cunningh@noscvax.UUCP (11/21/83)
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[This is an unauthorized condensation of an recent article in a local
paper, The Sunday Star-Bulletin & Advertiser. I don't believe the
wire services will pick it up, but some of you out there may find it
interesting.
The writer, a historian and author of "Sakhalin", "The Kuril Islands"
and other books, recently returned from his 16th visit to the Soviet
far eastern city of Khabarovsk (pop. 550,000) where he spend 3-1/2
months as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences working with local
scholars on a joint study of Soviet-American economic relations in the
Pacific.
His Khabarovsk sojourn spanned the weeks preceeding and following the
shooting down of the KAL 747 by a Sukoi-15 intercepter off the coast of
Sakhalin Island at 6:24 am September 1 (Sakhalin time).
Three figures accompanied the article: 1) a diagram showing the KAL 007
route and a portion of the USSR & Japan showing the locations of
Khabarovsk and Vladivostok; 2) a Russian poster (looks like an
advertisement for the movie 'Firefox') reading (in Russian) "Hail to
Soviet aviators"; 3) a photograph of 3 Soviet children viewing the
monument in Vladivostok to victims of an American attack on a Soviet
Ilyushin-12 passenger plane shot down on 27 July 1953.]
KAL 007 THROUGH SOVIET EYES: THE VIEW FROM KHABAROVSK.
by John J. Stephan
Like most citizens of Khabarovsk, I learned about the KAL incident
belatedly. The first hint came on a balmy Saturday afternoon,
September 3. I'd spent the morning shopping at the bazaar, and had
stopped by the newspaper kiosk on the corner of Lev Tolstoy St. and
Amur Blvd. After buying copies of Khabarovsk's Tikhookeanskaia Zvezda
("Pacific Star", herein after TZ) and Pravda. I settled down to read
on the Amur embankment, a pleasant 20 minutes walk from the kiosk.
TZ reported nothing out of the ordinary. The first day of the new
school year had just been festively celebrated, kolkhozniki were
harvesting potatoes according to plan, Reagan was stoking the arms
race. Sept. 2 had marked the 38th aniversary of Imperial Japan's
surrender in Tokyo Bay -- and the writer took the opportunity to
congratulate the Red Army for winning the Pacific War.
In Pravda, my attention was caught by an inconspicuous, unsigned entry
on the bottom of page 3. Unsigned Tass reports are said to herald
important tidings. It stated that an unidentified aircraft had
violated Soviet air space over Kamchatka and Sakhalin. It concluded:
"PVO (Air Defense) fighters which had risen to meet the intruder tried
to assist it to the nearest aerodrome. But the intruder did not react
to the signals and warnings of Soviet fighters and continued its flight
in the direction of the Sea of Japan."
That evening, at a conversational and gastromical marathon with close
friends, no one alluded to the Tass item. Caution? Embarassment? More
likely not everyone in Khabarovsk reads Pravda every day.
It didn't matter what paper you read the next morning, September 4.
They all carried a 3-column Tass statement denouncing the U.S. for a
planned provocation in Soviet air space. That sent me scurrying to a
shortwave set.
Voice of American's Russian service normally begins around 6 pm, but
for some reason it had recently become hard to pick up. VOA's East
Asia Service, in English starts only at 9 pm.
But there was no need to wait. Japanese and South Korean stations were
rattling off names and statistics that cut through air wave static:
"Korean Airlines...Boeing 747...Soviet airspace..interceptors..
missile....269 passengers....(a list of nationalities)..no survivors."
Several friends were in the same room watching TV: a Soviet film about
violence and corruption in the US labor unions. I walked over to the
set and asked, "Do you realize what happened off Sakhalin?" The TV
concealed the unsteadiness in my voice.
"You mean that spy plane," remarked a young man absentmindedly, his
eyes riveted to the screen as hired thugs moved in on honest union
leaders, "the one today's papers talked about?"
"Spy plane? That was an unarmed commercial airliner carrying 269
passengers and crew! They're all dead, blown out of the sky by your
PVO!"
All eyes left the TV. Today's Tass announcement had made no mention of
a commercial airliner, its destruction by a Soviet missile, and the 269
people -- an awesome figure, Aeroflot flies no jumbo jets. My friends
seemed to be having some trouble absorbing what they had heard. "How
many passengers?"
"240, and a crew of 29." "Are you absolutely sure our PVO destroyed
it?" "Tokyo and Seoul are saying so."
Silence, except for muffled punches as celluloid thugs worked over the
union reformer Finally, a gentle, bespectacled grandmother, shaking
her head sadly, said in a barely audible voice: "There must be some
mistake. Our country doesn't destroy passenger planes. That would be
terrible. Oh no, it has to be a mistake."
A young women abruptly unleashed a torrent of words, speaking quickly
with assurance tinted with defiance: "So who's fault is it? That plane
intruded into our air space. No navigation lights. No radio signals.
Flew right over bases. Every Country has the right to protect its
frontiers."
"Our frontiers are sacred. When an intruder penetrates a military
base, ignoring a sentry's warning, that sentry will shoot. Our boarder
guards operate under similar instruction. That Korean pilot knew
this. Why didn't he answer our warnings? He was 500 km off course."
"That's no accident. it was intentional. Reagan and the CIA thought
that one up. They want to sabotage the Geneva talks, to fill Europe
with Pershing missiles. They sent innocent people to their deaths for
the sake of an anti-Soviet provocation. They think they can distract
world opinion, direct it against us. It won't work. We'll expose it
for what it is -- a dirty, shameful provocation!"
The young man looked on, nodding in agreement. Another man left the
room. The grandmother, still shaking her head ventured hesitantly:
"No, we don't know all the facts yet. We mustn't jump to conclusions.
Time wil show it was a mistake, a dreadful mistake. Oh, it's so painful
to think of all those people."
These two reactions cropped up constantly during the next weeks: dismay
and compassion on one hand, self-righteous indignation on the other.
Friends and colleagues quietly offered personal condolences. But no
one budged from the premise that KAL 007 was a planned provocation
whose "termination" was justified.
During September, the Soviet media unveiled selective details of the
incident. The Tass report of Marshal Ogarov's Sept. 9 Moscow press
conference partially clarified the circumstances, hardening my
acquaintances' conviction that 007 had deliberately penetrated Soviet
airspace.
Air Marshall Kirsanov's Pravda article on Sept. 20 outlined an
elaborate US intelligence operation involving a spy satellite, a swarm
of spy planes (RC-135, Orion, AWACS), and a navy frigate off
Vladivostok -- all allegedly mobilized to monitor Soviet electronic
activity triggered by 007's approach to ultra-sensitive defense
installations on Kamchatka and Sakhalin.
Articles from the world press sceptical of Washington's explanations
were quoted or reprinted. Much was made of remarks by Air France and
Lufthansa pilots that the CIA had used scheduled commercial flights
over or near Soviet airspace for espionage.
Meanwhile, TZ carried readers' letters about the KAL incident. They
unanimously supported the official version of events, but their
vehemence went beyond anything coming from Moscow. One academic lumped
the KAL tragedy and subsequent demonstrations at the UN and elsewhere,
asserting "all are provocations thought up by Washington in order to
justify its policy of spurring the arms race, wrecking the Geneva
negotiations, and influencing the course of the Madrid talks."
It's worth noting that such words were not empty gestures 'for the
record'. A number of my Khabarovsk acquaintances expressed themselves
strongly in the same vein. One woman declared that she was sure the
CIA had arranged to have Georgia Congressman Larry McDonald on the
flight to maximize the anti-Soviet fallout.
The intensity of feeling about the incident, in the Soviet Far East at
least, has geographical, historical and cultural roots that have been
generally overlooked in the West. One-third the area of the US, the
Soviet Far East has a population of only 7 million. Lying at the
interstices of China, Japan and the US, it has awesomely extended
maritime and land frontiers.
Distance, a harsh climate, and an underdeveloped transport
infrastructure have made the Far East spacially and psychologically
remote from the USSR's demographic and industrial centers west of the
Urals. Nine time zones separate the capital from Kamchatka. When 007
entered Soviet airspace at 5:30 in the morning local time, in Moscow it
was 8:30 in the evening of the previous day.
History has conditioned the people there to be sensitive about
security. The Civil War and foreign intervention following the October
Revolution lasted longer there than in any other part of Russia.
Memories of Japanese and American troops in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk
are still alive.
During the 1930s and early 40s, these people lived under the shadow of
relentless Japanese military power just across the Amur and Ussuri
rivers in Manchuria. Anxiety about a possible Japanese attack after
the German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941 lasted until the end of
WWII.
American air power left its scars there after WWII. Even if Soviet
statistics about airspace violations are discounted, two incidents are
difficult to dismiss as insignificant.
On 8 Oct 1950, during the Korean War, two USAF F-80's strafed the
Sukhaia Rechka airfield near Vladivostok.
More seriously, on 27 July 1953, the day the Panmunjom armistice was
signed, American fighters show down an Aeroflot Ilyushin-12 passenger
plane flying between Dairen (China) and Vladivostok. A monument
commemorating this tragedy stands today in Vladivostok.
Sensitivity to security in the Soviet Far East has been heightened by
unmistakable signs of Sino-American and Japanese-American military
cooperation and by the spectacle of gradual Japanese rearmament. A
tense sensation of being surrounded and constantly probed on all sides
almost certainly is felt by Far Eastern military commanders and PVO
pilots.
As in other pats of the USSR, education inculcates in Soviet youth a
belief in the sacredness and inviolability of the nation's frontiers.
This 'frontier consciousness' is particularly strong in the Far East.
Frontier guards, not infrequently seen on the streets of Khabarovsk,
are held in high social respect. Frontier Guard Day on 28 May is
seriously and festively observed.
The Khabarovsk Publishing House prints a fair amount of 'frontier
literature'. For example, in early 1983, 400,000 copies of "My Life:
The Frontier" were published. It's a booklet for juvenile readers by
Nikita Karatsupa, a frontier guard who devoted his life to intercepting
and hunting down intruders in Far Eastern Taiga during the 1920s and
30s. He described his quarries as follows: "They try to cross our
frontier to do everything harmful to our country -- to blow up bridges
and factories, to poison wells, to kill people."
His words were echoed by the Sukhoi-15 pilot during a press interview
who said that while stalking KAL 007 he thought that the still
unidentified plane might be carrying a bomb.
Sadly, and perhaps inevitably given the international climate, that
pilot and his superiors acted as if it was.
--
Bob Cunningham ..sdcsvax!noscvax!cunningh
21 17' 35" N 157 49' 38" W MILNET: cunningh@nosc-cc