The Hunt for Red October (1984) is one of Tom Clancy's most popular novels. This fame was increased by its 1990 film adaptation, where Sean Connery played the charismatic commander Marko Ramius. It narrates the attempt of this USSR officer to defect to the United States with one of the most modern submersibles in the Soviet navy.
This classic of the techno-thriller genre didn't just spring from Clancy's imagination. As the American author acknowledged in a conference in 1986, it was inspired by a mutiny on the Soviet frigate Storozhevoy in 1975, although his protagonist had a very different objective than Ramius.
Without being as advanced a weapon as the Red October submarine, the frigate Storozhevoy (“sentry” in Russian) was one of the most modern ships in the Soviet navy in the 1970s. It was 120 meters long, displaced some 3,000 tons, and had a crew of nearly 200 men. The ship was designed to sink enemy ballistic submarines.
The Storozhevoy entered service in 1973 with the Baltic Fleet. Her role as a modern ship became clear when she received a visit from the Soviet Defense Minister himself, Marshal Andrei Grechko. Being a ship so appreciated by the communist authorities, how could a mutiny have been planned?
The person in charge of the rebellion was the frigate captain Valery Sablin. He was the second commanding officer of the Storozhevoy, with functions related to the political indoctrination of the crew, that is, to keep them faithful to the principles of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU).
Contrary to Ramius, his intention was not to defect: Sablin wanted to regenerate his country. The Storozhevoy officer was a convinced communist to whom the colloquial expression of “being more papist than the pope” could be applied. He considered that the government of Leonid Brezhnev was corrupt and ineffective, so it was necessary to return to the Leninist essence of 1917.
In addition to being orthodox, depending on how you look at it, he could also be considered a visionary, since the problems he diagnosed were largely the cause of the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
In order to recover “Bolshevik purity”, Sablin wanted to use the Storozhevoy as a fuse that would ignite a new revolution. His idea, once he controlled the ship, was to go to Leningrad, where he would make a proclamation to the rest of the army and the population. He was convinced that if citizens and sailors listened to his denunciation of the regime's corruption, they would join his project for political change.
Sablin also stood out for his charisma. Far from the prototype of a despotic officer of an authoritarian regime, he knew how to win the appreciation of the sailors. He was sympathetic to the crew's complaints about the harsh living conditions on board, and that was how he was able to win converts to his cause.
This group of faithful were not the majority of the crew, but they were enough to gain control of the ship if they chose the right moment. Sablin's patience was evident with the entry he made in his diary on the day chosen to take the decisive step: "Sometimes you wait almost half a lifetime until your time comes."
Sablin's plan was marked by symbolic elements. He chose as the date for his mutiny the evening of November 8, 1975, just one day after participating in Riga in the commemoration of the October Revolution of 1917. By choosing a moment so close to the anniversary, the officer counted on ringing the sensitive fiber of the citizenry and his comrades in arms.
He also hoped to arrive in Leningrad and navigate to the mooring point of the mythical cruiser Aurora, whose cannons marked the start of the October Revolution.
The date also gave him practical advantages. Due to the holiday, a third of the crew and officers of the Storozhevoy would be on leave, a circumstance that favored being able to gain control of the ship. The same happened with the garrison of the Riga naval base and the rest of the Soviet warships present there, which could not react in time to abort the rebellion.
It all started at seven in the evening. Sablin had scheduled a screening of Einsenstein's Battleship Potemkin, in another display of the mix of symbolism (he hoped his mutiny would be just as inspiring) and pragmatism he brought to his plan. In addition to the crew members who were on the ground, the bulk of the sailors were distracted by the feature film, so the initial blow was quick and accurate.
Sablin and his conspirators arrested Captain Vasily Potulny and the few officers who tried to abort the attempt. The leader of the mutiny announced to the rest of the crew that they were going to Leningrad to start a revolution that would bring new life to the country. Upon hearing the announcement, the other commanders, boatswains and sailors were paralyzed.
Beyond the surprise, the crew's docility in accepting the mutiny demonstrated some flaws in the Soviet system. The Navy hierarchy left little room for individual initiative and for questioning orders, even if they seemed absurd. The officers received technical training, but their ability to command was not affected. For their part, the sailors were very young replacement recruits.
So, at first, no one questioned Sablin's speech. After all, he was the second in command of the Storozhevoy and the officer who, in theory, defended the orthodoxy of the CPSU.
The seriousness of the situation only became apparent when an officer not related to Sablin, Lieutenant Vladimir Firsov, was able to jump overboard, reach a moored submarine, and raise the alarm. The mutineers soon discovered the escape and decided to weigh anchor towards Leningrad.
Sablin ordered the ship's radars disabled and strict radio silence maintained to make detection more difficult. Taking a direct course towards Leningrad was tricky, as it involved navigating between the many islets off the Estonian coast, a dangerous route without an expert pilot. So he decided to go out into international waters to issue his call for revolution from there.
For their part, the Soviet authorities reacted with great clumsiness. The duty officer at the Riga base did not fully believe Firsov's story and it took 45 minutes to alert his superiors, this delay gave Storozhevoy precious time.
Sablin wired the Government directly to explain his mutiny and to file a series of demands. He demanded provisions for the crew and that they let him issue his proclamations for days to the rest of the population and the militia to gain supporters for his cause. He also asked for security guarantees for the families of the insurgents. The only response from the Navy is to return to port.
From there the events become confused by the lack of data. Despite the declassification of some KGB files, a large part of the documentation was destroyed to hide a very uncomfortable incident for Moscow. Currently, much of the information available comes from interceptions of communications by Swedish intelligence, but some episodes have gaps.
One confusing point to note is whether Brezhnev ordered the Storozhevoy scuttled from the outset to prevent it from falling into NATO hands. According to this version, the Kremlin did not buy Sablin's story of the reformist revolution and suspected that he wanted to defect to the West.
In Moscow, the desertion of a Lithuanian captain, Jonas Pleskys, who fled to Sweden in 1961 with his ship (an auxiliary ship, not a combat ship), was still kicking. His action also inspired Clancy to create the character of Ramius.
Other versions speak of the use of force being contemplated after trying to get the mutineers to surrender. An option that Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, would have strongly defended. After all, this prestigious officer had promoted the modernization of the fleet and did not want to sink one of his most advanced ships so easily.
Gorshkov's position seemed to fit the attitude of a group of Navy Tu-16K bombers. These planes located Storozhevoy on the morning of November 9, but did not attack immediately. The aircraft made low-altitude passes and warning shots to intimidate the crew. Apparently, the only reaction they got was to change the course of the ship towards Swedish waters.
The new route reinforced the Kremlin's belief that Sablin and his cohorts yearned to defect. The Defense Minister considered that the Navy pilots had not wanted to fire on their comrades and ordered a squadron of air force bombers to attack the mutineers.
The problem was that these pilots were not trained to operate against naval targets. Their inexperience was shown when they mistakenly attacked two other ships in the Baltic – a freighter and one of the border guard ships following the Storozhevoy. The Soviets did not have to lament casualties, although they could have triggered a serious incident if they had attacked Western ships.
With the mutinous frigate ever closer to Swedish waters, Gorshkov and Grechko agreed that the Tu-16Ks would sink her once and for all. The rest of the Soviet navse were ordered to move away from the Storozhevoy and, according to the version consulted, the protocol for the use of atomic weapons was activated. Apparently, the plane that would lead the formation was carrying a nuclear-tipped anti-ship missile.
In a Hollywood ending, the order to shoot was given. The commander of the strike group, Colonel Arkhip Savinkov, claimed a failure in the radar to not launch its charge of mass destruction. After a few moments of confusion about whether to attack another plane or not, the Tu-16Ks verified that the Storozhevoy had stopped its machines and, shortly after, a radio message from the frigate arrived announcing the end of the mutiny.
What had happened aboard the mutinous ship? Apparently, the first intimidating flights of the Tu-16K convinced a part of the crew that they were not participating in any change in the USSR, but that their navy saw them as traitors. So they decided to free the captain and regain control of the ship. A brief confrontation ensued, ending with Sablin slightly wounded in the leg by a gunshot.
The crew of the Storozhevoy spent weeks under intense interrogation by the KGB. In the end, only Sablin and 12 other crew members (those who had shown loyalty to him from the beginning) went to trial. The mutinous officer was sentenced to death and executed on August 8, 1976. The rest were sentenced to several years in labor camps.
