How could you escape from the USSR. More about escapes from the USSR

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

Attempts to break out of the Soviet Union on captured ships have been made before. So on September 9, 1956, three young people - Volikov, Vilisov and Chernin - boarded the Typhoon boat, which was standing unguarded at the pier of Vanino Bay of the port of Sovetskaya Gavan and tried to go 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 got acquainted with the crew of the boat RK-1283, gave the whole crew a drink of vodka and stayed overnight on the ship. On the morning of October 14, the team members were sent ashore for vodka. After that, they went out to sea on a boat. When passing through the boom gates, they did not obey the orders 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 act with a craving for travel and adventure, they were convicted only for illegally crossing the border and sentenced to 3 years in camps.

In September 1967, four students of the Sevastopol GPTU 13 stole a diving boat from the Apollonovaya pier in the Sevastopol Bay, intending to escape to Turkey on it. They managed to get out of the bay unnoticed, but after 12 km. at Cape Khersones were discovered and detained by a patrol boat. Unsuccessful fugitives were placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Pavel Dudnikov and his friends were more fortunate.

Pavel Ivanovich Dudnikov was born on June 1, 1927 in Stavropol. He lost his parents early, fought on the fronts of World War II. Finished sailor. He sailed on the ships of foreign navigation. Seeing life abroad and comparing it with the bleak Soviet reality, he began to openly criticize Soviet orders. The rebel was written off the ship and his visa was closed. Seeing the injustice and cruelty of the communist regime, Pavel Dudnikov decides to leave the USSR forever. Pondering plans to escape, he decides that the greatest chances to go abroad may appear when a small ship is ferried from one port to another.

In 1970 he moved to Sukhumi. With great difficulty, Pavel manages to get a job in a fish farm for a seiner. An experienced sailor, who knows his business perfectly, fell in love with the leadership of the fish farm. Soon Dudnikov was appointed captain of a 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, he fiercely hated Soviet power and dreamed of escaping, Valery Dyusov listened to Western radio for days and was also not averse to leaving his socialist homeland. The Lithuanian Romas Gadlyauskas had his own accounts with the communists, his father died in Soviet dungeons, where he was thrown for participating in the partisan anti-Soviet movement. When Dudnikov hinted to the team that they might try to leave for 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, the Vishera arrived for repairs in Kerch. The ship was really very worn out and Dudnikov decides to run on it after repairs. The renovation was completed in August. "Vishera" leaves Kerch and follows 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. Without any problems, the fugitives passed the Bosphorus and entered the waters of the Sea of ​​​​Marmara. The Turks decided not to give up, but to follow to Greece, where by that time the military had come to power - the anti-communist "black colonels", who broke off relations with the 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 to the salon and congratulated the crew on the escape with full glasses of champagne. The team cheered. With the exception of the senior mechanic Tskhadai, he was an ardent communist, a fanatic, and, moreover, a foolish one. Then I announced that the ship would go further to Greece, I did not intend to take political asylum from the vile Turks, since they often arrange deals with Moscow and extradite defectors. Chief mechanic Tskhadai begged me not to go to Athens, because he, as a communist, would be put behind bars. I told him that they would not touch him, since the Greeks comply with international rules. But he was such a narrow-minded person that no truth reached him. He said that he was afraid of the black colonels who were in power in Greece. And now, passing the Dardanelles near the port of Canakalle, when approaching the board of the Turkish service boat, Tskhadaya rushes onto the boat and makes a noise - shaking in the arms of the Turkish representatives, but they do not understand him, because. he does not know Turkish. The Turks thought that this was a Soviet defector and moved away from the side, and they waved their hand at me - follow. And I continued my flight to the port of Piraeus. Later, I learned from the Greek authorities that the Turks in Chanakalla could not find an interpreter for a whole day, and when they learned from him that the ship had fled, and they were demanding to return it to the USSR, our trace had disappeared by that time. 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 Tskhadai returned to Sukhumi, my friends Georgians and Armenians wrote to me that the whole city laughed and made fun of him.

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

After the escape, the team dispersed to different countries. Some of the fugitives remained in Europe. Pavel Dudnikov and First Officer Georgy Kolosov left for the USA. The fate of team member Pavel Siordia (born in 1949) was tragic. An ethnic Greek, after escaping, he remained to live in Greece, but a year later, yearning for his relatives who remained in the Union, he decided to return. In 1973, upon arrival in Moscow, he was arrested right at the gangway of the plane, later placed in the Dnepropetrovsk Special Psychiatric Hospital. In 1977, Siordia died, unable to withstand the torture of neuroleptics.

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 did not work out. On the American courts where he had to work, Dudnikov was perceived as a living legend, he recalled that "the Americans were very surprised how I could arrange an 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 - to 15 years in prison.

History knows dozens, if not hundreds, of high-profile cases of flight from behind the Iron Curtain: artists did not return from tours, diplomats became defectors, scientists found their loopholes. All of them were a blow to the country's reputation, but few are able to cause surprise and shock even today. Anews tells about the most desperate, dangerous and insane acts that Soviet citizens went to in order to "break free." What did it all turn out for them in the end?

Operation "Wedding"

If successful, this would have been the first hijacking in the history of the USSR and the most massive escape over the cordon. 16 Soviet citizens - 12 men, 2 women and 2 teenage girls - planned to capture a small An-2 transport aircraft at a local airfield near Leningrad, twist and unload the pilot and navigator and fly through Finland to Sweden. The idea was code-named "Operation Wedding" - the fugitives intended to impersonate guests traveling to a Jewish wedding.

The scene of action is the airfield of small aviation "Smolnaya" (now "Rzhevka")

The group was led by retired Aviation Major Mark Dymshits (left) and 31-year-old dissident Eduard Kuznetsov.

All the "conspirators" were arrested before they could get on board. The leaders later claimed that they knew about the surveillance by the KGB and only wanted to fake the hijacking in order to draw world attention to the impossibility of leaving the USSR. As Kuznetsov said in 2009, “when we walked to the plane, we saw KGB agents under every bush.”

77-year-old Kuznetsov in the documentary "Operation Wedding", filmed by his son The women were released without charges. The men were tried and sentenced: the majority - to terms of 10 to 15 years, and Dymshits and Kuznetsov - to death. However, under pressure from the Western public, the execution was replaced with 15 years of labor camps.

Outcome: already 8 years later (in 1979), five convicts, including the organizers, ended up in America - they were exchanged for Soviet intelligence officers caught in the USA. Only one of the 12 "airplanes" served a full term (14 years). All the defendants in the case now live in Israel, continue to be friends and celebrate together each anniversary of their escape attempt, which opened the way for mass Jewish emigration.

The first aircraft hijacking in the USSR

The "Leningrad case" was just gaining momentum when two Lithuanians, a father and a 15-year-old son, actually hijacked a plane abroad for the first time in the history of the USSR. It was an An-24 flying from Batumi to Sukhumi with 46 passengers on board.

No one could have imagined that a mustachioed man in an officer's uniform and a teenage boy, who took the front seats near the cockpit, would turn out to be armed terrorists whose goal was to fly to Turkey. Their names were soon recognized by the whole world: Pranas Brazinskas and his son Algirdas.

They had a pistol, sawn-off shotguns and a hand grenade. After takeoff, they tried to send a note to the pilots with demands and threats through the stewardess, 19-year-old Nadya Kurchenko, but she immediately raised the alarm and was shot at point blank range by her father.

Having opened fire, the Brazinskasy could no longer stop. The crew commander was seriously injured (a bullet hit the spine, immobilizing the body), as well as a flight engineer and navigator. The miraculously surviving co-pilot was forced to change course.

In Turkey, the terrorists surrendered to the local authorities, who refused to extradite them to the USSR and judged them themselves. The hijacking was considered “forced”, and the shooting was “unintentional” and a lenient sentence was given - the elder received 8 years in prison, and the younger 2 years. Not having served even half of his term, my father was released under an amnesty, and in 1976 both hijackers made their way from Turkey to the United States in a roundabout way, through Venezuela, where they settled in California under new names.

Outcome: in February 2002, an unexpected bloody denouement came, which many considered belated retribution. In the heat of a domestic quarrel, Algirdas killed his 77-year-old father, inflicting multiple blows to his head with either a dumbbell or a baseball bat. At the trial, he stated that he was defending himself from an angry father who threatened him with a loaded pistol. The son was found guilty of murder and sent to prison for 16 (according to other sources, 20) years.

Poison to get to America

April 1970

On April 10, a Soviet fishing boat passing 170 km from New York sent a distress signal to the coast guard: a young waitress was on board, almost dying, she urgently needed hospitalization.

When the helicopter arrived, she was unconscious. As it turned out in the hospital, 25-year-old Latvian Daina Palena risked taking an overdose of drugs only in order to save her life and be transported to the American coast.

Photo of Daina from American newspapers Palena spent 10 days in the hospital, every day employees of the USSR diplomatic mission visited her. When they tried to transfer her to another hospital under Soviet supervision, she resisted and, with the help of the Latvian diaspora in New York, turned to the immigration authorities. “The seriousness of my intentions is evidenced by the measures that I took to get ashore and ask for political asylum,” she said.

Outcome: the Americans doubted whether Dina had political motives or she simply wanted a “comfortable Western life”, but, obviously, she found the right words, because 18 days after her “disease” she nevertheless received asylum.

Swim across the ocean

This famous escape behind the "Iron Curtain" went down in history as one of the most daring and among the dissidents was considered an almost unparalleled "feat". For three nights and two days, the oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov, who was not allowed to travel abroad, sailed through raging 7-meter waves to the coast of the Philippines, jumping off a Soviet cruise ship in the dead of night.

Slava Kurilov in his youth In order not to perish in the ocean, an accurate calculation of forces, time and distance was required, for which it was necessary to know the route. But Kurilov, when he bought the ticket, did not have any data - only guesses and the hope of finding out the missing information during the cruise. It was a visa-free journey from Vladivostok to the equator and back without calling at foreign ports, the course of the liner "Soviet Union" was kept secret.

From the moment of boarding, Kurilov had less than a week to prepare for the irretrievable jump. Knowing that it is better to swim on an empty stomach, he almost immediately stopped eating - he only drank 2 liters of water daily. However, to avoid suspicion, he pretended to share a common meal, was constantly in sight, flirted with three different girls, so that in the event of his long absence, everyone would think that he was with one of them.

Kurilov practiced yoga for many years. Breathing training saved him from death in the ocean. Together with a familiar astronomer from among the passengers, they “for fun” determined the route by the stars, and once Kurilov managed to get into the wheelhouse and saw the coordinates on the map. So, "on the go", he figured out the place where you need to jump.

On the night of the escape, it was very stormy, but Kurilov was glad - if they find him missing, they will not be able to send a boat for him. I had to jump in pitch darkness from a height of 14 meters, it was a risk fraught with bruises, fractures and even death. Then there was a continuous one-on-one struggle with the elements - almost three days without sleep, food and drink, and even without a compass, with only fins, a snorkel and a mask.

A day later, the liner nevertheless turned after the missing passenger - Kurilov saw lights and searchlights rummaging through the water, but dodged them.

At night, Kurilov was guided by the stars, during the day he went astray. He was repeatedly carried far to the side by a strong current, including almost near the shore, when it was within easy reach. In the end, after swimming almost 100 km, he found himself on a sandy beach on the Philippine island of Siargao and immediately lost consciousness. It was found by the locals.

Then there was an investigation and 6 months in a Philippine refugee prison without documents, after which Kurilov was deported to Canada, where his sister lived with her Hindu husband. While he was receiving Canadian citizenship, in the USSR he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years for treason.

As a maritime researcher, he traveled half the world, in the mid-80s he married an Israeli citizen, Elena Gendeleva, moved in with her, received a second foreign citizenship.

Bottom line: it so happened that the new free life of Slava Kurilov began and ended at sea. An excellent swimmer and diver, a tamer of the elements, he died while diving in the Sea of ​​Galilee (Israeli Lake Kinneret) in January 1998. Releasing underwater equipment, he became entangled in the networks and worked out all the air. He was raised to the surface already unconscious and could not be saved. He was 62 years old.

"The Girl in the Red Bikini"

Nobody in the USSR knew about Liliana Gasinskaya, but in Australia, where she escaped from a Soviet ship, she became a sensation, a superstar, a symbol of the decade, and even caused a political scandal.

An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman, the daughter of a musician and actress, served as a flight attendant on the Leonid Sobinov liner, which cruised to Australia and Polynesia in winter. Passengers and crew were in luxurious conditions, but under vigilant supervision: the decks were constantly patrolled, and the wandering beams of searchlights at night excluded the possibility of an inconspicuous "landing" from the ship.

A fugitive on the background of "Sobinov" Gasinskaya seized the moment when there was a noisy party on the ship. Wearing only a red bathing suit, she climbed out through the porthole in her cabin and jumped into the water. Of the more or less valuable, she only had a ring. For more than 40 minutes, she sailed to the Australian coast through a bay where man-eating sharks are found.

She clambered up the high pier, covered in bruises and scratches, with a sprained ankle, and wandered aimlessly along the embankment until she spotted a man walking his dog. He barely understood her broken English, but he helped. Meanwhile, the KGB officers on the ship raised the alarm, and the Soviet diplomatic corps immediately joined the search. However, sensational-hungry Australian newspapermen were the first to find the fugitive - they provided her with shelter in exchange for an interview and a photo shoot in a bikini.

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

And they really ran. Who could. On planes, swimming or on foot during foreign trips. If we consider the stories of escapes, then sometimes people risked their own lives and the lives of other people (like the Ovechkins) in order to find themselves in the coveted West. One gets the impression that in the USSR there was such a hell 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 change of power, in the social sphere - alcoholization of the population and low motivation to work. These are just some of the problems that confronted Soviet society in full growth in the late USSR. They arose, of course, not in the 80s, but much earlier, however, they acquired a well-known scale precisely for perestroika. Perestroika didn't come out of nowhere. The fact that it was necessary to decide and change something was understood by many. What in the end was “decided and changed” is another question.

However, all the shortcomings of the Soviet system could not be compared with its merits. Citizens simply stopped noticing these virtues, 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 really works. At best, they saw his shop windows, and often they didn’t even see them personally, but heard stories about them. Nobody believed the official propaganda, but they believed the friend of the wife's sister, who brought a Japanese Fisher tape recorder from a business trip abroad. It is clear that "there" everyone lives well, since they have such tape recorders !!! Approximately with 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 300 million people, I am 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 they say “everyone who could fled” is another anti-Soviet tale. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet people went abroad for one reason or another (including to Western countries), while only a few of them fled. Moreover, many of those who fled have never been abroad. To them, as in a joke, "Rabinovich sang."

In fact, mass emigration began with the fall of socialism, when, pardon the expression, a fierce scribe began throughout the entire territory of the former USSR. Ethnic conflicts, crime, the collapse of the economy... In the early 90s, citizens were forced to literally switch to subsistence farming, since there was simply no money for food. And then, indeed, many fled abroad. But not at all from socialism, but from the nascent capitalism, which everyone longed for in perestroika. At the same time, the fugitives were firmly convinced that they were running from the scoop, and that it was the communists who brought the country to such a state.
We will not deny that highly qualified specialists had every chance to get settled in the West much better than they lived in “developed socialism” and, moreover, in the “holy 90s”. First of all, because education in the West is paid. To become this most highly qualified specialist, you must first give a lot of money. Not only everyone can afford this. Therefore, local specialists are expensive for the employer. It is cheaper to hire, for example, Russian engineers, whom the USSR trained free of charge in commercial quantities.

And now a Russian engineer, in whose upbringing the country has invested a lot of money (starting from kindergarten and ending with a university), but who is firmly convinced that he is “all by himself”, is perfectly arranged somewhere in the USA or Germany. It was in the stupid scoop that they didn’t appreciate him so educated, and some miner could get more than a person with a higher education. And here is 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 in the West you will feel great (our elite will confirm). There, the whole society is built for people with money. There was nothing like this in the USSR. Even the richest Soviet citizens like Antonov or Pugacheva could not come close in terms of living standards to their counterparts in the West. Simply because in the Soviet Union there was no such social stratification as in the capitalist world. Incomes were distributed like butter on a sandwich: plus or minus evenly among all members of society. The same Soviet "leveling" that so infuriated People with Higher Education. Western society, on the contrary, has a 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 the 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!

And the scoop - if life in the USSR was so beautiful and wonderful, as you say - why did people flee from there? And why did the authorities not let people go abroad, holding 290 million people as de facto prisoners? In fact, the entire perimeter of the USSR was a large Zone, which you could not leave without a bunch of permits and pieces of paper, and if by some miracle you went abroad and decided to stay there, then interrogations and sanctions awaited your relatives who remained in the USSR - they remained hostage owl.

By the way, this alone should put an end to some tales about the "decaying West" and any of its comparisons with the USSR, such as salaries and the rest, all this pales in comparison with the simple fact - people tried to escape from the soviet zone at any cost, and The West was always open, and hundreds of thousands of people fled precisely there, and not into the scoop. There are also reverse examples - but there are only a few of them, no more than a statistical error, and basically all sorts of specific comrades from the left Marxists, all sorts of radicals and others like them fled to the scoop. Often, by the way, after living in the USSR, they quickly asked to return to their home - as happened, for example, with Lee Harvey Oswald.

So, in today's post - a story about how people fled from the scoop. Be sure to go under the cut, write your opinion in the comments, well, add to friends Do not forget)

How could you leave the USSR?

To begin with, I will say a few words about how it was possible to leave the USSR at all. As I already wrote at the beginning of the post, far from everyone was allowed to leave the scoop, even just for tourist purposes, that is, you did not have any freedom of movement. You could not leave for "emigration", you could go abroad for several days or weeks as a tourist, and even then there were big problems.

The future tourist went through several levels of filtration - first, the local committee accepted an application from the applicant for departure and gave him the so-called "characteristic", in which he described his "moral qualities" with phrases like "Comrade Ivanov is a leader in production, takes an active part in public life, was elected a member of the factory committee of the Komsomol, politically literate, modest in everyday life, enjoys prestige and respect at the enterprise. The characteristic had to be signed by the head of the enterprise, the secretary of the party organization, the chairman of the trade union organization and certified with a seal. After that, a person with a characteristic "was submitted for consideration and approval" to the district committee of the CPSU. And then the entire composition of the tourist group had to be approved by a whole commission under the regional committee of the CPSU.

In addition, a future tourist going abroad had to fill out a special questionnaire in which he listed all his relatives (living and dead), receive a health certificate, attach an extract from the decision of the trade union organization, pay a considerable cost of the tour (for example, a tour to Bulgaria cost as much as 600 rubles) and exchange a limited amount of Soviet money for foreign currency (so that, God forbid, you don’t buy something superfluous for yourself there).

And the most important thing - You might not be allowed to travel if at least at some stage you are suspected defector - that is, someone who is going to leave and not return. In the countries of the "decaying West", the border guards have such a wording - "you deceived the government of our country about the true purpose of your visit, you are probably going to stay here, we cannot allow you to enter." So, in the scoop it was the same, but exactly the opposite - the government did not allow departure from the country to its own citizens.

As you understand, all this became serious obstacles for those who wanted to leave the scoop (few managed to mow down as "tourists"), and people looked for other ways to escape.

Escape from the USSR.

There were quite a lot of escapes from the USSR, but mostly some bright and unusual cases became known (they tried not to advertise the escapes of ordinary tourists so as not to provoke others). In 1976, a 29-year-old member of the CPSU, senior lieutenant, pilot of a fighter regiment Victor Belenko, flying the latest Soviet interceptor Mig-25P, took off from the Sokolovka airfield as part of a fighter flight. Unexpectedly for everyone, Belenko changed course and went on a climb, and then dropped almost to zero and went over the ocean - landing on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, there was 30 seconds of fuel left in the aircraft tanks.

Within 48 hours, the lieutenant asked for asylum in the United States and on September 9 ended up in a coveted country. Upon arrival in America, Viktor Belenko was most struck by an ordinary supermarket. Belenko learned English and taught air combat techniques at the military academy, remarried, published a book, earned money, visited 68 countries of the world, and has no regrets. In the USSR, Belenko was sentenced in absentia to death.

Liliana Gasinskaya lived in Odessa and planned to escape from the USSR at the age of 14. To do this, Liliana learned to swim well, and then got a job as a stewardess on the Leonid Sobinov cruise ship. Late in the evening on January 14, 1979, the cruise ship docked at the airport in Sydney, Australia. Eighteen-year-old Lily mentally said goodbye to her family, put on a bright red bikini and gracefully flew out of the porthole, jumping into the black abyss of Sydney Bay. Lilian was discovered by a passerby - he saw in the dark a girl of model appearance in a scarlet swimsuit, who in broken English told him that she had fled the USSR and was asking for asylum.

In Australia, Liliana became a real star - first she became a fashion model and starred for glossy magazines like Penthouse, married a photographer for the Daily Mirror newspaper, starred in TV shows and became a DJ.

One of the most famous fugitives from the USSR was Mikhail Baryshnikov- He studied ballet and acted in films. Once, during a tour of the Bolshoi Theater in Canada, he decided to stay in this country, it happened in 1974. After Canada, Mikhail moved to the USA, where everything turned out well for him - he danced in ballet for 4 years, from 1980 to 1989 he was director of the American Ballet Theater and a leading dancer. He founded his own center for the arts, had a considerable influence on American and world ballet, was nominated for the Oscar and Golden Globe awards, and starred a lot.

An example of an unsuccessful and tragic escape can be considered the story Ovechkin family, also known in the USSR as the Seven Simeons Jazz Ensemble. In 1988, Ninel Ovechkina and 10 of her children flew from Irkutsk on a Tu-154 plane, and two older guys carried two sawn-off shotguns, 100 rounds of ammunition and improvised explosive devices on board the plane (in tool cases). During the flight, the flight attendant was given a note for the pilots to land in London or another British city - otherwise they would blow up the plane.

The plane went to refuel in the city of Kurgan (the invaders were told that this was one of the cities of Finland), after which the assault on the plane began - it was stormed by the usual special forces of the police, after which the Ovechkins began to shoot back and detonated an explosive device. The older children from the Ovechkin family shot themselves, the plane burned down completely, in total 9 people died during the assault (five of them were Ovechkins).

Escapes from the countries of the socialist camp and the border guard Karatsupa.

In addition to, in fact, escapes from the USSR, people fled en masse from the so-called "social camp". Mass escapes were observed from the communist GDR to the capitalist FRG - for which they even built a wall. Hey, scoop fans, tell me - why did people flee from your "paradise" - so much so that you had to build a whole huge wall?

Here are some shots of people fleeing East Berlin for West Berlin:

Here's another interesting fact for you. Was in the Soviet years such border guard Karatsupa- who, according to various sources, detained from 246 to 338 or even 467 violators, for which he became a hero - poems and songs were written about the border guard Karatsupa, books and newspaper editorials were published in his honor. But Soviet citizens were not informed that most of the border violators did not flee to the USSR, and fled from it- it was against these people that Karatsupa fought.

And the Soviet border guards had the following instructions:

So it goes.

Write in the comments what you think about all this)

History knows dozens, if not hundreds, of high-profile cases of flight from behind the Iron Curtain: artists did not return from tours, diplomats became defectors, scientists found their loopholes. All of them were a blow to the country's reputation, but few are able to cause surprise and shock even today. Anews tells about the most desperate, dangerous and insane acts that Soviet citizens went to in order to "break free." What did it all turn out for them in the end?

If successful, this would have been the first hijacking in the history of the USSR and the most massive escape over the cordon. 16 Soviet citizens - 12 men, 2 women and 2 teenage girls - planned to capture a small An-2 transport aircraft at a local airfield near Leningrad, twist and unload the pilot and navigator and fly through Finland to Sweden. The idea was code-named "Operation Wedding" - the fugitives intended to impersonate guests traveling to a Jewish wedding.

The scene of action is the airfield of small aviation "Smolnaya" (now "Rzhevka")

The group was led by retired Aviation Major Mark Dymshits (left) and 31-year-old dissident Eduard Kuznetsov. All the "conspirators" were arrested before they could get on board. The leaders later claimed that they knew about the surveillance by the KGB and only wanted to fake the hijacking in order to draw world attention to the impossibility of leaving the USSR. As Kuznetsov said in 2009, “when we walked to the plane, we saw KGB agents under every bush.”

77-year-old Kuznetsov in the documentary "Operation Wedding", filmed by his son The women were released without charges. The men were tried and sentenced: the majority - to terms of 10 to 15 years, and Dymshits and Kuznetsov - to death. However, under pressure from the Western public, the execution was replaced with 15 years of labor camps.

Bottom line: after 8 years (in 1979), five convicts, including the organizers, ended up in America - they were exchanged for Soviet intelligence officers caught in the USA. Only one of the 12 "airplanes" served a full term (14 years). All the defendants in the case now live in Israel, continue to be friends and celebrate together each anniversary of their escape attempt, which opened the way for mass Jewish emigration.

The "Leningrad case" was just gaining momentum when two Lithuanians, a father and a 15-year-old son, actually hijacked a plane abroad for the first time in the history of the USSR.

It was an An-24 flying from Batumi to Sukhumi with 46 passengers on board. No one could have imagined that a mustachioed man in an officer's uniform and a teenage boy, who took the front seats near the cockpit, would turn out to be armed terrorists whose goal was to fly to Turkey.

Their names were soon recognized by the whole world: Pranas Brazinskas and his son Algirdas. They had a pistol, sawn-off shotguns and a hand grenade. After takeoff, they tried to send a note to the pilots with demands and threats through the stewardess, 19-year-old Nadya Kurchenko, but she immediately raised the alarm and was shot at point blank range by her father.

Having opened fire, the Brazinskasy could no longer stop. The crew commander was seriously injured (a bullet hit the spine, immobilizing the body), as well as a flight engineer and navigator. The miraculously surviving co-pilot was forced to change course. In Turkey, the terrorists surrendered to the local authorities, who refused to extradite them to the USSR and judged them themselves. The hijacking was considered “forced”, and the shooting was “unintentional” and a lenient sentence was given - the elder received 8 years in prison, and the younger 2 years. Not having served even half of his term, my father was released under an amnesty, and in 1976 both hijackers made their way from Turkey to the United States in a roundabout way, through Venezuela, where they settled in California under new names.

Bottom line: in February 2002, an unexpected bloody denouement occurred, which many considered belated retribution. In the heat of a domestic quarrel, Algirdas killed his 77-year-old father, inflicting multiple blows to his head with either a dumbbell or a baseball bat. At the trial, he stated that he was defending himself from an angry father who threatened him with a loaded pistol. The son was found guilty of murder and sent to prison for 16 (according to other sources, 20) years.

Poison to get to America April 1970 A

On April 10, a Soviet fishing boat passing 170 km from New York sent a distress signal to the coast guard: a young waitress was on board, almost dying, she urgently needed hospitalization. When the helicopter arrived, she was unconscious. As it turned out in the hospital, 25-year-old Latvian Daina Palena risked taking an overdose of drugs only in order to save her life and be transported to the American coast. Photo of Daina from American newspapers Palena spent 10 days in the hospital, every day employees of the USSR diplomatic mission visited her. When they tried to transfer her to another hospital under Soviet supervision, she resisted and, with the help of the Latvian diaspora in New York, turned to the immigration authorities. “The seriousness of my intentions is evidenced by the measures that I took to get ashore and ask for political asylum,” she said.

Bottom line: the Americans doubted whether Dina had political motives or she just wanted a “comfortable Western life,” but, obviously, she found the right words, because 18 days after her “disease” she nevertheless received asylum.

This famous escape behind the "Iron Curtain" went down in history as one of the most daring and among the dissidents was considered an almost unparalleled "feat". For three nights and two days, the oceanographer Stanislav Kurilov, who was not allowed to travel abroad, sailed through raging 7-meter waves to the coast of the Philippines, jumping off a Soviet cruise ship in the dead of night.

Slava Kurilov in his youth

In order not to perish in the ocean, an accurate calculation of forces, time and distance was required, for which it was necessary to know the route. But Kurilov, when he bought the ticket, did not have any data - only guesses and the hope of finding out the missing information during the cruise.

It was a visa-free journey from Vladivostok to the equator and back without calling at foreign ports, the course of the liner "Soviet Union" was kept secret. From the moment of boarding, Kurilov had less than a week to prepare for the irretrievable jump. Knowing that it is better to swim on an empty stomach, he almost immediately stopped eating - he only drank 2 liters of water daily. However, to avoid suspicion, he pretended to share a common meal, was constantly in sight, flirted with three different girls, so that in the event of his long absence, everyone would think that he was with one of them.

Kurilov practiced yoga for many years. Breathing training saved him from death in the ocean. Together with a familiar astronomer from among the passengers, they “for fun” determined the route by the stars, and once Kurilov managed to get into the wheelhouse and saw the coordinates on the map.

So, "on the go", he figured out the place where you need to jump. On the night of the escape, it was very stormy, but Kurilov was glad - if they find him missing, they will not be able to send a boat for him. I had to jump in pitch darkness from a height of 14 meters, it was a risk fraught with bruises, fractures and even death. Then there was a continuous one-on-one struggle with the elements - almost three days without sleep, food and drink, and even without a compass, with only fins, a snorkel and a mask. A day later, the liner nevertheless turned for the missing passenger - Kurilov saw lights and searchlights rummaging through the water. At night, Kurilov was guided by the stars, during the day he went astray. He was repeatedly carried far to the side by a strong current, including almost near the shore, when it was within easy reach. In the end, after swimming almost 100 km, he found himself on a sandy beach on the Philippine island of Siargao and immediately lost consciousness. It was found by the locals. Then there was an investigation and 6 months in a Philippine refugee prison without documents, after which Kurilov was deported to Canada, where his sister lived with her Hindu husband. While he was receiving Canadian citizenship, in the USSR he was sentenced in absentia to 10 years for treason.

As a maritime researcher, he traveled half the world, in the mid-80s he married an Israeli citizen, Elena Gendeleva, moved in with her, received a second foreign citizenship.

Bottom line: it so happened that the new free life of Slava Kurilov began and ended at sea.

An excellent swimmer and diver, a tamer of the elements, he died while diving in the Sea of ​​Galilee (Israeli Lake Kinneret) in January 1998. Releasing underwater equipment, he became entangled in the networks and worked out all the air. He was raised to the surface already unconscious and could not be saved. He was 62 years old.

Nobody in the USSR knew about Liliana Gasinskaya, but in Australia, where she escaped from a Soviet ship, she became a sensation, a superstar, a symbol of the decade, and even caused a political scandal. An 18-year-old Ukrainian woman, the daughter of a musician and actress, served as a flight attendant on the Leonid Sobinov liner, which cruised to Australia and Polynesia in winter. Passengers and crew were in luxurious conditions, but under vigilant supervision: the decks were constantly patrolled, and the wandering beams of searchlights at night excluded the possibility of an inconspicuous "landing" from the ship.

A fugitive on the background of "Sobinov" Gasinskaya seized the moment when there was a noisy party on the ship. Wearing only a red bathing suit, she climbed out through the porthole in her cabin and jumped into the water. Of the more or less valuable, she only had a ring. For more than 40 minutes, she sailed to the Australian coast through a bay where man-eating sharks are found. She clambered up the high pier, covered in bruises and scratches, with a sprained ankle, and wandered aimlessly along the embankment until she spotted a man walking his dog.

He barely understood her broken English, but he helped. Meanwhile, the KGB officers on the ship raised the alarm, and the Soviet diplomatic corps immediately joined the search. However, sensational-hungry Australian newspapermen were the first to find the fugitive - they provided her with shelter in exchange for an interview and a photo shoot in a bikini.

The article appeared in the Daily Mirror under the headline: "Russian Fugitive: Why I Risked My Life." "The Girl in the Red Bikini" became the main celebrity of the continent, everyone jealously followed her fate. Debate flared up over whether to grant her asylum, with her vague claims of "repression" that critics quipped amounted to complaints about "boring Soviet shops."

When she was finally allowed to stay, a protest arose that refugees from conflict-torn Asian countries, who are truly persecuted, are not in a hurry to meet as cordially. Many said that if she had not been "young, beautiful and half-naked", then, most likely, she would have been sent back to the USSR.

Gasinskaya graced the cover of the first issue of the Australian Penthouse. The material, full of candid shots, was called: "Girl in a red bikini - no bikini." For nude shooting, she received 15 thousand dollars. Liliana's first patron in Australia was the Daily Mirror photographer, who left his wife and three children for her. With his help, she established herself in show business: she was a disco dancer, a DJ, and an actress of soap operas.

In 1984, she married Australian millionaire Ian Hyson, but a few years later the marriage broke up. Since then, she has disappeared from the pages of newspapers and interest in her has completely faded.

Bottom line: the last time her name was mentioned in the gossip column was in 1991, when she represented Russian and African art at an exhibition in London. Judging by Twitter, Liliana Gasinskaya, now 56, still lives in the British capital, unrecognizable by anyone and unwilling to remember her past.