ODYSSEY OF A SOVIET ARMY DEFECTOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340015-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: August 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340015-5
WALL STREET JOURNAL
12 August 1985
Odyssey of a Soviet Army Defer
ARTICLE APPEARED
By FREDERICK KEMPE
VIENNA-Aleksandr's odyssey began
the night that a drunken Soviet lieutenant
ordered him to scrub the company's grisly
toilets with a toothbrush. The 18-year-old
Soviet soldier, fed up with the ill-treatment
he received at his duty station in Poland,
told his superior to go to hell.
Unfortunately, the insulted officer was
sober enough to ship the private off to a
month of forced labor on a "punishment
brigade." His work was punctuated by
post-breakfast and pre-dinner beatings;
two smiling sergeants in a windowless
room would throw him on the floor and
kick him while shouting that he would
learn "how to talk to officers."
Aleksandr, or Sasha as his friends know
him, landed in a hospital after his month's
punishment with a badly swollen stomach
and damaged internal organs. He de-
spaired when the doctor refused to send
him home for treatment, and decided he
must escape. After returning to duty, he
took advantage of a day off granted for a
medical checkup. He hid in a courtyard
until nightfall, then leaped over a wall and
began 314 years of hiding before being
smuggled to Western Europe a little more
than a month ago by underground Solidar-
ity, the subterranean remains of the social
movement crushed by martial law in De-
cember 1981.
"I was afraid that I would curse an offi-
cer again sometime, and I never would
have survived another month of punish-
ment," he frowns. "I knew the risk of cap-
ture would be 10 or 15 years in a labor
camp, or perhaps even death, but I saw no
other choice."
The Experiences of Sasha
Sasha's whereabouts in Western Europe
and his last name must remain secret for
now, as must details about his escape to
the West. The Solidarity underground is
still using the channel for other purposes.
Large chunks of his story and some of its
minor details have been confirmed by
sources in Poland and through other reli-
able means so as to leave little doubt about
its truth. He misses his parents and friends
in the Soviet Union, but does not believe he
will follow the example of the two Soviet
Army defectors who left Britain last year
to return to their homeland.
Sasha, stocky and wearing a thick black
beard, talks about his experiences in sim-
ple Russian, spiced with occasional Polish
words to describe concepts and books he
has never discussed in his own language:
Solidarity, underground opposition and the
books he first read while in hiding-Alek-
sandr Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward" and
"Gulag Archipelago."
As the first known Soviet military de-
fector in Poland (there have been several
in Afghanistan), Sasha tells a unique tale;
spanning six months before martial law
and 3% years thereafter. It offers novel in-
sight into the life of a Soviet soldier in a
rebellious brother country, and it sheds
light on a Polish underground that is too
weak to fight authorities but still large and
organized enough to hide and smuggle out
a Russian fugitive.
His engineers battalion based in Olawe
near the Western Polish city of Wroclaw
was responsible for building and maintain-
ing airports. He speaks knowledgeably
about the construction of underground
takeoff strips and camouflaged landing
fields in many parts of Poland, covered ei-
ther by large nets or fake buildings that
can be removed quickly.
He speaks'of the low morale of ill-fed
enlisted Russians who were awakened be-
tween 1 and 3 a.m. almost every morning
for strike and demonstration alerts. He
says it was one of several practices engi-
neered to foment hatred against Poles,
psychologically preparing troops to sup-
press Solidarity, if necessary.
But above all, his time in hiding is a hu-
man tale of several hundred Poles risking
their safety to provide him jobs, protec-
tion, medical attention and even Polish
identity papers. He changed locations
more than 30 times, usually living in areas
where Solidarity was inactive. He stayed
in buildings that housed party members,
military officers and secret police, where
his underground Solidarity friends cor-
rectly figured he would be less likely to be
drawn in by a police dragnet.
But he was also rejected in his contacts
with U.S. officials. He tried to defect at the
U.S. Embassy in Warsaw in May 1984. He
carried a note giving his history that had
been written in English by friends. But a
consulate officer told him, "We can't do
anything to help you. You must go
away."
The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw declined
to comment, but one U.S. diplomat muses
that he was probably too small a fish for
the embassy to risk so much, considering
the political problems caused by Cardinal
Mindszenty's stay at the U.S. Embassy in
Budapest for 15 years until 1971 and five
years of housing Pentecostalists at the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow from 1978 to 1983.
Aleksandr was born on Feb. 18, 1963, in
Vornonezh, a medium-sized industrial town
in the Soviet Russian Republic, and he was
drafted in April 1981 after his 18th birth-
day. After three weeks of basic training in
Tambov, he and other draftees were put on
a plane without being told their destina-
tion. Their concern increased when leather
belts and boots were issued with their uni-
forms, items given only to troops being
shipped abroad.
"Everyone was unhappy and they
started drinking," he says. When officers
told the men on board the plane that they
were bound for Poland, there was initial
relief. "But then there was fear because
we said that was going to be the next Af-
ghanistan."
His biggest surprises in Poland were
the drunkenness of the officers, the lack of
troop discipline, and the time spent build-
ing up hatred and fear of Poles.
Soldiers technically weren't allowed off
base, not even to attend the cinema across
the road. They were told the restrictions
were to prevent Solidarity agents from kill-
ing or kidnapping them. However, lack of
discipline allowed many to get out and dis-
cover that Solidarity was a larger and
more peaceful organization than their offi-
cers' lectures indicated. But what they
were most interested in was that Poland
was a good market: They traded whatever
they could find to local Poles for alcohol or
such clothing as jeans and T-shirts that
they could sell later for a healthy profit in
the Soviet Union.
What also distinguished service in Po-
land was that the soldiers clearly saw
themselves as much as troops meant to
suppress an ally, Poland, as fight their en-
emies in the West.
"The officers wanted to make us very
aggressive against Solidarity and the Pol-
ish people," Aleksandr says. "But we were
indifferent to Solidarity, and we hated the
officers. There was such a lack of disci-
pline among the soldiers that I have trou-
ble imagining that officers could instill a
spirit to fight against the population. The
soldiers would have used every possible
chance to trade, but not to willingly
fight."
The soldiers also resented the officers
because they would often sell the batta-
lion's short supplies of butter and meat to
Poles. ,When meat was served to us it was
more often boiled fat and the butter was
melted fat," he says.
The arms depot that Aleksandr guarded
included the usual bombs and missiles, but
also curiously held enough spare AK-47
semiautomatic machine guns and ammuni-
tion "for a regiment" and many more
hand-to-hand weapons no longer used by
the Soviet military and too outdated to be
used in a modern war against the West.
There were 1,500 to 2,000 AK-47s alone with
180 bullets each. Moscow clearly didn't
trust the polish army too far.
The Poles were always kept short of
ammunition and were given old, unreliable
equipment. "We would always hear about
their tanks breaking down," he says.
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340015-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340015-5
But Aleksandr noticed that despite Po-
land's economic problems and Soviet pro-
paganda, ordinary people lived better than
in the Soviet Union. That led him to as-
sume that the West was even more desir-
able. The promise of a richer life, his fail-
ure to be sent home for health reasons, and
his fears about continuing in the Soviet
army prompted his defection.
The young soldier spent his first three
days of hiding inside a barn, where he
lived off animal corn feed and tepid water.
When those provisions ran out, he stole a
bicycle and rode to nearby Wroclaw.
Poles were taken aback when he ap-
proached them, still in his uniform (though
with the epaulets and insignia ripped off)
and asked in Russian where he could find
Solidarity headquarters.
He feared the worst when he walked
into the union offices and saw a Polish offi-
cer in full uniform, wearing a Solidarity
button, also waiting for help. He retreated
to the men's room. When a union official
walked in, the Soviet soldier answered his
small talk in Russian. He asked for asylum
over a Solidarity urinal, a scene only
slightly less ludicrous than Robin Wil-
liams's defection to a Bloomingdale's clerk
in the film "Moscow on the Hudson."
The official locked him in a stall until
he could decide what to do. He was then
moved to a safe house, where Solidarity
kept him under wraps for three weeks
while they investigated whether he had
been planted as a government provocation
against the union. When they discovered
the Soviet military manhunt under way,
they believed his story and took him to
Warsaw where he was to appeal to the
Swedish Embassy for help.
Frequent Moves
However, a receptionist there said no
one spoke Russian and he should come
back with an interpreter. That was Dec.
10, and three days later martifil law
changed everything. The parents of the
Solidarity activist who had been looking af-
ter him whisked the soldier away hours be-
fore their daughter was arrested.
He regained contact with Solidarity only
after four months, and from then on he
moved frequently. He worked as a watch
repairman, as a gardener and as a tractor
driver, and he stayed with people ranging
from simple workers to Roman Catholic in-
tellectuals. He learned Polish from televi-
sion, radio, and the reading of fairy tales
and comics, then he moved on to under-
ground publications and Solzhenitsyn.
The underground saw it was growing
more dangerous to keep their Russian sol-
dier in Poland, so they sent him to the U.S.
Embassy. The consulate officer turned him
away, and Sasha rejected his friends' ad-
vice to hold his ground until the embassy
was forced to take him in.
"I feared that the Marines would come
and take me in a jeep and drive me out
somewhere and throw me out," he says.
"That would have been very bad because
then I couldn't find my way back to
safety."
So he wandered lost on the streets of
Warsaw for several harrowing hours be-
fore finding his way back to friends.
Finally at about 'midnight on the last
Sunday of June, underground Solidarity
leaders picked him up, and he was on his
way to the West. He had no forewarning,
but as always simply trusted his Polish
protectors who, unlike the U.S. Embassy,
had never let him down.
But does he resent the democratic
United States for' not helping him? "I
didn't have any experience of American
democracy," he says, "so I couldn't be dis-
appointed in it."
Mr. Kempe is the Journal's East Euro-
pean correspondent.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403340015-5