Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

Prolific thriller writer Hagberg (Dance with the Dragon) and former Soviet naval officer Gindin recount the 1975 mutiny aboard the FFG Storozhevoy, a Russian antisubmarine warfare ship, which inspired Tom Clancy’s international bestseller. Gindin was a senior lieutenant and chief engineer on the Storozhevoy when it was seized by Capt. Third Rank Valery Sablin. An idealist who actually believes the Party line, Sablin intended to sail the ship into the Baltic Sea and broadcast an appeal to the Russian people to overthrow the corrupt Kremlin leadership. He secured the crew’s support by promising them an early out from the navy, and arrested the captain and the ship’s officers, including Gindin, who refused to cooperate. Upon hearing the news, Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev ordered his navy to find that ship and sink it. Under attack, the mutiny fizzled and the ship and crew were spared, but the personal repercussions were severe. Another nonfiction account of the Storozhevoy mutiny, The Last Sentry, was published in 2005, but the eyewitness testimony of coauthor Gindin justifies a retelling. Unfortunately, tutorials on subjects as diverse as historical mutinies and Soviet executions slow the narrative, and the documentation is bare bones.

(May)

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The granddaddy of the techno-thriller, Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October (1984), was based on a real mutiny of a Soviet warship in 1975. The definitive account of that event is The Last Sentry (2005), by Gregory D. Young and Nate Braden; here novelist Hagberg grafts the memories of a Soviet naval officer who was aboard the warship onto the thriller format. Then in his early twenties, Boris Gindin was the engineering officer of the Storozhevoi, an antisubmarine vessel whose name means “sentry.” Gindin was not disaffected with the Soviet system, opposed the mutiny, and was locked up with other loyalty-minded officers for the revolt’s brief duration. Its leader intended to sail into the Baltic Sea and broadcast an anti-Soviet manifesto, pirate-radio style. Readers not privy to the history will be surprised by the leader’s identity, and once those cards are on the table, Hagberg switches over to the thriller framework of admirals ordering pilots to sink the Storozhevoi. Although it is evident that creative license has been taken, the underlying truth of Gindin’s story comes through in Hagberg’s dramatized rendition.

—Gilbert Taylor