Soviet director who fled abroad. The most daring escapes from the USSR. Mikhail Baryshnikov, ballet dancer

// 09.11.2006
Paths to freedom
Fleeing from the USSR was, without a doubt, an undertaking no less risky and perhaps more difficult than trying to overcome Berlin Wall. The fact is that in the Soviet Union there was also a border zone tens of kilometers wide along the borders. In order to get there, a special pass was required. Citizens who did not have a business trip to those places or had relatives living there were practically unable to obtain such a pass. Those who nevertheless penetrated there were obliged to know that they had to avoid any meetings, since the local population was obliged to immediately inform the authorities not only about suspicious, but also about all unfamiliar persons.

Nevertheless, such attempts were made constantly. The author knows about a number of successful ones. However, we will not reveal the names of most of the heroes for one simple reason. Most of these people, having obviously endured horrific stress, did not and still do not want to reveal their names. Many have changed their first and last names. Many people don't talk to strangers in Russian. One of the fugitives I know never speaks Russian at all. They all spoke very sparingly about the circumstances of their escape. Parts had to be fished out of them literally with pincers. But all but one of these stories I know first hand. I’ll probably start with the only one whose hero I’m not familiar with.

Story one. You cannot enter the same sea three times

In the fall of 1975, I accompanied the mother and sister of my friend Boris Mukhametshin to the Perm region. There, in the Chusovsky district, in zone 35, Boris served time for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

The times were nasty, but not the most bloodthirsty. The women received a personal visit for three days. Corruption already existed then, and they let me into the visiting room with them for three hours. It cost a block of then-scarce American cigarettes and a pack of equally scarce Finnish chewing gum. It was then that I learned from Boris, who was talking about his prison and camp life, the story of a man with whom he spent several days in a prison hospital.

In the early 70s, this young man firmly decided to leave the USSR. Then there were two legal ways to do this: marry a foreigner or go for permanent residence in Israel. Our hero chose, however, to escape. He went to Batumi, built a small raft and, choosing a day, or rather a night, when the sea was rough and the wind was fair, he sailed to Turkey. On his way, he came across border boats several times, but every time the light of their rummaging searchlights approached, the fugitive dived, but his raft was not detected. In any case, he safely reached Turkey, and after some time he ended up in the USA. Everything would be wonderful, but he realized that he could not live without his beloved, who remained in the socialist fatherland. And he couldn’t come up with anything better than to go back to Turkey, build a raft and again violate the state border of the USSR. The most amazing thing is that this attempt was successful. He reached his hometown, found his beloved and went with her to Batumi again.

Alas, his girlfriend was a very bad swimmer, and when they went back to Turkey, they put a life jacket on her. This vest, naturally, did not allow one to completely submerge under water when the spotlight approached. The fugitives were discovered by the first border boat...

The second story. Nine days at sea

In 1976, I was allowed to go to Sweden to join my wife. A few years later, I was visiting friends in New York, spent some time on the road and got a job as a mover, that is, a loader, for a wonderful company called something like “Moving Allways”, the owner of which, an enterprising ex-dissident conscientious objector, was happy to use cheap immigrant work. My partner turned out to be a well-built, fit, ruddy mustache named Oleg, who at first refused to speak Russian to me. As it turned out, he believed that all Russian-speaking citizens unfamiliar to him were potential KGB agents. I must admit, I barely spoke English. Loaders, if they work in pairs, should, of course, exchange at least a couple of phrases from time to time. But in vain I appealed to Oleg. He was adamant. True, after a couple of days, either by making inquiries or taking my word for it, he changed his anger to mercy and began to speak to me in Russian. This was the famous Oleg Sokhanevich, sung in the song of Alexei Khvostenko.

Oleg also decided to flee by sea, also the Black Sea, also to Turkey. But he was rightly wary of the border boats and developed an escape plan that allowed him to avoid meeting them. Having put an inflatable rubber boat, a container of water and meager provisions in his suitcase, he bought a ticket for the Rossiya motor ship en route Odessa-Sochi. On a pre-selected night, he and his luggage simply jumped overboard. Having made sure that his jump went unnoticed and “Russia” was safely moving away in the direction of the Caucasus, Oleg, already in the water, inflated his boat with his mouth and the cellar to the south, to Turkey. He rowed for nine days, but still swam. According to him, the most difficult thing was to convince the Turks that he had succeeded, but I dare to assume that Oleg was showing off a little.

Story three. A five-year escape

Most of the “overland escapes” were apparently carried out across the Finnish border, although there was an agreement between the USSR and Finland on the extradition of fugitives. However, the people who carefully prepared their escape knew that if the transition was successful, they should not relax, but move on to Sweden, and there they should surrender to the authorities. Alexander K. did not know this. He lived in a small Central Russian town, but unlike most of its residents, he did not drink alcohol. Well, this happens too. When his fellow countrymen and friends were drinking, Alexander listened to the radio, including Western voices, and decided to go abroad.

This was in the mid-60s. He bought a ticket to Leningrad and there he already wanted to buy one to the station closest to the border. At the ticket office they asked him for a pass to the border zone. Patting his pockets, he said that he had left his pass at home. Then he went to the help desk, said that he was going fishing, and asked where in Karelia he could go without a pass. Having received the names of several settlements, he took a map from his backpack and, choosing the station closest to the border zone, bought a ticket.

Having reached the place, he cheerfully set off to the west and, having crossed the border zone in just over a day, went to the border, quickly found a hole and ended up in Finland. But, apparently, he “inherited it.” As it turned out later, just a few hours after he crossed the border, the Soviet side notified the Finnish police that a dangerous criminal, a fugitive murderer, had illegally crossed the border. Alexander, without hiding at all, got to some Finnish town and, going into the bank, asked to exchange several dozen rubles for Finnish marks. A few hours later he was back at home. After it became clear that Alexander was more of an eccentric than an anti-Soviet, he was given a relatively short sentence, and four years later he was released early due to exemplary behavior and an amnesty. But he was not going to give up and even in the camp he began to teach English language from some polyglot prisoner.

Having freed himself and arrived in hometown, he continued his studies, saved money and traveled to Leningrad several times, where he bought Finnish stamps from black marketeers. Considering that the required amount had been accumulated, he set off along a familiar route. Very quickly he discovered that in five years the border had been greatly strengthened. The distance that five years earlier he covered in a day took him a week. But the border itself seemed completely insurmountable. True, when he crawled along it, he discovered a passage in the wall about a hundred meters wide. But border guards were constantly on guard on each side of the passage. Alexander waited another day, hiding. And still he waited. One of the soldiers decided to go to the other to have a light. While he was lighting a cigarette, Alexander crossed the state border of the USSR for the second time. In the forest lake, he carefully washed his clothes. Then for several days, going around settlements, walked to Helsinki. I walked to the port and bought a ticket to Stockholm at the ticket office.

I met him almost a decade later. He lived with his Swedish wife and two children in a small town. He worked, as in Russia, in a factory. After much persuasion, he told me his story. In Swedish. After crossing the border for the second time, he never spoke Russian again.

Story four. Talkative policeman

Dmitry V. also “inherited” it when crossing the Finnish border. He couldn't help but follow as he climbed over the wall and barbed wire along the trunks of fir trees, which he sawed down and laid on the obstacle. Very quickly he was detained and taken to the police station.

The police officer, no longer a young man, spoke Russian. After listening to Dmitry’s confused story, he shook his head and said something like this: “I can’t help it. The Soviet side has already notified us that a dangerous criminal has violated the border. We are obliged to hand you over. I understand that you were very close to your goal, because over there, very close, there is Railway. And freight trains often stop at the siding. These trains go to Turku, and from Turku there is a ferry to Sweden. You don't need a ticket to get on the ferry because you can buy one on board, and the check takes place at the port of arrival. But this will no longer help you. I am obliged to hand you over to the Soviet side. Actually, I’ll go home and have lunch first. I don’t lock the door, but please sit here and wait for me, because when I return, I will have to hand you over to the Soviet side.” Having said all this, he winked at Dmitry, smiled and left without even closing the door.

During the years of the USSR, getting abroad was difficult. Soviet citizens traveled on tourist packages to countries of the socialist community. These are Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Romania. As for capitalist countries, only party members could go there. Only a party card gave the opportunity to see Western Europe. But the exchange of rubles for currency was carried out in very small amounts.

Along with tourists, there were people in the USSR who dreamed of going abroad forever. Some of them tried to leave the world's first state of workers and peasants for ideological reasons, while others put material interests at the forefront. But in any case, such citizens believed that the capitalist system was better than the socialist one and therefore sought to end up in the West by any means.

During the years of Soviet power, many stories of escapes from the USSR have accumulated. People went abroad using hang gliders and scuba gear, sailors abandoned ships in foreign ports, and artists and athletes did not return from trips abroad. But the capitalists did not show much interest in such people. It was another matter when an uninvited guest arrived in a modern air combat vehicle. That is, the defector turned out to be a military pilot. So we'll look at stories of escapes from the USSR by plane.

In 1967, on May 15, the pilot Vasily Epatko, flying a MIG-17 aircraft, flew from the airfield of a Soviet air base located in the GDR to an airfield in Germany. He was granted political asylum and residence in the United States.

But of much greater interest is the escape on May 27, 1973 of Senior Lieutenant Evgeniy Vronsky. This man had no flying skills. He served as a technician at a military airfield. It was located 200 km from the western border. But for a military aircraft such a distance was not a hindrance. Therefore, Vronsky, who had plans to escape from the USSR, decided to escape in a combat vehicle.

He became friends with the officer who was in charge of the simulator class. I began to regularly visit the classroom and general outline mastered piloting skills on a simulator. Of course, Vronsky never sat at the controls of an airplane, but, as they say, risk is a noble cause. Having become proficient in the simulators, the senior lieutenant chose Sunday for a daring escape.

On weekends, personnel were always engaged in cleaning the area and maintaining technical equipment. And when the hum of the turbines was heard an hour and a half before lunch, no one was alarmed - you never know why the pilots started the engine.

Everyone realized it only when the SU-7B plane rolled out of the hangar. He drove towards the runway, picking up speed. A car carrying the officer on duty and his assistant rushed after him. But the plane managed to enter the runway. He accelerated and took off from the ground. The acceleration and takeoff itself were extremely uncertain, and anyone could have guessed that it was not the pilot sitting at the controls.

The hijacker was favored by the fact that the take-off direction exactly coincided with the course towards the border. Therefore, when the plane took off into the blue sky, there was no need to turn the car or take it to the desired direction. Vronsky had just reached a certain height and, clutching the steering wheel with his hands, drove the car straight. He didn't even retract the landing gear.

And on the ground they declared a combat alert. Several fighters took off into the sky to intercept the hijacked plane. But the hijacker was flying low to the ground, so he was not detected. After only 23 minutes, he left the airspace of the GDR and found himself in the skies of West Germany.

The fuel was running low, and there was no chance of a safe landing. And then Vronsky decided to eject. He had never jumped with a parachute, and knew the procedure for using a catapult only theoretically. And yet the hijacker dared to eject. He landed safely 50 km from the border, and the plane crashed into a meadow without causing harm to anyone.

The senior lieutenant ended up with the West Germans. The Soviet government requested the return of the hijacker, but was refused. Only the wreckage of the SU-7B was returned. Vronsky himself did not make any political statements. He only said that he left the USSR of his own free will and consciously.

Senior Lieutenant Viktor Belenko, who hijacked a plane to Japan

Another senior lieutenant, 29 years old, fled his country on a MiG-25 plane. It happened on September 6, 1976. On that ill-fated day, the officer took off from the Sokolovka airfield in the Primorsky Territory at 6:45 a.m. His task was to carry out a combat mission to intercept a conditional target.

But within a minute the plane disappeared from the radar screen. Belenko flew over the hill, dropped to a height of 50 meters above the ground and in this mode flew 130 km, heading for the Japanese island of Hokkaido. There he landed at one of the airfields.

The senior lieutenant carefully planned his escape. He knew that during his flight there would be no anti-aircraft missile system on duty. He was having breakfast at that moment, but he didn’t have a replacement. Units in the Soviet army were mainly cadred, that is, staffed according to peacetime staff. And therefore there were not enough people.

2.5 hours after the fugitive reached Hokkaido, Japanese radio announced that the Soviet MiG-25P aircraft, Airborne 31, piloted by Belenko, had landed on Japanese soil. It was later announced that the pilot had asked for political asylum, and on September 9 he was transferred to the United States. The hijacked plane was returned to the USSR. It began to be used as teaching aid in one of the flight schools.

The last fugitive on the plane is Captain Alexander Zuev

Stories of escapes from the USSR using airplanes ended on May 20, 1989. On this day, the Air Force captain flew on a MiG-29 to Trabzon (Turkey). The plane was returned at the request of the Soviet government, and the pilot himself received political asylum in the United States. But life abroad did not last long. Zuev died in a plane crash on June 10, 2001, crashing on a plane during a training flight.

In conclusion, it should be said that any person has the right to live where he wants, and under the political system that suits him. But you can’t treat every escape abroad with understanding. In the above cases, military people fled abroad. They took an oath and swore to defend and defend the borders of their homeland.

Their escape, and even on military equipment, can be regarded as betrayal. If they really wanted to be in a foreign land, then they first had to resign from the army, buy scuba gear, build an airplane, and only after that leave the expanses of the USSR as civilians. However, these people chose a different path, which, according to the law of any country with any political system is regarded as treason. And traitors deserve only one thing - a trial by military tribunal.

On December 13, 1974, the most daring and famous escape from the USSR took place. Ocean scientist Stanislav Kurilov jumped overboard from a passenger ship in Pacific Ocean and swimming a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, reached the Philippine island of Siargao. Equipped only with fins, a mask and a snorkel, without water or food, he spent three nights and two days in the ocean.

Stanislav Kurilov was born in Vladikavkaz (Ordzhonikidze) in 1936, and spent his childhood in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). There, among the steppes, the dream of the sea was born. At the age of ten, Kurilov swam across the Irtysh. After school, I tried to get a job as a cabin boy in the Baltic Fleet. He wanted to become a navigator, but his eyesight failed him. There was only one option left - study at the Leningrad Meteorological Institute. During his studies he mastered scuba diving. Having received a specialty in oceanography, he worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, participated in the creation of the Chernomor underwater research laboratory, and worked as an instructor at the Institute of Marine Biology in Vladivostok.

S. Kurilov with his sister

From the very beginning, Kurilov had a mystical relationship with the sea. He considered him alive and somehow “felt” him in a special way. Since his student days, Stanislav Kurilov began to actively practice yoga, exercises for which could then be found in samizdat reprints. He accustomed himself to asceticism and engaged in special breathing practice. When Jacques Cousteau himself showed interest in the scientific research of Soviet scientists, Stanislav Kurilov tried to get permission to go on a business trip abroad, but he was refused. The wording left no doubt: “restricted from traveling.” The fact is that Kurilov had a sister abroad (she married an Indian and moved to Canada), and Soviet officials were justified in fearing that Kurilov might not return to the country.

With friends in Semipalatinsk, 1954

And then Kurilov decided to escape. In November 1974, he bought a ticket on the Soviet Union liner. The cruise was called “From Winter to Summer.” IN southern seas The ship left Vladivostok on December 8. Stanislav Kurilov didn’t even take a compass with him. But he had a mask, snorkel, fins and webbed gloves. The future defector knew that the ship would not enter any foreign port.

The fact is that the “Soviet Union” was built before the Great Patriotic War in Germany and was originally called "Adolf Hitler". The ship was sunk and then raised from the bottom and repaired. If the "Soviet Union" entered a foreign port, it would be arrested. The liner was a real prison for passengers. The fact is that the sides did not go down in a straight line, but in a “barrel” manner, that is, it was impossible to jump overboard without breaking. Moreover, below the waterline of the ship there were hydrofoils one and a half meters wide. And even the portholes in the cabins rotated on an axis that divided the opening in half. It would seem impossible to escape. But Kurilov escaped.

He was lucky three times. Firstly, in the captain’s cabin, Kurilov saw a map of the liner’s route with dates and coordinates. And I realized that I had to run when the ship passed the Philippine island of Siargao, and the coast was 10 nautical miles. Secondly, there was a girl astronomer on the ship who showed Kurilov the constellations southern hemisphere, which could be used to navigate. Thirdly, he jumped from a ship from a height of 14 meters and was not killed. Kurilov chose the night of December 13 for the jump. He jumped from the stern. There, in the gap between the hydrofoils and the propeller, there was the only gap that, if you got into it, you could survive. He later wrote that even if it all ended in death, he would still be a winner. The weather was stormy and the escape was not noticed.

Once in the water, Kurilov put on fins, gloves and a mask and swam away from the liner. Most of all, he was afraid that the liner would return and he would be taken on board. In fact, in the morning the ship actually returned; they searched for Kurilov, but did not find him. He realized that the chances of reaching the ground were almost zero. The main danger was sailing past the island. He could have been carried away by the current, he could have died of starvation, or he could have been eaten by sharks. Kurilov spent two days and three nights in the ocean. He survived rain, storms, and prolonged dehydration. And he survived. Towards the end, he could not feel his legs, periodically lost consciousness, and saw hallucinations. By the evening of the second day, he noticed land in front of him, but could not reach it: he was carried away by a strong current to the south. Fortunately, the same current carried him to a reef on the southern coast of the island. With the surf, he overcame the reef in the dark, swam across the lagoon for another hour, and on December 15, 1974, reached the shore of Siargao Island in the Philippines.

Siargao Island (Philippines)

Kurilov was picked up by local fishermen who reported him to the authorities. Stanislav was arrested. He spent almost a year in a local prison, but enjoyed great freedom, sometimes the police chief even took him with him on “tavern” raids. Perhaps he would have been imprisoned for illegally crossing the border, but his sister from Canada took charge of his fate. A year later, Kurilov received documentary evidence that he was a fugitive and left the Philippines. When the Soviet Union learned about the escape, Kurilov was tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in prison for treason.

Philippines, December 1974.

Kurilov wrote a book about his adventures, “Alone in the Ocean,” which was translated into many languages. The text also contains references to drunken compatriots and concentration camps, who were supposedly “somewhere in the north.” Having received a Canadian passport, Kurilov went on vacation to British Honduras, where he was kidnapped by a gang of mafiosi. He had to get out of captivity himself. In Canada, Kurilov worked in a pizzeria and then in companies involved in marine research. He looked for minerals off Hawaii, worked in the Arctic, and studied the ocean at the equator. In 1986, he got married and moved to Israel with his wife. Kurilov died on January 29, 1998 in the biblical places on Lake Kinneret (Sea of ​​Galilee) in Israel. He was 62 years old. The day before his death, he was disentangling a friend from a fishing net at depth, and on that day he himself became entangled. When they freed him from his bonds, he became ill, and when they carried him ashore, he died. Kurilov was buried in Jerusalem at the Templer cemetery.

Monument to Stanislav Vasilievich Kurilov.

On an expedition boat. Gelendzhik, 1969

Underwater research of Slava Kurilov

Kurilov with his wife.

The Western press did not entertain the new story for long, and in the evil empire they preferred to remain silent about it. But the very fact of a collective escape from Soviet hell excited many, especially Russian emigrants of the first and second waves. For them, Dudnikov’s act was a sign of impending global changes, the beginning of an impending collapse Soviet Empire. The heroic fugitive was invited to various meetings and conferences, but due to his modesty, he invariably refused - he just wanted to live and work quietly in a world that he considered free.

Attempts to escape from the Soviet Union on captured sea vessels had been made before. So on September 9, 1956, three young people - Volikov, Vilisov and Chernin - boarded the Typhoon boat, which stood unguarded at the pier of Vanino Bay in the port of Sovetskaya Gavan and tried to go out to sea on it, but in the fog they got lost in the bay and at dawn put the boat in place. After this failure, they decided to capture another ship. To do this, we met the crew of the boat RK-1283, gave the whole crew some vodka and stayed overnight on the ship. On the morning of October 14, the crew members were sent ashore for vodka. After that we took a boat out to sea. When passing through the boom gates, they did not obey the demands to stop. The fugitives headed for Japan. A patrol boat was sent in pursuit. Fire was opened on them, one of the fugitives was wounded. But since all the defectors were 16-17 years old and they explained their actions by a thirst for travel and adventure, they were convicted only of illegal border crossing and sentenced to 3 years in the camps.

In September 1967, four students from Sevastopol State Technical University No. 13 stole a diving boat from the Apolonovaya pier in Sevastopol Bay, intending to escape to Turkey on it. They managed to leave the bay unnoticed, but after 12 km. near Cape Chersonesos were discovered and detained by a patrol boat. The unsuccessful escapees were placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Pavel Dudnikov and his friends were luckier.

Pavel Ivanovich Dudnikov was born on June 1, 1927 in Stavropol. He lost his parents early and fought on the fronts of World War II. Finished sailor. Sailed on foreign ships. Seeing life abroad and comparing it with the bleak Soviet reality, he began to openly criticize the Soviet regime. The rebel was written off the ship and his visa was canceled. Seeing the injustice and cruelty of the communist regime, Pavel Dudnikov decides to leave the USSR forever. Pondering plans for escape, he decides that the best chance of going abroad may arise when ferrying a small ship from one port to another.

In 1970 he moved to Sukhumi. With great difficulty, Pavel manages to get a job at a fishing farm as a seiner. The experienced sailor, who knew his job very well, was liked by the management of the fish farm. Soon Dudnikov is appointed captain of the small fishing seiner “Vishera”, built in 1949.

Fantastically lucky with the team. His senior assistant Georgy Kolosov had already been in Soviet concentration camps three times for various offenses, and hated him fiercely Soviet power and dreamed of escape, Valery Dyusov listened to Western radio for days and was also not averse to leaving his socialist homeland. Lithuanian Romas Gadliauskas had his own scores to settle with the communists; his father died in Soviet dungeons, where he was thrown for participating in the anti-Soviet partisan movement. When Dudnikov hinted to the team that they might try to go to the West, his proposal was met with enthusiasm.

In June 1972, the ship left Sukhumi for Kerch for repairs at the Kerch shipyard. There was a short stop in Sochi and on June 5, 1972, Vishera arrived for repair work in Kerch. The ship was indeed very tattered and Dudnikov decides to escape on it after repairs. The renovation was completed in August. "Vishera" leaves Kerch and proceeds to Sukhumi. After the ship leaves the Kerch Strait, Dudnikov heads for the Bosphorus. The radio was turned off and after 2 days the fugitives entered the strait. Fortune smiled on the brave souls. Without any problems, the fugitives passed the Bosphorus and entered the waters of the Sea of ​​Marmara. The Turks decided not to surrender, but to follow to Greece, where by that time the military had come to power - anti-communist “black colonels”, who broke off relations with Soviet Union. And this was a guarantee against their non-extradition to the Soviet authorities.

This is how Pavel Dudnikov recalls that moment: “It was cultural, i.e. a brilliant escape without casualties and even with Soviet champagne. So, I dropped anchor in the Sea of ​​Marmara, called everyone into the salon and congratulated the crew on their escape with full glasses of champagne. The team rejoiced. With the exception of the senior mechanic Tskhadai - he was an ardent communist, a fanatic, and a bit of a fool at that. Then I announced that the ship would continue to Greece; I did not intend to take political asylum from the vile Turks, since they often arrange deals with Moscow and hand over defectors. The senior mechanic Tskhadaya begged me not to go to Athens, because he would be put behind bars as a communist. I told him that he would not be touched, since the Greeks follow international rules. But he was such a purely narrow person that no truth reached him. He said that he was afraid of the black colonels who were in power in Greece. And so, passing the Dardanelles near the port of Canakalle, when approaching the board of a Turkish service boat, Tskhadaya rushes onto the boat and makes a noise - he shakes the Turkish representatives in the arms, but they do not understand him, because he doesn't know Turkish. The Turks thought that this was a Soviet defector and moved away from the side, but they waved their hand at me - follow. And I continued the flight to the port of Piraeus. Afterwards I learned from the Greek authorities that the Turks in Canakalla could not find an interpreter for a whole day, and when they learned from him that the ship had escaped, and they demanded that he be returned to the USSR, by that time our trace was gone. In general, the Turks told the Greek government that they would give us asylum, but I replied that it was better not to deal with the Turks. Well, when Tskhadaya returned to Sukhumi, my Georgian and Armenian friends wrote to me that the whole city laughed and made fun of him.”

On August 12, 1972, Vishera safely entered the Greek port of Piraeus. The fugitives were greeted as heroes. They were called the brilliant eight, they were shown on television, they were interviewed, and banquets were held in their honor. The Greeks were especially impressed by the fact that the fugitives arrived straight to Greece, and did not ask for asylum in neighboring Turkey, with which they had long-standing scores.

After the escape, the team dispersed different countries. Some of the fugitives remained in Europe. Pavel Dudnikov and first mate Georgy Kolosov left for the USA. The fate of team member Pavel Siordia (born 1949) was tragic. An ethnic Greek, after escaping he remained to live in Greece, but a year later, missing his relatives who remained in the Union, he decided to return. In 1973, upon arrival in Moscow, he was arrested right at the plane's ramp, and later placed in the Dnepropetrovsk special psychiatric hospital. In 1977, Siordia died after being unable to withstand torture with antipsychotic drugs.

Pavel Dudnikov worked on fishing boats in Alaska and lived in California and Florida. American filmmakers met with him, planning to make a film about the escape, but it didn’t work out. On the American ships where he had to work, Dudnikov was perceived as a living legend; he recalled that “the Americans were very surprised how I could arrange my escape so brilliantly.”

Pavel Ivanovich Dudnikov died on January 20, 1996 in Hollywood, Florida, at the age of 68.

Pavel Dudnikov was sentenced in absentia in 1973 by the Supreme Court of the USSR to death for treason, the other seven fugitives were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Quite often in discussions about the USSR, a generally logical question is asked: “author, if everything was so good in your Soviet Union, then why did people try to escape from there to the decaying West?”

And they really did run. Whoever could. By plane, by swimming or on your own during trips abroad. If we look at the stories of escapes, sometimes people risked their own lives and the lives of other people (like the Ovechkins) in order to end up in the coveted West. One gets the impression that there was such hell in the USSR that citizens were even ready to die just to get out of it. But!

To begin with, let's start with the fact that the author never claimed that everything was fine in the USSR. There were enough problems in the USSR. In the economy - insufficient commodity coverage of wages (deficit), in politics - the absence of a mechanism for the replacement of power, in social sphere– alcoholization of the population and low motivation to work. These are just some of the problems that faced Soviet society in full force in the late USSR. They arose, of course, not in the 80s, but much earlier, but they acquired well-known proportions precisely during perestroika. Perestroika did not arise out of nowhere. Many people understood that something had to be decided and changed. What was ultimately “decided and replaced” is another question.

However, all the shortcomings of the Soviet system could not be compared with its advantages. Citizens simply stopped noticing these advantages, taking them for granted. Hence the idea that “in the West everything is the same as in the USSR, only people live much richer and there is no shortage.” Why? Yes, because they have a capitalist world, and we have a socialist camp.”
Soviet people, of course, had no idea how the western world. At best, they saw his shop windows, and often did not even see them in person, but heard stories about them. Nobody believed the official propaganda, but they believed a friend of his wife’s sister, who brought a Japanese Fisher tape recorder from a business trip abroad. It’s clear that everyone lives well “there”, since they have such tape recorders!!! With approximately this level of competence in the matter, especially gifted Soviet citizens decided to escape.

Was such a phenomenon widespread? No, it was not. Out of a population of 300 million, I’m not sure that there will be a hundred people who fled to the West. It’s just that each such escape had a serious public outcry. The generalization that “everyone who could fled” is another anti-Soviet tale. Hundreds of thousands Soviet people traveled abroad for one reason or another (including to Western countries), while only a few fled from them. Moreover, many of those who fled had never been abroad. To them, as in the joke, “Rabinovich sang.”

Truly mass emigration began with the fall of socialism, when throughout the entire territory former USSR began, excuse the expression, a fierce scribe. National conflicts, crime, economic collapse... In the early 90s, citizens were forced to literally switch to subsistence farming, since there was simply no money for food. And then many people really fled abroad. But not from socialism at all, but from the emerging capitalism that everyone yearned for during perestroika. At the same time, those fleeing were firmly convinced that they were fleeing precisely from the Soviet Union, and that it was the communists who brought the country to this state.
Let’s not deny that highly qualified specialists had every chance of finding a job in the West much better than they lived in “developed socialism” and, especially, in the “holy 90s”. First of all, because education in the West is paid. To become this highly qualified specialist, you must first give a lot of money. Not only everyone can afford this. Therefore, local specialists are expensive for employers. It is cheaper to hire, for example, Russian engineers, whom the USSR trained for free in commercial quantities.

And here is a Russian engineer, in whose education the country has invested a lot of money (since kindergarten and ending with a university), but who firmly believes that he is “all on his own”, is perfectly comfortable somewhere in the USA or Germany. It was in the stupid Soviet people that they didn’t value him for being so educated, and some miner could get more Human With Higher Education. But here it’s a completely different matter. Your own house, two cars per family, wagons of any food and mountains of junk without any queues. If only there was money.
In general, if you have money, then you will feel great in the West (our elite will confirm). The whole society there is built around people with money. There was nothing like this in the USSR. Even the richest Soviet citizens like Antonov or Pugacheva could not approach the standard of living of their colleagues in the West. Simply because in the Soviet Union there was no such social stratification as in the capitalist world. Income was distributed like butter on a sandwich: plus or minus, in an even layer among all members of society. The same Soviet “equalization” that so infuriated People with Higher Education. Western society, on the contrary, has the structure of a pronounced pyramid. Naturally, other things being equal, the standard of living at the top of the pyramid will be incomparably higher than in a Soviet sandwich. That is why Soviet specialists, finding themselves in Western society on the upper steps of the pyramid, simply wrote with delight. Oh, what a service they have! Oh, what houses they have! Oh, what cars!