Sometimes, for some people, real life is pretty much like a movie. Sergei Likolayevich Kourdakov, who was born March 1, 1951, is one of those people. He was born in the Soviet Union, in the Novosibirsk Oblast. It’s in southwest Siberia. His father had been an eminent officer in the Soviet Army, and a strong supporter of Joseph Stalin. Kourdakov initially believed that his father had died in battle, but found out later that he had been assassinated when Nikita Krushchev became the Soviet Premier, because all important officers who had supported Stalin were ordered to be eliminated.
He lived with his mother until he was four, when she also died. Then he lived with a nearby family until their son tried to kill him when he was six. After that he ran away and lived on the streets for a couple of weeks before being caught and sent to the Children’s Home Number One, an orphanage. He joined the Youth Pioneers, a Communist organization for children (he didn’t have any choice; it was required). But he also joined a gang of kids at the orphanage who became enough of a problem that the place was shut down in 1961.
Kourdakov ran away again, but was once again caught and sent to another orphanage, where he found there was a sort of caste system among the orphans, with a “king” at the top. By the time he was 14, Kourdakov became the king. He also began to get serious about studying, and became an excellent student, particularly interested in Marxism-Leninism. When he was about 17, he was even invited to teach classes about communism.
Along with a friend, he obtained a shipment of hashish and started selling drugs. That only lasted a few months, and when he got beaten up and stabbed by a rival gang, he dropped the idea of a life of crime. Instead, he joined the navy. At the Naval Academy, he was recruited into the KGB, the Soviet secret police. He was assigned to a “special action squad,” for which he would receive twenty-five rubles for each “operation.” Without knowing quite what an “operation” entailed, he signed up, partly because at the time Naval cadets only earned seven rubles per month.
At first, the operations of his squad involved breaking up fights in bars. But it soon changed to raiding homes where prohibited religious services were taking place. Officials believed the services were a threat to the Communist party. The squad would burst in, confiscate any religious material they found, and just for good measure they would beat up the attendees. This was still just a side gig for Kourdakov; he was still studying to become a radio engineer in the Navy. But in the late 1960s, he met Natasha, who was attending a service the squad raided. He thought she was especially attractive, but beat her up anyway.
Kourdakov was surprised to find Natasha at another meeting just a week later. To get her to stop, he delivered an especially hard beating. But then there she was at yet another meeting the next week. Kourdakov started to think about that, and not only didn’t beat her up again, but stopped the other squad members from doing so. It was a turning point for the young KGB officer.
Another turning point occurred on April 22, 1970, when Kourdakov was invited major Communist party convention, where he received an award. He gave a speech, which was televised nationwide. Then Comrade Orlov, the local party leader, invited him into the private dining room reserved for leaders. Kourdakov was shocked by what he saw: expensive delicacies unheard of for most people, unlimited amounts of vodka, and all the party leaders so drunk they were passing out. Kourdakov had been a true believer in communism, but on that day his goal changed: “From now on, there was only one goal: Get to the top! If the game was played by cynicism and ruthlessness, I’d play it that way.”
About that time he graduated from the Naval Academy, and was offered a spot at the Tomsk Academy, the top school for KGB agents. But he rejected the offer and shipped out as a radio officer on a destroyer. He was transferred to a couple different ships, and finally ended up on a secret trawler that sailed near enough to the US coast to pick up radio signals. He planned to jump ship and escape to the US, but on the very night he planned to defect, he got a message about the “Kudirka incident” — a Soviet naval officer had similarly tried to defect to the US, but the US government simply shipped him back.
That stopped Kourdakov’s plan of defecting to the US. He would try Canada instead. His trawler was pretty close to Canadian waters, and by coincidence a severe storm forced them much closer. He hadn’t had time to put together an elaborate escape plan, so at about 10pm on September 3, 1971, he simply jumped into the water and swam to shore.
He barely made it, but he did make it, and was hospitalized for several days. He was transferred to a prison in British Columbia, and then to another in Quebec City — this was in preparation for Canada, too, simply turning him back over to the USSR. There was a Russian ship due to sail up the Saint Lawrence River, and they were planning to put Kourdakov on it. But a Canadian radio talk show host, Pat Burns, spoke about Kourdakov, and even called a Member of Parliament while live on the air. The Member of Parliament, Harold Winch, demanded that the Prime Minister (Pierre Trudeau) do something. And sure enough, in a few days Kourdakov was granted permanent residency in Canada.
Meanwhile, Kourdakov had never forgotten about Natasha, and in fact had found religion because of her example. People all over Canada reached out to him to offer help, and he chose to move to Toronto to live with a Russian family who introduced him to their church. He was also visited by some Russian agents who warned him: “If you know what is good for you, Kourdakov, you will keep silent and say nothing more. If you open your mouth, you will have a ‘final accident.’ Remember, you have been warned.” What they wanted him to keep silent about was religion, and how it was treated in the USSR. But Kourdakov himself had become religious, and decided “If I kept silent, who would speak for them? Who would know of their suffering? I decided that since I took their lives, I owed them a debt. I decided not to tell the authorities of the threat. After all, it was my decision to speak out, and I had to take responsibility for it.”
Kourdakov did exactly the opposite of keeping silent. He moved to California and travelled around the US speaking in schools and universities, as well as making radio broadcasts about the problems with communism in the USSR. He also spent three weeks at the Pentagon talking about Soviet submarines, which he had served on.
He remembered the threats, though, and began carrying a pistol. In 1973 he was found in a motel room in California, shot in the head by his own gun. His death was initially ruled a suicide, then an accident, then left open. After all, he had been warned.
But there’s yet another twist in the story. A US journalist, Caroline Walker, worked in Russia to try to document Kourdakov’s life for a documentary. Her conclusion was that his story was mostly fake, and he had made it up in order to qualify for political asylum. You can see that documentary, Forgive Me, Sergei, on YouTube. So there really is a movie about a life that was like a movie. Maybe.
All the quotes above are from Kourdakov’s autobiography, The Persecutor, which is also titled Forgive Me, Natasha.
