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

9. EVENING OF THE MUTINY

Dinner has come and gone, the sky is starless, there is a cold breeze stirring, and traffic along the waterfront is sparse. The holiday is over and the people of Riga are doing their own thing: family gatherings, playing chess, watching television—the Bolshoi Ballet is doing a matinee performance of Giselle. Anyway, tomorrow the Storozhevoy will leave for the shipyard where for two weeks everything aboard will be put to rights. Already the weapons loads—missiles, mines, torpedoes, and depleted uranium ammunition for the guns—have been taken off the ship, and his fuel tanks are nearly but not quite empty. One of the refit tasks will be to send the smallest sailors through maintenance hatches into the tanks to repaint them. The less fuel there is to pump out beforehand, the quicker the job will get done.

Gindin goes back to his cabin to get another pack of cigarettes—they’ve been at sea for six months, so he is out of Marlboros until they get back to base; now he has to smoke the shitty-tasting Russian ones, Primas without filters. But he guesses that he really doesn’t mind. One of the main reasons he started smoking the much more expensive

American brand was so that he could impress civilians with how good Soviet navy officers have it.

“We were protecting their lives,” he says. “So maybe we deserved a few bogatstvo, luxuries.”

As he’s stuffing the pack into his uniform pocket, his roommate, Vladimir Firsov, walks in, a half smile on his pleasantly square face.

“So, Boris, what’s eating your ass?” he wants to know. It’s like half the ship has come down with the shits or something. Almost nobody is smiling.

Gindin hasn’t a clue. He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “Something.” It’s a general feeling that something is right around the corner or that someone is sneaking up behind them. He’s developed a case of the volocy vstali dybom, the willies.

Vladimir and Boris leave their nine-by-eleven cabin and head back up on deck, where they lean against the rail and smoke. The wind has picked up and now that the sun has gone down it has gotten even colder than this morning. One of the fronts that regularly sweep across the Baltic from the Arctic must have come through in the past hour, because they can see their breath.

“It’s cold,” Firsov says after a long silence, and Gindin isn’t at all sure his friend is talking about the weather just now.

“Havana was better,” Gindin replies. They’re talking, but it’s like they’re wading through molasses. It’s as if they are drifting, rudderless, without any purpose. Gindin has never felt like this.

They talk about the rotation they’re finally coming off and the big repair job they were stuck with on the way to Cuba. There’ll be a lot of work for them at the shipyard, but in two weeks they’ll be home with their families.

Vladimir is married and has one young kid. Each year Boris helps Vladimir celebrate his anniversary and the birthdays of his wife and son. It’s a sweet Russian custom, especially among sailors at sea. The little celebrations tend to make the loneliness more bearable.

Boris is thinking that he won’t be able to celebrate his father’s birthday next year, or any year after that, when Nikolay Bogomolov gets on the ship’s public-address system—the 1MC. He’s the duty officer on this shift. It’s coming up on 1900 hours, and Nikolay announces that all officers and midshipmen are to report to the midshipmen’s dining hall in uniform.

Boris and Vladimir head belowdecks. They’ve been off duty, so they have to change into the uniform of the day. All the ordinary sailors not on duty are watching a movie in their dining hall. It’s The Battleship Potemkin, which is the favorite of just about every zampolit in the fleet.

Sergey Kuzmin, who’s the lieutenant in charge of BCH-3 sonar systems, wants to know what the hell is going on. According to Sergey, this sounds like one of Sablin’s little tricks. The pizda, pussy, has been sticking his nose into everybody’s business for the past five days.

Sergey Bogonets, who’d had Boris help play a trick on Bogomolov, storms out of his cabin, a deep scowl on his dark face. “The bastard wants to get back at us for the trick with the shower,” he says. “Just watch: When we get dressed up and back to the dining hall, there won’t be any meeting.”

But playing this kind of a joke on the ship’s officers at the end of a six-month rotation is a dangerous thing to do. There’ll be a lot of resentment that might spill over to the next rotation. What is not needed aboard a ship at sea, especially a warship at sea, is a group of officers who are holding a grudge. The safety of the ship depends on the complete and instantaneous cooperation of the entire crew.

But if it’s Sablin calling this meeting, then none of them have any choice but to snap to, like dutiful Communist sailors, and at least give the appearance of appreciating his lecture. The zampolit is the number-two officer aboard any Soviet warship. That means he answers only to the captain and no one else. And in political matters the zampolit is the supreme authority.

Curiously, the officers don’t particularly care for Sablin, but the sailors do, because this zampolit really listens and really seems to care about the welfare of the enlisted men. He’s an officer, but he’s sincere. The officers, however, who are educated, can tell the difference between being sincere and being genuinely brainwashed.

“Political classes were a fact of life,” Gindin says. “It felt foreign to us even though we’d been hearing the same things all of our lives. The lies we were being told never touched us, never got into our bones, never adhered to us. The classes were distant from reality, in a sense just another obligation.”

Most of the people aboard ship or in high school or in college felt stupid and degraded being forced to study this stuff.

Everybody knows it’s a lie.

But at the same time everyone lives the lie because it is the only life they know. “You believe in things,” Gindin says. “You are ready to put your life on the line for the ideals, and yet somewhere inside, maybe not consciously, but somewhere, you see things differently. But you can’t change things and you continue to live the way you are told to live.”

The story is that Sablin actually believes the Party line. He is an idealist who knows in his heart-of-hearts that a better life is just around the corner for all of them. If they just stick with the basic principles, if they just keep on working, keep trusting in Moscow, everything will work out fine.

“Hey, Boris, what the hell is going on?” Senior Lieutenant Oleg Sadkov wants to know. He’s the medical doctor and he’s just come up from the dispensary. He’s not much older than Gindin, maybe twenty-six, and is married with one daughter. Sadkov has never had a bad word to say about anyone—officers or enlisted—and everyone likes him because he’s easygoing, open, and honest. Besides that, he’s as skinny as a rail, and with his dark hair and thick mustache he looks like a teenager. No threat to anyone.

Before Gindin can answer, Senior Lieutenant Dimitry Smirnov comes out of his cabin with a deck of cards in his hand and a big grin on his face. He’s the chief navigator and commander of BCH-1 and normally keeps to himself, but this evening he’s just as puzzled as the other officers. Sablin’s called the meeting, Smirnov is sure of it, and he’s not going to give the prick the satisfaction of ruining everyone’s holiday.

Smirnov holds up the deck of cards. “Maybe we’ll have a game and the meeting will turn out okay after all.”

Eighteen officers, plus the captain, and eleven midshipmen are assigned to the Storozhevoy, but including the ones who were on duty at 1900, plus those few on leave, only the captain, eight officers, and four midshipmen are available for the meeting. None of them are happy.

“That’s okay with me,” Boris says. “But in two weeks I’m going to be home with my family. If that means sitting through a boring political meeting with our zampolit and earnestly enjoying what he has to say, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Of course nobody can disobey a direct order. Someone could call in sick, but Soviet naval officers do not operate that way. There’s the same sort of discipline in just about every navy. But there’s also the same sort of griping, including the Soviet navy.

“There’s no reason for this,” Captain Lieutenant Victor Vinokurov mutters half under his breath.

Gindin is near enough in the now-crowded corridor to hear this remark. “It’s Sablin.”

“Maybe so, but the captain has to give his approval for all meetings,” says Vinkurov, who is the commander of BCH-2 in charge of artillery. He’s a tall, blond guy, very strict with his officers. He wants to be captain of his own ship one day. “This is a holiday. There’s no urgency. Nothing has happened to cause such a meeting. It makes no sense, I tell you.”

It makes no sense to Boris, either, but an order is an order, and along with the other officers he heads forward to the midshipmen’s dining hall. It’s one of the largest compartments where the officers can gather on the entire ship. It’s on the port side, toward the bow, and right under the upper deck, on the opposite side of the ship from the Sekretka, the Secret Library where officers have to go to check out the classified documents, blueprints, and manuals for the weapons and equipment under their responsibility.

Once again Gindin is struck by how unnaturally quiet the ship seems. No engine noises, of course, because they are at a mooring, but there are no crewmen running around, making jokes, talking loudly, arguing perhaps. No officers are in their cabins now, the doors open, drinking spirt and telling stories or laughing or debating about something or playing chess, which sometimes can be loud.

Captain Lieutenant Nikolay Proshutinsky, who is in charge of the entire BCH-3 acoustic systems division, storms up the corridor from his cabin. He’s Kuzmin’s boss, and he slaps Sergey on the back.

“Eb tvoiu mat,” Proshutinsky says. It’s a uniquely Russian expression, which literally means “fuck your mother,” but it’s never used in that context. Instead, the phrase means that something is screwed up. Almost like the American GI expression FUBAR—Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. Eb tvoiu mat, what the fuck is going on now?

“I don’t know, Lieutenant,” Kuzmin replies. He gets along well with his boss. “Maybe it’s Sablin going to give us a patriotic speech like last year.”

Proshutinsky is shaking his head ruefully. “Well, if that’s all it is, let’s not keep our good zampolit waiting.” He looks over at Gindin and grins. “Anyway, when we’re done Boris has invited all of us to his cabin for some spirt, isn’t that right?”

They come around a corner and straight ahead is the open door to the midshipmen’s dining hall. It’s this exact point in time that Gindin will remember for the rest of his life, though he doesn’t know it now, but he has developed a very bad feeling. One that he thinks he shares with the other officers. At that moment, for some reason he can’t know, he wishes that he could talk to his father for just a minute or two. Boris wants to ask for some advice. But even if he could somehow magically talk to Iosif, Boris wouldn’t know what to ask for.

Wherever his future lies, it’s just beyond the open door.

10. SOVIET DOGMA

When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, one of the first things they did was rename the Imperial Russian Navy, calling it the RKKF—Raboche-Krest’yansky Krasny Flot, Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Fleet. Next it renamed most of the ships. And then almost nothing happened for fifteen or twenty years. Little or no money was given to build the navy, and the midshipmen graduating from the leadership and engineering schools languished in a fleet that had almost nothing to do.

Remember, it was the battleships Potemkin and Aurora and others that had supported the revolution, but Lenin’s new government, as idealistic and egalitarian as it was supposed to be, had a short memory.

And everyone in the world knew that the new RKKF was little more than a rust-bucket joke. During the negotiations of the Washington Naval Treaty right after WWI when the most powerful nations met to cap the size of the world’s navies to limit the possibility of another war, the Soviet Union was not invited to the table. It was a slap in the face that the new Communist government was completely ignored.

They were busy doing other things, like killing the kulaks, their own people, by the millions. In fact, by the end of WWII, when the body count of Jews killed by Hitler topped 6 million, the body count of kulaks, or peasants, killed by Stalin may have topped 40 million, though nobody knows for sure.

During the Winter War in 1939, the Soviet navy saw a little action in the Baltic, but it wasn’t until Hitler’s 1941 Operation Barbarossa that the Soviet Union finally woke up to the fact that if it wanted to be a world power it needed a modern navy. It was too late to play catch-up in WWII. In fact, most of the Soviet Navy consisted of ex-U.S. Navy Lend-Lease destroyers, and what navy the Soviets had in the Baltic was blocked for the duration in Leningrad and Kronshtadt by German and Finnish minefields. But the seed of an idea had been firmly planted in Moscow.

After the war the Soviets went on an all-out crash program of shipbuilding, starting with submarines from homegrown designs supplemented by designs liberated from the Nazis and liberated from the United States and other Western nations. Although in the early days the Soviets were almost always one generation behind NATO boats, they were cranking out warships at a furious pace.

Next the Soviets turned to their surface fleet, arming just about anything that could float, no matter what size, with a lot of missiles, including the big cruisers of the Kirov class that displaced 24,300 tons and then in the sixties and early seventies their helicopter aircraft carriers the Moskva and Leningrad, followed up by the Kiev-class ships. The Soviets could never hope to match the U.S. advantage in super-carriers, so they had to concentrate on their submarine fleet and ship-to-ship missiles. Anyway Stalin didn’t really understand sea power and did not want to spend the money on aircraft carriers.

All this was during the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin and the race into space on which the Soviets had a lock, while the Soviet navy had all it could do to defend its own coasts from attack or invasion along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans and the Black, Caspian, and Baltic seas. There were four fleets: the Northern, based at Murmansk-Severomorsk, with at one point more than 170 submarines; the Pacific, based at Vladivostok; the Black Sea at Sevastapol; and the Baltic at Baltiysk. Plus by 1975 Soviet flotillas and squadrons were deployed in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean with access to supply and repair ports in Cuba, Syria, Libya, Ethiopia, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, the Seychelles, and Vietnam.

All of that rebuilding, all of the modernization of the fleet, all of the worldwide deployments, all of the drive for parity with NATO, and especially the United States, and all of the Soviet navy’s success belonged to one man, Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov, who understood two basic facts of life. The first was that the Soviet Union had to become a world naval power, with not just a coastal defense force but an arm of the military that could project its power everywhere on the globe. And the second was that the Soviet Union could never hope to match the U.S. Navy ship-for-ship. There wasn’t the time, the money, or the technology to achieve such a dream.

The main threats that the U.S. Navy posed against the Soviet Union were aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines. Gorshkov set about building a navy of warships equipped with powerful missile systems that could damage and sink even a supercarrier, and a navy of warships that could find and sink ballistic missile submarines.

But it wasn’t easy, especially in a nation whose heroes seemed to go in and out of favor faster than Western women’s fashions. His predecessor, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov, was around in 1956 when Nikita Khrushchev came to power and decided to scrap most of the navy’s big surface ships, which in the Party Secretary’s mind were draining the fragile economy. When Kuznetsov objected, he was fired and the forty-six-year-old Gorshkov was appointed to take his place. But the new boss of the Soviet navy knew when to keep his mouth shut, when to slip in through the back door, and when to finesse the Kremlin. In fact, Gorshkov long outlasted Khrushchev.

One of the early examples of how the wily admiral finessed the Kremlin leadership was the way in which he convinced the Communist Party that a strong navy was not only a necessity but also a bona fide part of the Russian national heritage. The superpowers of the United States, Great Britain, and France had convinced the world that Russia’s real power was as a land force. Her great armies were poised to pour across the Polish plains into Western Europe, and nothing but an all-out nuclear war could stop them.

This so-called Land Power Doctrine was imperialistic propaganda and nothing more, according to Gorshkov The doctrine’s only purpose was to keep the USSR from becoming a sea power, yet Russia had the world’s longest coastline and Russians have always loved the sea.

“It’s the Soviet manifest destiny to go to sea,” Gorshkov argued successfully. “Our navy will become the faithful helper of the army.” And the admiral’s timing was impeccable. It was 1962, in the midst of his campaign, when the U.S. Navy blockaded Cuba, turning the Soviet navy away. Moscow was finally convinced, and one of the most powerful and versatile navies of the world was reborn.

Gorshkov realized that a Russian navy faced three major problems: ice, choke points, and long distances. Once he was given the go-ahead, he attacked all three.

Most Soviet navy bases are up around the Arctic Circle or close to it and are frozen over for much of the year. Arkhangel’sk in particular is blocked by ice six months out of the year. Vladivostok in the Far East is unusable for several months each year, and even the Baltic Fleet at Baltiysk and Riga is closed down sometimes for three months.

Gorshkov partially solved the problem by building the world’s most powerful fleet of icebreakers. No longer were the northern ports closed when they were most needed.

The admiral’s solution to the other two problems was as brilliant as it was simple. If it came to war, the U.S. Navy could effectively hold almost the entire Soviet fleet close to home by mining and blockading the narrow passages leading to the open ocean. In the Pacific Ocean the La Perouse Strait, north of Japan, and to the south the Tsushima Strait are the only ways out for the Soviets. In the Atlantic the so-called GIUK, or Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap, could easily be controlled by the Allies. Then there are passages that are even tougher for the Soviet navy: the Turkish and Gibraltar straits, the Suez Canal, and up north the Skagerrak-Kattegat straits.

The way around this was to deploy Russian warships beyond these choke points, so that if it came to a war, they would not be held close to home. But that was the second part of the problem. In the early days Soviet warships could not be resupplied at sea. They had to return home for that. Admiral Gorshkov ordered the design and building of a fleet of supply ships, and he strongly urged the Kremlin to use its considerable diplomatic skills to set up places overseas where Soviet ships could be restocked. Angola, South Yemen, and Cuba were among the first.

As a result of these policy changes, the Storozhevoy stayed out to sea for six months at a stretch and stopped at Havana for something more than Gindin’s trip ashore to visit with VIP wives.

Under Gorshkov the navy became not just a stepchild of the Russian military establishment but an extremely important leg in what was called the nuclear triad for deterrence, which consisted of land-launched nuclear missiles, air-launched nuclear missiles, and nuclear missiles launched usually from ballistic missile submarines. The Soviet navy not only operated a fleet of the largest missile subs but also could launch nukes against NATO from a wide range of surface ships, and its ASW platforms, such as the Storozhevoy, were very good at what they were designed to do. Namely, to protect the Rodina.

So, starting in the sixties the navy became the branch of the military to join, and it attracted a lot of very bright, very ambitious young men into the academies. Which was a great deal. Civilians entering the trades, such as engineering or medicine, would have to work until they were sixty-five before retiring. But naval officers could retire after only twenty-five years of service—which included the five years they spent in the academies. It meant a naval officer could retire around age forty-four or forty-five, a full twenty years earlier than his civilian counterpart. But since the navy was expanding at such a rapid rate, it also relaxed many of the usual Soviet restrictions, such as not admitting Jews to the inner circle. This was exactly Boris Gindin’s ticket, though when he signed up he didn’t realize how difficult the work would be, nor how it would end for him and the rest of the Storozhevoy’s crew.

Once Soviet ships were able to deploy to every part of the world, Groshkov’s next job was to establish its missions beyond the vague but important notion of protecting the Rodina. In the good admiral’s mind there were four basic missions that his navy would have to carry out.

The first and most important was deterrence. Using the fleet, especially its ballistic missile submarines lying just off the U.S. coast, to threaten an all-out attack with no notice and no hope to defend against, the navy was an important tool for preventing a global thermonuclear war from ever happening. Of course Western analysts put a different spin on the issue, looking at the massive Typhoon-class missile subs as offensive, first-strike weapons. It was the same view the Soviets maintained when it came to the U.S. Ohio-class SSBMs.

The second mission was power projection, which the U.S. Marine Corps is so good at. The United States fields 180,000 marines, while the Soviet Naval Infantry only has 12,000 troops. But Gorshkov saw to it that there would be at least one naval infantry regiment in each fleet. It was a start.

The third and fourth missions, for which the Storozhevoy was built and his captain and crew were trained, were sea control and sea presence. In the first, Gorshkov wanted to avoid a war with the West, but if one did happen he wanted the Soviet Union to win. In order to ensure victory he built multi-purpose ships that could launch torpedoes to kill submarines, lay mines to stop surface ships, and fire missiles that could take out both subs and carrier battle groups as well as knock down airplanes. It’s why the Storozhevoy and ships like him carried so many weapons systems and were deployed to every ocean on the planet. Wherever the Americans and their allies planned to deploy their subs and ships and aircraft, the Soviet navy planned to be there waiting for them.

The last mission, that of sea presence, came to Gorshkov via Teddy Roosevelt, who’d promised to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” The idea, according to the admiral, was to send his ships—warships and merchant ships alike—to any nation that would have them. During their visits, which generally coincided with some significant military event or holiday, the navy crews would be sent ashore to organize sporting or musical events. Sometimes their officers would be sent on missions to visit with local dignitaries and their families. In Admiral Gorshkov’s own words:

The admiral, it seemed, bought the Soviet dogma, hook, line, and sinker.

11. TO THE MIDSHIPMEN’S DINING ROOM

Even the finest, most technologically advanced warship, equipped with the most sophisticated deadly weapons systems known to man, is nothing more than a well-crafted hunk of metal, plastic, glass, and rubber without a crew. Soviet officers are just about the same as the officers in any other modern navy. They’re volunteers and pretty well motivated to do their best. Gindin is typical of this class of sailor; he worked very hard to get himself qualified to be selected for a naval academy. And when he got to school he worked ten times as hard to make the grade. For a lot of guys like Gindin, failure is never an option. It’s a mind-set that is about to be severely tested this early evening of November 8.

Once a Soviet officer candidate qualifies for training at a specific school he is sent to either a technical institute, like Gindin’s St. Petersburg Military Engineering Academy, or a surface warfare school, such as Potulniy and Sablin’s Frunze Academy, the most famous of them all in the Soviet Union, very much akin to Annapolis in the United States. As soon as the officer candidate finishes his primary training he’s sent out into the fleet to stand watches and learn the responsibilities of his division. That’s four hours on, four hours of standby, and four hours off, twice in each twenty-four-hour period. But it’s not that easy. Besides learning how to do his own job, the young officer must be a shepherd to his enlisted crew 24/7. That means teaching them the technicalities of each of their jobs and their shipboard responsibilities and duties, such as calisthenics every morning, and giving them their ideological training—the Party doctrine.

On the one hand, if an officer wants to rise to a command position, such as the captain of his own ship, he must master every aspect of every vessel he serves on, learning one or more new jobs each time he goes out on rotation. At the end, when he is finally picked to run his own ship, he first has to serve as an executive officer, starpom, and if he survives that duty he is given a series of very rigorous ship-handling tests that are designed to flunk out all but the very best candidates. The Soviet navy does not want to promote average officers.

At least that’s the theory.

On the other hand, if enlisted crewmen mostly come from the smaller towns and farms, they’re drafted for a three-year term, and except for about twenty-two weeks of shoreside basic training they learn all their skills aboard ship at sea, where just about every minute of their time is rigidly planned. If they aren’t in their cubricks tending to their uniforms or sleeping, they are supposed to be in training, working, or listening to political lectures. Stuff like hanging out for a smoke and a chat with friends, maybe playing a game of cards or lingering over a cup of tea, is strongly discouraged, though these boys are sometimes pretty inventive and every now and then they do find the time for a diversion, the main purpose of which is to get out of work.

Most of them are eighteen or nineteen when they come out to the fleet and are country bumpkins or unsophisticated rustics, what are called muzhiks. And most of them are ignorant, because they’ve grown up in households with no access to television. They know nothing about life in their own country, let alone the outside world. They are naive kids, prostofiljas, and that includes an almost total lack of knowledge about sex. There is no such thing as sex education in Russian schools, nor is the subject ever discussed by parents. Such a thing is simply too embarrassing.

One day a senior sailor from BCH-3 hands a bucket to one of the younger kids and tells him that he has to climb the ladder to the top of the crow’s nest, what is called the observation bridge, remove the uterus up there, put it in the bucket, and bring it back. The kid doesn’t have a clue what the hell a uterus might be, it’s enough that a senior sailor has given him a job to do, and he’ll be damned if he’ll admit he doesn’t know.

“Do you understand your assignment?” he’s asked.

He nods. Of course he understands. But the moment the senior sailor goes away, the kid runs back to his cubrick to find out what he’s supposed to do. By the time he’s finally told exactly what a uterus is and what it does, just about every senior sailor aboard ship is falling on the deck with laughter, while all the other junior sailors are wondering when it’ll be their turn.

Like when one of the senior sailors from Gindin’s section hands one of the new kids a cloth bag.

“Are you aware that there’ll be a major disinfection for medical purposes throughout the entire ship first thing tomorrow morning?” the senior asks.

Of course the muzhik knows nothing about any medical drill, but he nods. After all the sailors aboard ship have gone to bed for the night, the kid is supposed to collect their toothbrushes in the bag and leave it at Dr. Sadakov’s door. The boy does what he’s told. In the morning all the sailors aboard ship get out of their bunks to clean up before exercises, but no one can find his toothbrush. What’s going on? Dr. Sadakov arrives at his dispensary, where he finds a big bag of toothbrushes with no note, and he has to wonder what the hell is going on.

After all is said and done, the young sailor’s boss gives him a very good piece of advice: “Be smarter next time. Try to actually use your brain instead of merely carrying it around.” On the other hand, Russians carry their souls just under their skin. It’s a common heritage, as an old Russian proverb provides: We are all related; the same sun dries our rags.

Mischa Mihailov was one of the typical sailors aboard the Storozhevoy in that he was average in just about everything he did. Gindin recalls that Mischa never showed any passion for his work, though he did have some fairly good basic knowledge of the machinery. If he could get out of a job, he would do it without a moment’s hesitation.

But Mischa could play the guitar and sing Russian songs until there wasn’t a dry eye in his cubrick. Whenever he had time off, usually just before bed, the other sailors would beg him to sing. Especially one particular song that back on base was played all the time on the radio:

The song had been approved by the Kremlin just for sailors like those aboard the Storozhevoy, and whenever it was played everyone, sailors and officers alike, couldn’t help but get a little misty-eyed.

“It was glorifying and praising us for the tough job we did far from home,” Gindin says. “It represented the value and the morality of our Soviet system, and what was important and what deserved to be honored.

“It uplifted our spirits, made us proud of what we did far from our homes and families. It gave us an incredible sense of accomplishment that our people and our government knew and appreciated how difficult our mission was.”

A warship’s mission and the morale of his crew are bound together tighter than anyone who never served in a navy can understand. And both elements come from the top down. Although Potulniy wasn’t as close to his sailors as was Sablin, everyone knew that the captain was a first-class officer who understood the ship and his systems better than anyone else aboard.

Potulniy was in his late thirties when he was assigned to the Storozhevoy, and he was very proud of his position. He spent most of his time either on the bridge or wandering around his ship to make sure that everything was working the way it should be and that his crew was doing their jobs. His personality and style of command was actually a perfect balance between Sablin’s friendliness and Novozilov’s strictness.

Captain Lieutenant Nikolay Novozilov was the Storozhevoy’s executive officer, starpom, and if ever there was a no-nonsense officer it was the exec. He was a perfectionist. Everything needed to be done accurately and on time, with no excuses. There wasn’t an ounce of pity in the man’s body, as Gindin remembers, and he simply didn’t want to hear the circumstances behind any lapse in duty. If Novozilov thought his orders weren’t being carried out to the letter, he’d come down like a ton of bricks on the hapless sailor or officer. Your rank didn’t matter; he was equally tough on everyone aboard.

“He was the kind of officer you never took personal problems to,” Gindin recalls. “He didn’t care. He was beyond that sort of thing. For him the only priority was the ship.”

Heading down the corridor to the midshipmen’s corridor this chilly Riga evening, Gindin is somewhat relieved that at least for the moment they don’t have to worry about Novozilov showing up and finding fault with something his officers had done yesterday or today. Their starpom went home on leave to his wife and kid. His presence aboard isn’t really needed for the short cruise down to the shipyard and the refit. He’ll be back when they get to the base at Baltiysk and will once again put them through the wringer before their next rotation.

Or at least that’s what Gindin and the others believe at this moment in time.

12. THE SHIPBOARD SCHEDULE

The Storozhevoy is a little universe all of its own, connected to Fleet Headquarters only by radio while at sea. The captain is the supreme authority, of course. He has the power of life and death over his crew. His eighteen officers are his standard-bearers, responsible for every detail 24/7. That means if an ordinary sailor makes a mistake, the first person to take the heat will be the officer in charge of his section. And the punishments, especially when Novozilov is involved, will be swift and harsh. More than one Soviet naval officer’s career has been short-circuited because he didn’t pay attention to how his sailors were behaving.

Two schedules are kept aboard ship. The routine daily one that starts with wake-up at six in the morning and ends with bedtime at ten in the evening. Intertwined is the duty schedule in which every sailor and officer works eight hours per twenty-four, is on call for eight hours, and is off for eight hours. That means everybody aboard adheres to both schedules at the same time, which can be grueling.

At 0600 reveille sounds and everyone in bed gets up. The ship’s day has begun, and for the next thirty minutes everyone who can be spared from duty comes up on deck for exercises, no matter the weather. These are push-ups, jogging in place, stretches, and sit-ups. Afterward the men have a half hour to clean up and get dressed for duty.

Showers aboard a Soviet warship are almost as rare as democratic elections. Freshwater is very scarce, so everyone, even officers, is allowed to take a shower only every few weeks, perhaps once a month. It’s just a fact of life aboard that no one questions.

After the first week at sea everyone stinks to high heaven—but it’s everyone, so after a while no one seems to notice. But when you do get to take a shower and change into clean clothes you suddenly realize that everyone else smells really bad.

Since Lieutenant Gindin is in charge of the water makers and water-heating equipment he can be one of the more popular officers aboard.

Breakfast starts at 0700 and can last as long as forty-five or fifty minutes. It’s when everyone gets to talk about the coming duty day or perhaps problems on the overnight shifts or about family and kids and letters from home. And it’s the time to tell jokes—but never about a man’s wife or girlfriend. It is an unwritten rule. Duty at sea is tough enough without worrying about your wife because one of your fellow officers told an off-color joke and put an idea into your head.

If Potulniy or Novozilov or even Sablin is in the officers’ dining hall while they are in port, the jokes cease and everyone finishes eating as quickly as possible and gets back to work.

“We had to prove that we didn’t have any extra time on our hands,” Gindin says.

But at sea the atmosphere, at least in the dining hall, is more relaxed, even when the captain is there. Everyone tells jokes, because the pressure on them is enormous and a good belly laugh provides a little relief.

Even Potulniy isn’t above playing a little practical joke. The Storozhevoy had a new dietary officer assigned to the crew. His main job was to take charge of all the food and miscellaneous supplies aboard. According to the duty roster, he was listed as an assistant to the captain. This dietary officer had never gone to any naval academy to learn a profession; he got his rank in an army college before he was sent out to the fleet, but as a captain’s assistant he thought that he was a pretty big deal.

So a few days out, Potulniy sends the dietary officer to do a complete inventory of all the food and supplies, and when he is finished he bumps into Boris in a corridor.

“The inventory is finished, Comrade Lieutenant,” the big shot says, a self-important smile plastered on his rat face.

But Boris has caught on right away. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean? I checked everything!”

“But not the lifeboats. They have to be checked for supplies such as chocolate and spirt. You know, in case we have to abandon ship we’ll need those things in order to survive. But a lot of the time the sailors get into the lifeboats and steal everything.”

Of course this is simply not true. Lifeboats are hermetically sealed in canisters and open automatically when they are launched into the water.

“I’ll take care of it immediately, Comrade.”

“But you’ll need the captain’s permission first,” Boris reminds the young officer.

The next day at lunch in the officers’ dining hall Potulniy introduces the new dietary officer to the others. “How do you like this?” the captain says. “Our new lieutenant has never seen a ship before, except in a picture, and now he wants my permission to open all our lifeboats to check the supplies. What do you think?”

The joke is on the hapless lieutenant, and the other officers have a good laugh, in part because the guy was such a self-important ass but also because the captain has just shown them that he’s human after all.

At 0800 everyone not stuck at their duty stations assembles on deck to salute the raising flag. This is another time that the crew, especially the officers, is feeling a wave of patriotism. It’s the same in every navy; some of the crew are happy to salute their flag, while others couldn’t be bothered. And all of the patriots pretty well know who’s in the other group.

The first four-hour duty shift begins at midnight, the second at 0400, and the third at 0800. So it is right after the flag ceremony when the oncoming crews assemble in the dining areas, where they meet their officers, who escort them to their duty stations to conduct the first equipment checks of their shift.

During each twenty-four-hour period one officer and a sailor-assistant are assigned the responsibility for the entire ship. It’s their job to make sure that the proper officers show up at their assigned times. During the evening hours, from ten at night until six in the morning, it’s the sailor’s job to go up to each duty officer’s cabin and remind him that his shift is coming up. During the daytime hours, it’s the officer in charge who makes the announcements over the 1MC, the ship’s intercom.

The officers not on duty from 0900 until noon on alternate Mondays are expected to teach political classes to the sailors in their divisions. No one likes this job except for Sablin, who often volunteers to handle it for the officers. No one turns down the zampolit.

On all other days, from 0900 to noon, the standby officers make sure that their areas of responsibility are clean and conduct training sessions for their sailors on the equipment and on their military duties and responsibilities.

From noon to 1300 is lunch, and afterward until 1400 is something called admiral’s hour. It’s when everyone aboard ship who isn’t on duty gets to relax. It’s about the only time in the day that anyone gets a real break, although some officers find little things for their sailors to finish up, and of course the inventive sailors make damned sure they’re nowhere in sight when their officer comes looking. It is admiral’s hour, after all.

The 1400 period starts with a glass of juice for every sailor aboard, followed by two hours of training on emergency procedures: military actions including biological or chemical attack—the Storozhevoy is a warship—as well as the usual emergency procedures covering fires, man overboards, and other accidents.

From 1600 to 1800, more ship cleaning—this time not only the duty stations but every square centimeter of the ship is washed and polished. That includes the crew’s cubricks and the officers’ cabins.

From 1800 to 1900 is dinner, and from 1900 until 2030 is another free period. But this is one of the times when sailors and officers alike are expected to play catch-up with whatever they didn’t have a chance to finish earlier. And there’s always some of that.

A warship at sea, even in time of peace, is an extremely high-maintenance master that demands loving care and attention every minute of every day.

From 2030 until 2100 everyone aboard is served evening tea. The sailors get one slice of bread while the officers get bread, butter, and cookies.

Then until 2200 hours, or 10:00 P.M., it’s time to prepare for bed, when it’s lights-out, except for the officer of the day and his sailor-assistant, the on-duty officers and the sailors in their divisions, and the on-call officers who are expected to take over if the duty officers need to step away from their posts for whatever reasons.

In an emergency, like what happened in the Mediterranean Sea when the Storozhevoy was on the way to Cuba, everyone is on duty; no one rests. At any other given time one-third of the ship’s personnel are on duty, one-third are on call, and one-third are off duty.

When Boris goes on duty just after the morning’s flag ceremony, he collects his crew of seven sailors and one midshipman in the midshipmen’s mess and after a few words leads them down to the machinery spaces. Among his crew are a pair of diesel specialists who watch over the engines that generate the ship’s electricity, one electrician who makes sure the power distribution equipment and panels are maintained in working order, one steam specialist who makes certain that the equipment and piping to create and manage steam for heating water and the ship’s compartments work, one fuel specialist who not only monitors how much fuel the ship is using and how much is left but also makes sure that the fuel pumps are up to par, and one midshipman who is in training for a job like Gindin’s.

The last two of Boris’s crew are the gas turbine specialists whose job is to make sure that the two marching engines and the pair of boost engines are doing what they’re supposed to do. As soon as these two guys get to the engine room and before the old crew is relieved, the specialists check the books. Each of the engines has its own log in which the gas turbine specialists record the oil pressure, temperature, RPMs, air pressure, and a host of other readings, along with any problems that may have cropped up during the shift. Then they physically inspect all four engines, making sure that nothing is wrong, nothing is leaking, and all the gauges are reading what they’re supposed to be reading, and then they finally sign the books. That means these two guys have accepted responsibility for the engines, under Gindin’s supervision, and the old crew can go on standby for the next four hours.

Of course if it’s one of the alternate Mondays the officer will have to take his crew up to their cubrick and teach them about Marx and Lenin and how the great Soviet experiment is a model for all mankind. It doesn’t matter if the men had worked nonstop their entire shift and are filthy dirty, covered in oil and grease, and just want to get a little sleep; Marx and Lenin come first.

The worst part is when Potulniy decides that he wants to conduct a uniform inspection on deck. It’s usually on these occasions when, covered in oil, Boris is rushing to his sailors’ cubricks to make sure that they are cleaned up and their uniforms are in order and ready for inspection that he runs into a fellow officer, all spick-and-span.

“So, Boris, how is it going, then?” the officer asks sarcastically, knowing full well exactly how it’s going. He’s been there himself before and will probably be in the same spot again before long. It’s just a little joke they have with each other. “Poshel na khyi” (go fuck yourself), Boris says tiredly but good-naturedly.

During the shift, nothing at all might happen, except that his sailors will check the gauges and log the readings every hour. Especially the late-night and early-morning shifts. If nothing goes wrong with the equipment and the bridge does not ring for a change in the RPMs, Gindin and his crew might actually catch a few minutes of sleep now and then. Or maybe some of his more inventive crew might find a diversion, like stealing potatoes and cooking them. Or stealing some of the spirt they are supposed to use to clean equipment and hiding it in a fire extinguisher. Every now and then on their off-duty time, if Boris isn’t watching, they might pause in front of the fire extinguisher for just a second. Plenty of time for a little sip. Makes a night pass a little faster.

Besides making sure that his sailors are doing their jobs, Boris has his own rounds every hour, during which he listens to each turbine using what amounts to a stethoscope to make sure nothing inside the engines is starting to go bad.

Smoking isn’t allowed in the engine room, so from time to time one of the other off-duty officers will stop by to relieve Boris for a few minutes. He goes up on deck and grabs a quick smoke. From time to time he returns the favor. It’s another of the military systems that are not in the regulations but seem to work just fine.

Then there is the almost continuous training. It’s up to Gindin to make sure all the sailors in his section know their jobs. That means, besides maintaining the gas turbines and other equipment, he has to take each of his sailors step-by-step through every single procedure from starting the engines to shutting them down and everything in between. That also means that Boris must intimately know every single nut, bolt, lever, and knob, shaft and gear in his entire section. It’s a very important responsibility that Boris has taken to heart from the day he graduated from the academy. His job is 24/7, and besides teaching his sailors he keeps himself up-to-date.

Other than Captain Potulniy, Boris Gindin probably knows the ship better than anyone else aboard.

There is perhaps a little fog beginning to form along the Daugava River, curling in wispy tendrils in and among the warships at anchor. Elsewhere in the assembled fleet sailors and officers not on duty are relaxing in their cubricks or cabins, maybe reading or watching television in one of the dining halls. This is the Gulf of Riga, on the same latitude as northern Newfoundland, protected from the open Baltic Sea only by the island of Saaremaa, so it is a very cold place in November. This is not Gindin’s home, and there have been times since his father’s death, like right now, that Boris feels a crushing sense of loneliness. He wants to get this meeting over with, he wants to get the Storozhevoy to the shipyard for his refit, he wants to sail back to base, and then he wants to spend some time with his mother and sister and other relatives. Then, if everything goes as he hopes it will, he will get the shoreside job that Potulniy has promised to help with, so that he can find a wife, settle down, have children, and get on with the rest of his life.

It’s a happy prospect for him, yet he cannot shake the sense of doom that has been riding over his shoulder like a mid-Atlantic squall ready to pounce.

13. SABLIN’S PLEA

The windowless midshipmen’s dining hall with fluorescent lights casting a sickly flat light is on the starboard side, just aft of the flaring bow. It’s a plain, dull compartment with no pictures on the pale green walls and linoleum on the steel deck. Two long dining tables, with gray plastic covers, seat three or four in chairs along one side and, curiously, sofas with dark blue covers on the other. A small plastic table with a brown plastic bin is positioned on the left side of the room, and in the center is another small table where Sablin is standing in his uniform. Along the back wall is a tiny room that holds the movie projector.

“Comrades, take a seat, please,” Sablin tells the officers as they shuffle in. Perhaps he is stepping nervously from foot to foot.

There are fourteen of them, but the tables are only meant to seat twelve, so they have to crowd together. Gindin figures it doesn’t really matter, hoping they’ll be out of here and back to their quarters in a few minutes, maybe a half hour.

“We ought to have a few drinks tonight,” Firsov says, sitting down with his roommate. “Proshutinsky was right: You’ve got enough spirt to go around.”

“We’ll see when we get done with this stupid meeting,” Gindin replies half under his breath. He looks over his shoulder as the last of the officers come in. “Where’s the captain?”

“He’ll be here,” Firsov says.

Everyone is talking at once, ignoring the zampolit. Yesterday was a holiday and no one is in a mood to listen to what is probably going to be another patriotic speech about serving the great Soviet people.

Sablin holds up a hand. “Settle down, please. This is important.”

“Pardon me, Comrade Sablin,” Gindin speaks up. “Where is the captain?”

“Stop talking now, so we can get on with this meeting,” Sablin says.

Gindin looks over his shoulder just as Alexander Shein, one of the ratings, closes the door on them. Their eyes meet for just a moment, but then Shein slips into the projection booth and closes that door. “What the hell—?”

“What’d you say?” Firsov asks.

“That was Shein. He’s in the projection room.”

Firsov glances over his shoulder at the door, a look of puzzlement on his face. “What the hell are you talking about? What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Gindin says, but his stomach is doing a slow roll.

Every sailor aboard is assigned a duty area that he has to keep clean. Shein’s duty area includes Gindin’s and Firsov’s cabin. He did his job without complaining, but he’s also struck Gindin as being a little bit sneaky. The other sailors are watching a movie in their own dining hall, so what is Shein doing up here, closing the door and hiding in the projection room?

No one else has noticed, but gradually the other men begin to settle down, until finally the dining hall is quiet.

“To answer your question, Lieutenant, Captain Potulniy is in his quarters resting,” Sablin says. He isn’t smiling, like usual. “In fact, he told me that I was to conduct this meeting and he did not want to be bothered.”

“Why is the door closed?”

Sablin shrugs indifferently. “So we will not be disturbed, Lieutenant.” He looks at the others crammed together at the tables. “What I have to say to you tonight is very important; I want you to know that from the start.”

“This is a holiday; what’s the problem?” one of the other officers asks. Gindin isn’t sure who it is, but the others grumble their agreement.

There is a tightening in Sablin’s eyes, as if he is a little uncertain what to do next. Gindin has never seen this look of hesitancy on the zampolit’s face before, and it adds to Boris’s already tense mood.

Something wasn’t right. But Sablin was a senior officer and they had to follow the chain of command. If he said there was to be a meeting of all officers, then there was no questioning such an order. But all of them thought it was a damned odd thing just then.

All of a sudden Sablin stops his fidgeting and stands a little taller, his shoulders squared, his expression set. It’s as if he’s made a difficult decision and he’s just realized that it’s the right one. He blinks as if he’s coming out of a sleep, but he is not smiling, and this is the most disturbing thing of all. The Sablin standing in the middle of the room, facing the eight officers and six midshipmen, isn’t the Sablin whom they have come to know. He is a completely different man, all of a sudden.

“His face did not reflect any holiday mood,” Gindin relates. “There wasn’t so much as a hint of a smile, or some kind of friendliness, his usual sociable self. Nothing like that. He was different. It was like seeing another side of him that we’d never seen before.”

Gindin looks around the room at the other officers, and he can see that they share his misgivings.

“What I am saying to you tonight, and what I am asking you to do, is not a betrayal of the Rodina. I want to make that very clear. I’m simply making a political declaration about the bureaucracy and the corruption that has taken over our country.

“Everyone here knows exactly what I am talking about. The great principles of Marx and Lenin have been totally perverted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party.”

Gindin cannot believe what he is hearing. He glances over at Firsov and then at the other officers, and he can see by their expressions that they are as confused as he is. Is this some sort of a test that Sablin is giving them? To find out how deep their loyalty to the Motherland runs?

“You know that all Russians are not treated equally. You can see that very problem here aboard ship, and everywhere you go you can see that the poor dumb muzhiks never have their day in court. They never have the same rights as we do.”

Firsov catches Gindin’s eye and he shrugs. Eb tvoiu mat, what the fuck is going on?

Gindin shakes his head, completely baffled. It’s even possible that Sablin has lost his mind. It’s happened to other sailors and officers during or just after a difficult rotation. Maybe Sablin is having troubles at home with his family. Maybe he’s just found out that he has an illness. Maybe cancer.

“Each of us has to admit, to honestly confess, that we have no control whatsoever over what happens in the Kremlin or anywhere else in the Soviet Union. That means we can’t do a thing to help fix the problems the Rodina is faced with. We are powerless to force our state and political institutions to make right what is wrong.”

Gindin suddenly begins to get a glimmer of where Sablin is going with this speech, and his blood runs cold. There is a sharp, hard knot in the pit of his stomach that feels like a ball of molten steel.

For the first time in his life Gindin is truly frightened to the depth of his soul. Not only for himself but also for all of his fellow officers in this room, including Sablin, who most certainly has lost his mind to even hint at criticizing the Party.

It’s treason!

“I have studied the problem for a long time. Our leaders over the past fifty years have done nothing more than produce a system in which the Russian people are trapped in a foul atmosphere where they are required to blindly follow orders with never a question.

“We live in a system of censorship and tyranny where everyone is afraid to make any criticisms of the Party, even though we can all plainly see that the Party has lied to us. Is lying to us!”

“Just wait a second,” someone from Gindin’s left shouts. Maybe it’s Kuzmin, but whoever it is, he’s angry.

Some of the others are grumbling, too.

Sablin holds up a hand for silence, and after a few seconds the room settles down.

“The system needs to be changed, Comrades. We are quick to make jokes, but we are just as quick to shed tears when we think of the future of the Rodina. The situation in our country has become dangerous. The Party tells us that everything is fine, yet the people can see that is a lie. The older people are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their pensions. And the young people like you know the difference between Party slogans and Party deeds.”

“What are you saying, Comrade zampolit?” one of the officers asks.

“The system must be changed in order for us to achieve the true democracy that Lenin promised us,” Sablin says, his voice clear and firm, totally without doubts. “The Party must be overthrown. It is time again for revolution.”

Gindin is more than shocked, he is stunned. No one talks about these things. No one is allowed, by law, to talk about these things. Even to think this way is treason. Even to listen this way is treason. To be in the same room with a man talking this way is treason.

Still, Gindin holds out the slim hope that the zampolit is merely testing their loyalty to the Communist government and to the Party. He is the political officer, after all, and it is his job to find out whom to trust. But not this way.

Sadkov is half off his seat, his eyes narrowed, his jaw set, but again Sablin holds up a hand to calm them down.

“How can you even suggest such a thing?” the doctor shouts.

“You’re the political officer aboard this ship! You’re a Communist and a member of the Bolshevik Party.”

“It’s because I am a good Communist that I am raising my voice—,” Sablin tries to interrupt, but Sadkov won’t hear it.

“Where were you raised? How can you even talk about these things?” Sadkov shouts. He looks at the other officers for their support. “This is against our country’s morals!”

Proshutinsky jumps to his feet. “Enough of this!” he shouts. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”

Senior Lieutenant Vinogradov gets up. He, too, has had enough, and he’s going to leave.

“Sit down!” Sablin cries. “Right now! That’s an order!”

For a very long, pregnant moment, no one in the room moves a muscle. But ever so slowly Sadkov sits down, followed by Proshutinsky and Vinogradov. Sablin is a superior officer. His orders are to be obeyed. It’s the same system in every military organization.

Gindin cannot comprehend what is happening. Everything he’s grown up with as a good Russian, everything he has been taught in the academy, and everything he’s learned aboard ship tells him that the situation he finds himself in is not possible.

Gindin wonders if Sablin is trying to defect to the West. It has happened before, though nothing was ever officially published about such treasonous acts. But everybody knows that things like that happen. And everybody knows what the punishment is. It’s called Russian insurance. Nine ounces. In other words, a 9mm bullet to the back of the head.

A strange, uneasy silence descends upon the midshipmen’s mess. Everyone is sitting down, looking at Sablin, and he’s standing up looking at them.

“I want to sail the Storozhevoy to Kronshtadt,” he tells us. It’s about six hundred kilometers to the northeast and is at the entrance to Leningrad.

No one says a thing. None of them know what to say.

“When we get there we will ask the Kremlin to, first of all, treat us as a separate military base and then give us access to a television station and a radio station. I will speak directly to the Russian people and ask them to join us in the fight against injustice.

“This day of celebration for the October Revolution will be symbolic of our struggle. The people will understand. They will be with us, you’ll see. It will be just like when the Potemkin and Aurora rose up in protest. The people rose up in support and the revolution began.”

The irony of this situation strikes Gindin right between the eyes. In the first place, Sablin is the one officer aboard the Storozhevoy whose loyalty is completely beyond question. He is the Communist Party aboard ship. His is the final word in anything that has to do with politics.

And in the second place, all of them in this room are condemned men as of this moment. It won’t just be Sablin preaching treason who will be punished; it will be all of those who listened.

“Now you must make a decision,” Sablin says. “Each of you must search your conscience to find out what is right for you but, more important, what is right for the Rodina.”

He takes the plastic container from the table on the left. The bin holds backgammon pieces, white and black. He sets a white piece and a black piece in front of each officer.

“Now you must choose,” he tells them. “If you are with me, put a white piece into the bin. But if you oppose my effort to save the Motherland, then put a black piece in the bin.”

He’s standing in the middle of the room looking at them, challenging the officers to do the right thing, whatever that might be.

“I promise you that your vote will be secret, if you want it to—,” he says. But all of a sudden he stops speaking. Perhaps he realizes just how stupid his promise really is. After this evening, nothing any of them will do aboard the Storozhevoy will be secret.

Especially not from the KGB.