The Tragedy of Newcomb Mott, Who Thought He Could Walk into Soviet Russia
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
Much less known, and much more tragic, is the story of two Finnish teenage boys who, in 1946, set sail from Helsinki in their small boat. Their intention was to voyage to Stockholm to meet some relatives, but as a result of extremely bad luck and post-war Soviet paranoia ended up in a forced-labor camp in Siberia.
Wikipedia says he stabbed a nurse shortly after his return, but was lacking details. A quick search turned up a couple news articles.[1][2] Notable excerpts include:
"According to police, Rust pulled an 18-year-old student nurse into a hospital changing room and, after locking the door behind them, attempted to kiss her.
When she resisted, she was stabbed twice in the stomach, police said."
He received only two and a half years in prison for that. The woman he stabbed nearly died. What the fuck.
"Mr. Rust had testified that he might have been drugged throughout his captivity in the Soviet Union, where he had been jailed for more than a year after landing a borrowed plane in Red Square in May 1987."
Having just read an article on the U.S.'s psychochemical warfare program[3] in the 1950s and 60s, and considering the Soviets had similar programs, I suppose it's possible he was drugged in a manner that had long-term effects. It'd make sense for the Soviets to render him violent in an attempt to destroy what amounted to a Western folk hero at the time.
That said, he was already out of his mind to attempt penetrating Soviet airspace in a Cessna 172, so an incident involving spontaneous violence isn't exactly surprising.
Either way, I found the whole thing extremely bizarre.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13792309
[1] http://articles.latimes.com/1989-11-24/news/mn-176_1_moscow-...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/20/world/red-square-pilot-con...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/17/operation-delir...
> He received only two and a half years in prison for that. The woman he stabbed nearly died. What the fuck.
I looked it up: At that time public opinion pivoted against him. His parents had sold his story to a magazine for a larger sum, which was seen as greedy and improper journalism, and he himself made very naive/weird statements in interviews (e.g. his claim about the russians drugging him). The media wanted him to be a hero and an attractive daredevil pilot, but he turned out to just be a boring weirdo. A socially inept and awkward 20 year old.
Regarding the knife attack he claimed that the girl rebuked his advances by calling him (I am paraphrasing the German here) "a loser, that he never will succeed and will ever be a loser, and the russia thing was just a stunt to make himself important". Rust said something snapped in him. A psychological examination saw this as triggering his neurosis. The court followed this and I guess judged the media stress as mitigating factor for his affect action. (The girl denied saying that to him and indeed only survived because the stabbing was in a hospital.)
After prison Rust had an odd life. He was in Asia and abroad, he had two failed marriages there, he claimed to have been a professional Poker player and having won a small fortune with poker, which allowed him to be financially independent, but then he was caught trying to steal an expensive cashmere pullover in a store, something about check fraud, something about a Yoga school he wanted to open...
http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/kreml-flieger-mathias-rust-...
Rust enabled Gorbachev to enact the biggest military purge since Stalin, which helped bring the Cold War to an end. Wires which would have made his landing impossible had been taken down. I'm surprised conspiracy theorists have not claimed it was planned by the Soviet leadership.
>The boys decided to set up camp on a nearby island, but in the middle of the night they woke to a scream. It sounded like a woman’s cry. “We were sure it was a maniac or something. You could hear cries from different directions.” The boys decided to leave the island in the middle of the night.
Wish I knew what that was all about! Too bad we don't know what island they stopped on. Are there animals whose calls sound like a woman's screams?
Edit: Some Googling tells me they may have been hearing a group of red foxes.
Rabbits and coyotes can make sounds that'll make you wonder what you just heard and if someone is in distress.
-- Overreaction in Korean Air 007 1983's incident let to under-reaction in Mathias Rust's case, which led to overreaction again in the following case: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/14/world/2-american-balloonis....
I am pretty sure the reality is much more complex though.
Pre-war, during the purge, they would be executed for sure. Still can't believe how lucky they were to stay alive in 1946
I have a picture somewhere that a friend took when I jumped over the chain and turned around and smiled, two feet inside North Korea, before jumping back and smiling at the border guard, who pretty clearly just wanted to make sure no stupid American tourists got arrested by the Norks on his watch (apparently some European backpackers had tried to hike the perimeter of the lake not long before and spent a few months in a North Korean prison).
Just don't do anything stupid, or you might be detained, like 22 yr old Otto Warmbier from Ohio, who was also there with YPT and allegedly stole a propaganda poster, and is now in North Korean labour camp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier
Crossing illegally from China is something I would not do...
If you have US passport and get detained, they would hold you for few years as a bargaining chip for some potential deal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_nationals_deta...
/edit
to add to my comment, remember that the moment you step over the border you are at the mercy of a regime that can treat you however it likes. It doesn't matter whether Otto Warmbier actually stole that poster or not, since he's spending 15 years in DPRK prison anyway.
Can you expand?
edit: I don't understand why this question was so poorly received. I didn't know what this was in reference to and now I know having been given proper information.
As if border crossing was some disneyland earlier?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_deaths_along_the_Mexic...
That said, it was pretty funny how he could just repeat "am I being detained?" until they all just gave up and let him go.
The videos (and there are tons of them) demonstrate over and over that if you refuse to answer questions and ask if you are being detained / are free to go, they will grudgingly admit that they can't stop you.
On the one hand, i love seeing people exercising their constitutional rights. On the other hand, the fact that there's a sort of secret handshake to get out of the situation when police are gaslighting you plays into the worst of the "sovereign citizen" conspiracy theories that if you write some magic words on your tax return you are exempt from paying taxes, and the like.
That said, I can see how the border checkpoints that are nowhere near the border would be frustrating, and good on the locals for protecting their rights.
(I went to university with a relative of the murdered girl)
In particular, they don't need reasonable cause to search you or your luggage or your computer/devices e.g. in the US, if I'm not mistaken.
Unlike the airport that 100 mile zone is not a free for all. They can ask you questions. You are free to not answer them. You haven't violated any laws by not doing so. Unless you crossed a border very recently you can tell CBP to kick rocks.
> In practice, Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people. These problems are compounded by inadequate training for Border Patrol agents, a lack of oversight by CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the consistent failure of CBP to hold agents accountable for abuse. Thus, although the 100-mile border zone is not literally "Constitution free," the U.S. government frequently acts like it is.
Scream "AM I BEING DETAINED!" all you want, you might win a court case. You still got your butthole probed.
https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
Source: https://youtu.be/NPtc_N9QiG8 NSFL Warning: This video will haunt you
Before someone comments about lawful orders, it's a complex topic and you're welcome to fight it in the Supreme Court, but in general I'm just going to obey police orders.
[0] http://traffic.findlaw.com/traffic-stops/are-dui-checkpoints...
https://www.amazon.com/Inclined-Escape-Yuri-Vetokhin/dp/B001...
Another well know case was three sailors from the UK, Canada, and New Zealand who accidentally sailed into Cambodian waters during the reign of Pol Pot. They ended up being burnt alive after months of torture at the infamous S-21 building.
Still a terrible story, though.
I'm not an English native, can someone explain me what would be the meaning of the verb to marshal in that sentence, in the context of using of the word "privilege". I don't want to misinterpret the last point.
"a white man from America" has a lot of privilege in the world, but even putting it all together could not help this guy.
In many contexts (geographical and social contexts), being white, male and America adds up to maximum privilege.
But in other contexts, white and male usually add up to a positive -- but being American can subtract (which is why backpackers are returning to the habit of sewing the Canadian flag patch on their gear, even if they are from the US).
In the era of Trump, the attribute of being American has turned negative, in many places.
I suppose the bottom line is that if you are placing yourself in different contexts, don't assume that that calculus of privilege works the same way on the Russian border as it does in Virginia or Indiana.
And if you are a Sikh in the United States, that calculus, which was at best neutral, has now turned sharply negative, sad to say.
This is a wild generalization that in the past nine months of traveling, I have not experienced once. In fact you may be surprised to hear I found more Trump supporters in Morocco, of all places, than I did detractors.
Regardless, even if someone hates trump, for most people it does not also follow that they hate all Americans.
I would lose immediate respect for someone sewing the flag of another country on their backpack; it's so presumptuous, arrogant, and self absorbed.
I spent some time living abroad in the Bush years, in a variety of places where Westerners almost never go. (I hate the beaten path...if I can see photos of it on Flickr, I don't need to go there myself. That should help you figure out where all I've been ;) )
Based on the anti-American sentiment I saw there, then, anti-American sentiment in many parts of the world would not at all surprise me now.
And I didn't sew any flag on my backpack, but I sure didn't tell people I was an American; I speak another language well enough (and with an indistinct accent) that I usually told people I was from a non-Western country entirely.
If for nothing else, the haggling. Just passing as a non-Westerner got my prices in North Africa cut by 90% every. single. time.
Hah, maybe they just liked your money!
I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising individuals in Norway bought the bikes back at reduced prices and shipped them back to Russia so the process could begin again.
I found this closing remark rather unnecessary, especially since it was the fact that he was American that got him into this mess.
Anyway, it is a fact that there are clear discriminations when it comes to traveling freely. I don't know if you have had a chance to become a non-american woman traveling to the U.S., but a lot of times the people at the consulate who approve your visa will start out from doubting you, and you have to go through troubles to prove that you are not a prostitute. I am not joking. This happens everyday, even for women who are legitimately visiting the U.S. to get a PhD, etc.
This means these people normally can't even imagine doing things like crossing the border illegally and get away with it. They have seen from past examples how harsh the society is to their kinds.
However sad this is, you can't really blame anyone for this because statistically speaking this happens a lot, and these people at the consulate were naturally trained to act that way over time. I have also seen a lot of illegal immigrants who came here naively thinking everything will work out, and just became illegal immigrants. They try to find a guy to marry so they can get out of the illegal status.
Also I cringe whenever I see the language "white male privilege" because this term itself assumes inherent superiority. A lot of liberal activists throw this language around without thinking, but this is completely missing the point. These racism, sexism, etc. exist all around the world and is not specific to a white country. If you go to another country where the majority is Asian or African or whatever, you no longer have "white male privilege", you are a second class citizen. The people from these cultures believe they are the most superior race/culture/etc. Which means the "White" from "white male privilege" is a made-up illusion for some of these Americans.
My point is, racism, sexism, etc. all exist and are very real. And they are contextual. I am not a social justice warrior but I do think people should know what's going on.
Just wanted to share my two cents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_deaths_along_the_Mexic...
Because whataboutism.
And also they're mexican, and our side deemed it OK to kill them, so they would have their reasons.
(As I wrote before, invocation of whataboutism is the laziest intellectual excuse to put things in perspective and to be vigilant about all sides. It's "lalala" hands on the ears denial pretending to care).
Where by "something completely different" you mean "with something of the exact same nature (people killed because of crossing a border) that still occurs often today"?
Conversations naturally expand to similar stories and greater lessons and perspective on things. Heck, a Rust announcement on HN will almost always expand to discussing type theory or static-vs-dynamic languages, Golang and C++ and same with everything else. That's what different threads are for.
What's inane is to artificially constrain a discussion, just to never break the echo chamber.
To illustrate that, how about we talk about the brutal crackdown of illegal immigration in Russia: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/06/russia-immigra...
Or expand even further -- to understand the anti-immigration sentiment -- let's discuss how the Chinese "invade" Russia's far east: http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/russia-china-and-the-far-east...
See my point?
You're free to open a new thread about US immigration issues. In fact there're already plenty of ongoing threads exploring the bad side of the politics, society, economy in the US. Are you worried your new thread wouldn't pique the interest around here?
Not sure what the point is though. Why shouldn't we talk about this (brutal crackdown of illegal immigration in Russia) in a subthread on this article?
It also seems totally relevant, e.g. to compare USSR-era border control to today's Russia, etc.
>Are you worried your new thread wouldn't pique the interest around here?
No, I'm worried about artificially limiting discussion to very narrow confines around a single particular topic.
Which doesn't even make sense. How much stuff can anybody here say about Mott's case in particular? And what's to say about it specifically that's not already in TFA?
It's the wider implications and issues around that that we all can contribute something to, and that's what makes conversation interesting.
You are the one trying to turn this into an echo chamber with a pivot into yet another discussion about US immigration politics.
That's not how echo chambers work. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Spies don't have the name "spy" on the forehead, but are people that serve their country obtaining information from another (preferably)with some excuse or alibi.
History tells us that anyone could be a spy, from sailors to tailors, including prostitutes.
I had family members in former Soviet Republics. Some of them risked their lives running away. That someone intelligent was so naive to not understand the danger is unconceivable for me. Norwegians knew for sure and told him.