Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt For Red October (13 page)

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.

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.

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.