The Mutiny by Boris Gindin and David Hagberg
This was a novelized non-fiction work, the story that inspired Tom Clancy to write his first novel, The Hunt for Red October. I thought EC Don had written about this, but when I searched the blog, the book did not come up. I think I got this one because it was associated with Hagberg. As much as Dan Quail was not John Kennedy, this is no Hunt for Red October. The real story involved a surface ship, not a submarine, and the intent of the guy who led the mutiny, the ship’s political officer, was not to defect. Rather, he had the harebrained idea that he could use the ship to broadcast to the Russian people. He believed that his message against the current leadership, Brezhnef, would lead to a new revolution and a return to the true values of Karl Marx. When he seized the vessel, he actually did get to deliver his message, but it was in the middle of the night. Also, the radioman was clever enough to send it as an encrypted message, so only the military people could understand what he was saying. There were some interesting interchanges in the chain of command, from the mutineers to Brezhnef. But, there was a lot of extraneous stuff, like too much info and comparisons to the events with Bligh and the H.S.S. Bounty, and too much info on the history of the Russian Navy and what was going on in the gulags. Since you won’t be reading this, I’ll tell you the ending was fast. The ship did get out of port and into the open Baltic Sea. They almost made it to Swedish waters, which was not where they wanted to go. They were attacked by the Russian air force about the same time the real captain escaped from his temporary prison, seized a gun, shot the political prisoner in the leg, and took back control of the ship. All participants, those that went along with the mutiny and those that were not were either run out of the Navy (a cushy job for officers) or demoted. The political officer was apparently killed, as in he got his 9 ounces (of lead). Clancy was pretty clever to have gone from this minor incident to the great story he wrote. This book is not worth your energy.
West Coast Don
I totally agree. I did read it a while back and reported on it in our earlier email exchanges that must not have made the cut when you posted some of our earliest efforts.
ReplyDeleteI'm always impressed how writers can take a seemingly minor story, rework it a bit and come up with a good tale. Clancy's first novel, written while he was still selling insurance in Baltimore I think, was Patriot Games, but stumbled across this story and set the other book aside and composed Red October (the book and movie are quite different). I remember Clancy shopped Red October around for a while before finally getting some obscure military publisher to print it, hitting the financial jackpot.
East Coast Don