Homeland for a Champion - Maria Filatova. Beth Squires translates

After a quest that lasted decades, two-time Olympic gymnastics champion Maria Filatova has received the right to enter Russia. “Argumenty i fakty” deserves some of the credit for this.

Just so you will understand about whom we are talking, Maria Yevgenyevna not only has medals of the purest tint from the 1976 and 1980 Olympics, she is a two-time world champion, two-time World Cup holder, European champion, USSR champion and more. All her medals weigh more than 40 kilograms! This remarkable person has been living in the US for many years and fighting to obtain Russian citizenship! (See AiF No. 3 for the year 2013.)

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FYI: AiF asked Putin to grant citizenship to gymnast Filatova.

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Homeward!

When we were writing the article, we were certain that progress would quickly be made on the case: who, if not a great athlete, should be given back the citizenship that had been absurdly lost during the collapse of the USSR? But the situation turned out to be so complicated that even the involvement of State Duma Deputy and celebrated athlete Alexander Karelin and the assistance of Kemerovo Province Governor Aman Tuleyev could not guarantee that Filatova’s citizenship would be restored. High-ranking officials invariably said that no basis had been found “for granting this individual Russian citizenship for special services to the Russian Federation”!

Little Masha began doing sports at age 5 in Leninsk-Kuznetsky, Kemerovo Province, and that was also where she went to school and college. She invariably returned there after great victories. But she moved to Minsk in 1982, and when she retired from competition, she got a job in the circus in Moscow. That is where she met her husband Alexander Kourbatov. They had a daughter in 1987. Things were so difficult financially during that time that the champion even sold switches of green birch twigs for use in bathhouses! So when she was offered a job training the national team of Northern Ireland, she first went there and then to the US. If only she had known for how long… “We wanted to go back, but each time it was harder and harder to get out! So I went to the US with a Soviet passport. The last time I was in Moscow was 1995. In the years since then, my mother, brothers and coaches died. I wasn’t even at their gravesites,” Maria Yevgenyevna told AiF through her tears.

In the US, in the city of Rochester, New York, the champion opened a gymnastics school and began haunting the thresholds of the Belarussian and Russian embassies. Nowhere was anyone able to tell her what use she was to them: the USSR no longer exists, so she with her red passport was no one. “Do you know what they spent last year doing? Confirming that I don’t have citizenship! I finally have a document stating that I don’t have any documents!” Even across the ocean, the champion’s sarcasm was audible. “As soon as I received the information that I had no citizenship, I learned that the US gives such people a special ‘travel document.’ I got one and took it to the Russian Embassy,” Filatova continued. That triggered another round of phone calls, requests and letters. Including from AiF. “I know that a letter from AiF editor in chief Nikolai Zyatkov was delivered to the Kremlin and played a role. Please convey to him my enormous gratitude! I finally received a Russian visa.”

Next week the illustrious champion will go to Moscow for the first time in many years. Then she will fly to Leninsk-Kuznetsky. “I still don’t believe it, even though the tickets have been bought and the documents collected.” Maria Filatova will spend more than a month in Russia. Children at the Leninsk-Kuznetsky sports school, whose director Aleksandr Tsimerman has been supporting and helping the champion for many years, are awaiting the champion’s clinics. But she herself is fretting: “Do you think I’ll be able to obtain a Russian passport in a month’s time?”

AiF will follow Maria Filatova’s case until she receives a Russian passport.