarried woman in her 30s has little chance of getting married--unless it is to a married man.

“Women desperately want the same thing themselves: They want someone to marry them,” Aushev said. “The advantages are that a woman will have a family, then she will give birth to children of her own. She will have a shield--a husband to protect her.”

The law does not provide for polyandry, which would allow a woman to have more than one husband--a practice Aushev said is unthinkable in Ingushetia.

While women’s rights in Russia lag far behind the West, Aushev’s comments drew scathing criticism from women such as Novodvorskaya, the leader of the Democratic Union, a small political party.

“The decree strengthens the popular image of Russia, where bears roam the streets of Moscow and it is impossible to tell the difference between the Russian people and the bears,” she said. “It plays into the hands of those who have always considered Russia to be a barbaric country.”

Aushev is unperturbed by such criticism. Asked about the existence of feminist groups in Ingushetia, he replied: “Do we have feminist organizations? Is this some kind of a joke? Our women do not even know what this word means.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.