Dr Vera Butler (nee) Inachin, who has died aged 88, was a classic example of the talented, intellectual, multicultural refugees who migrated to Australia in the early postwar years.
Part business person, part scholar, part radical, artist and poet, part politician's wife, Vera Butler embodied much of the Australian ethos during the great transitional period of the 1950s to 1970s. In this, she played a small but notable, symbolic part.
Vera grew up in a world unimaginable to most of us. Her father was Nicholas Gavrilovich Inachin (1889-1968). Her mother Hildegarde Emilie Kiers (1889-1962) was known earlier as Hilda but in Australia as Emily. 
Nicholas was born in St Petersburg into a lower-level aristocratic family, his father served with the Tsarist army and he was schooled in the Orthodox faith. Hilda was born into a German Lutheran family in Riga, Latvia, then located in the old Russian Empire.
Pressed into the army, Nicholas served in World War I as a driver/motor mechanic and was twice wounded. His parents and other relatives perished in the cauldron of the Russian Revolution, with all family property confiscated. This persuaded him to join the White Russian resistance army, leading to exile in Latvia, leaving behind two sons from an earlier marriage.
In Riga, Nicholas married Hilda and Vera was born. Growing up she learnt German from her mother, Russian from her father, French at a Russian primary school and Latvian at high school, showing academic aptitude from an early age. As a driver/mechanic Nicholas kept the family modestly but when the 1938 Nazi-Soviet pact handed Latvia to the Soviet Union, the family joined other Germans fleeing Latvia using Hilda's old German baptismal certificate as proof of Germanic identity.
The family spent the war as refugees in German-held Posen and were booked on a train for Dresden the day it was obliterated by Allied bombing. Probable death was avoided by 12 hours.
After the war, the family was almost deported back to the Soviet Union until Vera, speaking good French, told French occupation forces at the railway station that they were Latvians being forcibly deported. The French authorities surrounded the family and they were released from Russian control, saving them all as Russian deportees were often gaoled, sent to Siberia or executed.
Vera finished high school in Germany and then studied politics, philosophy and linguistics at two prestigious universities, Freiburg and Tuebingen.
Life was harsh in postwar Germany and looking for a better life, the Inachins took the SS Fairsea to Melbourne, arriving in early 1951. The elder Inachins later settled in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg.
Moving around the migrant communities in Melbourne and Sydney, Vera met and later married Janusz Zongollowicz, a former Polish army officer who had fought both Germans and Russians, also having had a brief marriage and a son, Jerzy (George). Vera's marriage to Janusz, from 1956 to 1961, resulted in a son, Andre. Age differences and little else in common apart from shared memory of war trauma led to eventual separation.
After the divorce, Vera shortened her surname name to Zonn. She took out Australian citizenship in 1957 and after several previous visits, her stepson George migrated to Australia in 1983.
In 1969 when Australian universities belatedly recognised European qualifications, Vera had almost enough units to finish her BA degree, taking out an MA and PhD at Melbourne University in following years. She mixed in progressive political circles and social justice-oriented groups such as the Unitarian Peace Memorial Church, while working long hours running her own tile importing business.
These activities eventually led her to the union movement and the Labor Party, where she met Glyde Butler (1932-2000), a former British soldier in the Korean war, an active trade unionist, an accomplished organiser, an assistant secretary of the Victorian ALP and a divorcee with five children. This milieu suited Vera perfectly and she set about helping Glyde, making political contacts, joining innumerable community groups, engaging in public speaking and pursuing interests in political economy.
During the 1980s, Vera established the Australia-USSR Association, a name she changed to the Australian International Studies Association (AISA) after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Through this group, Vera published a regular newsletter addressing intercultural relations, political economy, scientific developments and environmental issues, to which innumerable writers contributed. An added feature included material from German, Russian or French publications, translated by Vera herself.
Vera's views on international relations, politics and economics were progressive and even radical for the times, although she always maintained a sensible, pragmatic world outlook. On behalf of AISA, Vera ran frequent weekend seminars at her home in Pascoe Vale with speakers including politicians, local and international scholars, social activists and trade unionists, in addition to herself.
Vera taught extensively at a number of colleges and universities, particularly Victoria University, and created an almost Dickensian correspondence circle, engaging regularly with scholars and activists around the world. She wrote for progressive newsletters and journals to the end. Vera was also an accomplished artist using pencil, crayons and watercolours and wrote poetry, including Japanese Haiku, that she sometimes entered into competitions.
Ultimately, Vera's life journey took her through religion, war, business, politics and academia. In her MA, Vera argued a major cause of international instability was excessive dominance of the US dollar and proposed a system centred on gold movements that anticipated the problems that led to the 2008-9 Global Financial Crisis.
Her PhD, Aspects of Australia-Soviet Relations (1983-1988), addressed key dimensions of inter-country relations and Vera hoped the Soviet perestroika reforms of the 1980s would lead to an innovative form of democratic socialism. When the Soviet Union collapsed she was devastated, because this vision seemed lost. Vera believed in equality and human rights, arguing multiculturalism could both complement and add to the host country's unity and identity while carefully retaining the latter.
As the Member for Thomastown Province, Glyde Butler was Government Whip in the Legislative Council under the Cain Government. After an electoral redistribution, he retired in 1985 and died in 2000.
Vera continued her scholarly activities, even from her retirement home, having frequent intellectual conversations by email and with visitors. She is survived by her son Andre, his partner Lesley Czulowski, their daughter Natasha, her stepson George Zongollowicz and his wife Bogumila.
Dr Graham Dunkley was a friend and academic colleague of Vera Butler. Andre Zonn is her son.