Escaped From The USSR, Jumping Off A Cruise Liner - How Was The Fate Of Stanislav Kurilov

2024 Author: Bailey Albertson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 12:53

Leap into the unknown: Stanislav Kurilov's incredible escape from the USSR

Are you ready for your dream to jump under the propellers of a huge liner? And for almost three days to stubbornly swim to an unknown shore, risking every minute to become the prey of one of the ocean predators? And to give up homeland, family and the usual way of life for the sake of vague prospects in a foreign land? Stanislav Kurilov, a Soviet oceanographer in love with his profession, did all this and achieved success. True, at a difficult price.

I see a purpose, but I do not see obstacles

Since childhood, Kurilov was distinguished by enviable tenacity and an ineradicable craving for the sea, which was difficult to suspect in a boy who grew up in the steppe Kazakhstan of Semipalatinsk. With the water element, young Slava from childhood was "on you": at the age of 10 he swam the Irtysh, at 15 - rushed to distant Leningrad to get a cabin boy on the ship. When it didn’t work, I tried to apply to the nautical school, but the boy was not taken there either because of myopia.

What to do, to return home unwashed? Nothing like this! Stanislav "paid a debt" to his homeland, having served in the army, and returned to his dream. The stubborn guy mastered the profession of a psychologist in absentia; graduated from the Leningrad Hydrometeorological Institute, specializing in oceanologist; Thoroughly studied the subtleties of scuba divers' work and devoted himself with all his heart to his favorite business.

The name of Stanislav Kurilov was widely known among ocean scientists

Lust for freedom

In the late 60s, Kurilov's authority as an oceanologist was so strong that Stanislav became one of the five scientists who participated in the tests of the first underwater laboratory "Chernomor" in Gelendzhik. The famous Jacques Yves Cousteau wanted to work with him, he was predicted to be a participant in a large-scale research expedition to the Pacific atolls … Alas, tempting projects were thwarted every time for a simple reason: Kurylenko's older sister, during her studies, married a foreigner and lived in Canada, which has done Stanislav himself was not "restricted to travel abroad" - the presence of relatives in the "capital countries" in the USSR was not welcomed.

After another refusal, the scientist realized that dreams of endless ocean expanses and exciting exploration will remain dreams, unless extreme measures are taken. And he made up his mind.

In December 1974, the future fugitive stepped onto the ladder of the Sovetsky Soyuz liner, sailing from Vladivostok to the equator. Since the liner planned to make its journey and return to Russia without entering foreign ports, a visa was not required to participate in the cruise, which Kurilov took advantage of. As he later admitted, this trip was a kind of reconnaissance, so the scientist did not prepare for the escape - he did not have a map or a compass, and the route of the liner was only approximately known. Escaping under such conditions was tantamount to suicide.

It was child's play for the scientist to calculate at what time Soyuz will take place near the Philippines.

However, fate clearly favored the desperate oceanographer. A few days after sailing, a map fell into Kurilov's hands, on which not only the entire route of the ship was marked in detail, but also the estimated hours the liner was at one point or another.

Stanislav did not hesitate anymore. Fins, a mask with a snorkel, a jump from a dizzying height - and here he, by a miracle escaped the blades of huge propellers, sways on the waves of the endless ocean. And then endless hours of struggle for life and freedom dragged on. It's no joke to say that only by the end of the second day the fugitive saw the land dawning on the horizon! And for the whole night he fought with the current, so that in the morning, exhausted, but happy, he could get out to one of the reefs of Siargao Island.

Radio Voice of America reported about Stanislav's insane act, while Kurilov was first recognized as missing in his homeland, and then sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for treason

Living in a foreign land

Finding himself in the Philippines, which at that time partly served as an arena of hostilities with the United States, Kurilov was imprisoned - albeit on very lenient conditions - and only a year later was deported to Canada, where he received refugee status and new citizenship.

Life in a foreign land did not immediately turn its bright side to Stanislav, but the rebellious scientist could no longer be frightened by such trifles as an unsettled life or part-time work in a pizzeria. Over time, he again returned to oceanographic research, having visited, together with Canadian and American expeditions in the Arctic, at the equator and in many other places attractive for a true explorer.

An almost accidental trip to Israel gave Stanislav a meeting with his future wife Elena Gandeleva, the title of an employee of the Haifa Oceanographic Institute, and success in the literary field, when a local magazine published Kurylenko's story "Escape".

In a foreign land, Stanislav found love, recognition and wrote an autobiographical book "Alone in the Ocean"

The scientist spent the rest of his life in Israel. Here he also died, entangled in networks during the execution of the next research work on Lake Tiberias.

Stubborn, true to his dream and in love with freedom, Stanislav Kurylenko does not fit into the ranks of other dissidents fugitives. By his act, he protested not so much against the existing system as against the restriction of man in his right to freedom, the right to do what he loved, to seek, study, create. And the scientist emerged from this battle as the undoubted winner.