MATTHIAS RUST—A MAN WHO FULFILLED HIS DESTINY AND HELPED END THE COLD WAR
MATTHIAS RUST—A MAN WHO FULFILLED HIS DESTINY AND HELPED END THE COLD WAR
By Kevin Stoda, American Educator for Peace
I was living in West Germany the month that a 19-year from the city state of Hamburg almost single-handedly toppled the Soviet Union—and he did it without firing a weapon. The young hero of the Cold War was Mathias Rust.
Naturally, many people in Europe and I at the time felt that the young man was wacky—an out-of-control idealist. On the other hand, at other times, we also suspected that this young pilot, who flew a plane from Germany (via Finland) and on to Moscow’s Red Square back in May 1968, must have been paid by the West and its secret agencies to push the envelope into.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerA5oLif3k
We misjudged the young man.
THE BIG STORY YOU NEED IN YOUR HISTORY BOOK
On May 28, 1987, according to Wikipedia, “an amateur aviator, … [Mathias Rust] flew from Finland to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet air defence and interceptors. The Soviet fighters never received permission to shoot him down, and several times he was mistaken for a friendly aircraft. He landed on Vasilevski Spusk next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the USSR.”
In his Soviet-era trial, Rust's intentions were describe as an attempt “to create an ‘imaginary bridge’ to the East, and he … claimed that his flight was intended to reduce tension and suspicion between the two Cold War sides. Rust's successful flight through a supposedly impregnable air defense system had a great impact on the Soviet military and led to the firing of many senior officers, including Defence Minister Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov and the head of the Soviet Air Defense, former WWII fighter ace pilot Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov. The incident aided Mikhail Gorbachev in the implementation of his reforms (by removing numerous military officials opposed to him), and reduced the prestige of the Soviet military among the population, thus helping bring an end to the Cold War.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
One of the best summaries of Rust’s flight is from Air & Space magazine (2005) in an article by Tom LeCompte.
http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/rust.html?c=y&page=1
“As a child in Hamburg, Rust had been preoccupied by two things: flying and nuclear Armageddon. Belligerence and distrust marked East-West relations of the time. U.S. President Ronald Reagan seemed to be on a personal crusade against the Soviet Union. Many Germans were on edge. ‘There was a real sense of fear,’ Rust says, ‘because if there was a conflict, we all knew we would be the first to be hit.’”
I do recall beginning to feel that the whole Iron Curtain thing was a joke about the time that Rust made his flight. You see, I had made my first two visits to East Germany that very month of May 1987 and had come to see that the drive in Europe to get to know the other side of the fence (East to West or West to East) was very strong.
“To many Europeans, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascendancy to the Soviet leadership in 1985 offered a glimmer of hope. Glasnost, his policy of transparency in government, and perestroika, economic reforms at home, were radical departures from the policies of his predecessors. So when the U.S.-Soviet summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986 ended without an arms reduction deal, Rust felt despair. He was particularly angered by Reagan’s reflexive mistrust of the Soviet Union, which Rust felt had blinded the president to the historic opportunity Gorbachev presented.”
Yes, back in the 1980s many of us felt that Reagan was quite blind most of his years in office. Ronald Reagan never seemed to realize that his spending spree on militarization had helped almost break the USA economy in the 1980s. (That should be a lesson to all high-military-spending-proponents today.)
Retrospectively, had not the Cold War ended in 1989-1990 but instead had (it) continued for a few more years—the world would have been extremely different from the world we are facing today. For example, in August 1990 Sadam Hussein’s marched into Kuwait. Had the Soviet Union already made peace with the West by then, there would have certainly been no international coalition to return Iraq to its former borders in 1991. (As it was, the large international coalition to free Iraq could barely hold together for 2 or 3 months of war. )
http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/george-hw-bush-administration
In 1987, the 19-year-old “Rust decided he must do something—something big. He settled on the idea of building an ‘imaginary bridge’ by flying to Moscow. If he could reach the Soviet capital, if he could “pass through the Iron Curtain without being intercepted, it would show that Gorbachev was serious about new relations with the West,” says Rust. ‘How would Reagan continue to say it was the ‘Empire of Evil’ if me, in a small aircraft, can go straight there and be unharmed?’ Rust also prepared a 20-page manifesto he planned to deliver to Gorbachev on how to advance world peace.”
LECOMPTE’S NARRATION OF RUST’S JOURNEY
The following comes from the aforementioned article by LeCompte, “The Notorious Flight of Mathias Rust”. I hope it encourages you to learn more about the 180-degree-turns by individuals which can help change history.
“At the Tampere air traffic control facility in Finland, controllers noticed Rust’s near-180-degree change of course. As the radar blip headed south and then east across the water, passing through restricted Finnish military airspace, controllers tried to contact him and failed. At about 1 p.m., Rust’s airplane disappeared from radar screens. Fifteen minutes later, a helicopter pilot radioed that he spotted an oil slick and some debris on the water near where Rust’s airplane was last detected. A search-and-rescue operation was activated—only to be called off when news of Rust’s landing reached Finland. (Years later Finnish aviation authorities investigated a series of incidents in which airliners mysteriously disappeared from Tampere radar screens while in the same area.”[ p.3]
….
“A few moments later, from out of a layer of clouds in front of him, an aircraft appeared. “It was coming at me very fast, and dead-on,” Rust recalls. “And it went whoosh!—right over me.
“I remember how my heart felt, beating very fast,” he continues. “This was exactly the moment when you start to ask yourself: Is this when they shoot you down?”
“From below and to the left, a Soviet MiG-23 fighter-interceptor pulled up beside him. With nearly three times the wingspan and more than 10 times the weight of Rust’s Cessna, the MiG seemed huge. Designed to fly at more than twice the speed of sound, the swing-wing fighter had to be put into full landing configuration—gear and flaps extended, wings swung outward—in order to slow it enough to fly alongside the Cessna. Its nose rode high as it hovered at the edge of a stall.” [p.3]
….
“I realized because they hadn’t shot me down yet that they wanted to check on what I was doing there,” Rust says. He kept watching the Soviet airplane, “but there was no sign, no signal from the pilot for me to follow him. Nothing.” Soviet investigators later told Rust that the MiG pilot attempted to reach Rust over the radio but there was no response. Only later did Rust realize that the Soviet fighter could only communicate over high-frequency military channels.
“After the two pilots had eyed each other for a minute, the Soviet pilot retracted the jet’s gear and flaps. The MiG accelerated and peeled away, only to return and draw two long arcs around the Cessna at a distance of about a half-mile. Finally, it disappeared.”
“From both the registration number painted on the side of the airplane (D-ECJB) and the West German flag decal on its tail, the MiG-23 crew should have been able to tell that Rust’s aircraft was neither a Yak nor Soviet. Marshall Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of staff of all the Soviet armed forces, admitted in a 1990 interview cited in Don Oberdorfer’s book From the Cold War to the New Era that the fighter pilot’s commander either did not believe the pilot’s report or did not think it was significant, so the information was never passed up the chain of command.” [p.4]
….
“Rust flew on, leaving the Leningrad military district and entering that of Moscow. In the handoff report, the Leningrad commander related to his Moscow counterpart that his controllers had been tracking a Soviet airplane flying without its transponder turned on. But the report said nothing about tracking an unidentified airplane from the Gulf of Finland, nothing about fighter-interceptors intercepting a West German aircraft, and nothing about an unidentified aircraft on a steady course to Moscow. As such, the report set off no alarms.”
“For Rust, the flight was going flawlessly. He had no problem identifying the landmarks he had chosen as waypoints, and he was confident that his goal was within reach. ‘I had a sense of peace,’ he says. ‘Everything was calm and in order.’ He passed the outermost belt of Moscow’s vaunted ‘Ring of Steel,’ an elaborate network of anti-aircraft defenses that since the 1950s had been built up as a response to the threat of U.S. bombers. The rings of missile placements circled the city at distances of about 10, 25, and 45 nautical miles, but were not designed to fend off a single, slow-flying Cessna.” [p.5]
….
“At just after 6 p.m., Rust reached the outskirts of Moscow. The city’s airspace was restricted, with all overflights—both military and civilian—prohibited. At about this time, Soviet investigators would later tell Rust, radar controllers realized something was terribly wrong, but it was too late for them to act.”
“As Rust made his way over the city, he removed his helmet and began to search for Red Square. Unlike many western cities, Moscow has no skyline of glittering office towers that Rust could see and head for. Unsure where to go, Rust headed from building to building. “As I maneuvered around, I sort of narrowed in on the core of the city,” he says. Then he saw it: the distinctive turreted wall surrounding the Kremlin. Turning toward it, Rust began to descend and look for a place to land.” [p.5]
….
[after landing]
“He got out of the Cessna. Expecting to be stormed by hordes of troops and KGB agents, Rust leaned against the aircraft and waited. The people in Red Square seemed nervous or stunned, not sure what was going on. Some thought Rust’s airplane might be Gorbachev’s private aircraft, or that it was all part of a movie production. But once the crowd realized that Rust and the Cessna were foreign—and that he’d just pulled off one of the most sensational exploits they had ever witnessed—they drew closer.”
“’A big crowd had formed around me,’ Rust says. ‘People were smiling and coming up to shake my hand or ask for autographs. There was a young Russian guy who spoke English. He asked me where I came from. I told him I came from the West and wanted to talk to Gorbachev to deliver this peace message that would [help Gorbachev] convince everybody in the West that he had a new approach.’” [p. 6]
“Three men emerged from a black sedan and introduced themselves. The youngest, an interpreter, politely asked for Rust’s passport and whether he was carrying any weapons. They then asked to inspect the aircraft. After a few more questions, they asked Rust to get into the car. The mood, Rust says, was still very friendly, almost mirthful. The Cessna was hauled to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport and disassembled for inspection. Rust was taken to Lefortovo prison, a notorious complex the KGB used to hold political prisoners.” [p.6]
….
“On August 3, 1988, two months after Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the Supreme Soviet, in what Tass described as a ‘goodwill gesture,’ ordered Rust released from prison.”
“According to William E. Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, Rust’s flight damaged the reputation of the vast Soviet military and enabled Gorbachev to remove the staunchest opponents to his reforms. Within days of Rust’s landing, the Soviet defense minister and the Soviet air defense chief were sacked. In a matter of weeks, hundreds of other officers were fired or replaced—from the country’s most revered war heroes to scores of lesser officers. It was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military command since Stalin’s bloody purges of the 1930s.”
“More important than the replacement of specific individuals, analyst John Pike says, was the change Rust’s flight precipitated in the public’s perception of the military. The myth of Soviet military superiority had been punctured, and with it the almost religious reverence the public had held for its armed forces.” [p.7]
EPILOGUE
Naturally, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan contribute much more to the end of “the myth of Soviet military superiority”. As the U.S.A. fails to pull out of Afghanistan on a similar timetable, perhaps America needs a new type of hero, like Mathias Rust, to end the Endless War myth and the myth of the invincibility of the Bottomless-Pit-of-USA-Money-for Defense.
Perhaps one of my next writings will be on how the USA almost loss a truck-load of nuclear warheads due to hard-work of vigilant anti-nuclear demonstrators back in the 1980s, i.e. about the same time that Matthias Rust made his memorable flight.
By Kevin Stoda, American Educator for Peace
I was living in West Germany the month that a 19-year from the city state of Hamburg almost single-handedly toppled the Soviet Union—and he did it without firing a weapon. The young hero of the Cold War was Mathias Rust.
Naturally, many people in Europe and I at the time felt that the young man was wacky—an out-of-control idealist. On the other hand, at other times, we also suspected that this young pilot, who flew a plane from Germany (via Finland) and on to Moscow’s Red Square back in May 1968, must have been paid by the West and its secret agencies to push the envelope into.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aerA5oLif3k
We misjudged the young man.
THE BIG STORY YOU NEED IN YOUR HISTORY BOOK
On May 28, 1987, according to Wikipedia, “an amateur aviator, … [Mathias Rust] flew from Finland to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet air defence and interceptors. The Soviet fighters never received permission to shoot him down, and several times he was mistaken for a friendly aircraft. He landed on Vasilevski Spusk next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the USSR.”
In his Soviet-era trial, Rust's intentions were describe as an attempt “to create an ‘imaginary bridge’ to the East, and he … claimed that his flight was intended to reduce tension and suspicion between the two Cold War sides. Rust's successful flight through a supposedly impregnable air defense system had a great impact on the Soviet military and led to the firing of many senior officers, including Defence Minister Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov and the head of the Soviet Air Defense, former WWII fighter ace pilot Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov. The incident aided Mikhail Gorbachev in the implementation of his reforms (by removing numerous military officials opposed to him), and reduced the prestige of the Soviet military among the population, thus helping bring an end to the Cold War.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
One of the best summaries of Rust’s flight is from Air & Space magazine (2005) in an article by Tom LeCompte.
http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/rust.html?c=y&page=1
“As a child in Hamburg, Rust had been preoccupied by two things: flying and nuclear Armageddon. Belligerence and distrust marked East-West relations of the time. U.S. President Ronald Reagan seemed to be on a personal crusade against the Soviet Union. Many Germans were on edge. ‘There was a real sense of fear,’ Rust says, ‘because if there was a conflict, we all knew we would be the first to be hit.’”
I do recall beginning to feel that the whole Iron Curtain thing was a joke about the time that Rust made his flight. You see, I had made my first two visits to East Germany that very month of May 1987 and had come to see that the drive in Europe to get to know the other side of the fence (East to West or West to East) was very strong.
“To many Europeans, Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascendancy to the Soviet leadership in 1985 offered a glimmer of hope. Glasnost, his policy of transparency in government, and perestroika, economic reforms at home, were radical departures from the policies of his predecessors. So when the U.S.-Soviet summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986 ended without an arms reduction deal, Rust felt despair. He was particularly angered by Reagan’s reflexive mistrust of the Soviet Union, which Rust felt had blinded the president to the historic opportunity Gorbachev presented.”
Yes, back in the 1980s many of us felt that Reagan was quite blind most of his years in office. Ronald Reagan never seemed to realize that his spending spree on militarization had helped almost break the USA economy in the 1980s. (That should be a lesson to all high-military-spending-proponents today.)
Retrospectively, had not the Cold War ended in 1989-1990 but instead had (it) continued for a few more years—the world would have been extremely different from the world we are facing today. For example, in August 1990 Sadam Hussein’s marched into Kuwait. Had the Soviet Union already made peace with the West by then, there would have certainly been no international coalition to return Iraq to its former borders in 1991. (As it was, the large international coalition to free Iraq could barely hold together for 2 or 3 months of war. )
http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/george-hw-bush-administration
In 1987, the 19-year-old “Rust decided he must do something—something big. He settled on the idea of building an ‘imaginary bridge’ by flying to Moscow. If he could reach the Soviet capital, if he could “pass through the Iron Curtain without being intercepted, it would show that Gorbachev was serious about new relations with the West,” says Rust. ‘How would Reagan continue to say it was the ‘Empire of Evil’ if me, in a small aircraft, can go straight there and be unharmed?’ Rust also prepared a 20-page manifesto he planned to deliver to Gorbachev on how to advance world peace.”
LECOMPTE’S NARRATION OF RUST’S JOURNEY
The following comes from the aforementioned article by LeCompte, “The Notorious Flight of Mathias Rust”. I hope it encourages you to learn more about the 180-degree-turns by individuals which can help change history.
“At the Tampere air traffic control facility in Finland, controllers noticed Rust’s near-180-degree change of course. As the radar blip headed south and then east across the water, passing through restricted Finnish military airspace, controllers tried to contact him and failed. At about 1 p.m., Rust’s airplane disappeared from radar screens. Fifteen minutes later, a helicopter pilot radioed that he spotted an oil slick and some debris on the water near where Rust’s airplane was last detected. A search-and-rescue operation was activated—only to be called off when news of Rust’s landing reached Finland. (Years later Finnish aviation authorities investigated a series of incidents in which airliners mysteriously disappeared from Tampere radar screens while in the same area.”[ p.3]
….
“A few moments later, from out of a layer of clouds in front of him, an aircraft appeared. “It was coming at me very fast, and dead-on,” Rust recalls. “And it went whoosh!—right over me.
“I remember how my heart felt, beating very fast,” he continues. “This was exactly the moment when you start to ask yourself: Is this when they shoot you down?”
“From below and to the left, a Soviet MiG-23 fighter-interceptor pulled up beside him. With nearly three times the wingspan and more than 10 times the weight of Rust’s Cessna, the MiG seemed huge. Designed to fly at more than twice the speed of sound, the swing-wing fighter had to be put into full landing configuration—gear and flaps extended, wings swung outward—in order to slow it enough to fly alongside the Cessna. Its nose rode high as it hovered at the edge of a stall.” [p.3]
….
“I realized because they hadn’t shot me down yet that they wanted to check on what I was doing there,” Rust says. He kept watching the Soviet airplane, “but there was no sign, no signal from the pilot for me to follow him. Nothing.” Soviet investigators later told Rust that the MiG pilot attempted to reach Rust over the radio but there was no response. Only later did Rust realize that the Soviet fighter could only communicate over high-frequency military channels.
“After the two pilots had eyed each other for a minute, the Soviet pilot retracted the jet’s gear and flaps. The MiG accelerated and peeled away, only to return and draw two long arcs around the Cessna at a distance of about a half-mile. Finally, it disappeared.”
“From both the registration number painted on the side of the airplane (D-ECJB) and the West German flag decal on its tail, the MiG-23 crew should have been able to tell that Rust’s aircraft was neither a Yak nor Soviet. Marshall Sergei Akhromeyev, chief of staff of all the Soviet armed forces, admitted in a 1990 interview cited in Don Oberdorfer’s book From the Cold War to the New Era that the fighter pilot’s commander either did not believe the pilot’s report or did not think it was significant, so the information was never passed up the chain of command.” [p.4]
….
“Rust flew on, leaving the Leningrad military district and entering that of Moscow. In the handoff report, the Leningrad commander related to his Moscow counterpart that his controllers had been tracking a Soviet airplane flying without its transponder turned on. But the report said nothing about tracking an unidentified airplane from the Gulf of Finland, nothing about fighter-interceptors intercepting a West German aircraft, and nothing about an unidentified aircraft on a steady course to Moscow. As such, the report set off no alarms.”
“For Rust, the flight was going flawlessly. He had no problem identifying the landmarks he had chosen as waypoints, and he was confident that his goal was within reach. ‘I had a sense of peace,’ he says. ‘Everything was calm and in order.’ He passed the outermost belt of Moscow’s vaunted ‘Ring of Steel,’ an elaborate network of anti-aircraft defenses that since the 1950s had been built up as a response to the threat of U.S. bombers. The rings of missile placements circled the city at distances of about 10, 25, and 45 nautical miles, but were not designed to fend off a single, slow-flying Cessna.” [p.5]
….
“At just after 6 p.m., Rust reached the outskirts of Moscow. The city’s airspace was restricted, with all overflights—both military and civilian—prohibited. At about this time, Soviet investigators would later tell Rust, radar controllers realized something was terribly wrong, but it was too late for them to act.”
“As Rust made his way over the city, he removed his helmet and began to search for Red Square. Unlike many western cities, Moscow has no skyline of glittering office towers that Rust could see and head for. Unsure where to go, Rust headed from building to building. “As I maneuvered around, I sort of narrowed in on the core of the city,” he says. Then he saw it: the distinctive turreted wall surrounding the Kremlin. Turning toward it, Rust began to descend and look for a place to land.” [p.5]
….
[after landing]
“He got out of the Cessna. Expecting to be stormed by hordes of troops and KGB agents, Rust leaned against the aircraft and waited. The people in Red Square seemed nervous or stunned, not sure what was going on. Some thought Rust’s airplane might be Gorbachev’s private aircraft, or that it was all part of a movie production. But once the crowd realized that Rust and the Cessna were foreign—and that he’d just pulled off one of the most sensational exploits they had ever witnessed—they drew closer.”
“’A big crowd had formed around me,’ Rust says. ‘People were smiling and coming up to shake my hand or ask for autographs. There was a young Russian guy who spoke English. He asked me where I came from. I told him I came from the West and wanted to talk to Gorbachev to deliver this peace message that would [help Gorbachev] convince everybody in the West that he had a new approach.’” [p. 6]
“Three men emerged from a black sedan and introduced themselves. The youngest, an interpreter, politely asked for Rust’s passport and whether he was carrying any weapons. They then asked to inspect the aircraft. After a few more questions, they asked Rust to get into the car. The mood, Rust says, was still very friendly, almost mirthful. The Cessna was hauled to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport and disassembled for inspection. Rust was taken to Lefortovo prison, a notorious complex the KGB used to hold political prisoners.” [p.6]
….
“On August 3, 1988, two months after Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, the Supreme Soviet, in what Tass described as a ‘goodwill gesture,’ ordered Rust released from prison.”
“According to William E. Odom, former director of the National Security Agency and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, Rust’s flight damaged the reputation of the vast Soviet military and enabled Gorbachev to remove the staunchest opponents to his reforms. Within days of Rust’s landing, the Soviet defense minister and the Soviet air defense chief were sacked. In a matter of weeks, hundreds of other officers were fired or replaced—from the country’s most revered war heroes to scores of lesser officers. It was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military command since Stalin’s bloody purges of the 1930s.”
“More important than the replacement of specific individuals, analyst John Pike says, was the change Rust’s flight precipitated in the public’s perception of the military. The myth of Soviet military superiority had been punctured, and with it the almost religious reverence the public had held for its armed forces.” [p.7]
EPILOGUE
Naturally, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan contribute much more to the end of “the myth of Soviet military superiority”. As the U.S.A. fails to pull out of Afghanistan on a similar timetable, perhaps America needs a new type of hero, like Mathias Rust, to end the Endless War myth and the myth of the invincibility of the Bottomless-Pit-of-USA-Money-for Defense.
Perhaps one of my next writings will be on how the USA almost loss a truck-load of nuclear warheads due to hard-work of vigilant anti-nuclear demonstrators back in the 1980s, i.e. about the same time that Matthias Rust made his memorable flight.
Labels: MATTHIAS RUSt A MAN WHO FULFILLED HIS DESTINY AND HELPED END THE COLD WAR
posted by Kevin Anthony Stoda at 5:14 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home