A daring escape from Russia

• daring escape from Russia

In December 1974, news agencies tapes all over the world gets sensational news: "Escaping from the USSR. A citizen of the Soviet Union plunged into the Pacific Ocean on board the ship. " Among the details of what a man has overcome a hundred kilometers of swimming without food, water or rest, and made it to the Philippines. How is this possible? Oceanographer scientist Stanislav KURILOV really wanted to leave the USSR. So much so, that it will not stop the Iron Curtain, nor the status of restricted to travel abroad, nor night, nor unfamiliar sea.

A daring escape from Russia A daring escape from Russia

Stanislav Kurilov was born in 1936 in the city of Ordzhonikidze. He began swimming as a child, which is held in Semipalatinsk. Already in the 10 years he was able to swim across the river Irtysh. Large water and beckoned him, he tried to get undocumented cabin boy on the Baltic Fleet. The beginning was to study social psychology at the Pedagogical Institute, Stanislav KURILOV joined the Nautical School, graduated from it, and then graduated from the Leningrad Meteorological Institute, "oceanography".

A daring escape from Russia

After graduation next fugitive worked at a branch of the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad and trained deep-sea diving in the Marine Biology Institute in Vladivostok. Around this time he became interested in yoga, studying it in samizdat. KURILOV really wanted to go on business trips abroad, but he again and again refused, citing various reasons. One of them was the presence of relatives who lived abroad: Kurilova sister married an Indian and lived in India, and then moved to Canada. For scientists entrenched the status of restricted to travel abroad, but KURILOV was not so simple: he decided to trick the system. He has long cherished the idea of ​​escape, but finally matured it by accident, when he came across an advertisement for a cruise on board the "Soviet Union" in the Pacific. According to the route, the ship departs from Vladivostok to equatorial waters, then swam back, without entering into any foreign port. That is why travelers are not required to get the permission to travel, visas and all that bureaucratic hell, awaiting anyone who planned to briefly leave the country.

A daring escape from Russia

8 December 1974 the ship "Soviet Union" blew his departure from Vladivostok, and Stanislav Kurilova countdown to the most, perhaps, a daring escape operation in the history of the USSR. As luck would have it, the ship was the least suited to him to escape: the bottom side round off the tank system passive neutralizing pitching. This system also included hydrofoils width of about half a meter. If you would smoke jumped from side to side, it would just cut through these wings.

Still, it was a place on board the ship, which could jump: breaker for the blades of the propeller. The night of December 13 when the ship turned out to be about 100 kilometers west of Siargao Island, which is part of the Philippines, Stanislav KURILOV jumped into the water. Almost three days he sailed without stopping to sleep and not being with no food, no drinking water. How he managed to overcome this ordeal? It may have helped long-term yoga. Maybe scientist selected the correct equipment. Most likely, it is very fortunate that the storms, jellyfish and sharks walked by his side, and the sun barely peeks out from behind the clouds. December 15 Kurilova underfoot was dry land.

A daring escape from Russia

The Fugitive became the focus of the investigation the Philippine authorities, but friendly relations with the Soviet Union, the country was not, therefore Kurilova not given. Far in the country, where the scientist lived for 38 years, later he will make a judgment in absentia 10 years in prison for treason. But he did it already did not care: he began to live the life they dream of and to move forward in their research work. He participated in expeditions and travels, including visited the North Pole. After the Philippines, he was in Canada, where he started as a laborer, but gradually fell back in his favorite element: began to work in companies, dedicated to marine research.

A daring escape from Russia

In one of the workers travel in the US Stanislav KURILOV met with Israeli writers Alexander and Nina Voronel. They invited him to Israel, and there he met his fate - Elena Gendelev. In 1986 they married, and smoking has moved to Israel, where he joined the Haifa Institute of Oceanography. In the same year in an Israeli magazine "22" has been published novel Kurilova "Escape". Excerpts from it reached readers in the homeland only in 1991, published in the magazine "Ogonyok".

Stanislav KURILOV lived the element of water, and she's swallowed it. January 29, 1998 while diving on the Sea of ​​Galilee in Israel, he and his partner are exempt from fishing nets equipment installed at the bottom. KURILOV entangled in, he ran out of the air supply, and is not able to save. In 2012, director Alexei Litvintsev made a documentary about Stanislav Kurilova "Alone in the ocean." His first show on the air "Russia 1" on December 16 of the same year: