By Anthony Boadle Wed Sep 5, 8:50 AM ET
HAVANA (Reuters) - They came from Russia with love to a tropical
socialist utopia when the going was good.
They were young women romantically drawn to Fidel Castro's revolution, a
breath of fresh air on a distant Caribbean island for those who were
disillusioned with Soviet communism.
But when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, hundreds of Russian women
who married Cubans and moved to Cuba were cut off from home and stranded
in poverty as the Cuban economy plunged into deep crisis.
For those who had lived through the hardships of World War II in Russia
as children, the long blackouts and the lack of food, medicine and fuel
for transport were a cruel flashback.
"We were young and Cuba was beautiful when we got here," said film
historian Zoia Barash, who arrived in 1963. Cuban leaders were so young
compared to the Soviet gerontocracy and abstract art was not seen as
incompatible with communism.
Her hopes of finding "true socialism" were dashed, though, as Cuba
copied the Soviet model, with sweltering heat added.
"Today our situation is difficult, as it is for the whole country," said
Barash, 72, who cannot make ends meet on her 260 peso ($10) monthly
pension after 30 years working for the Cuban film industry.
About 1,300 women from Russia and former Soviet republics Ukraine,
Belarus and Kazakhstan still live in Cuba, scraping a living as best
they can.
In an old mansion belonging to the Russian Embassy, two women run a
store selling anything from vodka and pickled gherkins to imported
toothpaste, Pringles and Viagra pills.
The harshest aspect is not being able to travel home. Cuba used to grant
them subsidized tickets every five years, paid for in pesos. But Cuba's
airline stopped flying to Moscow and tickets must now be paid for in
hard cash few can afford.
"My father died in 1994 and I could not go to his funeral," said Zita
Kelderari, a Ukrainian gypsy, in tears.
The Flamenco singer fell for a Cuban helicopter pilot in Kiev in 1985
and sailed to Cuba on a Soviet freighter loaded with Yugoslavian butter.
When he defected to the United States a few years ago, she was left
penniless in Cuba.
Only the women lucky enough to receive money from their relatives get to
travel these days. On a Cuban pension alone, it would take 10 years to
gather the cost of a flight home.
For most it is too late to go back and start a new life. Many are
grandmothers with families to look after.
The blackouts are gone and food supplies have improved since the dark
days of Cuba's post-Soviet crisis. But housing remains dilapidated and
overcrowded, few have cars and access to the Internet is expensive.
NO BOOKS, NO NEWS
Havana's Russian bookstore closed when "perestroika" reforms took hold
in Moscow under Mikhail Gorbachev. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions
were stopped, cutting off information from Russia.
Despite the problems, some women have pressed ahead.
"I don't know what nostalgia is. There is no point sitting around
crying," said Natalia Balashova, who set about uniting the women in a
cultural club for Russian speakers.
Balashova's father was a Bolshevik and she was drawn to Cuba in 1969 as
much by love of the Cuban military officer she met in Moscow as by
Castro's "bold" transformation of Cuba.
"I knew what to expect. Cuba was building socialism and had its
difficulties. We came willingly, out of love," she said. Still, she felt
"shipwrecked" when her country disappeared.
Balashova said she tapped her inner reserves and wartime improvisations
she learned from her mother to cope with the crisis, such as using
crushed egg-shells for cleaning powder.
After a 14-year hiatus, she returned to Moscow last year, invited to
attend a world conference of Russians living abroad, and got to meet
President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
DEPORTED FROM CUBA
Elena Verselova, who was struggling to get ahead after two Cuban
divorces, took her activism in a different direction. She became a
dissident on Cuba's depressed Isle of Youth.
Verselova was deported by the Cuban government on July 26, according to
her daughter Diana Aguilar, who arrived from Russia when she was a
nine-month baby in her mother's arms.
Verselova was harassed and threatened by Cuban police, and eventually
arrested, her daughter said. The family had to sell hard-won electrical
appliances to pay for her ticket to Moscow, where she arrived with $170
in her pocket to start a new life.
"They didn't let us say good-bye to her," said Aguilar, 22, a University
of Havana student. She said the Russian consulate in Cuba refused to
help her mother even locate family members in Vladimir, 115 miles east
of Moscow.
"I hope to leave Cuba to join my mother. I want to return to my roots in
Europe," said the blond student.
A Cuban documentary "Todas iban a ser reinas" (They were all going to be
queens) made last year captured the isolation of women from seven former
Soviet republics living in Cuba.
"It was a migration of love, a part of our shattered utopia," said
director Gustavo Cruz. "They worked in our country for many years. It
would be ungrateful to forget them."
Women from other former Soviet bloc countries were also stranded in Cuba
and forgotten by post-communist governments.
Stasia Strach, 65, is one of 49 native Poles living in Cuba -- only
three of whom are men. The view from her small apartment overlooking
Havana's Malecon, or sea-wall, is spectacular. But the elevator packed
up years ago and the 130 steps are a daily effort. Going home is out of
the question.
"What would I do in Poland, beg at the door of a church?" she said. "I
have no pension and nowhere to go."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070905/wl_nm/cuba_russia_women_dc_3
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