Hi!My name is Elena Petrova. As the title of this site says, I am a Russian woman. I grew up in Russia, and spent the first 30 years of my life there. I got married to a Westerner 5 years ago.
Hi!
My name is Elena Petrova. As the title of this
site says, I am a Russian woman. I grew up in Russia, and spent the first 30
years of my life there. I got married to a Westerner 5 years ago.
I have a masters degree in philosophy (graduated with distinction), and also a postgraduate education in marketing and advertising. For a few years I worked in commerce, then as a copywriter in the advertisement department of a prominent industrial plant with more than 4,500 employees. My last position before I left Russia was as a regional manager of a large marketing agency that had representation in 22 cities of Russia, where I had 150 people working for me and the income that would fit into top 10% of the population.
I used to live in Ekaterinburg, one of the biggest cities in Russia, and have many friends in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities.
I traveled a lot, both around the countries of the former Soviet Union (when I started to travel it was still a country) and "far abroad", how Russians call the countries, which were not a part of the USSR. In my opinion, we Russians are really different from the other nations. Read about it in the Russians section of the page "About Russia".
Though I've never had a problem with getting men's attention, I was not able to find The Man Of My Dreams in my homeland. When I was 29, I realized that my expectations towards this special man were constantly growing (I believe this as I was growing, too), whilst my chances to find such a guy were decreasing in geometric progression. I did not see a man I would like to get married to, and even if on occasion one of these men looked alright, he was inevitably married already. So at the age of 29 I was still single, which is more than just a little unusual for a Russian woman. It was not just strange, it looked suspicious, and I felt like a complete idiot every time I had to answer the question "Have you got married?" (it meant: "at last...") whenever I met my school or university classmates. Read the Family life section, and you will probably understand why.
You know, marrying a foreigner is one of the hottest topics in Russia. I think, any single Russian woman would have thought about it at least once in her life. This idea came to my mind several times since I was 26, and it took me as little as 3 years to start making it come true. I won't overburden you with the details, lets just say that my search was quite successful. I received more than 250 men's letters from all over the world, though about 80% were from the USA. I was seeking a partner, not a country, and a guy from South Africa stole my heart... (If you are interested in his part of the story, click here.) We have moved to Australia since.
I started my search in the summer of 1997, and one year later I met my future husband in person. In 6 months we got married. Now we have two beautiful children, and honestly, I've never been so happy in my life. I am sure we have many wonderful years together ahead of us.
I still keep in contact with my Russian friends, and my successful story has encouraged many of them to try the same way. My cousin married a guy from the USA, and my friends are communicating with Americans, Australians and Europeans.
The idea of relationships between Western men and foreign women was really interesting to me, and that is why I decided to design this site. I would like to supply truly unbiased information about Russian women, their motives, aims, and conceptions, and touch on their misconceptions and superstitions.
A while ago I was interviewed by Cosmo, and the lady-reporter seemed to be going to write a completely different story from the beginning of our interview. The announcement for the future article was "South Africa's mail order brides". Sounds a bit nasty, doesn't it? This was the first time I had heard this term "mail order brides", and honestly, I was shocked!! I had no idea this was the official name of the process.
Nevertheless, it looked like the lady-reporter changed her attitude. The cover page to the actual issue with the article said "South Africa's Mail Order Romances". A bit better. And the article finished with the words "Welcome" and "Good luck" addressed to all us Russian women. (Thank you, Shantal.)
This was my first encounter with the way Russian-western marriages were presented in the media. I looked on the Internet in search of the information, and was shocked even more. With so many sources offering information about Russian women, there was precious little information that was not one-sided, or purposefully incorrect.
I found that there are two types of myths in Western society regarding Russian women, positive and negative, both are far from the truth. Even if there is a grain of truth in some of them, they are usually totally wrong about the reasons for the phenomena. This is why I decided to design my own website, and give the opinion of a Russian woman who came through the process herself. Being a qualified philosopher, I tried to deal with questions taking into consideration all facets of my experience, previous Russian and latest Western, and see the whole picture as opposed to looking at separate pieces of the puzzle, and trying to draw conclusions about the whole picture from this very piece. I hope it gives a better understanding of Russian women and Russia in general.
Please note that the main contents of this website, such as pages "Russian Women Secrets" "Myths And Reality", "About Russia", and "Russians", were written long before I started my dating business, so please don't think they are a usual marketing hype. They express the ideas of a Russian woman on subjects in question and not the ideas of a dating website owner. I later revised some facts that became outdated (thanks to my visitors for pointing me out) but preserved the essence.
Russian Brides Cyber Guide's website has on average 60,000 unique visitors a month, which indicates there is a great interest in this type of information.
So at first this site was designed as an informational source but many of my visitors asked me if I could do this and that for them, and that's how the idea about giving people a service came to my mind. Starting from small things like translations, today Russian Brides Cyber Guide has become a popular agency with thousands of male and female clients, diverse services from a photo catalogue listing dozens of single Russian women every week to placing men's ads with numerous local agencies and 40+ newspapers in Russia and the Ukraine. (For more details see Services section)
Since I wanted to keep Russian Brides Cyber Guide as an informational source, the dating agency operations were united under the name of Elena's Models, where I also started to offer a new service - selling individual addresses.
I cooperate with 372 local dating agencies in Russia, the Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union. Articles about my agency were published in many Russian publications including Cosmopolitan, Home Computer, Computers and Internet, Private Life, Krest'yanka (popular women's magazine) and dozens of others. I was invited for TV and radio interviews in several countries. My interviews and articles were published by many newspapers and magazines - USA, UK, Russia, Australia, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Finland - and the list goes on. I have published a book in Russia, called "101 Tips How To Find A Husband Abroad: Practical guidance For Russian Women Seeking Foreign Partners", which produced wonderful press and readers' comments. I also authored three e-books in English ("9 Simple Rules For Dating Russian Women", "Anti-Scam Guide" and "How To Find And Marry A Girl Like Me"). I have customers from all over the world. (Click here for the list of countries).
My sites Russian Brides Cyber Guide and Elena's Models are recommended by many sources on the Internet, including anti-scam sites, and their recommendations are the best credit to my work.
I am very proud to be one of the women who managed to make their way into the Internet business. When I left Russia nearly 6 years ago I did not even know what the Internet was!
If you ask me, what is my key to success, I've got 3: (1) be honest; (2) listen to what people need; (3) deliver!
You can contact me HERE.
Thanks!
Yours,
Elena Petrova
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