IVAN ZIABKIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 319, 3 August 1945, Page 7

IVAN ZIABKIN

Soviet Minister to New Zealand

ROM material supplied to us by the Society for Closer Relations with Russia, we are able to piece together an impression (what Americans call a "profile’) of M. Ivan Ziabkin, who has been appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the U.S.S.R. in New Zealand. From the same source we have obtained the photograph above. + Pen Portrait: "Short, thickset, with hair turning to grey and a pair of capable hands. Hands of an engineer. A friendly, easy man with twinkling eyes set in a laughter-creased face." Self-Portrait: "I am the son of a worker. My family had always been workers in the city. of Leningrad and I suppose that I too would have been an unskilled worker had it not been for the Revolution. The change of system gave

) me my opportunity. I went to the Polytechnic Institute of Leningrad where I studied electrical engineering." % oi * N graduating, M. Ziabkin remained at the Institute as a lecturer, training engineers who were needed in their thousands for the vast construction programme embarked on by the Soviet Government. In a few years he became Dean of the Faculty and a Soviet citizen of considerable prominence. When he moved from Leningrad to Moscow he was invited to join the Foreign Affairs Department. It is a common Soviet practice to give important diplomatic responsibilities to persons of intelligence and achievements, whatever their callings, and regardless of the fact that they may have had no special training to represent their country abroad. M. Ziabkin’s wife is also an engineer, They have a young son. Ee * % N an interview given in South Africa, the Soviet Minister said that he had three brothers and a sister, one of the brothers a Leningrad citizen, but how they had fared during the war he had not heard. He had his fears. There were few Russian families which had not had bereavements since 1941. In spite of this, the spirits of the Russians must have been at a high pitch, to judge from a later passage in the same interview. M. Ziabkin was asked whether people danced much in Russia. "Dance! Even in war time*’in Moscow, the many large dance halls are crowded in the week-ends." "And what do they dance? Folk dances?" ; This brought a hearty peal of laughter. os "Jazz! Russia is jazz crazy. The same as you young people here. When I was a boy of 18 or 19 I went dancing every single night. At home, on October day, May day, the people dance in the huge squares of the cities . ... The people have a deep capacity for knowing how to take their pleasures and enjoying them. Every little factory, every little organisation, every little club has got, its dance bands playing good rhythmic jazz, with a few waltzes thrown in." For the last three years M. Ziabkin has been Consul-General of the U.S.S.R. in South Africa. The exact date of his arrival in New Zealand is not yet known, * "Presently" is the official answer to questions about it, \ ,