Soviet defector changes mind

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33611, 13 August 1974, Page 14

Soviet defector changes mind

(New Zealand Press Association—Copyright) PERTH, August 12. A young Soviet Union violinist, Georgi Ermolenko, today changed his mind and decided to return to Russia less than 24 hours after he had asked for political asylum in Australia.

He told an official of the Foreign Affairs Department in Perth, Mr K. C. Henne, that his decision after a dramatic. four-hour interview with the Russian president of the International Society for Music Education, Professor Dimitri Kabalevsky. An official from the Russian Embassy in Canberra was also present. George Ermolenko, aged 18, a member of the student quintet of the Moscow Music College, had at first refused to see Professor Kabalevsky, agreeing onlv after his Australian friends had said that the interview was necessary to assure the Russians that he had decided to stay in Australia without coercion. During the long interview, three of his Australian friends were several times refused permission to see the youthful violinist.

Mr Henne said later: “Ermolenko is leaving Western Australia to return to Moscow of his own free will. One of the things I heard him say was: “A man is nobody without a homeland.” Georgi Ermolenko first made known his intentions to defect at 11 a.m. yesterday, when he approached Mr Harold Badger, the director of the Melba Music Conservatory, Melbourne, who had befriended the young Russian while they were both staying at St George’s College, Perth, during the conference of the international society. Mr Badger said today that Ermolenko was recognised as perhaps the most brilliant violinist in the world in his age group. “BLACK” BAN Ermolenko was placed aboard a British Airways jumbo jet bound for Moscow at Perth Airport tonight. But members of the Transport Workers’ Union, presumably angered by the way the violinist was talked into returning to Russia, placed a "black” ban on the aircraft Ermolenko and several hundred passengers bound for Singapore and London were stranded at the airport late tonight.