Intermarriage: good or bad?

Admittedly, it’s not unusual thing. At the times, lots of peoples were forcedly moved to Kazakhstan. As the result, besides Kazakhs and Russians, two major ethnic groups in the country, here now live Greeks, Bulgarians, Koreans, Ukrainians and a lot of others.

I still remember my school teacher keep saying “Kazakhstan is a multiethnic nation. Everybody should live in peace and accord in it.”

In 2010, 144,000 marriages were registered in Kazakhstan according to Ministry of Justice,  8,300 of them with foreign citizens. 122 such marriages were filed in Atyrau Oblast.

We now live in peace, accord and love. People of different ethnicities have so much interlaced their genealogic trees that seeing a Korean woman marrying a Russian man, a Kazakh man marrying Tatar or a Bulgarian joining Ukrainian is no longer an alien tradition. And their children, with mother’s milk, absorb immunity against ethnical prejudices.

Given this, over past few years our city experiences a new trend.

“Due to large number of foreign citizens in Atyrau, we can say that number of marriages with them has notably grown” says Kuralai KHAIROSHEVA, Atyrau Department of Justice. - Many Turks, English, Italians and a citizen of South Africa submitted applications this year. All foreign citizens are males, and their choices are mostly Kazakh and Russian women. Often, there is a big difference in age. For example, several dozens of girls under 25 married expatriate ‘uncles’ above 50 this year.”

Unfortunately, almost 30% of couples married last year have split by now. Mostly, the reason for divorce is difference in mindsets.  

A Russian wife of an Italian writes at a website: “What I can’t stand in Italians is their strange friendliness toward everything, their lovefullness and a huge number of relatives, who put in everything.”

“My Turkish husband doesn’t give me opportunity to be a personality, writes another lady. – He is mortally jealous of me for every lamp post”

“Girls, be careful! My English husband has completely bored me with his pain-in-the-neck character – put peas right, carrot in left, don’t do that, don’t do this…”

However, no two times are ever the same.

Another fact is that women increasingly prefer keeping their maiden names after marriage, unless they marry expatriates – here situation is vice versa.

By Anastassiya PASTOUKHOVA