Mutiny on the Storozhevoy: Historian Alexey Uvarov tells the story of the Soviet naval revolt that inspired ‘The Hunt for Red October’
Fifty years ago, in November 1975, a political officer in the Soviet Union’s Baltic Fleet launched an armed mutiny in hopes of sparking a “second revolution.” This staunch communist, Valery Sablin, managed to steer a frigate into open waters and win over part of the crew to his cause. But after Soviet naval and air forces crushed the uprising, the details of the mutiny remained classified for many years. Meanwhile, in the West, Sablin’s story served as inspiration for a bestselling novel that would launch Tom Clancy’s career. At Meduza’s request, historian Alexey Uvarov tells the story of the real Soviet naval revolt that inspired The Hunt for Red October.
A navy man
Under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, the army and the navy were kept under the strict control of the Communist Party and the state security agencies. In 1937–1938, Stalin orchestrated a massive purge of the military, targeting almost the entire Soviet high command. Hundreds of thousands of officers were arrested and shot. And special departments of the NKVD, the secret police, continued to carry out repressions against ordinary soldiers and military brass alike throughout World War II.
Valery Sablin was born into a naval family in the midst of Stalin’s terror, in 1939 — and from childhood, he followed the “navy line.” He graduated from Leningrad’s Frunze Higher Naval School, joined the Communist Party while still a cadet, and took Marxism-Leninism completely seriously — interpreting it not as empty rhetoric but as a blueprint for daily life. Sablin spent nine years serving in the Northern Fleet, rising to the rank of assistant ship commander. Then, he enrolled in Moscow’s Lenin Military-Political Academy.
While under Stalin the army and the navy existed in an atmosphere of fear and absolute subordination to the political leadership, this changed somewhat under his successors. Though the army and the navy remained loyal to the regimes of Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, there were bursts of disobedience and even political protest.
In 1962, for example, General Matvei Shaposhnikov — a war veteran decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union — refused an order to advance tanks against protesting workers in Novocherkassk. He was subsequently removed from his post and expelled from the Communist Party for refusing to order his tank unit to fire on demonstrators.
A year earlier, Major General Petro Grigorenko, a WWII veteran and professor at the Frunze Military Academy, had founded an underground organization known as the Union for the Struggle to Revive Leninism. With the help of their sons and officers, its members distributed leaflets criticizing the party leadership and called for democratization and free elections. The authorities arrested Grigorenko in 1964. After stripping the major general of his rank and declaring him insane, officials forcibly committed Grigorenko to a special psychiatric hospital.
A few years later, in January 1969, a junior lieutenant named Viktor Ilyin stole some weapons from his unit and hightailed it to Moscow, where he opened fire on a government cortège, hoping to kill Brezhnev. Ilyin, who was arrested and subsequently declared insane, said the assassination attempt was a protest against the policies of the Soviet leadership.
Sablin himself was far from anti-Soviet. After graduating from the Lenin Military-Political Academy, he returned to the navy in 1973, taking up the post of deputy political officer on board the Storozhevoy, an anti-submarine frigate belonging to the Baltic Fleet. He presented himself as a model party officer who sincerely believed in Communist ideals — and this is precisely why he had decided to rebel.
The idea of launching a mutiny came to Sablin while he was at the academy, where he had the opportunity to study the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin in depth. He came to conclude that the party elite of his time had betrayed socialist ideals, and that only a “second revolution” could save the USSR. This revolution, he believed, would bring about a return to “genuine Leninism,” freedom of speech, and democracy.
Sablin had even developed a concrete plan: he would hijack the Storozhevoy, sail to Leningrad and moor near the Aurora cruiser (a famous symbol of the October Revolution), and then appear on television with an appeal to the Soviet people to purge the country of its corrupt leadership and return to the ideals of socialism.
Step one, seizing the Storozhevoy, almost worked.
From movie night to mutiny
A large anti-submarine frigate, the Storozhevoy was designed to search for and destroy enemy submarines, and to protect other ships. Equipped with anti-submarine missiles, two anti-aircraft missile systems, two twin 76-millimeter guns, torpedo tubes, and rocket launchers, the Storozhevoy could reach speeds of more than 30 knots and remain at sea for up to a month. Its crew numbered around 190 people in total, including some 20 officers.
On November 8, 1975, the Storozhevoy and other ships belonging to the Baltic Fleet were in Riga for a naval parade marking the 58th anniversary of the October Revolution. From there, the frigate was supposed to depart for Liepāja, a port city on Latvia’s west coast, for scheduled repairs. But Sablin had other plans — namely, to steer the ship out of the Gulf of Riga and into the open sea at night, and then sail onwards to Leningrad.
That night, Sablin organized a screening of Battleship Potemkin for the crew. And while everyone was busy watching the famous film, he and a handful of trusted sailors locked the Storozhevoy’s commander, Anatoly Potulny, in a service room on the lower deck.
Sablin then announced to the crew that he was taking command of the ship and setting sail for Leningrad, where he would appeal to his countrymen for change. The sailors were confused, though Sablin assured them that the ship’s commander, who was effectively under arrest, was fully on board with the plan. And because Sablin was the ship’s political officer — whom the crew considered a party representative and their ideological mentor — many of the sailors decided to listen to him.
Sablin met with the officers separately, in the wardroom. Several of them went over to his side, while those who refused to obey his orders or remained silent were isolated in the ship’s lower compartments. Sablin also sent a radio telegram to Moscow, informing the party leadership of the purpose of his venture and inviting them to the ship for negotiations.
Meanwhile, one of the ship’s mechanic officers managed to climb a mooring rope to a nearby submarine. But by the time he raised the alarm, the Storozhevoy had already lifted its anchor, left the parade formation, sailed down the Daugava River, and set course for the Irbe Strait — the main exit from the Gulf of Riga to the Baltic Sea.
The mechanic who raised the alarm about the mutiny on the Storozhevoy wasn’t taken seriously at first. Because the ship was scheduled to depart for Liepāja for repairs, no one believed anything was amiss. It was only when the Storozhevoy stopped responding to messages from the Baltic Fleet’s command that it became clear that they had an emergency on their hands. That’s when the Baltic Fleet sounded the alarm, informed Moscow, and began an interception operation.
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Patrol ships and missile cutters were dispatched from the base in Batiysk (a seaport in the Kaliningrad region), as were border ships from Liepāja, and anti-submarine aircraft went out in search of the renegade frigate. Meanwhile, the Storozhevoy was already sailing across the Gulf of Riga, heading towards the open sea. The Baltic Fleet’s command did not know whether its destination was Leningrad or the nearby coast of Sweden, but the order was clear: prevent the ship from entering the Baltic Sea by any means necessary.
By this point, Sablin had managed to briefly outline his political program to the crew. He argued that the Soviet leadership was mired in careerism, corruption, and hypocrisy, and therefore, the state apparatus needed to be “cleansed and thrown into the dustbin of history.” The electoral system, he said, also needed to be replaced, since it had turned the people into a voiceless mass. Only a new revolution and a return to genuine Leninist principles could restore justice and dignity to the country, and make the Soviet people masters of their own destiny once again.
Sablin had also prepared a speech that was to be broadcast to the entire USSR via the state channel Central Television. In it, he underscored that the crew of the Storozhevoy were not traitors but patriots fighting to restore freedom of speech and true communist ideals. Sablin condemned the Soviet bureaucracy and the government’s lack of responsibility, demanding that the party organs stop pressuring the people and give them the opportunity to decide for themselves how to live. The speech concluded with an appeal to Soviet citizens to support the Storozhevoy’s crew.
‘An unauthorized hijacking’
The squadron of ships that had been dispatched to intercept the Storozhevoy received orders from Moscow to stop the mutiny at any cost — even if it meant bombing or sinking the frigate. (In the ensuing confusion, Soviet bombers struck two other vessels. Luckily, no one was hurt.)
On the morning of November 9, 1975, a bomb landed under the Storozhevoy’s stern, damaging its hull, propellers, and steering system. Taking advantage of the moment, some of the sailors freed Commander Anatoly Potulny, who then climbed on the bridge, shot Sablin in the leg with a pistol, and announced that he was reassuming command. Marines from other ships landed on the deck of the Storozhevoy soon after, putting an end to the mutiny.
Following their arrest, the wounded Sablin and his supporters were escorted off the ship under guard and taken in for interrogations. Most of the Storozhevoy’s crew members were soon dispersed across the fleet to prevent any contact between them. Sablin and his closest aide, a sailor named Alexander Shein, were taken to Moscow, where they were placed in pre-trial detention at the KGB headquarters on Lubyanka Square. They were later moved to the Lefortovo Prison.
The investigation into the mutiny on the Storozhevoy was conducted behind closed doors. Sablin was charged with high treason for the “organization and execution of an unauthorized hijacking of a warship outside of Soviet territorial waters with the aim of protesting the existing regime.”
Though he pleaded guilty, Sablin maintained that he was not a traitor, explaining that he had wanted to transform the Soviet Union into a communist society, and had not acted out of hostile motives. Later, when he was imprisoned in Lefortovo, Sablin completely renounced these views and repeatedly repented in writing, saying that he would “atone for his guilt” for the rest of his life.
On July 13, 1976, the Supreme Court’s Military Collegium sentenced Valery Sablin to death by firing squad, stripping him of his rank and state honors. Alexander Shein was convicted of acting as an accomplice and sentenced to eight years in prison. Six other officers and 11 midshipmen were also charged in connection with the mutiny. A court acquitted them, but many were dismissed from the navy or subjected to disciplinary measures. Speaking about the mutiny itself was strictly forbidden.
Still, the story of the mutiny on the Storozhevoy went on to inspire Tom Clancy’s bestselling debut novel, The Hunt for Red October. Ten years later, in 1994, the Russian Supreme Court revised the ruling on the case, reducing the high treason charges to military crimes, but refusing to completely exonerate Sablin and Shein.
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Alexey Uvarov
Abridged translation by Eilish Hart