In 1984, Tom Clancy released his blockbuster novel, The Hunt for Red October, an edge-of-your seat thriller that skyrocketed him into international notoriety. The inspiration for that novel came from an obscure report by a US naval officer of a mutiny aboard a Soviet warship in the Baltic Sea. The Hunt for Red October actually happened, and Boris Gindin lived through every minute of it. After decades of silence and fear, Gindin has finally come forward to tell the entire story of the mutiny aboard the FFG Storozhevoy, the real-life Red October.It was the fall of 1975, and the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were climbing. It seemed the two nations were headed for thermonuclear war, and it was that fear that caused most of the crewman of the FFG Storozhevoy to mutiny. Their goal was to send a message to the Soviet people that the Communist government was corrupt and major changes were needed. That message never reached a single person. Within hours the orders came from on high to destroy the Storozhevoy and its crew members. And this would have happened if it weren't for Gindin and few others whose heroism saved many lives.Now, with the help of USA Today bestselling author David Hagberg, Gindin relives every minute of that harrowing event. From the danger aboard the ship to the threats of death from the KGB to the fear that forced him to flee the Soviet Union for the United States, Mutiny reveals the real-life story behind The Hunt for Red October and offers an eye-opening look at the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
For Laurie
This book is for my lovely wife, Yana, with special thanks. It was she who inspired me to tell this story.
And for my granddaughter, Alexandra Gindin.
My wish is that this book will always remind her of the immense love I and the rest of the family have for her.
I would like to thank Elizabeth Winick, who knew that this was a story that must be told. She had the vision and foresight to take on an improbable project and see it through to completion. Also Tom Doherty, the publisher who took on a Russian immigrant with a story to tell. Without him none of this could have been possible. And to Bob Gleason, a remarkable editor.
A special thanks to Larry Bond for his kind help with technical matters. The mistakes are mine.
Some of the names have been changed.
In the fall of 1975 most of the crewmen of the Soviet antisubmarine warfare ship FFG
The dangerously idealistic ringleader of the mutiny sent a message to Moscow telling the Brezhnev government that he was taking the ship in order to give a message to the Soviet people, that their government was corrupt and needed to be changed.
The officer thought it would be a wake-up call not only for Russia but for the entire world that the Cold War was spinning dangerously out of control toward global thermonuclear war.
Within hours after the
Which very nearly happened, but for the heroic efforts of a few of the officers and crew who saved the lives of everyone.
And the cover-up was complete except for an obscure report of the incident written by a U.S. Navy officer studying at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, who managed to piece together the various bits and pieces of the story.
A couple years later Tom Clancy came across the report, which inspired him to write
Writing a nonfiction account of the mutiny through the eyes of one of the officers was supposed to be a natural extension of a career I’ve made chronicling the Cold War in several dozen novels. I have spent three decades studying the Soviet Union, its government, its military organizations, and its secret intelligence services, including the KGB, as well as its people and places.
I had the real-life, up close and personal story of a key player in the drama. Nothing could have been easier. The book would practically write itself. Boris Gindin would tell me the story, and I would fix up his grammar.
But this was, after all, the stuff of real life.
Which meant that if I came across something I didn’t like I couldn’t change it for the sake of the story. If some of the facts were messy and not pleasant, I couldn’t doctor them up to suit the narrative flow.
I might be able to invent some dialogue and interior monologue that, according to Boris Gindin and my own research, was likely to have happened. But I couldn’t change the facts.
Rather than relying on poetic license and clever plotting, the story of the
If truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction, then certainly truth can and most often is even more exciting.
