Forwarded from Nestor (Valery Sablin)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

 In 1975, a KGB officer who believed in Communism and the October
Revolution led a mutiny which attempted to sparkle a popular revolt against
the bureaucratic rule in the Soviet Union. The horror that this event sent
down the spine of the bureaucrats can be gauged by the events that befell
on the episode (not only on the characters) after this officer, Valery
Sablin, failed in his attempt.

I am sending on this post some partially colliding sources on the issue.
Firstly, an article from the Washington Post. Second, an article by Alan
Woods. Thirdly, a reference in an US Army paper on discipline.

1. Washington Post.

Available at http://www.mit.edu/afs/net/user/tytso/usenet/americast/wpost/1350

Soviet Navy's Rebel With a Cause;
Officer Staged 1975 Mutiny to Save Communism From Itself
By Fred Hiatt

MOSCOW - The strange case of Valery Sablin didn't make the news- papers;
most Russians knew nothing about it at the time. Even other naval officers
learned of the affair hazily, through the usual Soviet filter of fear and
wild rumor.

A madman had hijacked a ship, they were told. A Swedish spy had made a run
for Stockholm. A disgruntled officer had sparked a mutiny. There were
grains of truth in every tantalizing, whispered version, but no one in 1975
could grasp the real truth: an honest man in the corrupted, cynical Soviet
Union had tried to stand up and speak the truth.

This is the story of a Soviet martyr, an idealistic and perhaps crazy navy
captain who tried, and failed, to sail his ship up Leningrad's Neva River
and rally the people against Soviet power. It is the story of an officer
who believed both in Lenin and democracy, in revolution and honesty - who
believed his leaders had betrayed the noble Bolshevik cause. And the story
of Valery Sablin is, by now, also the story of Nikolai Cherkashin, who,
like Sablin, was a navy captain in 1975 - and who has been haunted by
Sablin's story ever since.

In today's Russia, Sablin's communist idealism may seem quaint, if not
downright dangerous. Lenin has been discredited; few people mention the
ruthless Bolshevik and democracy in the same breath.

And yet, in the moral muddle that is Russia today - where no one has stood
trial for political crimes, where the agents of repression remain in their
old offices with new titles on their doors - the unblinking, impossible
idealism of Valery Sablin seems in some ways more attractive than ever.

(clip)

2.Alan Woods's notes on Sablin's attempt.

http://www.newyouth.com/archives/russia/red_october_true_story_20000912.asp

A Leninist Hero of our Times In Memory of Valery Sablin: The true story of
Red October

By Alan Woods

September 12, 2000

"Trust the fact that history will judge events honestly and you will never
have to be embarrassed for what your father did. On no account ever be one
of those people who criticise but do not follow through their actions. Such
people are hypocrites - weak, worthless people who do not have the power to
reconcile their beliefs with their actions. I wish you courage, my dear. Be
strong in the belief that life is wonderful. Be positive and believe that
the Revolution will always win. (Valery Sablin's last letter to his son
before his execution)

On Thursday 7 September, Channel Four broadcast a fascinating programme as
part of its series Secret History, entitled Mutiny - the true story of Red
October. This remarkable documentary for the first time gave us the true
story behind the 1990 Hollywood movie The Hunt for Red October a film
version of a 1984 novel by Tom Clancy. Clancy's story of Marko Ramius, a
defecting submarine captain who takes his ship on an epic voyage across the
Atlantic, was inspired by real events.

The author took as his starting point a mutiny led by Valery Sablin on the
Soviet warship the Sentry (Storozhevoy, in Russian) in November 1975. As he
explains in his book, 'There is a precedent for this, sir. On November 8,
1975, the Storozhevoy, a Soviet Krivak-class missile frigate, attempted to
run from Riga, Latvia, to the Swedish island of Gotland. The political
officer aboard, Valery Sablin, led a mutiny of the enlisted personnel.
Sablin and 26 others were court-martialled and shot.' However, the real
story of the Red October was hidden at the time by the Soviet government
and only now have been revealed.

Until the end of the Cold War western intelligence believed that the crew
was going to defect, and this was the basis of Clancy's book and the film.
However, new evidence which emerged during the last days of the Soviet
Union and which was revealed in the Channel Four programme shows that
Clancy's account is inaccurate. The aim of the Sentry was not to defect to
the West, nor could it be because the leader of the mutiny, Valery Sablin
was a committed Communist. His intention was not to flee to the West, but
to provoke a political revolution in the USSR with the aim of overthrowing
the rule of the privileged Stalinist bureaucracy and restoring a genuine
regime of Leninist soviet democracy. As the programme's notes put it: "A
fervent believer in Communism, Sablin was making for Leningrad (now St
Petersburg). Inspired by the memory of the battleship Potemkin, which had
mutinied during the rising of 1905, and by the cruiser Aurora, which had
ignited the revolution of 1917, he hoped that his mutiny would spark a new
rebellion in Leningrad, and complete what he saw as the unfinished Russian
Revolution."

This is a true-life story that is richer, more extraordinary and more
moving than even the finest works of fiction. It will undoubtedly inspire
the workers and youth of Russia and the entire world. This marvellous
documentary deserves the widest possible audience.

Who was Valery Sablin?

Valery Mikhailovich Sablin was the son and grandson of naval officers, and
followed in their footsteps by enlisting in the Frunze Naval Academy at the
age of 16. His entire background instilled into him from an early age a
profound love of the sea and the navy, a deep sense of duty, military
discipline and Soviet patriotism. But Sablin was not only a military man,
he was first and foremost a Communist and a child of the October
Revolution. This is what gave the inner meaning to his life and his every
action.

(clip)


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org