Translated material
Rust syndrome
22 years ago, a German youth questioned the military power of the USSR
On May 27, 1987, a nineteen-year-old bespectacled German youth at the controls of a Cessna-172B light aircraft easily crossed the air border of the Soviet Union with Finland, also flew to its capital without interference and landed in the very center of Moscow. After that, Red Square was called “Sheremetyevo-3” for some time. There was a very popular joke at that time: a police post would be set up at the fountain near the Bolshoi Theater in case an American submarine surfaced there. But seriously, Rust's flight was a symbol of the beginning of the end of a militarily powerful state called the USSR.Few people remember today, but six months later, on Soviet territory, although far from Moscow, a light airplane also landed, and also from Finland. The pilot set foot on Soviet soil, left a bouquet of flowers and a note with words of admiration for “perestroika” to the then leader of the state, Mikhail Gorbachev. Even fewer, apparently, modern Russian citizens remember from history that in 1940 a German pilot flew to Central Russia without interference. This incident, like the story with Rust, served as the reason for an army pogrom - the removal of high military leaders from their posts. For some it all ended with execution. So innocent air travel, there’s no getting around it, became the prologue to tragic events in which the very existence of a huge country was in doubt.
Today it is known that Matthias Rust’s flight had been prepared for quite a long time, and the then powerful intelligence services - the SVR and the GRU - had to identify this preparation. But, alas, they did not reveal it. Moreover, the Soviet leadership did not make any claims against these departments - only against the army. They went through the army in full - even before any investigation, Mikhail Gorbachev removed from his post the Minister of Defense Marshal Sergei Sokolov, the Air Defense Commander-in-Chief, Air Marshal Alexander Koldunov, generals and lesser officers. Two - the general on duty of the central command post of the air defense forces and the operational duty officer of the Moscow air defense district - served their time in the colony. Some historians even compare these events with the purge of the armed forces carried out by Stalin in 1937.
The commander-in-chief of the air defense forces, Alexander Koldunov, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, who shot down 46 enemy aircraft during the war, took his resignation especially tragically. He became seriously ill, both legs were amputated within a short period of time, and the marshal died in mental and physical agony. My longtime good friend, former commander of the anti-aircraft missile forces of the USSR Air Defense Rasim Akchurin (by the way, the brother of a famous heart surgeon) told me: “The action was not at all harmless, but planned to decapitate our army.”
Meanwhile, the hooligan flight could have been stopped at any of its stages - the USSR had immeasurable military strength. The Cessna plane was observed over Suomi when approaching the border of the Union. Immediately after the flight from the Gulf of Finland, a MiG-23P fighter-interceptor was lifted from the Tapa airfield in Estonia. The radio engineering units reliably aimed it at the intruder, identified the Cessna visually and, reducing the speed to a minimum, accompanied the target for some time, keeping it “in the grip” of its on-board sight. The pilot literally begged for permission to open fire or launch a missile, but never received it. Then duty units from the Khotilovo and Bezhetsk airfields took to the air, but again there was no order to shoot down the Cessna.
Mi-24 army aviation helicopters could be scrambled to intercept - there were several bases along the intruder's flight route. A well-armed rotorcraft has considerable capabilities. During the Iran-Iraq War, an Mi-24 shot down a Fantom F-4 fighter. But the helicopters were also not raised due to inconsistency between the types and branches of troops. “And in the Moscow air defense zone,” honored military navigator retired colonel Valentin Dudin told Vremya Novostey, “it was quite possible to raise any aircraft or helicopter - a rescuer, a repeater, a transit board, which on a cloudless day with signal flares or energetic maneuver could have prevented the intruder from flying and pinned him to the ground.”
Even after landing on Red Square, everything could be presented as conscious humanism, and then a show trial could be held - as in his time over Powers (American pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down during a reconnaissance flight in a U-2 plane over the territory of the USSR on May 1 1960, in August 1960 he was sentenced by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR to ten years in prison with serving the first three years in prison, on February 11, 1962 in Berlin he was exchanged for the Soviet intelligence officer Rudolf Abel). But Gorbachev, in the opinion of many of the country’s military leaders at the time, worked according to the “beat your own” scheme. He needed this then, because he was afraid of the army, which could interfere with the implementation of reforms.
The military remembered how, after the destruction of a South Korean Boeing in September 1983 in the Far East, the then Russian media portrayed air defense troops as heartless killers of innocent people. Duty shifts at air defense points began to get bogged down in numerous approvals and re-requests. The main document “with two zeros,” that is, a top secret document regulating the actions of the air defense forces on duty, was modified in the direction of reinsurance and dilution of responsibility.
Literally at the same time, the Americans shot down an Iranian airbus over the Persian Gulf with an anti-aircraft missile from the Vincennes aircraft carrier, mistaking it for an Iranian F-14 attack aircraft. Arithmetic is, of course, inappropriate here, but more people died than on the South Korean Boeing. Neither the General Staff nor the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs drew the attention of the world community to the fact that our air defense, unlike the United States, if it shoots down foreign aircraft, does so over its territory, and not thousands of kilometers away.
Matthias Rust returned to Russia once again - in 1996 he sold shoes here. His plane, which made history, was purchased by a wealthy Japanese businessman. The Rust syndrome, expressed in indecision when it is absolutely necessary, in fear of taking responsibility, dominated the Soviet and then the Russian army for a long time. This was observed in both Chechen campaigns, although much less so in the second. But today, people who have worn shoulder straps for many years, who know the life of the armed forces from the inside, say that Rust syndrome has almost been overcome. They made this conclusion a year ago, during the South Ossetian events.
The decisiveness with which the order was given to attack Georgia, forcing it to peace, the confidence with which the troops acted, according to many military experts, became a turning point in the history of the army. And this despite the flaws in management caused by a deep reorganization of the General Staff, many of whose departments were at that moment moving to another building, and the absence of new types of weapons in the combat area. It’s not for nothing that they say that the main thing is fighting spirit. And a soldier has it only when he is completely confident in his commander - no matter what rank.