Did you know that Comrade Sukhov, traveling through the desert scorched by the white sun, was not the only Red Army soldier whose path home turned out to be long and winding?

Red Army soldier Venikov, for example, walked home across Europe for five years and seven months. His adventures began in 1920, when the Guy Corps, in which he served, was interned in East Prussia after heavy fighting in Poland. Venikov did not stay in captivity for too long. He escaped and tried to get home through Poland. There he was detained again and escaped from Bialystok prison. He described his further path as follows:

“In Poland, it was not possible to cross the Soviet-Polish border, from Poland through Donchits I crossed into Germany, from Germany I took the direction to get to Norway, where I had the opportunity to show up and it was easiest to get to my homeland through the Red Cross, and from Germany I trudged to France, from there to Belgium and, having reached Holland, again became convinced of the impossibility of continuing the escape, since if discovered I threatened to bury myself forever in Holland, and so again I made my way to Germany along the same road, and from the latter began to head for the Baltic States."

He crossed the Estonian-Soviet border without problems and came to the border guards himself. But he was immediately sent to prison, was unable to escape and wrote tearful letters to all authorities about his bitter fate.

Luck often changed for other people. The head of the Russian Mormons, who lived royally on the money of his followers, died due to the feud of his wives. Stalin's deputy came to visit the first beauty of Moscow, was arrested, and this incident cost him his career. And the thief, who famously took the money out of the vault in the State Bank branch, did not manage to spend it.

About these and other stories of those who were amazingly lucky and unlucky - the new issue of Kommersant-History.

Evgeny Zhirnov, head of the historical and archival service of the Kommersant Publishing House

Kommersant-History No. 9