DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, Nov. 7 — Gulya Ismoilova cannot say exactly when men in Tajikistan broke with a century of tradition and began taking second and even third wives, but she remembers precisely when her husband announced he had married again.
A lack of men in Dushanbe and all of Tajikistan has led to polygamy.
“Two years ago he took a woman to his brother’s house,” said Ms. Ismoilova, her hand trembling as she lifted a cigarette to her lips. “That’s when my life ended, when I became a first wife.”
Ms. Ismoilova said she could not have imagined her present circumstances when she married 11 years ago.
Polygamy existed in this overwhelmingly Muslim and rural country in the 70 years when the Soviet Union enforced a fiercely secular governing ideology that continues to be the law of the land. But it was very rare, and occurred in secret arrangements by people living shadowy lives.
But then came the breakup of the Soviet Union and Tajikistan’s civil war, which claimed as many as 100,000 lives in the 1990s, an overwhelming majority of the victims men.
Since then, as many as a million Tajik men have migrated to Russia to work, according to Tajik and Russian government statistics, leaving behind a stark imbalance of men and women in this nation of 6.5 million people.
Seizing on this disparity, men have begun to practice polygamy openly, citing Islamic law and the desire among women for partners to justify the illegal practice. Tajiks say polygamous marriages can now be found in nearly every apartment block in Dushanbe, and few Tajik families seem to be without a recent example.
“These girls require a husband or their families are shamed,” said Ali Fidhoum, 37, an engineer here. “Our religion allows it as long as I have a job and I treat both my wives equally. My second wife’s family is thankful for me, and they should be.”
But not all wives are as grateful as Mr. Fidhoum supposes. Ms. Ismoilova said her husband’s second household had left her humiliated and impoverished, and undermined her authority over her children.
“He tries to get our kids to move to his new wife’s apartment because she can’t have babies,” Ms. Ismoilova said. “These are my children he wants to take away from me. And I can do nothing. First my husband said I can’t work. Now he won’t let me leave the house without his permission.” She spoke slowly, her face distorted with anger.
Ms. Ismoilova said she once sought help from a women’s legal advocacy group but it offered no practical solution. Nor is her family a way out: her only relative in Dushanbe is her elderly mother, who subsists on a small pension. “I am a slave,” she said. “And now this society accepts it.”
Even those men who disapprove of polygamy say they understand why it has re-emerged. “I wouldn’t consider it,” said Zafer Mahmoudov, 24, a professional. “But for many men here, they are in arranged marriages with girls coming from villages. They have nothing to say to them. These girls do not know how to behave in the city. So they don’t tell their wives, but they go and marry a second one. They just do it and eventually everybody knows.”
The revival in Tajikistan of polygamy — which has been outlawed by the government but is supported by many imams — underscores a surprisingly swift return to traditional cultural and religious practices in all the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.
“We are in a country where 95 percent of the population is very religious,” said Said Shmadov, the adviser for religious affairs to President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan. “So I think we need to have an Islamic society that is not an Islamic state, where religious organizations do not interfere with the politics of the state, where the government has the trust of the mosque but where our rich secular history is observed.”
Ibodat Yatimova, 25, was 14 when her parents placed her in an arranged marriage. Her husband divorced her after five years, forcing her and her two children to move to her parents’ home. To ease the financial burden on her parents, Ms. Yatimova accepted the proposal last year of a 45-year-old laborer who worked in the office where Ms. Yatimova is a secretary.
But there was a catch. “I didn’t know he already had a wife,” Ms. Yatimova said.
She said she was resigned to the arrangement, at least for now.
“It’s important that I show my parents that I have a husband,” she said. “He pays the rent for my apartment. My children show him respect but he doesn’t help them. He has his own children. We don’t really matter to him. When he buys me an apartment, I will leave him. Let him go to his first wife.”
Miriam Cooke, a professor of Arab culture at Duke University, said polygamy was an emerging trend across the Islamic world, including Indonesia, “where there is a huge controversy about the perceived growing trend in polygamous marriages.” But she warns against treating it as a black-and-white issue.
“It is complicated,” Ms. Cooke said. “There are some women who consider themselves to be feminists who think it’s perfectly acceptable to be a second or third wife and to be a professional woman, a good Muslim and to have all her rights. But I would say that I would agree with the majority of Islamic feminists who consider this to be a setback.”
For educated professional women in Dushanbe, polygamy is often a source of dismay and embarrassment.
“This is a matter of women being educated and being financially independent,” said Rokhshona Nazhmidinova, 26, an outreach coordinator at a nonprofit organization here. “It’s a sign that society is heading down. Just look at the countries that allow multiple wives. I wouldn’t want to live in them.”