NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - On the matchmaker's video, a young Russian woman saunters across a bridge in historic St. Petersburg. She wears a clinging T-shirt, skintight pedal pushers and stiletto heels.

"I really like big cities such as New York or Los Angeles," she tells the camera. "So I would be very glad to see you."

Her goal is a ticket out of Russia's eroding economy.

For at least 20 years, Filipinas have dominated the international mail-order-bride business. But since 1991, when the Soviet Union's fall unleashed capitalism and unrest, Russian women have become the matchmaking industry's fastest-growing commodity.

Men pay up to $10,000 to travel to Moscow and St. Petersburg to meet women they have picked from catalogues and videos. More than 65 U.S. companies advertise such services on the Internet.

In the United States and Russia, these businesses are unmonitored. Reports of white slavery, domestic violence and the 1995 case of a Seattle man, Timothy Blackwell, who fatally shot his pregnant Filipina mail-order bride in the King County Courthouse, have prompted legislators and women's groups to demand industry rules.

In 1996, Congress asked the Immigration and Naturalization Service to draft regulations forcing agencies to inform women about marriage fraud, legal residency and domestic violence. The INS also was asked to document immigration fraud and physical abuse involving mail-order brides.

Congress is still waiting.

"We asked the INS to give us a report on an issue that's enormously important, and they've dragged their feet," said attorney Jon Leibowitz, whose boss, Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis., helped push through the legislation.

INS spokeswoman Elaine Komis said officials have been slowed by uncooperative mail-order-bride clients.

Battered brides

No one knows the number of American-Russian marriages sparked by matchmaking services. The INS doesn't keep records on how couples meet. Its legal responsibility is to determine whether marriages between foreigners and U.S. citizens are legitimate.

Americans often obtain so-called fiance visas for their intended mates. The document allows an immigrant to live and work in the U.S. for two years. After that, if the foreigner is still married and living in America, he or she gets permanent residency.

In 1991, 17 fiance visas were issued to Russian women. In 1997, there were 1,012.

A social worker with Atlanta's Refugee Family Violence Project said she received several phone calls from battered mail-order brides after writing an article about domestic violence in a tiny Russian-language newspaper.

The women didn't know their rights under U.S. law, said the social worker, who said she has been threatened by clients' husbands and asked that her name be withheld. None of her clients wanted to be interviewed, she said.

The St. Petersburg-based Svetlana Agency says it is a legitimate international matchmaking service. Two months ago, it opened a satellite office in opulent Newport Beach, about 60 miles south of Los Angeles.

An expensive company

Svetlana Novikova, 29, began her human-brokerage house four years ago. Her company is one of the most expensive.

Men are charged a $2,500 membership fee, which allows them to see videos and photographs. A trip to St. Petersburg, where men can meet as many as 10 women a day - including the student on the bridge - can cost an additional $2,500.

Like many of her colleagues, Novikova says she doesn't keep track of her clients' marriages or divorces. She says she doesn't know how many clients she has.

"We provide our services to very serious people who want a very serious relationship," she said.

Newport Beach salesman Aldo Almodovar, 28, traveled to St. Petersburg this fall on one of her package tours.

"I'm just basically going to have a good time," he said before departure. "I've never been to Russia before, and the girls are gorgeous. "

Agency began with marriage

In 1996 Mark Amspoker met a Moscow doctor 14 years his junior through a matchmaking service, proposed to her a week later, and married her last year.

Although he found a wife, the 44-year-old technology writer didn't like the service he used.

So he started his own.

Since opening last year, Russian-American Matchmakers has signed 60 male clients, each paying $1,500. The agency lists about 350 women and claims seven marriages.

Most agencies charge women a fee of about $20.

Amspoker says he wants his countrymen to discover what he did.

"I went to Russia and I could feel close to these women. I could connect with them," he said. American women, he complained, "just don't seem to have time to think of settling down and having a family."