Hard to believe it's been 40 years since '86. 47 days into the year Pavel Zagladimov went down with the ship.
By choice it would seem.
On February 16, the Soviet ocean liner MS Mikhail Lermontov with 743 people on board struck rocks off the coast of New Zealand, running aground. 4 hours and 50 minutes later, the liner slipped beneath the waves, coming to rest about 125 feet below.
742 people got off the ship and were rescued at that time. Only 33 year old crew engineer Zagladimov was lost. They said he went down with the ship. The actual cause of death is unknown, his body was never found.
I've typed a lot of numbers in your direction, please don't get confused. They're just numbers, no more, no less.
But it does make you wonder, doesn't it? Did Pavel really go down with the ship? Or did Pavel open the door when opportunity knocked?
In 1986, the Soviet Union was still a society where misinformation dominated the state controlled press and media. It was a closed society with a totalitarian regime that presented conclusions then manufactured facts to support them. It was no society a free thinking individual with goals could thrive in.
No doubt, Pavel might have been one of those individuals of high ideals and undying loyalty to the ocean liner division of the great Soviet state. But nobody ever went down with a cruise ship that had a real choice.
It seems a lot more likely to me that Pavel saw an opportunity to escape the oppressive world he was in for something different. Maybe Pavel wanted freedom. That was New Zealand on the horizon, not Soviet Georgia. There are unlimited possibilities for an experienced seaman in a free port.
A free port can lead anywhere.
Here we are forty years later. If Pavel really didn't go down with the ship, he'd only be 73 years old now. Survivors have a tendency to hang on, we might be able to have a conversation with the old ship's engineer.
A former soviet citizen who faked his own death to find freedom could tell us a lot about the power of misinformation. How Soviet Premiers controlled the media to suppress facts and quell opposition. We could compare old PRAVDA clips with today's cousin Truth Social over vodka.
Mother Russia!
Sorry, that was a flashback. Also forty years ago, in June 1986, I got married to a girl who deserved better and Key West was the final stop on a wonderful honeymoon. At Captain Tony's, a table of 3 Soviet merchant sailors heard we were newlyweds and bought a round of vodka shots. They ended each shot by slamming the glass on the table exclaiming Mother Russia!
They were alright guys and bought more than one round. I never toasted mother Russia. They didn't care.
What if one of those guys was Pavel Zaglimodov? It's not that outlandish. A guy can get a long way in four months from a port in New Zealand. A soviet sailor could probably hide from the soviets in plain site in Key West.
That would be quite a story from the 47th day of '86.