COUPLE UNITED

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 October 1933, Page 3

COUPLE UNITED

A RUSSIAN'S STORY

[per press association.]

WELLINGTON, October 30

A. strange and dramatic story of three anxious years spent in tracing his Russian w’ife, to bring her with him back to New Zealand, was told to a reported, to-day. by Andrew Trebukin .a former Russian subject. tn 1930, he left New Zealand, so that his wife, Maria, who had been forced by circumstances to wait for him in the Ukraine for fifteen years, could join him. It was not until early this year that the two were at last successful. in the face of formidable ditficulties—political and otherwise—in coming together. They arrived in Wellington last week from Manchuria, via Sydney, on the Wanganella. Trebukin was born in the Ukraine, where he and his wife were Avhat are now called in the Soviet “kulaks” — a derisive term for an independent farmer. He left his wife there in 1915, and came to Wellington, where he worked as a carpenter. He was not in a position to return for his wife until early in 1930, when he went to. Harbin, in Manchuria, with the intention oi getting her across the Rusisan border, 300 miles away. He was in Manchuria for three years, and, during that time, both he and his wife, from the opposite sides of the border, were kept continually in a state of anxiety, and sometimes of despair, and they had many discouraging experiences. Almost insuperable difficulties were placed in the way of any working man or woman who wished to leave the country, and one of the greatest of these was the surveillance that took place over all correspondence. During many of his first months of waiting in Harbin, ho did not know where his wife was. In fact, he did not know whether she was still alive. The last news that he had heard from her some time before was that she was in bad health, and that she could not get sufficient food and clothing. It was not until he heard from her mother who is in Riga, that she was alive and was still in the Ukraine, that he was able to do anything. Then there followed a tedious business of making secret arrangements for her to leave Russia. Her mother, in Latvia, w’as acting as the intermediary in their correspondence, and was ensuring the safe and unopened arrival of the letters. Sometimes his wife would have to move to another part of the country, and. on those occasions, there were enforced silences from her, and her address would not be known, often for a month at a time. In February, 1933, tho wife was able to slip secretly across the Russo-Manchurian border, and husband and wife met, alter having been separated for eighteen years; but. Trebukin’s natural delight at. meeting her at last received a dismal cheek on seeing her appearance. She was in a slate of semi-starvation and exhaustion. Iler clothing was a largo and thick sack, with holes cut for her neck, ami arm/'. Only after months of care and alieiition was she in a fit condition to undertake the journey to New Zealand, which had been for her tho promised land for so many years; but il was a. radiantly happy couple that, on their, second honeymoon, arrived at Wellington on ! the Wanganella.