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By Anthony BoadleWed Sep 5, 8:50 AM ET
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."