He spent almost three days in the Pacific Ocean, escaping from the Soviet Union from a cruise ship...

About the cruise "From winter to summer" Slava Kurilov learned by reading an ad in a Leningrad newspaper. It was December 1974. The Sovetsky Soyuz liner set off on a 20-day journey from Vladivostok to the equator and back without calling at foreign ports.

Having removed fur coats and fur hats away, the Soviet citizens "left into the gap." Sunbathed under the tropical sun, swam in the pools of the ship. "Behind the door of every cabin - music, drunken cries, moans of love ... Tourists indulged in fun every precious day of vacation",- S. Kurilov will write later. For appearances, he took part in general gatherings, but he himself peered more into the ocean, followed the stars, studied the ship ... And he realized that he could only jump from the stern of the main deck right under the propeller ... Dangerous ... Besides, he knew it is only an approximate route - the liner went south past about. Taiwan and Philippines. When the ship will be in the open ocean, and when close to the coast - is unknown. Only on the third day did he discover an accurate map with dates and make the final decision to escape.

Liner "Soviet Union" in the port of Vladivostok. Photo: RIA Novosti / Viktor Chernov

The escape

On the night of December 13, when the rest of the tourists were having fun on the dance floor, Kurilov took a bag with fins, a mask and a snorkel, covered it with a towel and went aft ... “I asked God for good luck - and took my step into the unknown, - he will write later . - He surfaced, turned his head and ... froze with fear. Near me, at arm's length - the huge hull of the liner and its giant rotating propeller!

The first night he sailed through the lights of the departing ship. Then, scolding himself for not taking a compass, he was guided at night by the stars, and during the day he went astray ... Thunder, lightning, giant waves, a tropical downpour, a rolling panic, sharks swimming past and poisonous physalian jellyfish that if they hit, there will be paralysis ... On the second day, he finally saw the shore, but a strong current carried him back, and it seemed that there were no more chances for salvation ... But Kurilov was happy! Because there was him, the ocean and no one else around! “The ocean breathed like a living, dear, kind creature. As soon as you tilt your head to the water, a fantastic phosphorescent world opens up to your eyes ... " he wrote. True, then there were other sensations: “The legs stopped obeying. The sun-scorched face, neck and chest burned intensely. I was feverish and more and more sleepy. At times I lost consciousness for a long time ... " He swam night, day, then another night, another day ... Only on the third day after the jump, on December 15, 1974, when he was almost in oblivion, a huge wave threw him onto the shore of the small Philippine island of Siargao.

"Why?" - the first thing that the daughter of the fisherman, who brought him to the house, asked Kurilov in bad English. She couldn't understand why jump ship when you can buy a ticket and go wherever you want?

What could he say to her? That the country in which he lived did not let him go?

“Slavka was not a dissident,” says AiF Kurilov's cousin Evgenia Litvintseva, - he dreamed of the sea, of a round-the-world trip, of freedom ... It is not clear where a person who grew up in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, has such a passion for the ocean. He himself learned to swim, at the age of 10 he crossed the Irtysh, and at 15 he left home for Leningrad to get a job as a cabin boy on a ship. They did not take him, then he went to the seafarer, but even then he was refused - myopia. Nevertheless, he found a specialty related to water - he became an oceanologist. Slavka was amazing! Fun, smart, interesting! He studied in absentia as a psychologist, sea navigator, became a diver, aquanaut - that was what scuba divers were then called. From his youth, he was seriously engaged in yoga, slept on nails, arranged a 40-day hunger strike, and meditated. In Gelendzhik, he was one of five scientists who were tested in the Chernomor underwater laboratory at a depth of 14 m. Only a person with such powerful physical and moral training could survive in the ocean for three days without food and sleep.

"We had an agreement with Jacques Cousteau about research in Tunisia, but the project fell through ... The expedition to the atolls of the Pacific Ocean also went to waste. For a whole year I prepared the diving unit. But the visa was not given again,- writes Kurilov. The reason is a relative abroad. His' elder sister Angela studied in foreign languages, met a Hindu, married him and left for Canada. “In the personal file there was a postscript-sentence: “We consider it inappropriate to visit capitalist countries”, - writes the oceanologist. - It was like I was stung. Life imprisonment with no hope of freedom! The only way out is to run."

Outline of fate

Some consider Kurilov a hero, others - an egoist who let down loved ones who remained in the USSR. “Slavka sent me a letter from the Philippines, in which he described his escape. It disappeared without a trace... Although no one from the authorities came to our house, there were no repressions, - recalls E. Litvintseva. - But the younger brother of Glory Valentine Suffered. He lived in Leningrad, worked as a long-distance navigator and had access to western ports. After the escape, Slava was sentenced in absentia to 10 years for treason, and Valentin was fired from his job. His wife left him, he was in poverty, he began to drink ... He is no longer in this world.

In the USSR, Kurilov also left his first wife and son (they divorced a long time ago and did not live together) and the second wife, however, relations with her were not ideal ... “Slavka was too freedom-loving, not family,” says E. Litvintseva. - But he still found his personal happiness, albeit on the third attempt. In Israel he met Lenochka with whom he lived for 11 years.

He found personal happiness on the third try. With wife Lena. Photo: From the family archive

“From the Philippines, Slava was sent to Canada, to her sister,” he says. widow Elena Gendeleva-Kurilova. - At first he worked in a pizzeria, then in oceanographic companies in Canada, America, Hawaii, the Arctic Ocean ... Once in America he met with an Israeli writer N. Voronel, which wanted to film the story of his fate. The film was not made, but Slava ended up in Israel, and we got to know each other. In the spring of 1986, he came here for good, got a job as an oceanographer at the University of Haifa.”

On January 29, 1998, the scientist was diving and got tangled in nets. The partner raised him to the surface, but it was too late ... When Elena was handed over her husband's things, among them were fresh records - he kept diaries until the last day. His wife collected them and published the book Alone in the Ocean.

“For me, the death of Glory was sudden, terrible,” says Elena. But for him she became the grace of God. A man who just had a mystical relationship with the sea couldn't die in a hospital bed. Do you know what he said writer Vasily Aksyonov when he was informed that Slava died in the Sea of ​​Galilee? "What a graceful outline of fate." And I agree with him."

December 13, 1974 was the most daring and famous escape from the USSR. Oceanologist Stanislav Kurilov jumped overboard from a passenger ship in the Pacific Ocean and after swimming a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, reached the Philippine island of Siargao. Equipped only with fins, a mask and a snorkel, without food or water, he spent three nights and two days in the ocean.

Stanislav Kurilov was born in Vladikavkaz (Ordzhonikidze) in 1936, spent his childhood in Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). There, among the steppes, the dream of the sea was born. At the age of ten, Kurilov swam across the Irtysh. After school, he tried to get a job as a cabin boy in the Baltic Fleet. He wanted to become a navigator, but his eyesight let him down. There was only one way out - studying at the Leningrad Meteorological Institute. During his studies, he mastered scuba diving. Having received the specialty "oceanography", he worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, participated in the creation of the underwater research laboratory "Chernomor", worked as an instructor at the Institute of Marine Biology in Vladivostok.

S. Kurilov with his sister

From the very beginning, Kurilov's relationship with the sea was mystical. He considered him alive and somehow "felt" him in a special way. From his student days, Stanislav Kurilov began to actively engage in yoga, the exercises for which could then be found in samizdat reprints. He accustomed himself to asceticism, engaged in a special breathing practice. When Jacques Yves Cousteau himself showed interest in the scientific research of Soviet scientists, Stanislav Kurilov tried to get permission to go on a business trip abroad, but he was refused. The wording left no doubt: "not allowed to travel abroad." The fact is that Kurilov had a sister abroad (she married an Indian and moved to Canada), and Soviet officials reasonably feared that Kurilov might not return to the country.

With friends in Semipalatinsk, 1954

And then Kurilov decided to run away. In November 1974, he bought a ticket for the Soviet Union liner. The cruise was called "From Winter to Summer". The ship left Vladivostok for the southern seas on 8 December. Stanislav Kurilov did not even take a compass with him. But he had a mask, snorkel, fins and webbed gloves. The future defector knew that the ship would not enter any of the foreign ports.

The fact is that the "Soviet Union" was built before the Great Patriotic War in Germany and was originally called "Adolf Hitler". The ship was sunk, and then raised from the bottom and repaired. If the "Soviet Union" entered a foreign port, he would be arrested. The liner was a real prison for passengers. The fact is that the sides did not go down in a straight line, but in a “barrel”, that is, it was impossible to jump overboard and not crash. Moreover, hydrofoils one and a half meters wide went below the waterline of the vessel. And even the portholes in the cabins turned on an axis that divided the hole in half. It seemed impossible to escape. But Kurilov escaped.

He got lucky three times. Firstly, in the cabin of the captain Kurilov saw a map of the route of the liner with dates and coordinates. And I realized that it was necessary to run when the ship passed the Philippine island of Siargao, and there were 10 nautical miles to the coast. Secondly, an astronomer girl was on the ship, who showed Kurilov the constellations of the southern hemisphere, which could be used to navigate. Thirdly, he jumped from a ship from a height of 14 meters and was not killed. For the jump, Kurilov chose the night of December 13th. He jumped from the stern. There, in the gap between the hydrofoils and the propeller, there was the only gap, once in which it was possible to survive. He later wrote that even if everything ended in death, he would still be the winner. The weather was stormy, and the escape was not noticed.

Once in the water, Kurilov put on flippers, gloves and a mask and swam away from the liner. Most of all, he was afraid that the liner would return and be taken aboard. In fact, in the morning the ship did indeed return, they searched for Kurilov, but did not find him. He realized that the chances of reaching the ground were almost zero. The main danger was to sail past the island. He could be carried aside by the current, he could die of hunger, he could be eaten by sharks. Kurilov spent two days and three nights in the ocean. He survived rain, storm, prolonged dehydration. And survived. In the end, he did not feel his legs, periodically lost consciousness, saw hallucinations. By the evening of the second day, he noticed land in front of him, but could not reach it: he was carried south by a strong current. Fortunately, the same current carried him to a reef on the southern coast of the island. With the waves of the surf, he overcame the reef in the dark, sailed the lagoon for another hour, and on December 15, 1974, reached the shore of the island of Siargao in the Philippines.

Siargao Island (Philippines)

Kurilov was picked up by local fishermen who reported him to the authorities. Stanislav was arrested. He spent almost a year in a local prison, but enjoyed great freedom, sometimes the police chief even took him with him on raids "in taverns." Perhaps he would have been imprisoned for illegally crossing the border, but his sister from Canada took care of his fate. A year later, Kurilov received documentary evidence that he was a fugitive and left the Philippines. When the Soviet Union learned of the escape, Kurilov was tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in prison for treason.

Philippines, December 1974.

About his adventures, Kurilov wrote the book Alone in the Ocean, which has been translated into many languages. The text also contains references to drunken compatriots and concentration camps, which allegedly were "somewhere in the north." Having received a Canadian passport, Kurilov went on vacation to British Honduras, where he was kidnapped by a gang of mafiosi. He had to get out of captivity himself. In Canada, Kurilov worked in a pizzeria and then in marine research firms. He searched for minerals in Hawaii, worked in the Arctic, studied the ocean at the equator. In 1986 he married and moved to his wife in Israel. Kurilov died on January 29, 1998 in biblical places on Lake Kinneret (Sea of ​​Galilee) in Israel. He was 62 years old. The day before his death, he untangled a friend from a fishing net at a depth, and on this day he got tangled himself. When he was freed from his bonds, he became ill, and when they carried him ashore, he died. Kurilov was buried in Jerusalem at the Templer Cemetery.

Monument to Stanislav Vasilyevich Kurilov.

On the expedition ship. Gelendzhik, 1969

Underwater research by Slava Kurilov

Kurilov with his wife.

On the eve of the New Year holidays, marking the arrival of 1975, sensational news came from across the ocean. Voice of America reported that a citizen of the USSR threw himself into the stormy Pacific Ocean from the ship. After almost three days spent in the middle of the ocean, he came ashore in the Philippines. The Soviet media were silent. There was no news about the escape in the Vzglyad program either.

"Voice of America" ​​reported the name of the fugitive - Stanislav Vasilyevich Kurilov. In response to inquiries to law enforcement agencies, concerned relatives received an answer: citizen Kurilov went missing under unclear circumstances. The escape was real, no one else had any doubts.

Curriculum vitae

Slava Kurilov was a passionate dreamer from early childhood. The boy, who was born in the city of Ordzhonikidze five years before the war, and spent his childhood in Semipalatinsk, raved about the sea. Later, he will recall that all adults are "hopelessly overland people." The family of Stanislav Kurilov believed that his love for the sea would soon pass. At the age of ten, Slava swam across the Irtysh, a deep river with many whirlpools and a strong undercurrent. Later, without documents, he tried to get a cabin boy in the fleet. The dream of young Slava Kurilov came true - he graduated from the institute with a degree in oceanology.

At first he wanted to become the captain of the ship, but the medical board at the university made an unequivocal conclusion: Kurilov could not be a sailor because of myopia. Desperate, he remembered that there was also a faculty of oceanology. After graduating from the university, Stanislav Kurilov was a deep-sea diving instructor, studied yoga, tried to get permission to go on a business trip abroad, but he was stubbornly refused. Kurilov became restricted to travel abroad. The fact is that his sister constantly lived abroad. She married an Indian citizen and left with her husband, first to his homeland, and then to Canada. But Stanislav Kurilov had a dream to still see this world.

Oceanologist training

Twelve years after the sensational news, Israeli television showed a recording of the interview. A shy man with a disarming smile made one of the most desperate and daring escapes from the USSR in the entire history of the country. This is truly an extraordinary event. People have tried to escape behind the Iron Curtain before, but not in such an unthinkable and even suicidal way. It was impossible to imagine that there would be a volunteer who would agree to stay indefinitely in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by sharks and fast sea currents. Stanislav Kurilov said that he was well prepared.

No training system guarantees that a person who decides on an extravagant act will survive and remain healthy. But Stanislav Kurilov still had quite extensive experience of a long stay in water and under water. And thanks to this experience, he was able to survive.

In 1968, the Soviet underwater laboratory "Chernomor" was tested in Gelendzhik. The submarine allowed researchers to stay under water for several weeks and go out to work on the bottom. Among the testers of Chernomor was the Soviet oceanographer Slava Kurilov. Scientists in Gelendzhik tried to find out how the human body behaves in completely atypical conditions and what are the limits of human capabilities.

Slava Kurilov took on the hardest work. Without natural light and under conditions of increased pressure, he endured constant loads. Among his friends and colleagues there were many strong young guys who were not inferior to him in endurance and strength. But they could hardly imagine such madness: jumping from the side of a huge passenger ship at full speed. The height of the ship "Soviet Union" could be compared with a nine-story building, its length is about two hundred meters. The "Soviet Union" has been in the Soviet Union for more than a quarter of a century.

Encyclopedias did not write about the giant ship, limited themselves to a few photographs in the local press. The reason was that the ship was designed and built in Nazi Germany. His first name is "Albert Ballin", although they say that in fact the liner was called the name of the Fuhrer himself.

The ship was built in Hamburg in 1922 and sunk in 1945. After the war, it was raised from the bottom of the Baltic Sea and restored at the East German shipyard. In 1957, already under the familiar name "Soviet Union", the liner stopped at a new home port, in the city of Vladivostok. Passengers were amazed by the decoration of the ship.

"Journey to Summer"

After the news about the escape of a Soviet citizen from the largest cruise ship in the USSR, the State Security Committee interviewed all persons who somehow had contact with Stanislav Kurilov. The repressions were so severe that even a girl who sold a citizen a plane ticket from Leningrad to Vladivostok, from where the ship "Soviet Union" departed, was punished. But so far, Stanislav Kurilov only caught the eye of an ad in the newspaper Vecherniy Leningrad. Soviet citizens were invited to take part in the cruise "From Winter to Summer".

It was a cruise to the equator. There were more than 200 tourists on the ship. "Soviet Union" followed the equator without calling at foreign ports and back. The fugitive easily got a ticket. Passengers did not need visas, they were not going to guard them either. After all, where can passengers go if there is only the ocean for many kilometers around? Even experienced members of the state security agencies could not imagine that someone could decide to jump from the largest cruise ship.

The would-be fugitive first thought of buying a ticket to go on a cruise and scout the situation. Escape Stanislav Kurilov planned only for the next trip. He did not take a compass or a map of the Pacific with him. In an interview, he himself told reporters that it was a completely spontaneous decision.

On board the ship

Three days after the ship left Vladivostok, passengers were already sunbathing on deck in swimsuits. Stanislav Kurilov had not yet decided whether to escape this time or abandon this venture. He knew only the approximate route of the liner: from Vladivostok south along the Korean Peninsula, past the island of Taiwan and the Philippines to the very equator, and then approximately the same route back. Only when the Sea of ​​Japan was left behind did he accidentally find a map showing the ship's route.

On the found map, not just a route was marked. Dates and times were even marked next to the ship's line of advance. Now Slava Kurilov knew exactly where and at what time the ship would sail. He understood that on the next flight (if it took place) there would be no such luck. Kurilov calculated that he would be able to leave the liner only at two points along the way. Both of these points were close to the Philippines. He knew that the Philippines was a zone of influence of the United States. If he swims, then they will not return him back, because the Cold War is in full swing. But he also knew that the Southern Philippines at that time was a zone of internal military conflict. Local rebels launched a powerful fight against government troops. But Stanislav Kurilov was not afraid of danger.

Escape from the USSR

On the night of December 13, 1974, Stanislav Kurilov escaped. Having calculated the optimal time, he jumped from the stern into the water. It should have been about ten nautical miles to the coast. But the next morning he did not see the outlines of the earth on the horizon. Then Stanislav Kurilov did not yet know that he would have to spend two days and three nights in the ocean without food, water and rest. By the evening of the second day, he managed to make out the land, but the fugitive was swept south by a strong sea current. The same current carried him to the reef on the south side of the island. On December 15, 1974, Stanislav Kurilov managed to reach the coast of Siargao Island.

On the shore, a Soviet citizen was picked up by a local fisherman with children. He reported this to the authorities. First, Stanislav Kurilov was arrested. He spent almost a year in a local prison, but he enjoyed quite a lot of freedom. From time to time, the head of the prison took him with him to drink in a local tavern. A year later, Kurilov managed to get official confirmation that he was a refugee. He was finally able to leave the Philippines. But when the USSR found out about this, the state security authorities tried Kurilov in absentia and sentenced him to ten years in prison for treason.

Dream come true

Stanislav Kurilov described his impressions and biography in the book Alone in the Ocean, which was translated into many languages. The journey did not end on the craziest escape. What is only worth a year in a Philippine prison. Then, having received a former Soviet citizen, he went to Honduras, where he was kidnapped by mafiosi. He had to get out of the terrible captivity on his own. In Canada, he first got a job in a pizzeria, and then engaged in marine research. He worked at the North Pole, studied the ocean at the equator and searched for fossils off the Hawaiian Islands.

In the book "Alone in the Ocean" Stanislav Kurilov outlined the most interesting story of his life. In 1986 he married and moved to Israel to live with his wife.

A fugitive from the USSR died tragically on January 29, 1998. The day before his death, in biblical places on the island of Kinneret in Israel, he disentangled a colleague and friend from the network. He was then 62 years old. The next day, Stanislav Kurilov, during diving work, got himself entangled in the same networks and worked out all the air. When Kurilov was carried ashore, he could no longer be saved. A Soviet fugitive is buried in Jerusalem.

The first step of the Soviet government to restrict exit from the country was the Instruction to the Commissars of the Border Points of the Russian Republic “On the Rules for Entry and Exit from Russia” dated December 21, 1917. According to the new rules, foreign and Russian citizens were required to have a foreign passport to leave the country. Russian citizens were required to obtain an exit permit from the foreign department of the Committee of Internal Affairs in Petrograd, or in Moscow, from the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. Thus, strict supervision was established for all citizens crossing the state border.

New rules for the entry of citizens into the country from abroad were approved by the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs on January 12, 1918, and the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On ownerless property" of November 3, 1920 practically excluded the possibility of the return of emigrated citizens ever in the future. Thus, the Soviet government actually deprived millions of emigrants and refugees of their property, and hence of all the foundations of existence in their native land and the prospects for returning. If before 1920 foreign passports could be obtained from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, then with the introduction of changes, this document should also receive a visa from the Special Department of the Cheka.

For the first time, the proposal to punish by death for an attempt to return from abroad without the sanction of the authorities was announced by Lenin in May 1922 at a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee during the discussion of the draft Criminal Code of the RSFSR. However, no decision was made.

According to the new rules introduced on June 1, 1922, in order to travel abroad, it was necessary to obtain a special permit from the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID). It is quite obvious that this further complicated the process of leaving, making it almost impossible. Neither journalists, nor writers, nor other artists could practically go abroad - these people had to wait for a special decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) to leave.

The procedure for traveling abroad was tightened every year, and the new stage in the tightening of the rules for exit was the “Regulations on Entry and Exit from the USSR”, which was published on June 5, 1925. The situation made the exit procedure extremely strict. All foreign countries were declared "hostile capitalist encirclement".

The Stalinist law of June 9, 1935 became a logical continuation in the chain of tightening the procedure for traveling abroad and the construction of the Iron Curtain. Escape across the border was punishable by death. At the same time, the relatives of the defectors, of course, were also declared criminals.

The introduction of such a severe punishment for fleeing the country was dictated not only by the logic of total repression, but was also a kind of reinsurance. The authorities feared the start of mass emigration in the event of a recurrence of famine in the country.

The law providing for execution for illegal emigration was repealed only after the death of Joseph Stalin. For escaping from the territory of the USSR, a prison sentence was now provided. Severe restrictions on the possibility of leaving the USSR existed almost until its collapse. The first serious step towards the liberalization of migration legislation was the Law on Entry and Exit, adopted in 1990.

Stanislav Kurilov grew up in Semipalatinsk - but from childhood he raved about the sea. Avidly read Jules Verne, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. In a pioneer camp, secretly from his parents, he learned to swim and at the age of ten he swam across the Irtysh. Parents were not thoughtless romantics and Slava entered the road technical school. He went in for sports, became the champion of the city, entered the national team of Kazakhstan. At the age of fifteen, he left the technical school, ran away from home and independently reached Leningrad.

He thought that he could, like the heroes of Stevenson and Jules Verne, act as a cabin boy on a ship. But he did not pass the medical commission - he began to develop myopia, the road to the civil or military fleet was closed. Fortunately, he learned that with a little myopia, you can enter the Faculty of Oceanology of the Leningrad Hydrometeorological Institute, where he entered after serving in the army.

Studying turned out to be rather boring and far from romantic. The dream of the sea actually materialized in boring tables, graphs and diagrams. Everything was changed by the organization of training courses for divers and groups at the Institute, and then the Underwater Research Laboratory. In the late 1960s, Kurilov already took part in the most interesting research work on board the Chernomor underwater laboratory, which was located at a depth of 14 meters. The legendary Jacques-Yves-Cousteau, who visited the USSR several times, was keenly interested in the works.

Kurilov loved the sea. And he felt true happiness only when he was alone with him. Many times he could die. In a storm, he was thrown from the boat by the waves and swam to the shore for several hours. I got entangled in diving lines at a depth of 50 meters, photographing a new bathyscaphe. In Kronstadt, while inspecting submarines in the dock, the workers turned off the oxygen by mistake. Kurilov was brought to the surface unconscious. The element seemed to be keeping him for some other test.

Somewhere out there, far away, were Madagascar, Hawaii, Tahiti, the famous Jacques Yves Cousteau plied the oceans with his team ... An agreement had already been signed with the Leningrad Institute. In his amazing book Alone in the Ocean, Kurilov recalls further events with a hint of inescapable bitterness: “We had an agreement with Jacques Cousteau on joint research in an underwater house in Tunisia. We were to send our tug Nereus with a team of diving engineers to Monaco in the summer of 1970. And then everything went down the drain. We were not given visas, and the whole project fell through. Another expedition with Cousteau went to waste - to the atolls of the Pacific Ocean - called the "Southern Cross". I suggested this name. For a whole year I prepared the diving part of the expedition. I specially graduated from the nautical school in absentia and received a diploma as a long-distance navigation navigator. We were again not given visas, but other people were sent to Cousteau, not divers, but with visas. He did not accept them ... Then the project of organizing an institute for underwater research and testing underwater submersibles went to waste. They didn't give me a visa."

The last refusal came with the wording: "We consider it inappropriate to visit the capitalist countries." The Soviet Union could not let a man go abroad whose sister had once married an Indian and then settled with her husband and son in capitalist Canada. Meanwhile, Slava was neither a dissident nor an anti-Soviet, although he considered the Soviet regime evil. He was a mystic and a yogi, whom he became interested in while still in his first year at the institute. Yoga was then banned. Slava mastered Indian wisdom alone, without a teacher and with only samizdat manuals printed on a typewriter.

The lack of the possibility of self-realization in the business that he loved so much gradually formed in him a feeling of unconscious protest and a growing desire to escape by any means from the nauseating reality surrounding him into the fresh air of freedom.

For a year, Kurilov worked as a hydrological engineer at Lake Baikal. He lived alone, in a forest hut on the island of Olkhon, where there was nothing but a bear's coat and two suitcases. He slept in a fur coat and did yoga. On a cloudy October day, I read an advertisement in a Leningrad newspaper about the cruise "From Winter to Summer". Visas were not required: the liner set off for the equator without calling at foreign ports. With a group of tourists from Leningrad, Kurilov flew to Vladivostok, to the gathering place. "Soviet Union" went to sea on 8 December. Slava already knew that he was leaving his homeland forever.

On the third day of sailing in one of the halls of the liner, he saw a map on which the route was indicated. The cruise ship sailed across the East China Sea, along the eastern shores of the Philippine Islands, into the Celebes Sea and to the equator between Borneo and Celebes. It could be expected that in order to shorten the route, the captain would approach the coast near the Philippine islands of Siargao and Mindanao. Only these two points were suitable for escape.

In the meantime, it turned out that jumping into the water from the upper decks was excluded. During the day, the fugitive would be quickly caught at sea. It was possible to jump only from the stern, from a height of 14 meters, in the dark, hoping not to fall between the blades of a giant propeller. And again Kurilov was lucky. On board, he met an astronomer and with her help got into the pilot's cabin. According to the navigation map, I realized that on December 13 at 20 o’clock the ship will catch up with Siargao, a small Philippine island that is part of the Mindanao island group about 800 km southeast of Manila. He didn't eat anything that day. Has made several complex yogic washings.

At eight in the evening he walked along the deck between the dancers. From the loudspeaker came my favorite song - "Dove". After waiting until the three sailors who were on the quarterdeck were distracted, Kurilov threw the body over the bulwark, pushed off strongly with his feet and jumped. With him was only a bag with a mask, snorkel and flippers, and even a shark amulet, made according to the recommendations of an underground translated grimoire - a book describing magical procedures, spells to summon spirits and witchcraft recipes. Alone in the ocean. Neither many years of yoga, nor the experience of deep, 30-35 days of fasting could prepare him for the experience. He successfully entered the water with his feet and was thrown by a jet of water from a rotating screw, which turned out to be at arm's length from him. He swam, guided first by the lights of the ship, then by the clouds and stars. Most of all, he was afraid that the liner would turn back and they would start looking for him. There were moments when he was seized by overwhelming fear. During the day, the island appeared and disappeared on the horizon. The next night the visions began. He heard soft singing, from all sides his name was repeated in different voices, right below him an unknown luminous world was revealed.

By the evening of the next day, Slava was very close to the island, but the current, to the horror of the swimmer, carried him past. At night, he was already swimming by inertia, there was almost no hope left. Power was running out. He was haunted by hallucinations.

Huge waves eventually carried Kurilov to the reef, and then to the quiet lagoon. The fateful current that carried him past the eastern shore of Siargao saved him and washed him to the south. The fishermen were the first to notice him: a monster covered with phosphorescent plankton was dancing on the banks of the sirtaki and laughing at the top of his lungs.

Slava spent six months in the Philippines, of which one and a half months in prison. At first, his story was not believed. The escape was reported on Voice of America. Kurilov was tried in absentia and sentenced to ten years in prison for "treason." His brother, the navigator, lost his job. A wife remained in the USSR, about whom Slava speaks little and sparingly in her book. Kurilov was deported to Canada, at the place of residence of his sister.

He received citizenship, worked in Canadian and American oceanographic firms. The story of his escape was decided to film on the BBC, and in 1985 he received an advance for a trip to Israel, where filming was to take place. Nothing came of the film adaptation - but Kurilov spent three cheerful months in Israel and met the beautiful Elena, the ex-wife of the poet Mikhail Gendelev. They got married in the church of the Gethsemane monastery.

Kurilov was hired at the Institute of Oceanography. This is a beautiful building near Haifa on a small cape, around which the sea is on three sides. On January 29, 1998, at the age of 62, Vyacheslav Kurilov died during underwater work on Lake Kinneret - it is also the biblical Lake of Gennesaret. The day before, he released a confused partner from the fishing nets, the air in the cylinders almost ran out. Nevertheless, they decided to dive again in order to raise the device entangled in nets to the surface. This time, the partner had to cut the nets and free Slava. He didn't have time to do it.