Last Sentry

May 2, 2005
Although it bears only a passing resemblance to the Tom Clancy thriller, this account of a mutiny aboard the Russian destroyer Storozhevoy offers a revealing look at Soviet decrepitude, circa 1975. The hero of the story is the mutiny's leader, Valery Sablin, a political officer charged with inculcating Marxist-Leninist principles in the ship's crew. A humane and idealistic man, Sablin took said principles all too seriously, and decided to seize the ship as a platform for launching a revolution that would redeem Communism from the corrupt reality of the Soviet system. The authors' starry-eyed profile suggests that Sablin may be "the freest man in the Soviet Union," but his rebellion seems little more than a quixotic farce that was snuffed out in a few hours; he apparently intended to sail to international waters and then demand that the Soviet authorities give him daily television and radio air time to broadcast revolutionary manifestos. What's more interesting is that he managed to persuade most of the ship's crew, in the course of a couple of fiery speeches, to go along with this scheme, an accomplishment that speaks volumes about the latent discontent with Communism. Ex-Navy officer and political scientist Young and ex-marine and online publisher Braden explore this conundrum by probing conditions in the Soviet military and by offering a sketchy rehash of Soviet history that sometimes reads like a primer for naval cadets. Still, their well-researched reconstruction of this astonishing incident reveals some of the brittleness of the Soviet Union's totalitarian facade. 30 illus.

May 16, 2005
Although it bears only a passing resemblance to the Tom Clancy thriller, this account of a mutiny aboard the Russian destroyer Storozhevoy offers a revealing look at Soviet decrepitude, circa 1975. The hero of the story is the mutiny's leader, Valery Sablin, a political officer charged with inculcating Marxist-Leninist principles in the ship's crew. A humane and idealistic man, Sablin took said principles all too seriously, and decided to seize the ship as a platform for launching a revolution that would redeem Communism from the corrupt reality of the Soviet system. The authors' starry-eyed profile suggests that Sablin may be "the freest man in the Soviet Union," but his rebellion seems little more than a quixotic farce that was snuffed out in a few hours; he apparently intended to sail to international waters and then demand that the Soviet authorities give him daily television and radio air time to broadcast revolutionary manifestos. What's more interesting is that he managed to persuade most of the ship's crew, in the course of a couple of fiery speeches, to go along with this scheme, an accomplishment that speaks volumes about the latent discontent with Communism. Ex-Navy officer and political scientist Young and ex-marine and online publisher Braden explore this conundrum by probing conditions in the Soviet military and by offering a sketchy rehash of Soviet history that sometimes reads like a primer for naval cadets. Still, their well-researched reconstruction of this astonishing incident reveals some of the brittleness of the Soviet Union's totalitarian facade. 30 illus.

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2005
This is the gripping tale of the mutiny aboard the Soviet Baltic Fleet destroyer " torozhevoy" ("Sentry"). It was led by the ship's charismatic and idealistic political officer, Valery Sablin, who wanted to see the end of the corrupt Brezh-nev regime and intended to take the ship to Leningrad, from which it would broadcast an appeal to the Soviet people. Unfortunately, Soviet air strikes brought the ship to a halt, Sablin was executed, and most of his family and crew were disgraced. But the affair played a part in naval history by shaking up the Soviet navy, in political history by being one of the factors that generated glasnost and all that followed, and in literary history by inspiring Tom Clancy's career-launching megaseller, " The Hunt for Red October" (1984). Young wrote the memorandum that inspired Clancy, and with writer Braden has expanded it into a gripping tribute to a hero and a vivid portrait of the Soviet navy at its height.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)