Today, when people think of mail order brides, they usually think of Russian mail order brides.That’s not surprising, because the current mail order bride phenomena really started with the fall of the Soviet Union on December 22, 1991.Before then the mail order bride movement was almost dead. Yes, there were one or two “picture bride companies” — most notably Cherry Blossoms — that focused on connecting American men to Asian women, but those companies reached a tiny audience.After the Soviet Union collapsed and the country fell into a state of anarchy, poverty, and alcoholism. The economy absolutely collapsed:“In Russia, output fell by 45% during 1989–1998, as death rates increased from 1% in the 1980s to over 1.5% in 1994, equivalent to over 700,000 additional deaths annually.