The only per­son to escape the Iron Cur­tain by swimming.

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

Since his child­hood, Slava Kurilov had been very keen on swim­ming and he loved the sea so deeply, he made it his career — he was an oceanog­ra­pher, a deep sea diver. He knew the sky — all the major con­stel­la­tions, he knew mete­o­rol­ogy, he had a vivid inquis­i­tive mind  — he also spoke good Eng­lish, had a sis­ter liv­ing in Canada and his father was in a Ger­man prison camp dur­ing the WWII, which also con­sid­ered some­what of a treach­ery. A few times Slava applied for a per­mit for research trips out­side the coun­try, but to no avail — the rea­son being “endan­ger­ing the secu­rity of the USSR”.

Slava at a typ­i­cal day at work

In his diaries he wrote that ““my home­land had sen­tenced me to life impris­on­ment through no fault of my own. Until my death I will never see the free world.”

Apart from that, Slava had an inter­est­ing out­look on life: he prac­ticed yoga and med­i­ta­tion, he trained him­self to abstemious, ascetic regime, and often he went with­out food — or water! — for five days at a time.

THE CRUISE “FROM WINTER INTO SUMMER”

One day — it was Novem­ber 1974  — Slava came across a travel ad in a paper: a large cruise line was to go on a voy­age towards the equa­tor, depart­ing Vladi­vos­tok. The cruise was an unusual one: the ship did not intend to enter any for­eign ports so no visas were required — the route was just to travel the outer waters for 20 days with­out approach­ing the coastal lines.

When Slava read that, he felt a pang of hope — in his mem­oirs, he later wrote that he felt like a wild ani­mal which was about to be taken out for a walk before chain­ing him down for­ever. So the deci­sion to go on a cruise was made, and it was an easy, con­fi­dent one.

Inter­est­ingly, the cruise ship was built in 1930s in Ger­many and ini­tially was called “Adolf Hitler” — the rumour had it that it was the Fuhrer’s pri­vate yacht. It sank dur­ing the war, but was recov­ered by the Soviet engi­neers. After that, it became the largest cruise ship of the Soviet Union and was used on the Far East routes, as far as pos­si­ble from the civilised world — so it couldn’t be vetoed.

The route for this par­tic­u­lar cruise was kept in strict secret. What was announced, how­ever, that the pas­sen­gers could sun­bathe under the trop­i­cal sun, swim in the onboard pools and enjoy the stun­ning vis­tas. The guest lec­tur­ers would talk about the geog­ra­phy of the Pacific Ocean as well as the coun­tries in the prox­im­ity. A cruise with no stops but with lec­tures about the South East Asia — well, in those days it did not sound unreasonable.

The main chal­lenge was to fig­ure out when — and where to jump. Slava’s goal was the Philip­pine island of Siar­gao,  near the south­ern part of Mindanao.

Pas­sen­gers were never shown any maps or other nav­i­ga­tional tools — yet Slava man­aged to steal a glance at a captain’s dashboard.

THE JUMP

On Decem­ber 13, at about 8pm, dressed in tight thick shorts and a few pairs of socks, equipped with a snorkel, flips and an amulet he had deep faith in, Slava walked to the upper deck  — and took a leap into the darkness.

The deck was no longer under my feet. For sev­eral moments I flew through the air, until I felt the waves part­ing, gen­tly wel­com­ing me into their embrace. Com­ing up to the sur­face I looked around – and froze in ter­ror. Beside me, an arm’s length away, was the huge hull of the liner and its gigan­tic turn­ing pro­peller. I des­per­ately sum­moned up my strength to swim out of reach, but I was held in the dense mass of sta­tion­ary water that was cou­pled to the screw in a mor­tal grip. It felt as if the liner had sud­denly stopped, yet only a few sec­onds ago it had been doing eigh­teen knots. The ter­ri­fy­ing vibra­tions of the hell­ish noise went through my body; the screw seemed to be alive: it had a mali­ciously smil­ing face and held me tight with invis­i­ble arms.

And so he began to swim, try­ing to keep the liner behind his back, swim­ming away from it. After the ini­tial shock, Slava was con­sumed by utter silence — just the mild mur­murs of the ocean accom­pa­nied his thoughts. He realised that he really needed a com­pass — yet tak­ing one on board would have seemed sus­pi­cious. Now all he had to do was to con­tinue swim­ming — but he found it com­fort­ing, as the water was warm and the ocean seemed friendly. Had he known what was ahead of him, he later wrote — he would have jumped any­way. Any­thing lying ahead — los­ing the direc­tion, thirst, hunger, uncer­tainty,  jelly fish or shark — was a bet­ter option than return­ing to the ship, to the Soviet Union.

Kurilov in his lat­ter days.

A day later he did not feel sore or tired — only the breath­ing of the ocean, which by now seemed like a liv­ing crea­ture with heavy breath.  Slava mis­cal­cu­lated the route, and his ini­tial esti­mates  — to swim for about 24 hours — had grown to three full nights alone in the ocean.

THE REST

There was a lot between the jump and the land. He was all sore and swallen from the salt water. He scratched his knees on the coral reefs and was bleed­ing, think­ing of the sharks. He almost made it to a quiet bay — until he was picked up by a strong tor­rent and taken back into the open ocean. A boat passed right by him with­out notic­ing. The Soviet cruise liner seemed cen­turies away now to him.

At last he felt the land under his feet. The first thought at that moment, fun­nily, was “If I get attacked by a shark now, it would have been the biggest fail ever”. The sec­ond thought — even a feel­ing — was a wave — pun intended — of huge love towards the ele­ment of the water, towards the Pacific Ocean, the feel­ing of a beau­ti­ful force that had looked after him so very well. And after that he imme­di­ately fell asleep on the sand under a palm tree.

Wak­ing up a few hours ear­lier, Slava took stock of him­self. he was not hun­gry — his mouth was still swallen. He was vey thirsty, but far from the state of dying of thirst. When plan­ning the great escape, what never crossed his mind was the thought of actu­ally reach­ing the for­eign land — and so he did not fore­see a need for matches, a knife, an ID. But noth­ing mat­tered — Slava felt like the first per­son on Earth, like Adam, like Tarzan from the Jun­gles, and it felt great!

The locals, who found him on the beach, could not believe his cha­rade swim­ming motions — after the ini­tial con­tact was estab­lished, they kept ask­ing him about “the rest of the bunch”. It was incom­pre­hen­si­ble for them, in a way, to believe that there was no ship­wreck — just an escape.

Till his death, every year he cel­e­brated the days of 12, 13 and 14 of Decem­ber as his sec­ond  — spiritual — birthday.

Slava spent six months in the Philip­pines, while the author­i­ties fig­ured what to do with him. He was impris­oned for a few weeks, but then released as of  “good char­ac­ter”.  After the con­tacts were made with his sis­ter, he was sent to live to Canada. His very first job was at a pizza joint, but after he per­fected his Eng­lish and got him­self ori­ented, he con­tin­ued doing what he loved most — work­ing with the oceans. Once he trav­elled to Israel, which he instantly  fell in love with — and so in 1986 he immi­grated to Haifa.

He con­tin­ued doing oceanography-related research until 1998, when a div­ing acci­dent went wrong — he was 62 years old.

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