For Many Russians, the Key to the City May Be a Marriage Certificate

MOSCOW —  Anya Pryanikova’s hunt for a husband took a strange turn just before New Year’s, when she married her cousin for the sake of a dull-looking black ink stamp.

She liked her cousin, Alyosha, just fine. But not in a romantic, lustful sort of way. Pryanikova agreed to exchange vows with him for one reason alone: to help him obtain a Moscow propiska, a residence permit allowing him to live and work in Russia’s capital.

Without it, Alyosha, a trained economist, was stuck peddling junk in an outdoor market. He could not find work. He could not get health care. He could not apply for a subsidized apartment.

For all the hoopla about Russia’s new freedoms, Alyosha needed a Soviet-era stamp to begin building a life for himself in Moscow.

But as a native of the Crimea, he had no shot at landing a propiska stamped “Moscow.” Not unless he married a Muscovite--like his 23-year-old cousin.

Looking back on their slapdash wedding--no rings, no flowers, no post-vow kiss--Pryanikova has to giggle.

“The irony is, it’s normal,” she said. “It’s absolutely common. Everybody tries to trick the system.”

Indeed, Alexander Petrov, an associate with the Helsinki-based Human Rights Watch, calls sham weddings “the No. 1 solution for [out-of-town] people who want to live in Moscow.”

That’s because the quickest way to get a propiska is to latch on to someone who already has one. Moscow residents can act as sponsors only for their closest relatives--spouses, children or parents.

As Alyosha’s cousin, Pryanikova could not get him a propiska. As his wife, she could. And will.

In the most forlorn days of communism, young Muscovites used to wed solely for the chance to shop at special stores for brides and grooms, where they could pick up rare luxuries like pantyhose, mascara, dress shoes and rings. Now, the hard-to-find commodities are not clothes, but propiskas. So sham marriages are back in style.

For $1,000 to $4,000, an out-of-towner can cozy up to a local’s propiska. After a year of official bliss, the couple can divorce and run off their separate ways, each clutching a precious residency permit.

“It’s amoral, of course, but what else are people to do?” the weekly newspaper Nedelya editorialized in a recent article on fake marriages.

Even government officials acknowledge that sham weddings are popular. And they criticize the system that inspires such chicanery as a nasty bit of bureaucracy.

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Invented in 1932 during Josef Stalin’s dictatorship, propiskas violate Russia’s constitution, which guarantees freedom of movement to citizens. They also gum up the economy by preventing workers from traveling to cities with surplus jobs.

In a gesture of reform, Moscow police announced last week that they would chuck the entire system as of Feb. 1. To put it in official lingo, by next month the passport department plans to achieve “liquidation of the institution of propiskas.”

But that announcement cheered no one. Because as soon as propiskas are history, Moscow plans to introduce a new system of population control--mandatory registration--that critics believe will prove just as odious.

Police insist that the new program will set a softer tone. Where propiskas served to block internal migration, they say, the registration system will merely help the government keep track of the population.

“We’re moving away from the Middle Ages and we’re joining the civilized world,” said Yuri I. Sharagorov, deputy director of Moscow’s passport department.

Human rights activists are not so sure. They see the registration law as a burdensome, Big Brother bureaucracy. And they criticize the new system as at least as restrictive as the propiskas.

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To register under the new law, would-be Muscovites must first prove they have found a home with at least 54 square feet of living space per person. That’s an enormous obstacle for Russians accustomed to packing three generations into one-bedroom apartments.

The new law also requires Russians to register not only in their hometown, but in any city they visit for 10 days or more. Vacationers, business travelers, even patients under a specialist’s medical care will need to announce their presence to local authorities or face an unspecified fine.

“It gives us the ability to find people more easily,” Sharagorov said.

It also gives government watchdogs the chills.

“The very principle of registration is a violation of our constitutional rights,” Petrov said. “It’s absurd.”

Petrov, like other critics, senses that little will change under the registration system. Although the term propiska will be abolished, all citizens will need a stamp in their internal passports linking them to a particular city.

“Changing the name from propiska to registration, what difference does that make?” asked human-rights activist Alexander Podrabinek, editor of the Express Khronika newspaper.

A longtime dissident who spent years in Siberia for “anti-Soviet activity,” Podrabinek refuses to get a Moscow propiska out of principle, though his wife would willingly sponsor him.

“I don’t want to support a system that tramples on human rights,” he explained.

However much they may hate the system, few Russians would pass up a chance at a Moscow propiska simply to lodge a protest.

Propiskas entitle citizens to free medical care in neighborhood clinics. They’re required to buy grave sites in the municipal cemetery or apply for a license to carry a gun. Parents must have the proper propiskas before they can enroll their children in local kindergartens. What’s more, anyone caught in Moscow without them or a visitor’s visa faces a hefty fine.

“You need either a propiska or a whole lot of money to get along in Moscow,” university student Natasha Gerasimova said. “It’s one of the biggest problems we face these days.”

At 23, Gerasimova is living in Moscow on a temporary student permit. She’s already fretting about how to obtain a permanent propiska--or registration stamp--when she graduates from a fashion design institute in two years.

If she could scrounge up enough money, Gerasimova said she would try a sham marriage.

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The cheapest arrangements she has heard of would hook her up with an alcoholic for $1,000 and some booze. She could walk away from the wedding with a chance to snag a propiska and settle in Moscow for good.

“I don’t oppose fake weddings on principle,” she said. “If I had the money, my goodness, I would do it.”

Still, one worry nags at her. In marriages of convenience, especially to alcoholics, “it’s often difficult to find your husband when you want to get divorced,” she said. “That can be a terrible problem.”