Natasha is a casualty of the mass unemployment that occurred after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. The sweeping away of communism and the introduction of democracy and the market economy, much heralded in the West and perhaps much anticipated by the Soviet people, led to disappointment, hunger, crime and corruption. Women suffered severe and disproportionate cutbacks in employment opportunities in the mid-nineties. Although the situation has improved, it has merely corrected the imbalance of the nineties. Significant numbers of highly qualified Russian women advertise themselves as potential wives on websites appealing to Americans or Europeans. Unskilled young girls, seeking to work abroad, fall easy victims to traffickers promising life as waitresses and dancers abroad at attractive salaries.

Natasha’s experience of domestic violence at the hands of an alcoholic father is also not uncommon. Every day 36,000 women are beaten and each year 14,000 women die at the hands of their husbands or partners in Russia. There is a general pressure to get married as soon as possible, and as a result many women marry men they hardly know. If these women face domestic violence, they often cannot divorce because they are financially dependent on their husbands. Alcoholism, known popularly as the ‘green snake’, has grown in Russia in the post-Soviet era. A substantial percentage of manual workers have drinking issues. Daily alcohol intake by men increased by four times between 1991 and 2000. Around 24 pints of pure alcohol a year are consumed per head: man, woman and child, the highest level of alcohol consumption anywhere in the world. An estimated 27,000 Russians die every year of alcohol poisoning, quite apart from other drink-related complaints.

Women who have faced domestic violence, child abuse or single parenthood dream of escaping their situation and are particularly vulnerable to the promises made by traffickers. Women and girls may dream of a better life abroad if they live in countries where they face extreme poverty or where there is a lack of educational and employment opportunities as a result of economic crises or war.