American Wins Divorce From Soviet Husband : She Gave Love; All He Wanted Was Visa

ANN ARBOR, Mich. —  A graduate student who put aside her doctoral studies to help her Soviet husband emigrate to the United States has been granted a divorce on grounds the man only wanted to flee the Soviet Union.

Sandra Gubin, 40, and Alexei Lodisev, 35, were married in 1981 while Gubin was studying political science in Kiev. She returned to the United States several months later and spent the next five years trying to gain an exit visa for her husband.

Gubin became the national spokeswoman for the Divided Spouses Coalition--a group of Americans whose Soviet spouses were denied requests to emigrate to the United States.

Lodisev arrived in New York in January, 1986, but Gubin said in a divorce action filed 11 months later that Lodisev ignored her and refused to have sex with her although she desperately wanted a child.

She testified that her husband spent his first night in the United States in front of a television, playing with the remote control.

She also testified that Lodisev told her he had been having an affair with a Soviet woman when he left home.

Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Kenneth Bronson ordered Lodisev to pay Gubin $113,087, including about $58,000 in wages lost when she put aside her doctoral studies at the University of Michigan to work for his emigration.

The judge noted that Lodisev accumulated about $22,000 in debts before returning to the Soviet Union for a visit last summer.

“This showed a pattern not just of stiffing the plaintiff, but of stiffing everyone else in this country,” Bronson said.

Bronson conceded that there is little likelihood Gubin will collect on the judgment, given the debts already pending against Lodisev.

He worked for Applicon Corp., an Ann Arbor computer firm after he first arrived in this country, but was laid off and is working for a firm that does contract work on computers for Ford Motor Co., testimony showed.

“I care for him,” Gubin said. “I know he doesn’t believe it, but I do.”