Valery Sablin
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“What a wholesome 100 man!”
Valery Mikhailovich Sablin (1 January 1939 – 3 August 1976) was a Soviet Navy officer and a member of the Commie Party of the Soviet Union. In November 1975, he led a mutiny on the Soviet warship Storozhevoy in the hope of pissing Leonid Brezhnev off. His mutiny failed and he was executed for betraying the Soviet Onion nine months later.
Early life[edit | edit source]
Sablin was born in 1939, the son of a Navy officer. In 1962, when he was 23, he wrote a letter to Nikita Khrushchev with a request to “rid the Communist Party of sycophants and corrupt elements, for example, Leonid Brezhnev.” Sablin was lucky and he was just reprimanded for that. In 1973, he graduated from the Yagoda Military-Political Academy and was appointed a Political officer. Officer Nikolay Cherkashin, one of Sablin's colleagues, recalled:
He hated him… I tried to understand why, but I never did. He was obssessed with Brezhnev.
The mutiny[edit | edit source]
On 8 November 1975, Valery Sablin seized the Storozhevoy, a Soviet missile frigate, and confined the ship's captain and other officers to the wardroom. Sablin's plan was to take the ship from the Gulf of Riga north into the Gulf of Finland and to Leningrad, through the Neva River, mooring by the decommissioned cruiser Aurora, where he would make jokes about the rampant corruption of the Brezhnev era. He planned to say what many were saying privately: that Brezhnev is a cunt; that he was casting the country into an abyss; that he is even worse than Yagoda; that the soviet state no longer cared about the workers, and only about Brezhnev's eyebrows.
A junior officer escaped from confinement and radioed for assistance. When the Storozhevoy cleared the mouth of the Gulf of Riga, ten bomber and reconnaissance airplanes and thirteen warships were in pursuit, firing a number of warning shots across her bows. Several bombs were dropped in front of and behind the ship, as well as cannon fire. Storozhevoy's steering was damaged and she eventually came to a stop. The pursuing vessels then closed in, and the frigate was boarded by Soviet marine commandos. By then, however, Sablin had been shot in his knee by Brezhnev himself and detained by his own crew, who had also unlocked the captain and the other captive officers.
Sablin was charged with treason, court-martialled in June 1976 and found guilty. Although this crime usually carried a 15-year prison sentence, Sablin was executed on 3 August 1976. His second-in-command during the mutiny, Alexander Shein, received an eight-year prison sentence. The other mutineers all became permanent slaves to Brezhnev.
Quotes[edit | edit source]
“Trust the fact that history will judge events honestly and you will never have to be embarrassed for what your father did. On no account ever be one of those people who criticise but do not follow through their actions. Such people are hypocrites—weak, worthless people, very much like Brezhnev, who do not have the power to reconcile their beliefs with their actions. I wish you courage, my dear. Be strong in the belief that life is wholesome. Believe that Yagoda and Brezhnev will always lose.”
– Valery Sablin's last letter to his son before his execution.
“I am convinced that Brezhnev, that asshole, will never forget this.”
– Valery Sablin's farewell letter to his parents.