RUSSIAN DRAMA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 286, 31 October 1933, Page 8

RUSSIAN DRAMA

RE-TJNITING OF. COUPLE.. AFTER LONG SEPARATION. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON,■ Oct. 30. A strange and dramatic story of three anxious years spent in tracing liis Russian wife, to bring her with him back to New Zealand, was told to a reporter to-day by Andrew Trebukin, a former Russian subject. In 1930 lie left New Zealand so that his wife, Maria, who had been forced by circumstances to wait for him in the Ukraine for 15 years, could join him. It was not until early this year that the two were at last successful in the face of formidable difficulties, political and otherwise, in coming together. They arrived in Wellington last week from Manchuria, via Sydney, on the Wanganella. . Trebukin iyas born in the Ukraine, where he and liis wife were wliat are now called in the Soviet “Kulaks, 1 a derisive term for an independent farmer. He left his wife there m 1915 and came to Wellington, where lie worked as a carpenter. He was not in a position to return for his wife until early in 1930, when he went to Harbin, Manchuria, with the intention of getting her across the Russian border, 300 miles away. He was in Manchuria for three years, and during that time both he and his wife, from opposite sides of the border, were kept continually in a state of anxiety and sometimes of despair, and had many discouraging experiences. Almost insuperable difficulties were placed in the way of a working man or woman who wished to leave the country, and one of the greatest of these was the surveillance that took place of all correspondence. During many of the first months of waiting in Harbin, he did not know where his wife was; in fact,_ he did not know whether she was still alive. The last news he had heard from her some time before was that she was in bad health and 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 still in the Ukraine, that he was able to do anything. Then there followed the tedious business of making secret arrangements for her to leave Russia, her mother, in Latvia, acting as an intermediary in the correspondence and ensuring the safe and unopened arrival of 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 months at a time. In February, 1933, she was able to slip secretly across the Russo-Manchu-rian border, and husband and wife met after having been separated for 18 years, but Trebukin’s natural delight at meeting her at last received a dismal check on seeing her appearance. She was in a state of semi-starvation and exhaustion. Her clothing consisted of a large and thick sack, with holes cut for the neck and arms. Only after months of care and attention was she in a fit condition to undertake the journey to New Zealand, which has been for her the Promised Land for so many years, but it was a radiantly happy couple that, on their second honeymoon, arrived in Wellington on the Wanganella.