“LIFE IN LONDON LIKE BEING IN PRISON”-RUSSIAN BRIDE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22665, 16 June 1948, Page 5

“LIFE IN LONDON LIKE BEING IN PRISON”-RUSSIAN BRIDE

(10.30 a.m.) LONDON, June 15. The Russian wife of an Englishman declared, in a letter to the Moscow paper Pravda, that she had “done a foolish thing” in marrying and going to Britain, states Reuter’s correspondent in Moscow.

She is Nina Makushina, who i said that in London she had wit-1 nessed a dirty anti-Soviet press campaign based on the fact that a few Soviet women married to Britons were not allowed to join their husbands in Britain. “I am sincerely sorry for these women,” she said. “I want the whole Soviet people to convince themselves what Britain is realy like. I have experienced only suffering, poverty and deprivation of rights. I often thought with horror that life in London was like being in prison. Russians in England are treated arrogantly with a sort of contempt.” She added that she lived in the dreadful slum of Hackney where the flat was lighted by gas and there was not water or other communal conveniences.” She had filed a suit for divorce ana said that five other Russian wives in,

England intended shortly returning to Russia. Makushina said that her husband agreed to allow her to return to Russia with her son. Other Side of the Story Makushina’s husband, Mr. John Brand, aged 28, clerk in the Hackney Town Hall, giving his side of the story, said conditions in his home were not as bad as his wife painted them, although there was no electricity or water. Mr. Brand, who was on the staff of the British military mission in Moscow, said that living in Moscow was entirely different. “There are shortages here but there are shortages there,” he said. "My wife expected too much from a workingclass man.” Mr. Brand’s stepmother said the Russian wife came of a good family and expected more luxuries than Mr. Brand could afford to give her. Mr. Brand’s uncle said that the Russian girl was lazy, hated housework and seemed to think mostly of doing UP her nails and rougeicg her lips.