Poly in Putin's Russia

I've done hardly any reporting lately on poly in foreign-language media. Google News Alerts hasn't been serving me poliamoria, polyamor, polyamour, polyamorie, полиамория, polyamourøse, polyamorösa, פוליאמוריה, wielomiłość, ljubavništvo, etc., and I know lots of material has slipped by.

From Russia, correspondent Anton now writes (somewhat edited):

Hi, Alan!

Five years ago, you posted about polyamory recognition in Russian media. In these years since, there have been many articles on Russian news sites and even in printed media, but they can be divided into these sorts:

* Positive translations of English articles (rare).

* Negative translations of English articles; with a preface about "Western debauchery", prefixing all words like "family" with "so called", and so on.

* Compilations without knowing the topic, with great errors (for example, in one article I've read that poly people don't tolerate homosexuality), hatred, and contempt.

But today I accidentally found an article in mainstream web media, not a translation and well written with understanding of the subject and with sympathy: Семьи на троих / Family of Three. It was posted a year ago, but after 5 years of silence that doesn't seem like a big gap.

The Google translation isn't perfect but seems understandable.

Excerpts:

Family of three

...Poliamoriya, in a broad sense, is a system of ethical views on love admitting the possibility of multiple love relationships with several people (or between several people) at the same time, with the consent of all parties to those relationships. [Compared to] polygamy in the traditional sense, modern polyamorous families differ in the equality of all participants, with relationship based not on tradition but on an agreement reached together.

...Polyamorous relationship can take many forms — some are a couple with other people, [in which] the couple remains primary. It can also happen that three or more people form a quite equal relationship.

Of course, a polyamorous relationship is not easy to build and maintain....

...I talked with two polyamorous families who have been living together. They shared with me their life stories and their understanding of family, love and loyalty.

Anna and Andrew are enrolled in graduate school; in addition Andrew has worked as a teacher in high school. Kate works as an editor, and Anya, who answered my questions, said of himself: "I'm such a house-husband, moonlighting doing freelance translations, but not regularly." All three of them are about 25....

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Sociologists Bashkirov and colleagues asked 2,000 Russians about their attitudes toward family formation. It was found that more than 30% of young people aged 25 to 35 considered marriage to be a social atavism. Following Europeans and our fellow Americans, they are starting to take advantage of new forms of the family. Marriage without children, seasonal marriage, polygamy and polyandry, serial polygamy — that's just a partial classification of the modern types of relationships between a man and a woman....

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...Victor is a middle manager in a real-estate office and a part-time one-man band. Olga is the lead lawyer of a construction company, and Alexander aka Jerry is a freelancer. All three are about 40, and they have two children.

"...Olga and I met five years ago on the Internet, in a historical-game forum.... the third time we got together we decided to go with friends on a tour of the castles of Belarus. And here we go. And somehow it came that were in the same bed.... Then, to this celebration of life joined Victor — it's just for all the participants seemed quite natural to meet together."

"Olga's mother and sister are aware of our relationships, but they pretend that they do not care....

"...That's the strange thing — we have encountered no [official] difficulties. When the prosecutor was needed for temporary registration in St. Petersburg, we went to the passport office and filled out an application, without question — who, what, and why. Child registered at the place of residence of the father. With this reference to him without question straightened health insurance, with which we go to the district hospital, and put on a waiting list in kindergarten.... 'My house is my fortress' and all that. We were quite comfortable ... but let's say we would not mind to register a triple marriage."...

Here's the whole (long) original article (13 August 2012).

Anton continues:

Some words about general picture of nonmonogamy in Russia: There is clericalization here [the Russian Orthodox Church collaborates with the authoritarian Putin government and vice versa –Ed.], but we exist and have some websites (http://www.mirdalubov.com/ for example), communities in social networks, and at least one offline meeting group — on http://vk.com/freelove_spb they write that there are up to 80 people at meetings.

With best regards and great thanks for your polyinthemedia work.

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