FORBIDDEN TO LAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22742, 30 November 1935, Page 17

FORBIDDEN TO LAND

PLIGHT OF SHIP CAPTAIN Captain Alexander Zuzenko, master of the Soviet ship Smolny, has for 12 years been plying regularly between Leningrad and British ports, yet not once has he been allowed, to place foot on British soil, states the Sunday Express. He has carried scores of distinguished people to and from Russia—Mr Bernard Shaw, Dr Pavlov, Lord Passfleld and many others —and has been popular with them, yet the ban, which dates from his deportation from Australia 16 years ago, remains. The officers and crew are free to go ashore when the Smolny ties up at London bridge, but the captain remains a prisoner in his ship. An immigration officer goes through the force of presenting him with an aliens order refusing him permission to land. The order is duplicated. One is addressed “ To the Master,” and the other “To the Alien.” Captain Zuzenko, is both the “ Master ” and the “ Alien,” and he has to see that the order marked “ To the Alien ” is delivered to himself. Captain Zuzenko will not approach the authorities to have this ban lifted. “ The lead must come from them,” he says. The captain was deported from Australia in 1919. An attempt was being made in Brisbane to organise a contingent of returned Australian soldiers to go to the assistance of the Russian Whites in the campaign against the Bolsheviks. Zuzenko, who had been compelled to leave Tsarist Russia in 1909 because of his revolutionary activities, organised a protest demonstration of returned men and workers. The demonstration clashed with the police. Zuzenko was arrested, and it was decided to send him to General Denikin, who was then in possession of Odessa. This was equivalent to a death sentence, as Denikin had a quick and ready method of dealing with Bolsheviks. Zuzenko sampled the interior of many gaols in the process of his deportation from Sydney to Odessa, and finally arrived at Constantinople, His wife was compelled to follow him, and was expecting a child. She appealed to General

Sir Charles Haringtqn, commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in the Near East, against her husband being taken from her and leaving her destitute in a foreign city. General Harington granted her appeal, and Zuzenko was allowed to remain with his wife until after the birth of a daughter. He then managed to make his escape to Odessa, eluded the White Guards, and a few weeks later fought with the Red Army which drove Denikin finally out of Odessa.