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Il paradosso russo del matrimonio. Quale nesso con la poverta relazionale?
This paper is aimed at providing a reflection on the so-called “Russian marriage paradox”. The paradox lies in the reproduction of both high marriage and high divorce rates over the last fifty years, which cannot be explained only by the mainstream institutional or “shift in values” theories. We will assume that, compared to most of European countries, which have not experienced forced secularization in the 20th century, Russia is a case of a radical decoupling between the institutional and relational dimensions of marriage, which started in the early Soviet period. Along with the presence of a strong social norm, which ensures a high popularity to marriage and weak institutional regulations on entry and exit from relations, the “Russian marriage paradox” relies on relational poverty, which does not promote reciprocal engagement in couples and leads to a high divorce rate during the first years of a couple’s life. We turn to a relational approach, which highlights that the marital relationship (We-relation) exceeds individual behaviors, and use data from the authors’ research on the qualities of marriage to objectify our assumption about relational poverty. The results showed that married respondents appreciate the importance of relational qualities in family life differently depending on the duration of marriage and the level of religiosity. The relational approach to marriage becomes a valuable source for research and reflections on marital behavior in Post-Soviet countries.