The supply of filchable state resources is disappearing, and with it much male economic muscle. Despite her broken back, the pensioner who lived in the room next to mine went out in all weathers to peddle plastic carrier bags. She was thereby able to keep her husband in vodka and eau de Cologne. In the early morning he would stagger in and collapse in the corridor. I could hear her cursing him as she dragged him through the door and put him to bed.
Younger women are less prepared to follow suit.
An acquaintance in her twenties told her fiance that she would not marry him until he had set himself up in business. He was a college lecturer, a profession which no longer pays a living wage. She worked for a foreign company, and was not prepared to use her salary to keep her husband. In today's era of wild capitalism individualism is filtering through all levels of society. The old economic basis for marriage is disappearing in Russia in a way that parallels the process in the West.