What do you think?
Rate this book
Склонен к побегу
Книга описывает несколько неудачных попыток автора сбежать из СССР в 60-70-х годах, последующее заключение в тюрьмах и специализированных психиатрических лечебницах и счастливое спасение на индонезийском острове после прыжка из иллюминатора парохода.
545 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1983
1 person is currently reading
60 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 28, 2021
Эта книга стремительно ворвалась в топ 3 прочитанных мною книг. Написаня простым и понятным языком она захватывает от начала и держит до конца. невероятная история про несгибаемую преданность жизненной цели, повлекшая долгие годы лагерных пыток и едва не стоившая жизни герою. История человека с железным характером и стальной силой воли. История подвига за который не дают медали.
February 9, 2016
История человека, который пытался бежать из СССР, провел 10 лет в советских психушках, выжил и... спойлера не будет. Страшная и невероятная книга. О силе духа, смелости и целеустремленности. Читается на одном дыхании. Последние главы дочитывала на рассвете. Must read.
March 2, 2025
Incredible real story. Short synopsis from wikipedia:
“Юрий Александрович Ветохин (19 марта 1928, Ленинград, СССР — 6 марта 2022, Сан-Диего, США) — писатель, общественный деятель, перебежчик, трижды совершивший попытки бежать из Советского Союза, отбывший 8 лет заключения в тюрьмах и специализированных психиатрических лечебницах и смогший после этого в 1979 году (в возрасте 51 года) сбежать, спрыгнув ночью через иллюминатор круизного теплохода с 8 метровой высоты и проплыв в океане за 20 часов около 30 км до индонезийского острова Бачан. В дальнейшем попросил политического убежища и переехал в США.”
I suppose I learned about this person and his story in relation to Слава Курилов’s “Один в океане” because their escape from the USSR was eventually carried out in the same way: jumping from a cruise ship “Путешествие из зимы в лето” in the middle of the ocean and swimming solo to the nearest foreign country. However, the story of Юрий Ветохин is much, much more than this, and I highly recommend reading this book.
First of all, as you can see from the synopsis, he was extremely motivated to leave the USSR and had several attempts to escape, all by swimming, but differently each time. The first two attempts (in 1963 and 1967) were not successful, and while he managed to exonerate himself in 1963, he was caught in the sea and arrested in 1967. Note that this was already during the “Ottepel,” and this is why he ended up in psychiatric hospitals rather than be shot or sent to the GULAG.
As a result, a large part of this book is about his stay in those psychiatric hospitals, mostly in the notorious “Днепропетровская областная психиатрическая больница,” the most cruel and dreadful of such facilities created specially in the 1960s to imprison and “mentally correct” political dissidents. And this is what makes this memoir especially precious and important.
Before this, I have read some accounts about what these facilities did to political dissidents only in Валерия Новодворская’s, Владимир Буковский’s, and Петро Григоренко’s memoirs, and although Валерия Новодворская’s evidence is rather horryfing already, it was quite short and “light” compared to what Юрий Ветохин told, and for subjective reasons, Владимир Буковский’s and Петро Григоренко’s stay in “special psychiatric hospitals” was rather mild and cannot be regarded as evidence about real situation there. Юрий Ветохин presents to us a very impressive detailed report of all the tortures and humiliations people were subjected to in these “hospitals,” up to lethal consequences. And he himself could have died there very easily. I should say that this was really scary for me personally because, as a person with professional healthcare education, I know perfectly what a powerful destructive effect these “treatments” have on human’s personality and health, so what he describes is a real “body horror” for me, in addition to all the understanding of all the social and political horrors of having these practices in society.
Reading this, you may have the impression that these “doctors” and “nurses” are so cruel and totally inhumane just because they work in these “psychiatric hospitals-prisons” for many years and were hardened over time, similarly to interrogators and prison guards in the KGB/GULAG system. However, please note that the Dnepropetrovsk hospital was built in 1968, the year when Юрий Ветохин was confined there, so he was one of its first “patients”; the whole system of “special psychiatric hospitals” started to be created in the 1960s, when the “humane” Ottepel government formally “liquidated” the GULAG but instead introduced “карательная психиатрия.”
Wikipedia:
“С начала 1960-х годов создавалась широкая и постоянно растущая сеть тюремных психиатрических больниц. Динамика их строительства в 1960-е годы выглядела следующим образом:
1961 год — Сычёвская ТПБ (Смоленская область);
1964 год — Благовещенская ТПБ (Амурская область);
1965 год — Черняховская ТПБ (Калининградская область) и Костромская ТПБ (Костромская область);
1966 год — Минская СПБ;
1968 год — Днепропетровская СПБ;
1970 год — Орловская СПБ.”
“29 апреля 1969 года председатель КГБ СССР Ю. В. Андропов направил в ЦК КПСС проект плана расширения сети психиатрических больниц и предложения по усовершенствованию использования психбольниц для защиты интересов советского государства и общественного строя. Кроме того, принимались и соответствующие закрытые постановления ЦК партии и Совета Министров.”
“Общее число находящихся на излечении в психиатрических больницах специального типа МВД СССР в 1968 году, по архивным данным, составляло 2465 человек, а к концу 1979 года оно выросло более чем в 2,5 раза и составило 6308 человек. В 1986 году только в шести крупнейших специальных психиатрических больницах МВД СССР — Казанской, Ленинградской, Орловской, Сычёвской, Черняховской, Благовещенской — находились в заключении 5329 человек.”
So, shortly before this, all these “healthcare workers” were very normal doctors and nurses who really treated sick people and cared for their health. And now they willingly become torturers and killers of totally healthy people whose only “disease” was their disagreement with Soviet political ideas. In Юрий Ветохин’s book, all his “doctors” knew perfectly that he was a mentally healthy person and they often said this to him directly (“Вы, конечно, ничем не больны, и мы все это знаем”). And yet they poisoned him with powerful and painful drugs for many years in order to make him “a vegetable.”
“— Да, жаль мне вас, Юрий Александрович! — вдруг заявила Бочковская. — Не поддаетесь вы лечению! Вы уже много приняли лекарств. Больше, чем другие больные. А сдвигов в лечении не намечается! Вы говорите и думаете по-старому. А нам надо не только, чтобы вы начали говорить другое, а чтобы уверовали в другое. Нам надо, чтобы вы полюбили то, что раньше ненавидели, и возненавидели то, что раньше любили. Надо, чтобы у нас изменилась личность. Пока личность ваша не изменится — мы не выпишем вас из спецбольницы.
Последние слова Бочковская произнесла трогательным голосом, почти что со слезой в голосе и также «жалеючи» отпустила меня.
А я шел в камеру и вспоминал Орвелла: «С вами произойдет нечто такое, от чего вы не оправитесь и через 1000 лет! — сказал КГБ-шник из романа Орвелла „1984“ своей жертве. — Мы не просто уничтожаем людей, мы их сперва переделываем».
Живые советские палачи, а не книжные герои, говорили мне то же самое…”
Yes, it was exactly like in Orwell’s “1984.”
If you haven’t read anything about the Soviet “карательная психиатрия,” this memoir may be a good introduction to the subject.
(A side effect: after reading this book, you will never be able to take Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” seriously anymore.)
In addition to this, Юрий Ветохин tells really interesting things about his preparation to all his attempts to escape and their fulfilment (he is this kind of person who fascinates you with very detailed, logical, and technical “procedural” accounts; you feel engaged and captured by all this planning and attention to details).
However, it should be said that he is not a pleasant person )). It is obvious from the very first pages of the book, but he also provides several “supplementary” chapters after the memoirs where he explains some of his views and opinions about various things, and this is not nice reading. He was a weird person, with a peculiar mixture of a very logical, intellectual, and rational mindset overall and quite aggressive, preposterous, exaggerated judgements about some things (for example, religion, women, Russia, etc.). Nevertheless, his hatred to the USSR and his struggle in this system invoke nothing but deep sympathy, and I was actually amazed that he still managed to flee the USSR in a most enduring and demanding to the mind and body way as a pretty normal and mentally preserved personality after 8 years of tortures and gradual killing him by “карательная психиатрия.” Most of us would not survive all this at all or would definitely become physically and mentally disabled for life.
Also, it should be said that one of the main reasons to not give up for him all these years and try and try again was his intention to write this book and tell the whole world what a fucking “paradise” the USSR was. It means that he wanted to escape not only because he hoped for a better life for himself personally but also because he really wanted to break this system and contribute something important to its future destruction, which deserves all the praise, of course. This book was written twice: he wrote it for the first time when he still lived in Leningrad and he wanted to take the manuscript with him abroad, but he decided against it at the last moment and destroyed the manuscript. He reconstructed the book after his successful escape abroad and published it in Russian in 1983 and later in translation into English. Incredibly strong and determined person.
Юрий Ветохин never returned to Russia, even after the disintegration of the USSR, although in his book, he claimed that he loved Russia and hated Communists. I hope he changed his mind about who really was guilty in the creation of this “prison for people” from which he escaped. He died on March 06, 2022 (a week after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by his beloved Russia began) in the USA, at the age of 93.
“Юрий Александрович Ветохин (19 марта 1928, Ленинград, СССР — 6 марта 2022, Сан-Диего, США) — писатель, общественный деятель, перебежчик, трижды совершивший попытки бежать из Советского Союза, отбывший 8 лет заключения в тюрьмах и специализированных психиатрических лечебницах и смогший после этого в 1979 году (в возрасте 51 года) сбежать, спрыгнув ночью через иллюминатор круизного теплохода с 8 метровой высоты и проплыв в океане за 20 часов около 30 км до индонезийского острова Бачан. В дальнейшем попросил политического убежища и переехал в США.”
I suppose I learned about this person and his story in relation to Слава Курилов’s “Один в океане” because their escape from the USSR was eventually carried out in the same way: jumping from a cruise ship “Путешествие из зимы в лето” in the middle of the ocean and swimming solo to the nearest foreign country. However, the story of Юрий Ветохин is much, much more than this, and I highly recommend reading this book.
First of all, as you can see from the synopsis, he was extremely motivated to leave the USSR and had several attempts to escape, all by swimming, but differently each time. The first two attempts (in 1963 and 1967) were not successful, and while he managed to exonerate himself in 1963, he was caught in the sea and arrested in 1967. Note that this was already during the “Ottepel,” and this is why he ended up in psychiatric hospitals rather than be shot or sent to the GULAG.
As a result, a large part of this book is about his stay in those psychiatric hospitals, mostly in the notorious “Днепропетровская областная психиатрическая больница,” the most cruel and dreadful of such facilities created specially in the 1960s to imprison and “mentally correct” political dissidents. And this is what makes this memoir especially precious and important.
Before this, I have read some accounts about what these facilities did to political dissidents only in Валерия Новодворская’s, Владимир Буковский’s, and Петро Григоренко’s memoirs, and although Валерия Новодворская’s evidence is rather horryfing already, it was quite short and “light” compared to what Юрий Ветохин told, and for subjective reasons, Владимир Буковский’s and Петро Григоренко’s stay in “special psychiatric hospitals” was rather mild and cannot be regarded as evidence about real situation there. Юрий Ветохин presents to us a very impressive detailed report of all the tortures and humiliations people were subjected to in these “hospitals,” up to lethal consequences. And he himself could have died there very easily. I should say that this was really scary for me personally because, as a person with professional healthcare education, I know perfectly what a powerful destructive effect these “treatments” have on human’s personality and health, so what he describes is a real “body horror” for me, in addition to all the understanding of all the social and political horrors of having these practices in society.
Reading this, you may have the impression that these “doctors” and “nurses” are so cruel and totally inhumane just because they work in these “psychiatric hospitals-prisons” for many years and were hardened over time, similarly to interrogators and prison guards in the KGB/GULAG system. However, please note that the Dnepropetrovsk hospital was built in 1968, the year when Юрий Ветохин was confined there, so he was one of its first “patients”; the whole system of “special psychiatric hospitals” started to be created in the 1960s, when the “humane” Ottepel government formally “liquidated” the GULAG but instead introduced “карательная психиатрия.”
Wikipedia:
“С начала 1960-х годов создавалась широкая и постоянно растущая сеть тюремных психиатрических больниц. Динамика их строительства в 1960-е годы выглядела следующим образом:
1961 год — Сычёвская ТПБ (Смоленская область);
1964 год — Благовещенская ТПБ (Амурская область);
1965 год — Черняховская ТПБ (Калининградская область) и Костромская ТПБ (Костромская область);
1966 год — Минская СПБ;
1968 год — Днепропетровская СПБ;
1970 год — Орловская СПБ.”
“29 апреля 1969 года председатель КГБ СССР Ю. В. Андропов направил в ЦК КПСС проект плана расширения сети психиатрических больниц и предложения по усовершенствованию использования психбольниц для защиты интересов советского государства и общественного строя. Кроме того, принимались и соответствующие закрытые постановления ЦК партии и Совета Министров.”
“Общее число находящихся на излечении в психиатрических больницах специального типа МВД СССР в 1968 году, по архивным данным, составляло 2465 человек, а к концу 1979 года оно выросло более чем в 2,5 раза и составило 6308 человек. В 1986 году только в шести крупнейших специальных психиатрических больницах МВД СССР — Казанской, Ленинградской, Орловской, Сычёвской, Черняховской, Благовещенской — находились в заключении 5329 человек.”
So, shortly before this, all these “healthcare workers” were very normal doctors and nurses who really treated sick people and cared for their health. And now they willingly become torturers and killers of totally healthy people whose only “disease” was their disagreement with Soviet political ideas. In Юрий Ветохин’s book, all his “doctors” knew perfectly that he was a mentally healthy person and they often said this to him directly (“Вы, конечно, ничем не больны, и мы все это знаем”). And yet they poisoned him with powerful and painful drugs for many years in order to make him “a vegetable.”
“— Да, жаль мне вас, Юрий Александрович! — вдруг заявила Бочковская. — Не поддаетесь вы лечению! Вы уже много приняли лекарств. Больше, чем другие больные. А сдвигов в лечении не намечается! Вы говорите и думаете по-старому. А нам надо не только, чтобы вы начали говорить другое, а чтобы уверовали в другое. Нам надо, чтобы вы полюбили то, что раньше ненавидели, и возненавидели то, что раньше любили. Надо, чтобы у нас изменилась личность. Пока личность ваша не изменится — мы не выпишем вас из спецбольницы.
Последние слова Бочковская произнесла трогательным голосом, почти что со слезой в голосе и также «жалеючи» отпустила меня.
А я шел в камеру и вспоминал Орвелла: «С вами произойдет нечто такое, от чего вы не оправитесь и через 1000 лет! — сказал КГБ-шник из романа Орвелла „1984“ своей жертве. — Мы не просто уничтожаем людей, мы их сперва переделываем».
Живые советские палачи, а не книжные герои, говорили мне то же самое…”
Yes, it was exactly like in Orwell’s “1984.”
If you haven’t read anything about the Soviet “карательная психиатрия,” this memoir may be a good introduction to the subject.
(A side effect: after reading this book, you will never be able to take Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” seriously anymore.)
In addition to this, Юрий Ветохин tells really interesting things about his preparation to all his attempts to escape and their fulfilment (he is this kind of person who fascinates you with very detailed, logical, and technical “procedural” accounts; you feel engaged and captured by all this planning and attention to details).
However, it should be said that he is not a pleasant person )). It is obvious from the very first pages of the book, but he also provides several “supplementary” chapters after the memoirs where he explains some of his views and opinions about various things, and this is not nice reading. He was a weird person, with a peculiar mixture of a very logical, intellectual, and rational mindset overall and quite aggressive, preposterous, exaggerated judgements about some things (for example, religion, women, Russia, etc.). Nevertheless, his hatred to the USSR and his struggle in this system invoke nothing but deep sympathy, and I was actually amazed that he still managed to flee the USSR in a most enduring and demanding to the mind and body way as a pretty normal and mentally preserved personality after 8 years of tortures and gradual killing him by “карательная психиатрия.” Most of us would not survive all this at all or would definitely become physically and mentally disabled for life.
Also, it should be said that one of the main reasons to not give up for him all these years and try and try again was his intention to write this book and tell the whole world what a fucking “paradise” the USSR was. It means that he wanted to escape not only because he hoped for a better life for himself personally but also because he really wanted to break this system and contribute something important to its future destruction, which deserves all the praise, of course. This book was written twice: he wrote it for the first time when he still lived in Leningrad and he wanted to take the manuscript with him abroad, but he decided against it at the last moment and destroyed the manuscript. He reconstructed the book after his successful escape abroad and published it in Russian in 1983 and later in translation into English. Incredibly strong and determined person.
Юрий Ветохин never returned to Russia, even after the disintegration of the USSR, although in his book, he claimed that he loved Russia and hated Communists. I hope he changed his mind about who really was guilty in the creation of this “prison for people” from which he escaped. He died on March 06, 2022 (a week after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by his beloved Russia began) in the USA, at the age of 93.
December 1, 2024
Книга очень хорошо показывает, что способности человека определяют его судьбу. Он был капитаном и умел хорошо плавать - и вот, единственный способ побега из Ссср конечно вплавь, где обе эти способности будут применены. По-другому сбежать из Ссср конечно было нельзя. И надо же было досидеть в психушке 8 лет, до тех пор, пока его почти не убили, чтобы понять, что надо просто притвориться идиотом, чтобы тебя отпустили. В общем, книга про очень сильного, но не очень умного человека.
Но читать конечно интересно, особенно с исторической точки зрения.
Но читать конечно интересно, особенно с исторической точки зрения.
June 22, 2020
I admire such people as Yuri; unbroken by the KBG torture machine; unquenchable thirst for freedom of Yuri allowed him to survive that Soviet hell imposed on the sixth part of the Globe. I gulped this book down non-stop. Style of writing is simple, yet captivating, very interesting details fo the epoch when I was born (1962) and grew up in Siberia. Recommended to everybody interested in the so-called GULAG literature, along with Oleg Volkov, Evgueniya Ginzburg, Tamara Petkevich and Varlam Shalamov.
October 9, 2024
С одной стороны, невероятная сила воли, целеустремленность и работоспособность. С другой - под конец книги я стала подозревать, что автор всё-таки имеет определенные психологические проблемы. Не надо ему было рассуждать про женщин, ох не надо. И напрашивается вопрос: если можно было признать себя идиотом и выйти на свободу, то зачем надо было столько лет делать упор на принципиальность?
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews