Stanislav Vasilyevich 'Slava' Kurilov (; July 17, 1936 – January 29, 1998) was a Soviet, Canadian and Israeli
oceanographer
Oceanography (), also known as oceanology, sea science, ocean science, and marine science, is the scientific study of the ocean, including its physics, chemistry, biology, and geology.
It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of top ...
. He escaped from the
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
by jumping overboard from a
cruise liner
Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports of call, where passengers may go on Tourism, tours k ...
in the open ocean and swimming to the
Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
.
Biography
Early life
Stanislav Kurilov was born in 1936 in
Vladikavkaz
Vladikavkaz, formerly known as Ordzhonikidze () or Dzaudzhikau (), is the capital city of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia. It is located in the southeast of the republic at the foothills of the Caucasus, situated on the Terek (river), Terek River. ...
(then known as Ordzhonikidze). He grew up in
Semipalatinsk
Semey (; , formerly known as Semipalatinsk ( ) until 2007 and as Alash-Qala ( ) from 1917 to 1920, is a city in eastern Kazakhstan, in the Kazakh part of Siberia. When Abai Region was created in 2022, Semey became its administrative centre. I ...
, in Soviet
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country primarily in Central Asia, with a European Kazakhstan, small portion in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the Kazakhstan–Russia border, north and west, China to th ...
. As a young child, he learned to swim in secret from his own parents (who forbade him to enter open water), and at the age of 10, on a dare, he swam across the
Irtysh
The Irtysh is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the chief tributary of the Ob (river), Ob and is also the longest tributary in the world.
The river's source lies in the Altai Mountains, Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria (the northern p ...
.
[ Many years later, in one of his later stories, he described the negative environmental and public health effects of the ]nuclear test site
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of their explosion. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to signal strength. Bec ...
that was constructed near the city during his teenage years.
From his early years, Kurilov dreamed of a life of sailing the seas. However, doctors told him that due to a vision problem he would not be eligible for either a Soviet Navy
The Soviet Navy was the naval warfare Military, uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces. Often referred to as the Red Fleet, the Soviet Navy made up a large part of the Soviet Union's strategic planning in the event of a conflict with t ...
or merchant marine career. After doing his military service, as a chemical warfare instructor of a sapper
A sapper, also called a combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications, demolitions, bridge-building, laying or clearing minefields, preparing field defenses ...
battalion, he graduated from the Leningrad Meteorology Institute ( ru) as an oceanographer. While a student, he also learned scuba diving
Scuba diving is a Diving mode, mode of underwater diving whereby divers use Scuba set, breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface breathing gas supply, and therefore has a limited but variable endurance. The word ''scub ...
.[ Later, he also became interested in ]yoga
Yoga (UK: , US: ; 'yoga' ; ) is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated with its own philosophy in ancient India, aimed at controlling body and mind to attain various salvation goals, as pra ...
and meditation
Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...
.[
Kurilov worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and at the Marine Biology Institute in ]Vladivostok
Vladivostok ( ; , ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai and the capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia. It is located around the Zolotoy Rog, Golden Horn Bay on the Sea of Japan, covering an area o ...
. Even though the Soviet Union operated a large number of research vessel
A research vessel (RV or R/V) is a ship or boat designed, modified, or equipped to carry out research at sea. Research vessels carry out a number of roles. Some of these roles can be combined into a single vessel but others require a dedicated ...
s on a worldwide scale, the authorities decided that Kurilov was not eligible for any overseas expeditions, either because of him learning about chemical warfare during his military service, because his father had been a prisoner of war during World War II,[ or because of Kurilov's "foreign connection": his sister had married an Indian citizen and immigrated to India, and later to Canada.][ Kurilov's field work, therefore, was restricted to the Soviet Union's coastal waters, such as the ]Black Sea
The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...
and Sea of Japan
The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...
. In particular, he worked at Soviet underwater research stations in the Black Sea.[
Kurilov came to resent the Soviet state even more when, starting in 1970, two of his team's joint underwater projects with ]Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the A ...
fell through one after the other, because he was refused a passport
A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that certifies a person's identity and nationality for international travel. A passport allows its bearer to enter and temporarily reside in a foreign country, access local aid ...
. Instead, the Soviets sent another group, "without diving experience, but with xitvisas", with whom Cousteau refused to work.[Stanislav Kurilov]
Море
(The Sea)[
]
The defection
In December 1974, Kurilov boarded Soviet cruise liner
Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports of call, where passengers may go on Tourism, tours k ...
''Sovetsky Soyuz
''Sovétsky Soyúz'' () was a magazine published by the Soviet Union. The magazine was established in 1956. It was one of the propaganda magazines of the Soviet Union. There were editions published in France, Italy, Finland and Japan
Jap ...
'', leaving for a tour advertised as a "Cruise from the winter into the summer". It was a popular "cruise to nowhere", where a ship would depart Vladivostok in the Far East, sail south toward the equator through the Pacific Ocean, and come back without entering any foreign ports. Because of the absence of port calls, the trip required neither passport nor visas. It was known that the ship would pass within view of several foreign countries, and after studying its planned route, Kurilov decided that the best chance for an escape would be in the Philippine Sea
The Philippine Sea is a List of seas#Marginal seas by ocean, marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean, Western Pacific Ocean east of the list of islands of the Philippines, Philippine Archipelago (hence the name) and the List of seas#Largest seas ...
, off the coast of Siargao Island
Siargao is a tear-drop shaped island in the Philippine Sea situated 196 kilometers southeast of Tacloban. It has a land area of approximately . The east coast is relatively straight with one deep inlet, Port Pilar. The coastline is marked by a s ...
.[Stanislav Kurilov]
Побег
(Escape)
After sunset on December 13, in stormy weather, Kurilov jumped overboard from the stern of the cruise ship, with a snorkeling
Snorkeling (American and British English spelling differences#Doubled in British English, British and Commonwealth English spelling: snorkelling) is the practice of human swimming, swimming face down on or through a body of water while breathing ...
mask and fins. Luckily, he was neither immediately noticed by the crew, nor struck by the ship's propeller. However, because of the strong currents, it took him three nights and two days to reach the land. In his own memoir, he recalls reaching the Philippine shore on his own, by swimming all the way;[ but according to an ]Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City.
Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
report, based on information released by the Philippine authorities, published a few days later, he had been found by a local fisherman "clinging to a drifting fishing boat".[Soviet 'Defector' was Airman]
(Associated Press). ''The Milwaukee Journal'', Dec 24, 1974. Quote: "A Russian sailor who says he jumped overboard in the Philippine Sea 12 days ago is a former lieutenant in the Soviet air force, Immigration Commissioner Edmundo Reyes said Thursday. Reyes said Slava Kurilov, 36, of Leningrad, was being questioned at Cagayan de Oro... Filipino fishermen found him December 15 clinging to a drifting fishing boat near Siargo Island..."
More similar news items from December 1974 can be found with a newspaper archive search, e.g
like this
After about six months of investigation, first in Cagayan de Oro
Cagayan de Oro (abbreviated CDO and officially the City of Cagayan de Oro; ; Bukid language, Binukid: ''Ciudad ta Cagayan de Oro''; ; ) is a Cities of the Philippines#Legal classification, highly urbanized city in the Regions of the Philippi ...
,[ later in ]Manila
Manila, officially the City of Manila, is the Capital of the Philippines, capital and second-most populous city of the Philippines after Quezon City, with a population of 1,846,513 people in 2020. Located on the eastern shore of Manila Bay on ...
(the Philippine authorities may have suspected him to be a Soviet spy), Kurilov was able to leave for Canada.
Life in the West
Kurilov spent over 10 years in Canada, during which time he traveled extensively. Although not Jewish, in 1986 he moved to Israel,
where he married an Israeli citizen (Lena Gendelev; after marriage, Gendelev-Kurilov) and became employed at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute in Haifa
Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...
.[
He wrote the story of his escape,][ as well as a number of other stories; they have been published both in Russian and in Hebrew and (partial) English translations.][
Stanislav Kurilov died in a diving accident on ]Lake Kinneret
The Sea of Galilee (, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ), also called Lake Tiberias, Genezareth Lake or Kinneret, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest la ...
.[ He was buried in the Alliance Church International Cemetery in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood.
]
Other similar escapes
Although Stanislav Kurilov's method of escape is remarkable, it is not unique. In his study of defection
In politics, a defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one state in exchange for allegiance to another, changing sides in a way which is considered illegitimate by the first state. More broadly, defection involves abandoning a person, ca ...
s from the Soviet Union, Vladislav Krasnov
Vladislav Krasnov (, ''Vladislav Georgievich Krasnov''; born February 24, 1937) is a Russian and American scholar and writer. While his scholarly works were published with his name spelled as Vladislav Krasnov, his social and political commentary ...
mentions at least two other similar escapes from a Soviet cruise ship on a "cruise to nowhere" in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
( Yuri Vetokhin and Liliana Gasinskaya).
An unnamed member of the biology faculty at Moscow University
Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, and six branches. Al ...
, who was 26 at the time, escaped from another Soviet cruise liner (MV ''Rus'') off the Philippines, in a rubber raft. He was picked by Filipino fishermen.[. Krasnov's source for this incident is a "master list" of Soviet defectors leaked from the KGB c. 1970-71.]
Yuri Vetokhin, a former computer programmer from Leningrad, escaped in a similar way to Indonesia in December 1979. He later gave an account of his escape (as well as of two previous, failed, escape attempts on the Black Sea) in his memoir.
In culture
In 2017 the Ukrainian music band ''Antytila
Antytila () is a Ukrainian musical group. It includes Taras Topolia (vocals), Serhii Vusyk (keyboard, artistic director), Dmytro Zholud (guitar), and Dmytro Vodovozov (drums), Mykhailo Chyrko (bass). History
In 2018, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the futur ...
'' published a music video of the song "TDME" dedicated to Kurilov.Антитіла - TDME / Official video
/ref>
Notes
External links
Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbelievable Way to Escape the Iron Curtain
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kurilov, Stanislav
Russian oceanographers
Soviet defectors
1936 births
1998 deaths
People from Vladikavkaz
Accidental deaths in Israel
20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers
Underwater diving deaths
Canadian oceanographers
Soviet emigrants to Canada
Deaths by drowning in Israel
Soviet escapees
Soviet oceanographers