30/03/2021
Mishka /Mikhail Ivanovich and his Russian wife in the mid 1940s G.C
During the modernization of the Ethiopian state under Emperor Menelik II, Russian military advisers played an important role in strengthening the national army. Almost half a century later, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Ethiopian of Russian descent, Babichef, again had a chance to make a fundamental contribution to the creation of a national air force in Ethiopia
Mikhail Ivanovich Babichev was born on October 14, 1908 in Ethiopia from a Russian Lieutenant who accompanied the Russian diplomatic mission to Ethiopia in 1898, and an Ethiopian mother
In 1944, Pilot Mishka Babicheff was retrained as a diplomat. Perhaps due to health problems and he was assigned as Charge d'Affaires of Ethiopia in Russia between 1944-1947. Here, in his father's homeland, Babicheff found his love
The thirty-eight-year-old former commander-in-chief of Ethiopian aviation in early 1946 met Lyudmila Nesterenkova, a student at the Maurice Torez Moscow State Institute of Foreign Languages, and on April 6, 1947, their son Alexander was born. Unfortunately, the health of the Ethiopian diplomat was deteriorating
From the Soviet Union, Babicheff's relatives took him to Sweden, to a neurological clinic. In Stockholm, Babicheff underwent surgery and his health improved slightly. However, the sick person could no longer work in a diplomatic mission, and it was decided to evacuate him to Ethiopia. On November 25, 1948, he returned to Addis Ababa
However, Lyudmila and their son Alexander, were never able to live with their father and husband. On February 15, 1947, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks prohibited marriages between citizens of the USSR and foreigners. Therefore, the exit from the Soviet Union to the wife and son of Babicheff was closed ...
You can view two more pictures on the comment section; Young Babicheff in the early 30s, and a picture of his parents Ivan Babicheff and W/o Tekabech Wolde perhaps taken in the 1900s/1910s
Russian Archive/Live Journal:
https://masterok.livejournal.com/2176022.html
