How the glory of the Kurils sailed away from the USSR. Stanislav Kurilov: biography, family and education, history of escape from the Soviet Union

Stanislav Kurilov really wanted to be a world-famous oceanographer, but he had the status of a travel ban. Then he fled from the USSR. I jumped into the ocean from the liner, sailed for two days and three nights, until I ended up in the Philippines.

With dreams of the sea

Stanislav Kurilov was born in Vladikavkaz (Ordzhonikidze) in 1936, 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, he tried to get a job as a cabin boy in the Baltic Fleet. He wanted to become a navigator, but his eyesight let him down. There was only one way out - studying at the Leningrad Meteorological Institute. During his studies, he mastered scuba diving. Having received the specialty "oceanography", he worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, participated in the creation of the underwater research laboratory "Chernomor", worked as an instructor at the Institute of Marine Biology in Vladivostok.

travel restrictions

From the very beginning, Kurilov's relationship with the sea was mystical. He considered him alive and somehow "felt" him in a special way.
From his student days, Stanislav Kurilov began to actively engage in yoga, the exercises for which could then be found in samizdat reprints. He accustomed himself to asceticism, engaged in a special breathing practice.
When Jacques Yves 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: "not allowed to travel abroad."
The fact is that Kurilov had a sister abroad (she married an Indian and moved to Canada), and Soviet officials reasonably feared that Kurilov might not return to the country.

Escape on the Nazi liner

And then Kurilov decided to run away. In November 1974, he bought a ticket for the Soviet Union liner. The cruise was called "From Winter to Summer". The ship left Vladivostok for the southern seas on 8 December. Stanislav Kurilov did not 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 of the foreign ports. 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, he 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”, that is, it was impossible to jump overboard and not crash. Moreover, hydrofoils one and a half meters wide went below the waterline of the vessel. And even the portholes in the cabins turned on an axis that divided the hole in half.
It seemed impossible to escape. But Kurilov escaped.

Bounce

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

In the sea

Once in the water, Kurilov put on flippers, gloves and a mask and swam away from the liner. Most of all, he was afraid that the liner would return and be taken aboard. In fact, in the morning the ship did indeed return, 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 to sail past the island. He could be carried aside by the current, he could die of hunger, he could be eaten by sharks.
Kurilov spent two days and three nights in the ocean. He survived rain, storm, prolonged dehydration. And survived.
In the end, he did not feel his legs, periodically lost consciousness, saw hallucinations.
By the evening of the second day, he noticed land in front of him, but could not reach it: he was carried south by a strong current. Fortunately, the same current carried him to a reef on the southern coast of the island. With the waves of the surf, he overcame the reef in the dark, sailed the lagoon for another hour, and on December 15, 1974, reached the shore of the island of Siargao in the Philippines.

in the 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 raids "in taverns." Perhaps he would have been imprisoned for illegally crossing the border, but his sister from Canada took care of his fate. A year later, Kurilov received documentary evidence that he was a fugitive and left the Philippines.
When the Soviet Union learned of the escape, Kurilov was tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in prison for treason.

Dream come true

About his adventures, Kurilov wrote the book Alone in the Ocean, which has been translated into many languages. The text also contains references to drunken compatriots and concentration camps, which allegedly were "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 marine research firms. He searched for minerals in Hawaii, worked in the Arctic, studied the ocean at the equator.

In 1986 he married and moved to his wife in Israel.
Kurilov died on January 29, 1998 in biblical places on Lake Kinneret (Sea of ​​Galilee) in Israel. He was 62 years old. The day before his death, he untangled a friend from a fishing net at a depth, and on this day he got tangled himself. When he was freed from his bonds, he became ill, and when they carried him ashore, he died.
Kurilov was buried in Jerusalem at the Templer Cemetery.

As the Soviet press and authorities claimed, it was simply not possible to find a better country for life. However, for some reason, in order to escape from the country of socialist happiness, people swam hundreds of kilometers and hijacked planes.
We present to your attention the loudest and most unusual escapes from the Soviet Union.

Stanislav Kurilov

Kurilov worked as a deep-sea diving instructor at the Institute of Marine Biology in Vladivostok and, for professional reasons, dreamed of going on foreign business trips.

However, the authorities refused to allow him to leave, also because his relatives lived abroad: his own sister, having married a Hindu, went with him to India, and then emigrated to Canada.

Soon Stanislav began to plan his escape from the USSR. He had to turn the plan into reality unexpectedly, when in December 1974 he saw an advertisement for a cruise on the liner "Soviet Union", the route of which passed from Vladivostok to the equator and back.

As an experienced oceanologist, Kurilov laid out the best route of movement on the map and on the night of December 13 he jumped from the stern of the ship into the water. He swam to the Philippine island of Siargao about 100 kilometers. He covered such a segment of the journey without food, drink and sleep.

The Filipinos brought Kurilov to the city of Cagayan de Oro in Mindanao, after which international media wrote about his escape. The Philippine authorities deported Stanislav to Canada, where he received Canadian citizenship.

In the USSR, Kurilov was sentenced in absentia: 10 years in prison for treason.

In Canada, Kurilov got a job as a laborer in a pizzeria, and soon, having learned English, he worked in Canadian and American firms involved in marine research.

During one of his business trips to the United States, he met Israeli writers Alexander and Nina Voronel. While visiting them in Israel, he met Elena Gendeleva, who became his wife. After the wedding, Stanislav settled in Israel and got a job at the Haifa Oceanographic Institute.

Kurilov died on January 29, 1998 during diving operations: he and a friend were untangling equipment from fishing nets, got tangled in one of them and exhausted all the air.

Victor Belenko



On September 6, 1976, a Soviet pilot piloting a Mig-25P fighter landed in Japan, where he requested political asylum in the United States.

Prior to this, the pilot had repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the living conditions of the flight crew, saying that American pilots were less busy, their days off were not canceled, and their schedule was not so busy.

In the USSR, for treason, Belenko was sentenced in absentia to capital punishment - execution, and in the USA, permission to grant citizenship to the pilot was personally signed by President Jimmy Carter. But, despite this, the paradise life did not work out.

Lily Gasinskaya



The girl dreamed of escaping the USSR from the age of 14. It was because of this that she got a job as a waitress on the Soviet cruise ship Leonid Sobinov.
January 14, 1979, when the ship was moored at the port of Sydney, Gasinskaya in a red bikini got out through the porthole and in 40 minutes swam to the shore of Sydney Bay, where she explained to a passerby in broken English that she needed help with shelter and clothes.
The workers of the Soviet consulate opened a real hunt for Lily, but local reporters discovered her first and hid her in exchange for exclusive interviews and photos in a bikini.
Australia was not going to spoil relations with the USSR, so the decision on the fate of the girl was made for quite a long time. Since she was not an athlete, a writer, or a prisoner, she was of little interest abroad.
In an interview, Lily spoke about her hatred of communism, “built on lies and propaganda,” and eventually received political asylum.

In her new homeland, Gasinskaya became a real star: she advertised a red swimsuit, starred for several magazines, married a Daily Mirror photographer, appeared in TV shows and even became a DJ.

Nikolai Gilev and Vitaly Pozdeev



On October 27, 1970, a 21-year-old student of a medical institute in the Crimea and a 20-year-old student of the Kerch branch of the Sevastopol Instrument-Making Institute, who were cousins ​​to each other, bought tickets for an “air taxi” flight in the direction of Kerch - Krasnodar.

When the Morava L 200 plane, designed for four passengers, took off, the students threatened the pilots and ordered them to fly to Istanbul. The plane landed successfully in Turkey, but there was no happy ending.

The students immediately applied for asylum in the US, but the country showed no interest in them. They had been waiting for a response from the embassy for almost a year when a TASS correspondent arrived with letters from their relatives.

The students were morally exhausted, and therefore easily succumbed to the persuasion of the "journalist" to return and promises that they would get off with a suspended sentence. In the USSR, both were given real terms - 10 and 12 years.

Petr Pirogov and Anatoly Barsov



On October 9, 1948, the pilots flew on a Tu-2 bomber of the USSR Air Force from the Kolomyia airbase to Austria.

The American occupation authorities gave them political asylum, after which Pirogov, having found a literary agent, began to give lectures, write articles and a book. Later, he began working for the US Air Force, where three years later he married a compatriot who had fled from Austria.

Barsov could not start a new life, that no one needs him here. The man was guaranteed an amnesty upon his return to his homeland, however, when he returned to the USSR, six months later he was shot.

Sergey Nemtsanov



Shortly before the Olympics, 17-year-old Nemtsanov, who was raised by his grandmother, won the Canamex diving tournament (Canada - USA - Mexico) as part of the Soviet national team.

Preparing for the Olympic Games, the athlete met 21-year-old American jumper Carol Lindner. Later, the press claimed that the young people had a romantic relationship, which prompted Sergei to flee, but the girl's father denied this fact.

At the Olympics in Montreal, Nemtsanov took only ninth place, but at the end of the Games he was met by an immigration officer, after a meeting with whom the jumper asked for political asylum in Canada.

Nemtsanov himself recalled: “Having driven around Montreal, we ended up in a villa in the suburbs, and there I already see on TV how they say on all channels that the Soviet athlete Sergei Nemtsanov chose freedom, they show Komsomol organizer Lenka Vaitsekhovskaya, how she fights off journalists ... Then someone appears named George and tells me: the duck has already been launched, there is no turning back, sign that you want to stay here, and your future will be secured.

“The next day, Canadian lawyers came, they said that the residence permit was practically in my pocket, despite the fact that I was not yet fully 18. But, they say, Canada is a state of law and before you decide, you should listen to this tape, and give me a cassette. And there is the voice of my grandmother, crying excitedly: “Who did you leave me for? I was completely alone.”

Sergei returned to the USSR, where they did not apply any sanctions to him and allowed him to graduate from the institute. His coach became restricted to travel abroad, and his father was recalled from service in Hungary. In 1979, Nemtsanov became the champion of the USSR, now he was not allowed to compete in international competitions, and after a while he left the sport.

Igor Ivanov



The chess player fled the USSR in 1980. A year earlier, the 32-year-old chess player beat Anatoly Karpov and went to an international tournament in Cuba. Ivanov ran away from a KGB officer with whom he was returning to Russia.

The plane was supposed to be refueled in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where Ivanov, with pocket chess in his hands, ran onto the runway and asked for political asylum.

The chess player settled in Montreal, won the title of champion of Canada four times and represented this country at international tournaments, and was a participant in commercial tournaments in the USA.

By the beginning of the 90s, Ivanov moved to the United States, retaining Canadian citizenship, where he devoted himself to coaching.

Daina Palena



On April 10, a Soviet fishing boat was passing 170 kilometers from New York when it sent a distress signal to the shore - one of the waitresses was dying.

In a New York hospital, it became known that a 25-year-old Latvian took an overdose of strong drugs in order to get to the American coast. Palena stayed in the hospital for 10 days, where she was under the supervision of the Soviet diplomatic mission.

“The seriousness of my intentions is evidenced by the measures that I took to get ashore and ask for political asylum,” Dina said. The American authorities made a decision for 18 days, after which they nevertheless gave the girl asylum.

Svetlana Alliluyeva



Stalin's daughter fled the USSR in 1966: on December 20, 1966, she arrived in India, accompanying the ashes of her common-law husband Brajesh Singh.

While there, she reported to the US Embassy in Delhi with her passport and luggage and asked for political asylum.

Alliluyeva moved to the United States, where she published the book Twenty Letters to a Friend, in which she recalled her father and life in the Kremlin. The work brought her a lot of money and fame, but later life did not work out.

Alexander Mogilny



The hockey player fled the collapsing Soviet Union in 1989. The 20-year-old athlete left the hotel in Stockholm after the world championship was victorious for the USSR and requested asylum in the United States. Having received consent, Mogilny joined the Buffalo Sabers club.

Alexander said that he decided to escape easily. “Someone said that when I left, I “burned bridges” - and this makes me especially funny. I left Moscow a beggar. Okay, if there was an oligarch - he stole money and dumped. But it's different for me. I was a natural beggar! I was an Olympic champion, a world champion, a three-time champion of the USSR. At the same time, he did not even have a meter of housing. Who needs such a life?

In the first game in the NHL, Mogilny scored the puck in the 20th second of the match, and in the 1992/93 season he became the most productive striker in the NHL. Now he has dual citizenship - the United States and Russia.

Ovechkin family



On March 8, 1988, a family of musicians made one of the most daring and bloody attempts to hijack a passenger plane while en route Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad.

The Ovechkin family - Ninel and her 10 children - flew out of Irkutsk on a Tu-154 aircraft flying along the route Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad. The official purpose of the trip was a tour in Leningrad. When boarding the plane, there was no thorough screening of hand luggage, which allowed the criminals to carry on board two sawn-off shotguns, 100 rounds of ammunition and improvised explosive devices hidden in musical instruments. The executors of the capture were Vasily, Oleg, Dmitry, Alexander and Igor.
An attempt to hijack the plane failed: the plane landed at a military airfield and was taken by storm. In this case, a total of nine people were killed: five terrorists (Ninel Ovechkina and her four eldest sons), flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya and three passengers; 19 people were injured and injured (two Ovechkins, two police officers and 15 passengers). The Ovechkins are buried near Vyborg in a cemetery in the village of Veshchevo in unmarked graves with numbers.


The term "defector" appeared in the Soviet Union with the light hand of one of the officers of the State Security and came into use as a sarcastic stigma for people who forever left the country of the heyday of socialism for the sake of life in decaying capitalism. In those days, this word was akin to an anathema, and the relatives of the “defectors” who remained in a happy socialist society were also persecuted. The reasons that pushed people to break through the "Iron Curtain" were different, and their fates also developed differently.
.

VICTOR BELENKO

This name is hardly known today to many. He was a Soviet pilot, an officer who conscientiously treated his military duties. Colleagues remember him with a kind word, as a man who did not tolerate injustice. Once, when in his regiment he spoke at a meeting criticizing the conditions in which the families of officers lived, the persecution of the authorities began against him. The political officer threatened to be expelled from the party.


Pilot Viktor Belenko.

Fighting the system is like banging your head against a wall. And when the confrontation reached a boiling point, Victor's nerves could not stand it. During the next flights, his board disappeared from the tracking screens. Having overcome the air defenses of the two countries, on September 6, 1976, Belenko landed at a Japanese airport, left the MIG-25 with his hands up and was soon transferred to the United States, receiving political refugee status.


The traitor is still alive today.

The West glorified the Soviet pilot - the ace, who, risking his life, overcame the Iron Curtain. And for his compatriots, he forever remained a defector and a traitor.

VIKTOR SUVOROV


Defector Vladimir Rezun.

Vladimir Rezun (literary pseudonym - Viktor Suvorov) graduated from the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow in Soviet times and served as an officer in the GRU. In the summer of 1978, he and his family disappeared from an apartment in Geneva. Breaking his oath, he surrendered to British intelligence. As the reader later learned from his books, this happened because they wanted to write off the failure of the Swiss residency on him. The former Soviet intelligence officer was sentenced to death in absentia by a military tribunal.

Currently, Viktor Suvorov is a citizen of Great Britain, an Honorary Member of the International Union of Writers. His books "Aquarium", "Icebreaker", "Choice" and many others have been translated into twenty languages ​​of the world and are very popular.

Today Suvorov teaches at the British Military Academy.

Belousov and Protopopov


Figure skaters Belousova and Protopopov on the ice.

This legendary pair of figure skaters came to the "high sport" at a fairly mature age. They immediately captivated the audience with their artistry and synchronicity. Not only on the ice, but also in life, Lyudmila and Oleg showed themselves as a single whole, having gone through moments of glory and persecution.

They made their way to the summit slowly but surely. They were their own choreographers and trainers. First they won the Union Championship, then the European Championship. And soon they made a splash at the Innsbruck Olympics in 1964, and then, in 1968 at the World Championships, where, under the jubilant approval of the audience, the arbitrators unanimously gave them 6.0.

Young people came to replace the star couple, and Belousova and Protopopov began to be openly forced out of the ice arena, deliberately lowering the scores. But the couple was full of strength and creative plans, which were no longer destined to come true in their homeland.


Belousov and Protopopov in our days.

During the next European tour, the stars decided not to return to the Union. They stayed in Switzerland, where they continued to do what they loved, although they did not receive citizenship for a long time. But they say that your place is where you breathe freely, and not where the stamp in your passport indicates.

And recently, Olympic champions 79-year-old Lyudmila Belousova and 83-year-old Oleg Prototopov again took to the ice.

ANDREY TARKOVSKY


Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

He is called one of the most talented screenwriters and directors of all time. Many of Tarkovsky's colleagues frankly admire his talent, considering him their teacher. Even the great Bergman said that Andrei Tarkovsky created a special film language in which life is a mirror. This is also the name of one of his most popular tapes. "Mirror", "Stalker", "Solaris" and many other masterpieces of cinema, created by the brilliant Soviet director, still do not leave the screens in all corners of the world.

In 1980, Tarkovsky went to Italy, where he began work on the next film. From there, he sent a request to the Union so that his family would be allowed to travel to him for the duration of the filming for a period of three years, after which he undertakes to return to his homeland. The Central Committee of the CPSU refused the director this request. And in the summer of 1984, Andrei announced his non-return to the USSR.

Tarkovsky was not deprived of Soviet citizenship, but a ban was imposed on showing his films in the country and mentioning the name of the exile in the press.

The master of cinema shot his last film in Sweden, and soon died of lung cancer. At the same time, the Union lifted the ban on the demonstration of his films. Andrei Tarkovsky was awarded the Lenin Prize posthumously.

RUDOLF NURIEV


Rudolf Nuriev.

One of the most famous soloists of the world ballet, Nuriev, in 1961, during a tour in Paris, asked for political asylum, but the French authorities refused him. Rudolf went to Copenhagen, where he danced successfully at the Royal Theatre. In addition, his homosexual inclinations in this country were not condemned.

Then the artist moved to London and for fifteen long years became the star of English ballet and the idol of British fans of Terpsichore. Soon he received Austrian citizenship, and his popularity reached its peak: Nuriev gave up to three hundred performances annually.

Rudolf Nureyev.

In the 80s, Rudolf headed the ballet troupe of the theater in Paris, where he actively promoted young and handsome artists.

In the USSR, the dancer was allowed to enter only for three days in order to attend the funeral of his mother, while limiting the circle of communication and movement. For the last ten years, Nureyev lived with the HIV infection in his blood, died from complications of an incurable disease, and was buried in a Russian cemetery in France.

ALISA ROSENBAUM


Alisa Rosenbaum is a talented writer.

Ayn Rand, born Alisa Rosenbaum, is little known in Russia. The talented writer has lived most of her life in the United States, although she spent her childhood and youth in St. Petersburg.

The revolution of 1917 took almost everything from the Rosenbaum family. And later, Alice herself lost her loved one in the Stalinist dungeons and her parents during the blockade of Leningrad.

Back in early 1926, Alice went to study in the States, where she remained to live permanently. At first she worked as an extra at the Dream Factory, and then, having married an actor, she received American citizenship and seriously took up creativity. Already under the pseudonym Ayn Rand, she created screenplays, stories and novels.


Ain's non-returner.

Although they tried to attribute her work to a certain political current, Ain said that she was not interested in politics, because it was a cheap way to become popular. Maybe that's why the sales of her books are dozens of times higher than the sales of works by well-known creators of history, such as Karl Marx.

ALEXANDER ALEKHIN


Famous chess player, world champion Alexander Alekhin.

The famous chess player, world champion, Alekhin left for France for permanent residence in 1921. He was the first to win the title of world champion from the undefeated Capablanca in 1927.

In his entire career as a chess player, Alekhine lost only once to his opponent, but soon took revenge on Max Euwe, and remained world champion until the end of his life.

Chess player Alekhin.

During the war years, he took part in tournaments in Nazi Germany in order to somehow feed his family. Later, the chess players were going to boycott Alexander, accusing him of publishing anti-Semitic articles. Once “beaten” by him, Euwe even proposed depriving Alekhine of his well-deserved titles. But Max's selfish plans were not destined to come true.

In March 1946, on the eve of the match with Botvinnik, Alekhine was found dead. He was sitting in an armchair in front of a chessboard with pieces placed. It has not yet been established which country's special services organized his asphyxia.

People fled from the Soviet Union in many ways, but this escape was the only one of its kind. On December 13, 1974, at 20:15 ship time, Soviet citizen Kurilov Stanislav Vasilievich, born in 1936, an oceanographer, jumped overboard of the cruise liner "Soviet Union". He was to spend two days and three nights in the ocean.

Stanislav Kurilov grew up in Semipalatinsk - but from childhood he raved about the sea. Avidly read Jules Verne, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. In a pioneer camp, secretly from his parents, he learned to swim and at the age of ten he swam across the Irtysh. Parents were not thoughtless romantics and Slava entered the road technical school. He went in for sports, became the champion of the city, entered the national team of Kazakhstan. At the age of fifteen, he left the technical school, ran away from home and independently reached Leningrad.

He thought that he could, like the heroes of Stevenson and Jules Verne, act as a cabin boy on a ship. But he did not pass the medical commission - he began to develop myopia, the road to the civil or military fleet was closed. Fortunately, he learned that with a little myopia, you can enter the Faculty of Oceanology of the Leningrad Hydrometeorological Institute, where he entered after serving in the army.

Studying turned out to be rather boring and far from romantic. The dream of the sea actually materialized in boring tables, graphs and diagrams. Everything was changed by the organization of training courses for divers and groups at the Institute, and then the Underwater Research Laboratory. In the late 1960s, Kurilov already took part in the most interesting research work on board the Chernomor underwater laboratory, which was located at a depth of 14 meters. The legendary Jacques-Yves-Cousteau, who visited the USSR several times, was keenly interested in the works.

Kurilov loved the sea. And he felt true happiness only when he was alone with him. Many times he could die. In a storm, he was thrown from the boat by the waves and swam to the shore for several hours. I got entangled in diving lines at a depth of 50 meters, photographing a new bathyscaphe. In Kronstadt, while inspecting submarines in the dock, the workers turned off the oxygen by mistake. Kurilov was brought to the surface unconscious. The element seemed to be keeping him for some other test.

Somewhere out there, far away, were Madagascar, Hawaii, Tahiti, the famous Jacques Yves Cousteau plied the oceans with his team ... An agreement had already been signed with the Leningrad Institute. In his amazing book Alone in the Ocean, Kurilov recalls further events with a hint of inescapable bitterness: “We had an agreement with Jacques Cousteau on joint research in an underwater house in Tunisia. We were to send our tug Nereus with a team of diving engineers to Monaco in the summer of 1970. And then everything went down the drain. We were not given visas, and the whole project fell through. Another expedition with Cousteau went to waste - to the atolls of the Pacific Ocean - called the "Southern Cross". I suggested this name. For a whole year I prepared the diving part of the expedition. I specially graduated from the nautical school in absentia and received a diploma as a long-distance navigation navigator. We were again not given visas, but other people were sent to Cousteau, not divers, but with visas. He did not accept them ... Then the project of organizing an institute for underwater research and testing underwater submersibles went to waste. They didn't give me a visa."

The last refusal came with the wording: "We consider it inappropriate to visit the capitalist countries." The Soviet Union could not let a man go abroad whose sister had once married an Indian and then settled with her husband and son in capitalist Canada. Meanwhile, Slava was neither a dissident nor an anti-Soviet, although he considered the Soviet regime evil. He was a mystic and a yogi, whom he became interested in while still in his first year at the institute. Yoga was then banned. Slava mastered Indian wisdom alone, without a teacher and with only samizdat manuals printed on a typewriter.

The lack of the possibility of self-realization in the business that he loved so much gradually formed in him a feeling of unconscious protest and a growing desire to escape by any means from the nauseating reality surrounding him into the fresh air of freedom.

For a year, Kurilov worked as a hydrological engineer at Lake Baikal. He lived alone, in a forest hut on the island of Olkhon, where there was nothing but a bear's coat and two suitcases. He slept in a fur coat and did yoga. On a cloudy October day, I read an advertisement in a Leningrad newspaper about the cruise "From Winter to Summer". Visas were not required: the liner set off for the equator without calling at foreign ports. With a group of tourists from Leningrad, Kurilov flew to Vladivostok, to the gathering place. "Soviet Union" went to sea on 8 December. Slava already knew that he was leaving his homeland forever.

On the third day of sailing in one of the halls of the liner, he saw a map on which the route was indicated. The cruise ship sailed across the East China Sea, along the eastern shores of the Philippine Islands, into the Celebes Sea and to the equator between Borneo and Celebes. It could be expected that in order to shorten the route, the captain would approach the coast near the Philippine islands of Siargao and Mindanao. Only these two points were suitable for escape.

In the meantime, it turned out that jumping into the water from the upper decks was excluded. During the day, the fugitive would be quickly caught at sea. It was possible to jump only from the stern, from a height of 14 meters, in the dark, hoping not to fall between the blades of a giant propeller. And again Kurilov was lucky. On board, he met an astronomer and with her help got into the pilot's cabin. According to the navigation map, I realized that on December 13 at 20 o’clock the ship will catch up with Siargao, a small Philippine island that is part of the Mindanao island group about 800 km southeast of Manila. He didn't eat anything that day. Has made several complex yogic washings.

At eight in the evening he walked along the deck between the dancers. From the loudspeaker came my favorite song - "Dove". After waiting until the three sailors who were on the quarterdeck were distracted, Kurilov threw the body over the bulwark, pushed off strongly with his feet and jumped. With him was only a bag with a mask, snorkel and flippers, and even a shark amulet, made according to the recommendations of an underground translated grimoire - a book describing magical procedures, spells to summon spirits and witchcraft recipes. Alone in the ocean. Neither many years of yoga, nor the experience of deep, 30-35 days of fasting could prepare him for the experience. He successfully entered the water with his feet and was thrown by a jet of water from a rotating screw, which turned out to be at arm's length from him. He swam, guided first by the lights of the ship, then by the clouds and stars. Most of all, he was afraid that the liner would turn back and they would start looking for him. There were moments when he was seized by overwhelming fear. During the day, the island appeared and disappeared on the horizon. The next night the visions began. He heard soft singing, from all sides his name was repeated in different voices, right below him an unknown luminous world was revealed.

By the evening of the next day, Slava was very close to the island, but the current, to the horror of the swimmer, carried him past. At night, he was already swimming by inertia, there was almost no hope left. Power was running out. He was haunted by hallucinations.

Huge waves eventually carried Kurilov to the reef, and then to the quiet lagoon. The fateful current that carried him past the eastern shore of Siargao saved him and washed him to the south. The fishermen were the first to notice him: a monster covered with phosphorescent plankton was dancing on the banks of the sirtaki and laughing at the top of his lungs.

Slava spent six months in the Philippines, of which one and a half months in prison. At first, his story was not believed. The escape was reported on Voice of America. Kurilov was tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in prison for "treason." His brother, the navigator, lost his job. A wife remained in the USSR, about whom Slava speaks little and sparingly in her book. Kurilov was deported to Canada, at the place of residence of his sister.

He received citizenship, worked in Canadian and American oceanographic firms. The story of his escape was decided to film on the BBC, and in 1985 he received an advance for a trip to Israel, where filming was to take place. Nothing came of the film adaptation - but Kurilov spent three cheerful months in Israel and met the beautiful Elena, the ex-wife of the poet Mikhail Gendelev. They got married in the church of the Gethsemane monastery.

Kurilov was hired at the Institute of Oceanography. This is a beautiful building near Haifa on a small cape, around which the sea is on three sides. On January 29, 1998, at the age of 62, Vyacheslav Kurilov died during underwater work on Lake Kinneret - it is also the biblical Lake of Gennesaret. The day before, he released a confused partner from the fishing nets, the air in the cylinders almost ran out. Nevertheless, they decided to dive again in order to raise the device entangled in nets to the surface. This time, the partner had to cut the nets and free Slava. He didn't have time to do it.


Today I will tell you one story. About the USSR. Or rather, about the very end of the USSR. Everything stated here is the pure truth. And yet, it looks partly absurd. Rather, strictly speaking, this is not entirely about the USSR. Since many of the events described took place outside the USSR. But a citizen of the USSR participated in them. Who did not want to be a citizen of the USSR and therefore, almost from childhood, dreamed of running away from the USSR. And he did run away. This is what I will tell you now. So get comfortable and take it easy.

Everything described here happened to my childhood friend. Since he is "widely known in narrow circles", I will call him by another name. Let it be - Lyokha.

Lyokha began his journey in the same year as me. Yes, almost the same month. So we are full peers with him. In his school years, Lyokha distinguished himself by mockingly drowning his pioneer tie in the toilet. In the years of adolescence, when I went to the 9th grade, Lyokha went to vocational school. During these years, he was a member of one of the vicious youth gangs in our area and with his friends made a lot of all kinds of fights in a drunken shop. However, there was nothing special in his life path. In the late 70s - early 80s - this was the usual leisure of Soviet vocational school students, that is, a huge mass of Soviet youth.

When Lyokha turned 16, his friends beat up a policeman in civilian clothes on the bus. “I am a police officer, stop the attack,” the officer shouted, pulling out a certificate, but the answer was a cannon blow to the face, which Lyokhin’s friend Galkin was so famous for - a blow with which Igor, small in stature, knocked out opponents much larger. The son of an officer transferred from Kazakhstan to Moscow, Galkin, when pumped up with port wine, was a fighting machine for killing. And sooner or later something like that was bound to happen. And again, there was nothing special about it. A lot of my weather, who went to vocational school, then ended up in places not so remote. Of course, Galkin and another friend of Lyokha, Andros, went there. And Lyokha remained, as it were, alone.

I met Lyokha in 1983 in the basement of the locksmiths of our Housing Office, which the locksmith provided at our disposal in the evenings for rehearsals of the rock band in which I played. The difference between our group and all other yard teams was that we sang not only "Sunday", "Machine" and "Cruise", but also songs of our own composition. In this connection, our basement very soon became a kind of club in which all the surrounding punks gathered on winter evenings to drink port wine and cuddle the girls.

Lyokha, who was the best guitarist in the area, somehow quickly became something like our producer. Having found a common topic for conversation through music, we somehow quickly became close to him. As it turned out, despite his brutal lifestyle, Lyokha was stuffed with all sorts of ideas that he took from some books that were inaccessible to ordinary Soviet people. It was from Lyokha that I first heard the word "Sovdep" in the context that I still use today. Lyokha told all sorts of things. And about Carlos Castaneda and about Solzhenitsyn, for the possession of whose books some kind of Lekhin's friend was expelled from Moscow State University. The attitude towards the Soviet of Deputies in my family has always been critical. And my mother, and all her girlfriends / friends about the "charms of the USSR" talked a lot at various holiday feasts. However, I think this was not unusual for the second half of the 70s. But what Lyokha uttered was the real anti-Soviet with all the consequences.

By and large, Lyokha was of a philosophical mindset. He was just stuffed with all sorts of alternative knowledge. And he had one dream. He really wanted to get out of the USSR. He hated the USSR with every fiber of his soul. Together with his mother, he lived in a one-room apartment in a two-story red-brick barrack-like house in a quarter of exactly the same miserable houses - a working quarter. Everyone around drank port wine and staged drunken fights. And Lyokha, in general, led the same life until some point. But, as it turned out, this life was burdensome. Lyokha simply did not see any prospects for himself in the USSR. It was 1984.

In November 1984, I left for the army. It was the apotheosis of wretched soviet greyness. To convey the feeling of the USSR in 1984 on the canvas, you just need to splash more gray paint onto the canvas - this will be an authentic image. I remember that even films in cinemas began to show some rare miserable ones. Well, that is, such a gray soviet muck that at least shoot yourself. The only bright spot that I remember was the American film Spartak, which for some reason suddenly began to play in Moscow cinemas in the fall of 1984. Lyokha did not join the army - he received a "white ticket" (for those who are especially interested: a simulation of sluggish schizophrenia).

I came home on November 7, 1986 - it was a completely different Moscow. Joyful, cheerful, elegant. And it was not only November 7th. Just a dull Scoop seemed to retreat somewhere. Different cafes began to appear on the streets of Moscow, a pedestrian Arbat appeared - then it was really unusual. The main thing is that there has been some kind of change in people, they have become more cheerful, more relaxed, with greater optimism to look into the future. By the way, it was during this period that there was an outbreak of the birth rate, which the scoops now like to show as the antithesis of the demographic collapse of the 90s. True, the scoops forget that, firstly, until 1985 in the RSFSR, on the contrary, there was a decrease in the birth rate, and secondly, the people somehow perked up precisely because they believed that real improvements had begun. But I digress.

Nevertheless, Lech did not leave the dream of escaping from the USSR. But it has become somehow more realistic, or something. Lyokha worked as a projectionist (I regularly watched all new films from his movie booth) and intensively studied English - he was sure that everyone in Europe spoke excellent English.

As time went. Lyokha began to seriously prepare. He began to save dollars. And the Sovdep, meanwhile, was slowly falling apart. We repeatedly discussed his escape, I asked: is it worth it? After all, little is left of that Scoop. But Lyokha was adamant. In 1990, the air smelled of something painfully familiar. Central television began to show cartoons of the 60s about crazy abstractionists and the training of fighters of the division. Dzerzhinsky. Lyokha said: “It's time. The scoop is back."

His plan was as follows: he buys a tourist ticket to Hungary - fortunately at that time it already became very easy - in Hungary he goes to the Hungarian-Austrian border, which he crosses at night and gets to Vienna. From Vienna, he goes by train to Brussels, where he comes to a transit center for emigrants (I don’t remember its exact name), asks for political asylum and - voila. True, there was one weak point in this plan - at the end of 1990, asking for political asylum, when all of Europe reveled in democratization and glasnost in the USSR - was somewhat strange. But Lyokha decided to take a chance.

We saw off Lyokha noisily. It was early spring 1991. There were many people. Some agreed with him that as soon as he settled in Europe, he would immediately send them a challenge. I never intended to emigrate anywhere, and therefore I said goodbye to Lyokha forever. It was somewhat sad.

And Lyokha went to Hungary. By train.

1991 was a difficult year, so to speak. In addition, I had to write a diploma. So I didn’t often think about Lyokha. And then one day, the phone rang at my house. I picked up the phone and heard a familiar voice: “Hi. Do you recognize?" “I know,” I answered, wondering why it was a Moscow call when calling from abroad. “Where do you think I am?” asked a voice on the other end with a grin. “Judging by the call, it looks like in Moscow.” "That's right," Lyokha replied. "If you want, come to me." And I rushed off to listen to a fascinating story about Lekhin's wanderings.