5 extraordinary escapes from the USSR, which were made by ordinary Soviet citizens in search of freedom

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Soviet citizen actually did not have the opportunity to legally leave his homeland. One of the options was to marry a foreigner. And the family path was ordered for a man, since emigration was limited as much as possible. In the 80s, the entire Union population had no more than 1-2 thousand visas per year. Therefore, those wishing to leave the USSR had to resort to extreme measures and think over whole schemes of illegal ways to part with their homeland. History has recorded the most desperate fugitives who hijacked planes for the sake of abroad, poisoned themselves with a high dose of medicines and threw themselves from liners into the open ocean.

Red flight

Lilya Gasinskaya dreamed of leaving the USSR since her teens. In pursuit of such a goal, she even got a job as a waitress on the cruise ship Leonid Sobinov. In January 1979, the ship moored in the port of Sydney. Without wasting a minute, the girl, dressed only in a red swimsuit, left the side through the porthole and swam in the direction of the bay. Knowing a little English, she explained herself to a casual passer-by and conveyed the essence of her intentions. Representatives of the Soviet consulate opened a real hunt for Gasinskaya, but local reporters were the first to find the waitress.

In pursuit of high-profile publications, they hid Lilya in exchange for the promised interview. Australia, unwilling to go to conflict with the USSR, could not make a decision on the asylum seeker Gasinskaya for a long time. Without choosing expressions in conversations with journalists, the girl winged yesterday's homeland with her last words. She repeated that communism, which she hated, was built on nothing but propaganda and lies, and that a mentally healthy person could not boil in this. As a result, Gasinskaya received political asylum, and with it, stellar popularity in her new homeland. Lilya gladly participated in an advertising campaign for a red swimsuit, posed for photographers of fashion magazines, starred in TV shows and even realized herself as a DJ.

Fugitive pilots

In 1948, comrades Anatoly Barsov and Pyotr Pirogov flew in a Tu-2 belonging to the Soviet Air Force to Austria, where they purposefully requested political asylum from the occupying American authorities. The USA did not refuse to help the escaped pilots of the Land of the Soviets. Pirogov managed to quickly take root in a new place. Collaborating with a literary agent, he wrote and lectured. Three years later, Pirogov married a compatriot who had escaped like him. Things went worse for Barsov, who knocked off his feet in search of work, more and more convinced of his own uselessness. Barsov began to drink out of despair, and at home he was promised an amnesty in case of a voluntary return. Anatoly decided to go back, but a few months later, instead of pardoning, he was shot.

Another pilot who was looking for happiness across the seas and oceans was Viktor Belenko. The pilot of the MiG-25 fighter has demanded asylum in the United States due to dissatisfaction with the conditions of service in the Air Force. He repeatedly spoke about the sweet life of American flight crews. Say, the pilots in the USA are less busy, they have more rest, the work is not dusty. In the USSR, the traitor was sentenced to death in absentia, and Belenko did not find paradise in his new place of residence. At first, things were going uphill, but soon yesterday's promising pilot slipped into drunkenness and subsistence on benefits for the unemployed.

To the USA via India

In 1986, a 25-year-old resident of Novosibirsk Dmitry Sokolenko fled from the "wretched and joyless" USSR. Thinking over various options, he settled on tourism. The choice fell on India, as an area accessible to an ordinary citizen, but not a socialist state (the risks of extradition were low). After collecting a pile of papers and obtaining the necessary permits, Sokolenko found himself on board a Moscow-Delhi plane. After landing, the young man, who did not stand out in the group of tourists, went to the hotel. But after waiting for midnight, he left the room and ran to the American Embassy, where he subsequently hid for two weeks.

One of the UN representatives helped the unfortunate Soviet citizen with an application for American asylum and the organization of a smuggler's transportation to Nepal. Further, the path lay through Pakistan, France and Rome, where Sokolenko met with an escaped Pole and a Kazan Tatar. Finally, a Soviet tourist flew to New York, where he began a new life. True, long wanderings led to hepatitis. And the first job he was offered was picking apples in Connecticut.

Risking my life

In April 1970, a Soviet fishing vessel passing near New York sent a distress signal ashore. The fact is that a 25-year-old waitress was dying. Latvian Daina Palena was promptly taken to the hospital, where an overdose of potent medications was found in her body. It turns out that the girl poisoned herself on purpose, intending to stay abroad under the guarantees of political asylum. Palena spent about a week in a New York hospital under the supervision of members of the Soviet diplomatic mission. Having come to her senses, the native of Latvia confirmed the seriousness of her intentions not to return home, they say, it was not in vain that she risked her life. The girl colorfully told foreigners about the round-the-clock surveillance of people in Latvia by special services in their own apartments.

She also spoke about the fact that Soviet citizens are deprived of political will, they have no right to organize rallies, and the slightest initiatives that contradict the official ideology are suppressed. The American authorities, after thinking about three weeks, nevertheless granted Dinah's request. Foreign life flowed calmly and measuredly. Palena went from a Soviet waitress to a New Jersey supermarket saleswoman.

Swim in the Pacific Ocean

Oceanologist Stanislav Kurilov dreamed of traveling on business trips around the world, but the Soviet bureaucracy did not allow him to do so. Then, in 1974, Kurilov, jumping into the Pacific Ocean from a cruise liner, sailed with a threat to his life about 100 km to the nearest Philippine island of Siargao. The daring escape got publicity in the press, and the former Union citizen was deported to Canada to obtain citizenship there. Here he founded his own pizzeria and continued to engage in marine research. After his marriage, Kurilov moved to live in Israel, worked on a biographical story, but a few years later he died while performing diving work.

And repeat offenders serving sentences in prisons and camps wanted to serve in the Soviet army when Germany attacked the USSR. There is very interesting information, how recidivists fought at the front, and why the idea of a "criminal army" was abandoned in the USSR.