Polygamy Widespread in North Caucasus Now Mostly Involving Men with Money and Power

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 14 – In traditional pre-Islamic in the North Caucasus, polygamy was practiced primarily in order to ensure that there would be a male offspring to take over the leadership of the family. Such practices were sanctioned by the Koran’s support for polygamy as long as certain conditions were observed that Islamic law suggested were almost impossible.

            Now, however, polygamy is being practiced in the North Caucasus by men who have the money or the power to engage in it, a practice that has led to the saying there that “the first wife is for household chores,” that is taking care of children, while “the second is for the man himself.”

            And it continues in this modernized form which in many ways leaves many of the women involved with fewer rights and protections than their predecessors had given that the Russian state bans polygamy and that second, third and even fourth marriages are conducted by the religious authorities and have no legal standing as far as the government is concerned.

            Wealthy and powerful men routinely seek to have a second wife – third and fourth wives are rare – including Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov who is known to have four wives and perhaps as many as ten concubines (proekt.media/guide/vertical-ramzan-kadyrov/) and Ingushetia’s Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov who is widely reported to have a second wife.

            The issue periodically attracts attention due to the efforts of human rights groups and calls by secular and religious authorities in the North Caucasus to legalize the practice. But in the last few months, there has been an explosion of discussions about it because of a clip posted online of the behavior of a first wife  at the marriage of her husband to a second.

            That discussion has become so heated that it has prompted two media outlets in the region to prepare a report on the tradition of polygamy in the North Caucasus and the forms it has  taken now (regaspect.info/2026/01/14/pervaya-zhena-dlya-byta-vtoraya-dlya-sebya/nd fortanga.org/2026/01/pervaya-zhena-dlya-byta-vtoraya-dlya-sebya-kak-ne-menyaetsya-institut-mnogozhenstva-na-severnom-kavkaze/).

            The report says that supporters of polygamy argue that “you cannot forbid what Allah has permitted” but typically ignore that “within Islamic law, permission for polygamy comes with strict restrictions: a man is obligated to provide each of his wives with equal financial support and ensure that none of them experiences injustice or deprivation.”

            “If a new wife does not wish to live under the same root with the first,” Islamic law says, “the husband is required to provide her with separate housing; and the care, attention and time devoted to each wife must be distributed as equally as possible,” something few can do and that Islam specifies “monography is preferable if a man doubts his ability to treat his spouses equally.

            But after the Soviets and then the Russians banned polygamy, that rarely is the case because the first wife is usually married in government offices and thus has rights under state law while the second, third, or fourth, is married only by religious officials and thus cannot defend herself if things go wrong.

            Men in the North Caucasus exploit this, “especially the Vainakhs” who include the Chechens and Ingush,” and “the number of wives is directly linked to perceptions of power and status with multiple wives being a symbol of control, authority and social respect” and a sign of “an unwillingness to limit oneself and instead to have it all,” the report says.

            Few women want to be a second or third wife, the report continues; but because “marriage is a key social marker of a woman’s ‘value’ and an unmarried woman is perceived to be more vulnerable than a married one … the fear of being left unmarried is stronger than ideological or personal objections” and “becoming a second wife is a survival strategy.”