Newspaper Page Text
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, August 31,1972
Page 12
Escape to west
Sergei’s freedom swim nearly cost him his life
The sun
tanned young man with the
bleached blond hair and a
movie star profile paused out
side the Pentagon and grinned.
“Every submarine officer in
the Russian navy boasts that
his No. 1 missile is aimed at the
Pentagon.
“I never thought I’d be
here!”
Some 15 months ago, in early
summer of 1971, Sergei
Kourdakov was a lieutenant on
a Soviet missile submarine out
ward bound from Vladivostok
on a patrol of the northern Pa
cific.
Three months later, last
Sept. 4, a Canadian girl found
him exhausted, cut and
bruised, barely alive on a
stormy island beach in a Queen
Charlotte sound in British Co
lumbia. Sergei had leaped from
a Russian fishing trawler at the
height of a storm and somehow
survived a tortured eight-hour
swim to freedom in 50-degree
waters.
Only now, a year after the
one-time “perfect example of
Communist youth” escaped, is
his story beginning to emerge
—a story of disillusioned young
Russians, aggressive naval
commanders, spy trawlers,
KGB threats in Canada, re
ligious persecution in Russia
and an atheist’s remarkable
discovery of Christian princi
ples.
“When I was struggling
through those waves in Queen
Charlotte Sound, I found myself
praying to God,” said Kour
dakov. “It never occurred to
me to pray to (Karl) Marx or
(Friedrich) Engels or (Nikita)
Khrushchev or (Leonid)
Brezhnev.”
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We know what you’re looking for.
Now on his first visit to the
United States and hoping for
permanent residence and work
with the California-based
Underground Evangelism
Society, Kourdakov is begin
ning to tell his complex tale.
He has shared his religious
experience with scattered
church groups in Canada, but
in his first U.S. interview he
began to talk publicly for the
first time about his career in
the Soviet navy. Some details,
he said, are still “secrets,”
shared only with Canadian and
American security teams.
“The Federal Bureau of In
vestigation has ‘books’ on this
young fellow,” joked Dale
Smith, European director of
Underground Evangelism who
is accompanying him.
Kourdakov trained for three
years at Soviet naval acade
mies in and at Pet
ropavlovsk in the far eastern
Kamchatka province before
drawing his first assignment as
radio officer on a submarine.
“The submarine had no
name, only a number,” he said.
"And that doesn’t matter, be
cause each submarine is known
by many numbers.”
The vessel, he says, was con
ventionally powered, but car
ried long-range airbreathing
missiles that could be launched
from the surface.
“I’m just as glad it wasn’t an
atomic submarine,” he said.
“We used to hear stories at
Vladivostok about submarines
that didn’t return and about
crews that did and had to be
isolated because of radiation
sickness.”
Kourdakov said his sub
marine sailed south from
Vladivostok and loitered for
some time off the coast of
Japan, particularly near the
port of Yokosuka which is used
by U.S. Navy ships.
“Then we headed toward
Hawaii,” he said. “That’s when
I got orders to join the trawler.
The rendezvous was at night
about 250 miles north of Pearl
Harbor. We surfaced and the
trawler sent a small boat to
pick me up.”
Soviet trawlers and fishing
fleets, he said, operate under
Soviety navy command and all
officers hold comparable naval
ranks although they wear mer
chant seamens’ garb.
In the event of war, he said,
all have military assignments,
some carry hidden heavy
weapons. All are equipped to
support Soviet submarine
operations.
“They are stationed around
North America, South America
and in the Indian Ocean like a
blockade,” he said, pointing to
strategic concentrations on a
world map.
Every trawler fleet carries
on continuous naval intelli
gence work, charting the North
American shoreline, monitor
ing all radio traffic, reporting
all air, naval and merchant
ship movements to the USSR.
His own work with the 60-ship
fishing fleet, he said, involved
monitoring and taping traffic
on certain radio frequencies.
Some of the signals from the
North American mainland, he
said, “were meant only for us.”
He said he could not discuss the
nature of those signals, but he
nodded when asked if
espionage was involved.
Kourdakov said he con
sidered escape attempts near
Honolulu, Ix>ng Beach, (Calif.),
San Francisco and Portland,
Ore.
“I was frightened,” he said.
“I didn’t know what to believe.
But when the storm drove us
into Queen Charlotte Sound,
only three miles from shore, I
knew it was my last chance. We
were scheduled to sail for the
Aleutians and Russia when the
weather improved.”
Kourdakov, a 6-foot, 200-
pounder with immense
shoulders, said he was confi
dent he would reach shore. He
had been the free-style swim
ming champion of his class at
the Leningrad Naval Academy.
"But I underestimated the
storm,” he confesses. “I
thought I could do it fully
clothed.”
Wrapping his identity cards
and his orphan’s collection of
childhood photographs in a
plastic bag that he tied around
his waist, and pocketing a
switchblade “submarine”
knife, the young lieutenant took
an early evening deck watch.
“At 9:45 I jumped into the
water. The waves were huge,
the rain was coming down in
torrents. In just moments I al
most drowned because of my
heavy boots.”
“I got them off finally, and
cut my clothing away and be
gan to swim. I lost my sense of
direction and in a couple of
hours found myself back near
the ship. I thought I heard
voices crying ‘man overboard,’
but it was only the wind.”
Kourdakov admits he con
sidered returning to the ship at
that point and claiming he had
fallen overboard, but he real
ized he could not explain why
he had all his personal effects
with him.
“I was in the ocean for eight
hours and near the seventh
hour I felt myself going down,”
he said. “That’s when I called
for God. I really don’t know
why. I had never called for Him
before."
“(Nikita)
Khrushchev’s generation be
lieved they would have a Com
munist world by 1970. My gen
eration knows it will never
come.”
Sergei Kourdakov was stand
ing on a terrace of a Washing
ton office building looking down
on the old 16th Street mansion a
block away that houses the
Russian Embassy. It was as if
he was passing judgment on a
system that only a year ago
considered him one of its shin
ing achievements.
“The problem in the Soviet
Union is that the old Christian
ideal has been destroyed and
the Socialist ideal has not been
realized. It leaves young people
with nothing."
If any young man in the
USSR looked like a man with
everything it must have been
this broad-shouldered, pain
fully polite six-footer with the
ready grin.
A year ago he was 20, a
brand-new navy submarine
lieutenant trained in radio,
radar and sonar. He had been
honored as “the perfect
example of Communist youth,”
and had been designated the
No. 1 Communist youth of
Kamchatka province in far
eastern Russia. He was a
leader of the Communist Youth
league with 1,200 young Com
munists under his command.
He was judo champion of Kam
chatka province, a swimming
champion of his class at Lenin
grad’s naval academy, an ac
complished mountain climber,
skin diver and parachutist. He
had passed his examinations
for membership in the Commu
nist Party and was a special
lecturer on communism in
Soviet universities.
But on Sept. 3, 1971, Lt.
Sergei Kourdakov dove off a
Russian fishing trawler during
a storm off the British Colum
bia coast and swam to freedom,
surviving a 10-hour ordeal.
Almost a year later,
Canadian and American au
thorities are still piecing to
gether Kourdakov’s story and
the Underground Evangelism
Society, a California-based
missionary group, is preparing
to broadcast it throughout the
Communist world.
Rep. Earl Landgrebe, R-Ind.,
arranged a special two-month
visa permitting Kourdakov to
enter the United States. Efforts
are under way to secure a spe
cial bill in Congress that will
grant him permanent resi
dence and open the way to ulti
mate American citizenship.
Underground Evangelism of
ficials trace his disillusionment
with communism to religious
experiences during “bully boy”
raids on secret church services
in Kamchatka. Kourdakov’s
own analysis, however, sug
gests that the Kremlin’s at
tempt to regiment and
propagandize its young is
creating instead a rebellious
mood, a hunger for any kind of
information on Western philos
ophy and society.
Kourdakov is literally a
product of the state. His father,
a Stalinist army colonel and
war hero, was killed when
Nikita Khrushchev rose to
power in 1956. He had com
manded a garrison at
Novosibirsk, the largest city in
Siberia. His mother died of a
heart attack a few months
later. (Kourdakov’s grand
father was a White Russian
who fought against the Bolshe
viks and was deported to
Siberia where he died in a slave
labor camp.)
Kourdakov was raised in an
orphanage where he says,
“One got his milk along with
constant teaching and indoctri
nation ... and very strong disci
pline.”
"Often there was not enough
to eat,” he recalls, “especially
in 1963 and 1964 during a large
famine. One boy died of starva
tion. Two girls committed sui
cide; one hanged herself, one
jumped into the river.”
Sergei, however, made a rec
ord as a good Marxist. He
scored 100 on his final high
school exams and qualified for
naval preparatory school at 16.
At 17 he was secretary of the
district Komsomol or Young
Communist League.
Because Kamchatka is a
very homogenous region with
people from all over the USSR,
the area was a “hotbed” of
underground religious activity,
the young defector says.
Government - tolerated
churches, he says, are largely
facades maintained in tourist
centers like Moscow, Lenin
grad and Kiev or are “traps”
where KGB-trained clergymen
spy on worshipers.
In an attempt to stamp out
underground religious meet
ings, Kourdakov says, Kam
chatka police recruited boys
from the Komsomol to carry
out raids against them.
“We usually went first to the
police station,” he recalls.
“There we received our clubs,
the address of the secret
church meeting and plenty of
vodka. We were all young and
the vodka went to our heads
pretty fast.”
He said they would burst into
the meeting, beat anyone who
resisted or tried to talk to them,
and bum any Bibles, New Test
aments, song books or other re
ligious literature.
He estimates he took part in
150 such raids, before he en
countered two Christian
women who shook his faith in
the Soviet system.
One was an 18-year-old type
setter named Natasha Sh
danova. The girl was caught at
one meeting, Kourdakov says,
and was knocked unconscious.
Three days later she was seized
at a second meeting stripped
and beaten with the special
Czech-made telescoping steel
and rubber clubs until the skin
on much of her body was rip
ped.
Eight days later, the same
girl was caught at still another
meeting.
“This time we simply let her
go,” he said. “We all knew she
had some kind of courage we
couldn’t understand.”
The other woman was caught
at a meeting of old people in a
steam bath house. As he raised
his club to strike her, Kour-
dakov says, he heard her pray
ing:
“Direct this young man to
yourself, Father. Help him find
the way.”
“I had never before heard
anyone pray for me,” he said.
“It made me furious. I wanted
to hit her.
“But as I lifted my arm I felt
something grip it and stop the
blow. I looked back, but no one
was there. An electric shock
ran through me. I ran. It took
hours to get hold of myself. I
went to the police, turned in my
club and refused to work for
them anymore. I told them I
had too much work with the
Communist League and my
na val studies.”
The idea of escape from the
U.S.S.R., he says, was first
formed during a summer fur
lough to European Russian in
1970. Armed with scuba diving
equipment he weighed a daring
river escape route to Hungary,
then Austria, but decided it
could not succeed. En route
back to Kamchatka province,
he tried to scale a Caucasian
mountain pass between Soviet
Armenia and Turkey, but found
the way barred by border
guards.
“That was when I decided I
must go to sea to escape,” he
said.
Some
where in the course of a five
hour interview with Lt. Sergei
Kourdakov, late of the Russian
navy, a participant asked:
“Would you like to meet Jane
Fonda or Angela Davis?”
The young Russian’s eyes
flashed.
“I think I could change their
minds about life in a Commu
nist country.
“Making $500,000 for a film
and then paying a visit to Hanoi
and playing the heroine is one
thing. Living under the system
is altogether different.”
Kourdakov has had almost a
year to size up life in the West
since he leaped overboard from
a Soviet trawler in a north Pa
cific storm last Sept. 3, and
swam to asylum in Canada’s
British Columbia.
"My first impression in Can
ada and now in the United
States is how rich everyone is.
In Russia (Leonid) Brezhnev
talks for hours about millions of
shoes, tons of grain, automo
biles, clothing, new apart
ments; here you have it all and
you take it for granted.
“In Russia everything is
promises, but there is no per
formance.
“Here you don't need the
promises, you don’t even ap
preciate the performance.”
Kourdakov, a tall, handsome
youth of 21 who looks like he
could compete for a Hollywood
role, is outspoken about anti
war demonstrators in the
United States and the tolerant
attitudes of the American and
Canadian governments toward
political leftists.
His political opinions are
largely on the conservative
side. How much they represent
his own decisions, or those of
his newfound friends is hard to
judge.
He distrusts the Quebec Lib
eration Front as a Communist
group. He says he has come to
admire President Nixon. He
criticizes Sen. J. William Ful
bright’s attempts to silence Ra
dio Liberty and Radio Free Eu
rope and cut back sharply the
operations of Voice of America.
“Those radio stations are our
only source of truth,” he said.
"Their balanced broadcasts
make us realize the double
standard of Russian propagan
da.”
He shrugs his shoulders at
mention of Sen. George
McGovern.
“I’m sure he is a fine man,
but how can anyone talk seri
ously of cutting the American
defense budget by one-third,
about stopping the Trident sub
marines and the antimissile
missiles?
"Doesn’t he know what
Russia is building?”
He claims that Russian
speaking men who he believes
were KGB agents approached
him five times in Toronto, Que
bec and Montreal warning him
against giving any information
to authorities.
Approached once from be
hind in a Toronto subway sta
tion, Kourdakov said:
"He told me: “Don’t turn
around. Walk slowly. Listen. If
you don’t stop talking about the
Soviet Union you’ll have an
accident. And it will be your
last accident.”
Kourdakov said when he
turned, the man was gone.
“I could hide on a farm
somewhere in Canada, change
my name and escape them,”
Kourdakov said, “but I want to
speak out for myself and for
Underground Evangelism. And
I want to lead a public life. If I
do that in Canada ‘they’ will try
to kill me.”
The Russian has just spent
more than six months living
with families in Toronto’s Rus
sian-Canadian community and
studying English at George
Brown College on a govern
ment scholarship for immi
grants.
Twice he has moved after
suspected KGB agents ap
proached him.
Although he has enjoyed Ca
nadian hospitality for almost a
year and described its people
as “warm and friendly,” Kour
dakov says he feels safer in the
United States. He is convinced
that Premier Pierre Trudeau’s
government would have turned
him back to Soviet authorities
had Canadian press, radio and
television not called public at
tention to his escape.
“My case was embarrassing
to Trudeau because of the big
wheat sales to Russia and be
cause of Premier (Alexei) Ko
sygin’s visit to Ottawa,” the
young sailor says. “He would
have preferred to get rid of me.
It would have been done, too, if
a nurse in a hospital hadn’t
called a local radio announcer
who made inquiries direct to
the Parliament.
“You couldn’t do that in Rus
sia.”
Kourdakov also voices suspi- ,
cions about Trudeau’s leftist
politics.
“He was in Russia and said it
was beautiful,” the Russian
once told a Canadian press in
terviewer. “I live in Russia and
I didn’t think it was beautiful.”
Kourdakov and his Under
ground Evangelism escort plan
to travel from Washington to 1
UE headquarters at Glendale,
Calif., where the Russian will
begin to tape broadcasts that
will be beamed into the Soviet
Union from radio stations in
Portugal, Monaco and in the
Far East. Radio Free Europe
and Radio liberty also are de- 1
scribed as anxious to air his
story.
Kourdakov also is scheduled
for more intensive English-lan
guage courses to prepare him
for North American television
and radio appearances. And he 1
is working with two collabora
tors on a book that will be pub
lished in 1973.
His English is still heavily
accented and he slips into er
rors of grammar and syntax,
but he has remarkably little 1
difficulty communicating.
“You should have seen him
talking to my secretary,” joked <
one Washington official.
“That’s what I like about
Canada and America,” grinned
Kourdakov. “The girls are tall
and they have long legs. In
Russia they are too fat. ...”
Then he hesitated and
blushed.
“I forgot. I’m not to call them
‘fat’; I should say ‘plump.’”
The Russian’s missionary
program with UE will probably
last two or three years, his es
cort said. After that he hopes to
continue as a radio technician
and linguist with the organiza
tion or find a radio engineering
job in private industry.
Underground Evangelism
was founded in 1960 by the Rev.
L. Joe Bass, a Pentacostal min
ister. Its prime aim is to broad
cast the Old and New Testa
ments into Communist coun
tries (often at dictation speed,
so they can be copied) and to
smuggle Bibles and tracts into
these lands. It works largely
through the Pentacostal and
Evangelical churches and the
Church of God.
I
It now operates eight over
seas missions, several in the
United States and one at Cal
gary, Canada. »
Agree to
amendment
WASHINGTON (UPl)—The
United States and Uruguay
have agreed to amend their
extradition treaty to include
aircraft hijacking, narcotics *
offenses and diplomatic kid
naps.
•
The State Department said
Tuesday the amendments were
approved by administration
officials from Uruguay and the ’
United States last week. They
will take effect upon ratifica
tion by the U.S. Senate and the
Uruguayan Parliament.