by Scott Liddicoat

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Much of the information that follows is from

MIG Pilot The Final Escape of Lt.  Belenko by John Barron

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Quotes from author John Barron are made in italics.

Quotes from Viktor Belenko are cited in bold italics.

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EXTRA CREDIT READING FOR A SOCIALIST TEACHES US ABOUT FREEDOM

If you’re going to read MIG Pilot, and I hope you do, you don’t have to read what follows.

Here I’ve collected portions of the book that illustrate what pushed Belenko out of the USSR.  Some small slices of everyday life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that give you even more reason to appreciate our freedoms in the United States.  These experiences seem as incredible to us as Belenko’s newfound freedom seemed to him in 1976.

In each of the following anecdotes, I’ll let Barron and Belenko tell the story to the greatest degree possible.  This is because they do it so masterfully.  Also, so that I cannot be accused of extending the story beyond their words.

The story of Viktor Belenko’s actual escape is riveting.  And there’s so much more that’s so much better when read in its full context.  Do yourself the favor of reading MIG Pilot! 

█ A sampling of Belenko’s childhood…

When Viktor was two, his father divorced his mother, took him away to Donbas, the great mining region of southwestern Russia…consigned him to the care of his own mother and sister, and departed for a job 5,000 miles away in a Siberian factory managed by a wartime friend.

The grandmother and aunt lived in one of some forty mud and straw huts that constituted a village near Mine No. 24.  Coal dust darkened every structure of the village and so permeated the atmosphere that after a storm temporarily purified the air, food tasted strange.  The women occupied one room of the hut and built a bed for Viktor in the other, where they cooked and ate.  His aunt rose daily at 5:00 A.M. to draw water from the communal well, stoke the fire, and prepare soup and bread for breakfast before she walked to the mine.  There she worked from 7:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., sorting debris and alien particles from coal passing on a

conveyor belt.  She had no gloves, and often her hands were bruised or bleeding. 

█ Belenko’s political education begins…

At nine years of age, he learned that the man who looked back at him from the first page of every textbook he’d ever seen—the leader and “father of the Soviet people”—had been a “depraved monster.”  Joseph Stalin…had been a tyrant who had imprisoned and inflicted death upon countless innocent people, including loyal party members and great generals.  Far from having won the war, Stalin had been a megalomaniac who had very nearly lost the war. 

Nikita Khruschev took power, and in 1959 returned from a trip in the United States with yet another five year plan for the USSR.  He’d stood in and flown over the great American corn fields that fed the world.  They fed large segments of the Russian population, too.  Khruschev’s plan was to overcome the errors of Stalin to produce ever-larger quantities of meat, milk, butter, bread, and other foodstuffs.  How to do this?  Increase corn production eight-fold by 1960, planting corn

“from ocean to ocean.”  Khruschev, the hero who revealed Stalin’s behavior to the world, was now declared a visionary. 

His plan required planting corn on formerly uncultivated land.  Planting corn where other crops had usually been planted and were proven to grow well.  Planting corn where it could not possibly grow because of poor soil conditions and inhospitable climate.  In Siberia, for example.  Naturally, this effort to amend the laws of nature by decree only resulted in even more serious shortages of every provision desired in the plan.  But now the shortages included crops that had been successfully grown in the USSR. 

Of course, a few years later Khruschev “requested” retirement.  Then it began.  Past appearances had been misleading.  Fresh findings resulted from scientific review by the Party disclosed that Khruschev actually was an ineffectual bumbler who had made a mess of the economy while dangerously relaxing the vigilance of the Motherland against the ubiquitous threat from the “Dark Forces of the West.”  Under [new leader Leonid] Brezhnev, the nation at last was blessed with wise and strong leadership.

█ The battle of the harvest…

As a young adult, Belenko was “volunteered” to fight the battle of the harvest.

Legions of young people from factories, the universities, the Army were being trucked into the countryside.  The manufacture of goods, the education of physicians, the training of the nation’s guardians must wait.  All available manpower had to be mobilized for the frantic, desperate battle of the harvest. 

Why are we so unprepared?  The harvest is not something that happens only once every twenty or thirty years.  It is known that each fall crops must be harvested.  Why do we have to tend to the business of the kolkhozniks?

█ Working in a factory, Viktor learns the Party and the People Are One…

Viktor came to feel that even were the prohibition against alcohol effectively enforced, it would not materially increase production or efficiency.  For the attitudes, habits, and work patterns of the men were, as they said, “cast in iron.”  Most were quite competent at their craft.  They worked well and diligently in the morning and, unless machinery broke down, usually fulfilled their quota by noon.  But once a quota was met, they ensured it was not exceeded.  They would stop the furnace to extract a 200-kilogram mold “which was stuck” or change the stuffing box in the press cylinder because “the steam pressure is too low” or intentionally make something defective so that it would have to be remade.

An ironsmith in Viktor’s section was a veritable genius at his work and ordinarily discharged his assigned duties in an hour or so, then loafed the remainder of the day, smoking, strolling about, and chatting with friends.  Out of curiosity rather than censure, Viktor frankly asked why he did not make a hero of himself by surpassing his quota, as the Party constantly exhorted everybody to do.  “You know nothing of life, young fellow,” he replied.  “If I chose, I could do ten times as much work.  But what would that bring me? Only a quota ten times as high.  And I must think of my fellows.  If I exceed my quota, they will be expected to exceed theirs.”

The Educational Section of the Cultural Division of the tank factory employed ten or eleven artists full time to paint posters intended to correct such attitudes and inspire the workers.  Some of the posters Viktor saw were labeled “Be a New Communist Man,” “Marching Toward True Communism,” “Building a New Base for Communism,” “I Will Exceed My Quota 100 Percent,” “Be a Hero of the Party,” “The Party and People Are One.”

█ Twenty years to True Communism…

The Twenty-second Party Congress in 1961 had proclaimed that the Soviet Union would largely realize True Communism by 1980.  True Communism, by definition, would inundate the land with such a bounty of goods and services, food and housing, transport and medicine, recreational, cultural, and educational opportunities that each citizen could partake of as much of the common wealth as he or she wished.  And all would be free! Born of an environment that fully and continuously gratified all material needs, a new breed of man would emerge—the New Communist Man —unselfish, compassionate, enlightened, strong, brave, diligent, brotherly, altruistic.  He would be unflawed by any of the imperfections that had afflicted man through ages past.  There would be no reason for anybody to be otherwise.

But on the oil-soaked floors of the factory, the assembly line workers took their indoctrination sessions with more than a great deal of skepticism:

“Since everybody can have as much of everything as he wants and everything will be free, we can stay drunk all the time.”

“No, I’m going to stay sober on Mondays because every Monday I will fly to a different resort.”

“I will stay sober on Sundays; half sober anyway.  On Sundays I will drive my car and my wife will drive her car to the restaurant for free caviar.”

“And we won’t have to work.  The tanks will produce themselves.”

“Hey, this New Communist Man, does he ever have to go to the toilet?”

█ Belenko gets time off from flight training…

An overpowering, unrelenting stench saturated the unventilated coach, emanating from its filthy toilet, from the vomit of drunks, from bodies and clothes too long unwashed.  The windows, grimy and flyspecked, could not be opened.  And the unupholstered wooden benches of the coach, with their high, straight backs, made any posture miserable.  Yet the very squalor of the train sustained him by reminding him that he was journeying away from squalor.

█ Belenko returns to base…

There was alarm at Armavir when Belenko returned from leave.  A cholera epidemic had spread from the shores of the Black Sea through the region, and all military personnel were being quarantined indefinitely on their bases.  A military physician briefed the cadets about the nature and dangers of cholera, noting that one good antidote was “vodka with garlic.” Belenko was astounded, for from his own reading, he already knew about cholera.

Cholera! If we have the best medicine in the world, why should we have cholera?  Well, of course.  There is shit and filth and garbage everywhere: on the beaches, in the outhouse and garbage pit of every house, every apartment building.  People can’t bathe or even wash their dishes properly.  What can you expect? How many toilets could we build for the price of one spaceship?

█ A sampling of Viktor’s required political indoctrination…

To dramatize the poverty, hunger, and unemployment of contemporary America, the political officers showed films taken in the 1930s of Depression breadlines, current Soviet television films of New York slums and of workers eating sandwiches or hot dogs and drinking Coca-Cola for lunch.  The narrative, explaining that a sandwich or hot dog was all the American could afford for “dinner,” struck Belenko because in the Soviet Union the noon meal is the main one of the day.

If they are starving and can’t find jobs and prefer communism, why don’t they come over here? We need workers, millions of them, especially in Siberia, and we could guarantee them all the bread they need and milk, too.  But wait a minute.  Who owns all those cars I see?

█ More harvest battles, and volunteer “Communist Weekends”…

The schedule stipulated that the cadets would study the MiG-17 for two months back at Armavir preparatory to the final phase of training.  But the two months stretched into four because an emergency had sprung up in the countryside—another harvest was nearing.  Each weekend and sometimes two or three more days a week, officers and men alike were packed into buses and trucks to join the battle of the harvest.  For Belenko, it was a pleasant diversion.  They mostly picked fruit and ate all they wanted.  Because the schools and colleges of Armavir had been closed for the harvest, many pretty girls worked and flirted with them in the orchards.  The farmers were hospitable and slipped them glasses of cider and wine.  And at night they went back to the barracks, a good meal, and a clean bunk.

Yet Belenko despaired at the acres and acres of apples, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of apples, rotting because nobody had arranged for them to be picked in time. 

He remembered how precious apples were in Siberia, how once in Rubtsovsk he had paid a whole ruble to buy one apple on the black market.

Why doesn’t anything work? Why doesn’t anything change? It’s barely ten years before 1980.  But we’re no farther along toward True Communism than we were when they first started talking about it.  We’re never going to have True Communism.  Everything is just as screwed up as ever.  Why?

In April 1970 Belenko was assigned to a MiG-17 training regiment seventy-five miles northwest of Armavir…They attended classes from early afternoon until early evening — tactics, future trends in aerodynamics, technology of advanced aircraft, military leadership, political economics, science of communism, history of the Party, Marxist/Leninist philosophy.  Passes were issued on Saturday nights and Sundays, unless they were called to clean factories or work in the fields on weekends, requests which occurred roughly every other week.

█ Soviet technological deficiencies…

The professor of technology again was candid.  He said that presently there was no known defense, practical or theoretical, against the B-1 [American bomber] should it perform approximately as designed.  The history of warfare demonstrated that for every offensive weapon, an effective defensive weapon ultimately emerged, and doubtless, one would be developed.  The broader difficulty lay in Soviet technological deficiencies.  The Russians still could not develop an aircraft engine that for the same weight generated the same thrust as an American engine.  They were behind in electronics, transistors, and microcircuitry.  And all technological difficulties were compounded by the comparative inadequacy of their computer technology.  Cadets should not be discouraged by these

handicaps but rather consider them a further stimulus to becoming better pilots than the Americans.

But if our system is so much better than the Americans’, why is their technology so much better than ours?

█ Belenko becomes a pilot and assumes the duties required…

Each fall Belenko had to organize his twelve subordinates into a labor squad and sortie forth into the annual battle of the harvest.  Treading through the dust or mud and manure of the kolkhoz, they reaped grain, tinkered with neglected machinery, and tried to toil usefully alongside the women, children, students, and old men.  The sight of Air Force pilots, engineers, and mechanics so deployed made him alternately curse and laugh.

They brag all the time of our progress—in the newspaper, on radio, and television.  Where is the progress?  It’s all the same: the crime, the poverty, the stupidity.  We’re never going to have a New Communist Man; we’re never going to have True Communism.

█ Painting the dead trees…

The career of every officer would depend on his impressions, and to make a good impression, it would be necessary to build a paved road from the base to the helicopter pad where the Minister would land, about four miles away.  The entire regiment would begin work on the road tomorrow.

It never was clear just where in the chain of command the order originated; certainly Shevsov had no authority to initiate such a costly undertaking.  In any case, the Dark Forces, the SR-71s, the Chinese, the desirability of maintaining flying proficiency—

were forgotten now.  Pilots, engineers, technicians, mechanics, cooks, everybody turned to road building—digging a base, laying gravel, pouring concrete, and covering it with macadam.  It’s unbelievable.  For this we could have built everything, barracks, mess hall, everything.  We could have built a palace!

But the crowning order was yet to come.  Within a radius of about a mile, the land around the base had been cleared of trees to facilitate takeoffs and landings.  The Minister, it was said, was a devotee of nature and its verdancy.  He would want to see green trees as he rode to the base.  Therefore, trees would have to be transplanted to line the mile or so of road.  You can’t transplant trees here in the middle of the summer! Everybody knows that!

But transplanted they were, hundreds of them, pines, spruces, poplars, dug up from the forest, hauled by truck and placed every fifteen yards along the road.  By the first week in July they were dead, shriveling and yellowing.

Dig them up and replace them.  So they did, with the same results.

Do it again.  He may be here anytime now.

So again saplings and some fairly tall trees were imported by the hundreds from the forests.  Again they all died.

Finally acknowledging that nature would not change its ways for them, someone had had an idea.  Leave them there, and just before he arrives, we’ll spray them all with green paint.  We’ll drive fast, and he won’t know the difference.

It all was to no avail.  In early August they were advised that illness had forced cancellation of the Minister’s inspection.  He wasn’t coming after all.  It was time to fly again.

█ And finally there was this, just a few hours before Belenko left for good…

Belenko joined other pilots, who, pending the latest report from the meteorological officer, were standing around the hangar, joking about the forthcoming Communist Weekend.  It was preposterous to cover the bunkers with sod. 

Obviously, the Americans long ago had located and targeted the airfield.  How could anyone think they would believe it suddenly was not there anymore?

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These selections help us understand the kind of life that drove Viktor Belenko from his homeland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  They also provide us with a greater appreciation of the liberties and lifestyle that are common to us.  The freedoms we enjoy every day in the United States are not found elsewhere.  Hold fast to your liberties.  Cherish them.  And protect them.  One of those freedoms is to read books of your choosing.  Read, and appreciate, MIG Pilot!

Scott Liddicoat