10 November 2024
Source: Facebook
Some small but good news for the weekend. Having published Anti-Soviet Stories at my own expense and distributing it, too, I have now recouped all my expenses for the publication. I’m not going to be a millionaire anyway, so I can lower the price by 40%. As they say, we were never rich . . . no reason to start now! The sale is on Ozon.
And today, in honor of having made ends meet, I’m publishing a story from the book.
All of us are constantly being castigated, especially by our neighbors, for our slavish mindset and servile acquiescence. But they’re wrong. We have had resistance of a far from peaceful kind.
MUTINY IN THE NAVY
In 1975, Captain 3rd Rank Valery Sablin raised a military mutiny on the frigate Storozhevoy. The plan was this: take the seized ship through the Baltic Sea to Kronstadt, then speak out in Leningrad over Central Television in an appeal to Brezhnev and set forth his, Sablin’s, views of the political situation in the country. Sablin accused the Party and government of departing from Lenin’s theses on building socialism.
The Soviet mass media reported not a word about the mutiny in the Baltic fleet, its suppression, or the subsequent trial. A military mutiny was an unprecedented event for those times. Evidently, the sole one like it in Soviet history. At least in peacetime.
Valery Sablin was born in 1939 in Leningrad to the family of a hereditary naval officer. He studied at the Frunze Higher Naval School. He was elected secretary of the Komsomol’s faculty committee. He joined the Communist Party. He was someone who sincerely believed in the Communist idea. One did come across people like that in those days, though not often. And they created definite difficulties for the Soviet regime.
During his military service, Valery Sablin had received gratitude from the command several times. However, his first promotion was delayed because he had written a letter to Khrushchev laying out his thoughts about the purity of the Party ranks. Evidently, Sablin had noted that all was not as happy in the country of victorious socialism as Soviet propaganda would have it.
Nonetheless, in 1969 he entered the military-political academy and graduated from it four years later with distinction. His name was etched into a marble board among the names of the academy’s best alumni. In 1973, Sablin was appointed political officer on the Storozhevoy. He was given an apartment in Baltiisk, and his wife and son joined him.
His military service was going well. The Storozhevoy visited East Germany, served military duty in the Mediterranean, and went to Cuba. Sablin was awarded a medal “For service to the homeland.”
All this time, the deputy political officer was studying his crew and seeking out like-minded people with whom to share his views. What led the successful naval officer to risk his military career, his freedom, and even his life?
Preparing for his speech over radio and television, Valery Sablin recorded his appeal on tape: “Naturally, we can laugh a million times at Raikin’s satire, at Krokodil magazine, and at Fitil film magazine, but at some point, a tear has to appear amid the laughter over our Homeland’s present and future. Now is the time not to laugh but to bring certain people before an all-people’s court and ask in full for all this bitter laughter. Our action is only a small impulse that must set off a surge.”
This was 1975. Detente between West and East, de-escalation of international tension. On 1 August, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe ended in Helsinki. The Final Document was signed, and the Soviet Union accepted its responsibilities for observing human rights.
On 8 November, Captain 3rd Rank Valery Sablin raised a mutiny on the frigate Storozhevoy. The day before, on the occasion of the holiday—the Day of the October Revolution—some of the officers and warrant officers had gone ashore. For the sailors, Sablin had arranged for Battleship Potemkin—a film about the 1905 uprising on the battleship—to be shown on board. During the viewing, the political officer informed the ship’s commander, Captain Anatoly Potulny, that drunken soldiers in the sonar room had started a fight. Potulny went to sort it out, with Sablin behind him, but when the ship’s commander went down to the sonar room, Sablin shut the steel hatch behind him, locked it, and posted his loyal assistant, the ship’s librarian, able seaman Aleksandr Shein, on guard.
Then Sablin assembled first the officers and warrant officers and then the able seamen and sailors. He announced that he had taken command of the ship and intended to sail it to Leningrad in order to moor next to the Aurora and address the Soviet people over radio and television.
He was supported by a few officers and able seamen and a large portion of the sailors. According to testimony from sailor Maksimenko, Sablin spoke about corruption at the top and about how the regime was squandering Russia’s national riches and bankrupting the country and the people. He spoke about the need for a change of leadership.
Sailor Aleksandr Shein recalled later: “After his speech, there was widespread enthusiasm. What we had been discussing among ourselves in the smoking rooms was suddenly there for all to hear. It was like a holiday. A sense of dignity was aroused in each man. We felt like human beings.”
Shortly before midnight on 8 November, the officer of the watch on a B-49 submarine, which was on duty at the roadstead on the Daugava River near Riga, where the ships of the naval parade were, noticed someone waving his arms on a mooring buoy.
It was the Storozhevoy’s Komsomol secretary, First Lieutenant Firsov, who told the submarine commander that he had fled his ship in order to report a revolt raised by political officer Sablin.
No one believed him. The officers decided this was a silly joke or a drunken game: there could be no revolt in the Soviet Navy. Even the Storozhevoy’s independent exit to the sea did not make naval commander Vice Admiral Kosov believe in the reality of what was happening. The command thought that the ship had confused the time and left for scheduled repairs in Liepaja.
Meanwhile, the Storozhevoy was speeding toward Leningrad. Once Komsomol Secretary Firsov escaped the ship, the element of surprise was lost. It was dangerous to stay at the roadstead. The uprising was announced over the radio on the open air. A tape recording has been preserved with Valery Sablin’s appeal.
“To everyone! Everyone! This is the frigate Storozhevoy. Our speech is not a betrayal of the homeland but a purely political, progressive speech, and the traitors to the homeland will be those who try to stop us. My comrades have asked me to say that in the event of military actions against our country, we will defend it honorably. But our purpose right now is something else—to raise the voice of truth.”
That night the hunt for the Storozhevoy began. Its goal was to force the ship to surrender or destroy it. Sent in pursuit were missile-launching and anti-submarine ships, a submarine, a ship with marines, and aviation. Coast Guard missile boats followed the Storozhevoy from the Riga port itself.
Captain First Class A. Naipert, brigade commander of the Coast Guard ships, received an order from General-Lieutenant K. Sekretarev, commander of the KGB’s Baltic Coast Guard District: “Immediately open fire to defeat and destroy the ship.” At 8:55 in the morning, the Coast Guard ship received a semaphore from the Storozhevoy: “Friend! We are not traitors to the Homeland.” The Coast Guard forces disobeyed their order and did not open fire. A week later, Captain Naipert was removed from his brigade command and discharged from the Navy.
Meanwhile, that night, two aviation bomber groups were raised. The pilots of one of them refused to use weapons against the Storozhevoy. The other wing began the attack on the mutinous ship but by mistake bombed a Soviet dry-cargo carrier that happened to be in the vicinity. Fortunately, the bombs missed their mark and blew up alongside, only damaging the sheathing. The dry-cargo carrier’s captain, who knew nothing of the military uprising, began to send out an SOS over the open air and a text: “Murderous attack in the territorial waters of the Soviet Union.”
In the second attack on the Storozhevoy, one of the bombs fell on the middle of the deck. The rudders jammed and the ship came to a halt. The part of the Storozhevoy crew that did not support the uprising took advantage of the bombing of the ship. They were able to free the ship’s commander and other officers.
Captain Potulny opened the ship’s arsenal, armed his supporters with pistols and machine guns, and took two groups to the captain’s bridge. Seeing Sablin, Captain Potulny shot him in the leg with his pistol. Sablin’s comrades-in-arms were arrested. Potulny took command of the ship into his own hands.
The arrested Valery Sablin was transported to Moscow, to the KGB’s remand centre at Lefortovo prison. He was charged under Article 64 of the Russian Criminal Code, “Betrayal of the homeland.” The maximum punishment under this article is the death penalty.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, a secret document in the Sablin case was extracted from the so-called special file of the Soviet Central Committee. It said: “Having fallen under the influence of revisionist ideology, Sablin for several years harbored hostile views of Soviet reality. During the events on the Storozhevoy, he delivered an anti-Soviet speech to the crew.”
Captain Sablin’s fate was decided at the very highest level, therefore there was no reason to expect mercy. Sablin doubtless realized this, though, as the investigation confirmed, and he did write a petition for a pardon.
Preserved in the investigation’s file is Sablin’s unsent letter, dated 8 November 1975, the afternoon after the mutiny on the Storozhevoy began: “My dear, beloved, and good Papa and Mama! It was very hard to start writing this letter, since it very likely will cause you alarm, pain, and maybe even indignation and anger against me. . . . My actions have been guided by one sole desire—to do everything in my power to rouse our people, the good, and mighty people of our Homeland, from their political slumber, for it is having a ruinous effect on all aspects of the life of our society. . . .”
On 13 July 1976, the Military Collegium of the Soviet Supreme Court sentenced Valery Sablin to death. On 3 August 1976, 20 days later, he was shot. He is buried in an unmarked grave whose location remains unknown to this day.
Criminal charges were brought against six officers and 11 able seamen from the Storozhevoy, but their cases were closed before any trial. Captain Sablin’s loyal assistant, sailor Aleksandr Shein, was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.
The Storozhevoy was transferred to the Pacific fleet and in 2002 was decommissioned from the Navy and sold to India for scrap.
Repairs on the dry-goods carrier that was bombed by mistake cost the Defense Ministry a tank of alcohol and a five-ton truck of oil paint.
In 1994, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court reexamined Sablin’s case. The court commuted the executed officer’s death penalty to 10 years’ imprisonment. He was denied posthumous rehabilitation.
Before his execution, Sablin wrote a letter to his son: “Believe me that history will honestly reward everyone on their merits, and then you will never doubt what your father did. Never be among people who criticize without acting. These hypocrites, weak men, are incapable of matching their belief and their deeds. I want you to be brave. Be confident that life is marvelous. Believe that the Revolution will always be victorious.”
In one of his appeals from the mutinous Storozhevoy, Captain Sablin said: “We look forward to correspondence, personal meetings, and all kinds of support from representatives of all strata of the population. If force is used against us by the government to liquidate us, you will know this by the absence of another broadcast from us over radio and television. And in this instance only your political activism, a universal effort, will save the revolution we began. Support us, comrades.”
Valery Sablin’s place of burial is unknown. Even after Sablin’s death, the Communist regime was settling its scores with a man for whom his duty of honor stood above his oath to the state.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
