REFUGEES: I Is Russian Pilot

At Camp McCauley airstrip near Linz, Austria, a Russian two-engine light bomber bounced on to the field, overshot the strip and crumpled into a fence. Out climbed a handsome Soviet air force lieutenant, English grammar in hand. “I is Russian pilot,” he said. “Where is Linz?”

Twenty-eight-year-old Lieut. Piotr Pirogov and his copilot, Anatoly Barsov, had been planning for a year to escape from Russia and get to the U.S. They had left their base near Lwow, formerly Poland, on a routine training flight that morning and headed for Munich in the U.S. zone of Germany. The third member of their crew, a flight sergeant, was not in on the lieutenants’ plan. When they were airborne, Pirogov told the sergeant he could either come along or bail out while still over Russian territory. Since there were no parachutes in the plane, the sergeant elected to stay aboard.

“Forced Landing?” The U.S. Army was slightly embarrassed by its unexpected guests. Should they be returned as deserters, or kept as political refugees? At first the State Department ordered the men returned to the Russians, then changed its mind. After an all-night teletype discussion between Vienna, Washington, Paris and General Lucius Clay’s headquarters in Berlin, it was decided, on the precedent of the Kasenkina case, that the Russians would not be handed over to the Red army. Colonel General Vladimir Kurasov, Russian commander in Austria, searched four days for the missing plane, finally learned its whereabouts. He demanded that the men be returned. Air Force authorities offered a compromise: Kurasov’s representative could see for himself whether they were being held against their will. Both sides would abide by the flyers’ own decision. Kurasov accepted.

He sent a tall, sturdily built Russian in the uniform of a major in the MVD (secret police) to question the fugitives. Pirogov led off with the statement that he wasn’t going back to Russia until there was a change in the regime. When the major kept referring to a “forced landing,” Pirogov corrected him sharply: “There was no forced landing about it. I landed on U.S. territory because I intended to. This was an escape, not a forced landing.”

“Did I Strike Him?” After an hour of fruitless questioning, the major asked Pirogov whether he had given any thought to his family back in Russia. “I object!” an American officer put in heatedly. “That’s coercion.” “What do you mean, coercion?” the MVD man replied in an injured tone. “Did I strike him?” After an hour’s argument over what constituted coercion, the major was finally allowed to ask whatever he wanted. He drew a blank.

Snubnosed, 31-year-old Barsov proved equally obdurate. For hours the major employed every psychological trick in the book to wear him down. Over & over again he made Barsov write his name, insisting that it was not really the way he normally wrote his signature. Then, playing his trump card, the major pulled out a letter.

Before the major could speak, Barsov pointed at the letter and exclaimed: “I know the handwriting on that letter, and unlike you, I’m not going to quibble with you for an hour about whether it’s real. That letter was written by my wife . . . I know anything that’s in that letter you’ve forced her to write . . . I’m still not going back.” After nine hours the major finally returned with his lone catch, the flight sergeant, who wanted to go back in the first place. The plane was also returned.

“Everyone Listens.” Last week Pirogov and Barsov held a mammoth press conference in the Camp McCauley officers’ club. They explained to the world what made two officers in the Red air force, the most privileged group in Russia, choose to join the tens of thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians who have made their way to the West since 1945. “The Party,” said Pirogov, “does nothing to meet the needs and desires of the people.” “And elections aren’t free!” shouted Barsov, banging his fist on the table. “They must vote at the point of a gun . . . The army doesn’t live badly, and especially the air corps; but the farmer who represents the majority of Russians lives so badly and is treated so badly it pained me, so I decided to leave.”

Both flyers had been regular listeners to the “Voice of America” broadcasts. Said Barsov: “I believe everyone within range who has a radio listens to the broadcasts . . . The Russian people are really interested in life in the United States and they know the Soviet press and radio are not giving the true picture.”

Pirogov and Barsov were eager to start learning about the western world. Shown a bathtub, they started to climb in with their shorts on; they thought it was a small swimming pool.