Eastern Samar homecoming of White Russians recalls Quirino’s compassion

GUIUAN, Eastern Samar (PNA) – Several White Russians who were refugees for two years, from 1949 to 1951 on the island of Tubabao, this town, were back here last Monday in an emotional homecoming dubbed “Pasasalamat kay Pangulong Quirino: The Homecoming of the White Russians to Tubabao.”

Natalie G. Sabelnik, Congress of Russian-Americans, Inc. President, Natalie G. Sabelnik, who led the group, said there were 30 of them who traveled to the Philippines but “for health reasons, only half of the group came to Tubabao while the rest stayed behind in Manila.”

Former Guiuan Mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan who started the search for the White Russians who sought temporary refuge in Guiuan in 2009 during her term, accompanied them from Manila to Guiuan.

The local government unit (LGU) of Guiuan under Mayor Christopher Sheen Gonzales hosted a welcome dinner Monday night in the residence of the former mayor.

Guiuan is 145 kilometers or about three hours drive from Leyte provincial capital, Tacloban City. Sabelnik, who was only 18 months old when she was brought by her parents to the Philippines, said this is “a sentimental journey for us who took refuge in the Philippines.”

Sabelnik, who was among some 6,000 White Russians who escaped the Communist Army in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 to take refuge in the Philippines remember settling in Guiuan. She remembered life on the island as “very simple; we lived in tents for two years. I remember there were no big calamities. When it rained, all of us living in tents had to hold the posts, so they wouldn’t collapse.”

Sabelnik was only almost four years old when her family left Russia and was admitted, along with other refugees, to the United States.

“White Russians” refers to Russians who resisted the Communist revolution in the Union Soviet of the Socialist Republics (USSR, now Russia) and fled the civil war that ensued in 1917 during the Bolshevik Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin against the Tsar. Some of them were relatives of the Tsar, the emperor of Russia.

That upheaval in the USSR led to a “White Army” fighting the “Red Army (Communist)”, and the term “White Russian” has since been used to refer to people who fought the Communist army and/or fled as a result of the upheaval during that particular time in Russia.

Some of the White Russians sought refuge in Europe while others sailed to the cities of Hankow and Shanghai in China.

When China was freed after World War II from the Japanese, the Civil War between the Communists under MaoTse-Tung and the Nationalists under Shang Kai Shek in 1948 resumed.

The Chinese Communists were supported by Russia. Fearing for their lives because they knew that China would eventually be overtaken by the Communists, the White Russians organized themselves under the leadership of Col. Gregory Bologoff, a former colonel in the White Russian Army back in Russia.

Bologoff appealed to the United Nations through the International Refugee Organization (IRO) now popularly known as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Philippines, under then President Elpidio Quirino, was the only country who responded to Bologoff’s appeal.