A nineteen-year-old boy from Germany provoked a global purge of the top of the Soviet army, the scale of which experts compare with the Stalinist repressions of 1937. When Matthias Rust landed his light sports plane on Red Square in 1987, he did not think about such consequences. He called himself a messenger of peace.
Peace dove
28 May at 18.30 on Red Square, a small sports plane of foreign production landed, a young man in a red overalls and aviator glasses got out of it. He smiled broadly. Amazed Soviet citizens began to pull themselves up to the plane, assuming that some film was being shot, since the cameramen were right there.
What was the surprise of the crowd when it turned out that the boy flew from Hamburg like a dove of peace to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was at that time in Berlin at a meeting of the Warsaw Pact countries. The young idealist had exactly an hour to communicate with citizens, distributeautographs and posing for TV cameras. Then the police arrived and arrested.
Friendship Bridge
The event in Moscow excited the Soviet and Western media. European and American journalists applauded the brave act of the German pilot Matthias Rust. The Soviet press, on the contrary, wrote about discrediting the military defense of the superpower. Indeed, it was unheard of: to cross the border of the country, fly unhindered to its very capital, land in the heart of Moscow and still survive.
As Matthias Rust himself will later explain in court, he wanted to build an imaginary bridge between the West and the East. The bridge of friendship was supposed to demonstrate how ordinary people in the west want to make friends with the Soviet people. The meeting in Reykjavik between the two heads of the superpowers of the USSR and the United States, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, in 1986, prompted such an extraordinary act, to put it mildly.
Then the meeting came to a standstill, no fateful documents were signed. And, apparently, the German novice pilot decided to correct this mistake by offering his air peace treaty.
No turning back
Mathias Rust was very worried when he rented the plane with the largest fuel tanks from his flight school. The pretext was to obtain the rights of a professional pilot, for which it was necessary to gain a certain number of flying hours. The excitement was caused by the fear of the planned grandiose event. Throughout the flight, he will not leave the desire to abandon thisundertakings.
But on May 13, 1987, Mathias Rust's plane left the runway in Uetersen, which is located near Hamburg, and headed for Iceland. Having visited the historical meeting place of the heads of the two states, the young pilot flew to Norway, and from there to Helsinki. On the morning before the decisive flight, the pilot filled up the full tanks of his Cessna and sent the flight plan to Stockholm to the controllers. As Rust would later say, this was a backup plan if he didn’t have the courage to cross the border of the USSR.
Heading for Moscow
After takeoff, he turned off all radio communication devices and, having lowered the altitude to 200 meters, changed course. The plane disappeared from the airport's radar, and controllers initiated a search and rescue operation. Rescuers did not find anything, having spent several hours searching. Rust would later be billed $120,000 for the false alarm. Meanwhile, a sports plane with a peace envoy on board crossed the border of the USSR, symbolically breaking the Iron Curtain.
The chronology of Matthias Rust's flight over the territory of the Soviet Union shows that air defense radars spotted an unidentified aircraft as soon as it crossed the state border on May 28 at 14.10 near the town of Kohtla-Jarve. And here begins a series of coincidences that can only be attributed to luck. The border guards, and May 28 was their professional holiday, having found a small plane, could not identify it in any way. Anti-aircraft installations were put on alert, the target was assigned the code 8255, but no destruction orders were given.received.
Smile of fate
MiG-21, MiG-23 were lifted into the air, which at high speed flew past the barely crawling Matthias Rust. High-speed fighters could not fly a sports aircraft flying at low altitude and low speed. Therefore, having circled it several times and not having received an order for further actions, they returned to the base. Luck smiled on the young pilot because there had been an incident four years before.
On September 1, 1983, a South Korean civilian aircraft was flying from New York to Anchorage to Seoul. At three o'clock in the morning, he began to deviate from the course and flew into the territory of the Soviet Union for more than 100 kilometers. The aircraft did not respond to call signs, and over Sakhalin it was shot down by a border Su-15. 269 people died, all who were on board. The Boeing disaster aggravated the already strained relations between the West and the USSR. After that, the Soviet air defense services received an order not to shoot down civilian ships, but to guide them, forcing them to land.
I am mine
The luck continued. In the Pskov region, the code “friend or foe” was changed, because. there were training flights of one of the military regiments, so all the planes in the air were recognized as their own, including the plane of Matthias Rust. The day before, an Air Force plane crashed near the city of Torzhok. Rescue operations were carried out, and the sports aircraft was mistaken for a participant in the search and rescue operation. When they realized that this was an intruder, Matthias Rust had already entered the zone of the Moscow Air Defense District.
Determining that the Muscovites themselvessort it out, they reported that a Soviet sports plane had flown to them, which had not filed a corresponding application. In the Moscow District, they looked through their fingers at the petty intruder and did not take any action.
No one would have thought that a small plane that violated the border could fly to Moscow without being stopped. But it happened. As the media will later say, all military units shifted responsibility on each other. It turned out as in the proverb: "Seven nannies have a child without an eye." Thinking that the neighbors would figure it out, the big bosses decided not to bother. As a result, Matthias Rust landed on Red Square.
Prosecution
Until we realized what was happening, an hour passed. The envoy of peace was arrested and a criminal case was opened under the articles “Violation of the state border” and “Air hooliganism”. Remarkably, neither during the arrest nor at the trial, Rust showed no signs of anxiety or fear. He acted like an outsider who didn't care or who knew what was going to happen next. This behavior will further arouse some suspicion of a conspiracy, but without proof, it will remain only a hypothesis.
Also, the investigation had an assumption that the guy has mental disabilities. But they were afraid to conduct a psychiatric examination due to the fact that the Western media could accuse the Soviet Union of bringing a he althy guy to mental imbalance. One way or another, Matthias Rust received 4 years in a penal colony.
Serious consequences of spontaneous flight
While the newly minted prisoner was mastering the Soviet prison cell of increased comfort - 2 mattresses instead of one, 2 pillows instead of one, diet food and his own yard for walking, a global shake-up took place in the country's leadership.
Mikhail Gorbachev flew in from Berlin as soon as the incident was reported to him. Emergency meetings of the Politburo were held one after another. It was clear that the flight of Matthias Rust would have a colossal international resonance: well, what a jerk on a plane broke through the impregnable air defense of a nuclear country and landed right in front of the nose of the government. This will be remembered and procrastinated for a long time. How to endure such a shame? Measures are needed to prove to the world that serious guys are at the helm of the Soviet Union and no one is to be trifled with. Punitive measures were not long in coming.
Conspiracy Theory
To say that the anger of the head of state was strong is to say nothing. In just a week, more than 250 generals and lower rank officers lost their posts, starting with Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov and Air Defense Commander twice Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Koldunov.
Immediately after that, rumors spread and suspicions arose that it was all a set up. The incident with Matthias Rust was just in time for Gorbachev to deal with the military elite, which was in opposition and posed the main political threat of perestroika inside the country, under a plausible pretext. The sources referred to V. A. Kryuchkov, Deputy Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, who admitted that the flight of the German boy wasplanned by professionals from the USA, and prepared and implemented with the help of the Soviet side.
Many flying professionals also did not believe in the phenomenal luck of an inexperienced pilot. In particular, Igor M altsev, who in 1984-1991 served as chief of the main headquarters of the Air Defense Forces, himself a professional pilot, argued that without training and support from outside, a pilot who had recently learned to fly could not carry out such a flight. It is so easy to pass through all the cordons only by knowing where they are and how to bypass them. But a theory remains a theory, suspicion is one thing, and proof is another. Naturally, no one was looking for them. Perestroika successfully ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fragmentation into small states of the once superpower. No one interfered with this anymore.
The later life of a superhero
The boy who made so much noise was soon amnestied. After spending 14 months in prison, he returned to his homeland, where he, as a mentally unstable person, was deprived of his flying license for life. The criminal case that was brought against him in Germany was also dropped, and Finland's claim of 120 thousand dollars for rescue work was settled at the level of heads of state. So the Messenger of Peace got off very lightly.
Further biography of Matthias Rust is no different from the heroic. There was another criminal case for assaulting a nurse who was stabbed. Rust could not stand the girl's refusal to date him. Gave 4 yearsbut after 15 months he was released. He then left for Trinidad, where he lived for some time. In 1997, he converted to Hinduism and married a girl who was originally from India. Together with his wife, he returned to Germany. In 2001, he was detained by the police for stealing a sweater from a supermarket, got off with a fine of 600 marks. Rust makes a living playing poker, teaching yoga and doing analytics for an investment bank. In 2012, his memoirs dedicated to the famous flight were published. Now Matthias Rust leads an inconspicuous lifestyle: he does not make contact with journalists and does not give interviews about the events of 1987.
