Twenty-six years ago Captain 1st Rank Marko Aleksandrovich Ramius, commanding officer of the ballistic missile submarine Krasnoye Oktyabrskaya, posted a letter to the head of Main Political Administration (MPA) of the Soviet Navy. Novelist Tom Clancy introduced the letter in his classic The Hunt for Red October, published in late 1984.
In his novel Clancy tells how, immediately after the Red October sails from her base on the Kola Peninsula, Admiral Yuri I. Padorin, head of the MPA in Moscow, opening his morning mail, sees an envelope from the submarine. He begins reading the letter from his protégé
Ramius. Clancy writes:
What? Padorin stopped reading and started over. He forgot the cigarette smoldering in his ashtray as he reached the bottom of the first page. A joke. Ramius was known for his jokes-but he'd pay for this one. . . . He turned the page.
"This is no joke, Uncle Yuri—Marko."
But Clancy never gives the reader the full letter from Ramius in The Hunt for Red October, just its opening and closing lines.
Before the book was published, Clancy kindly sent a copy of the letter to me for comment.
The hand-typed page by Ramius—I mean by Tom Clancy—was dated 3 December 198?, but actually typed on 12 September 1984.
Admiral Yu. I. Padorin
Director,
Main Political Administration,
People’s Commissariat of the Navy
Moscow, R.F.S.F.R.Dear
Admiral PadorinUncle Yori:Thank you for your confidence, and for the opportunity you have given me with command of this magnificent ship!
As you know, I have been an officer in the Soviet Navy for nearly thirty years, and this is my seventh submarine command. It is my intention to use all my training and all my experience to carry out a mission which no Soviet vessel has ever accomplished.
I intend to defect to the west. In fact, I shall sail Red October into New York harbor, bring her to dock at the United Nations building, and present her to the President of the United States.
Why would I do such a thing, you ask? Because the Party has betrayed the revolution, has betrayed the people, and has betrayed the Rodina with its corruption. I have known this for years—since my youth. But like a coward I was unwilling to take action. I chose instead to hide in my uniform and in my career. I chose to hide in the privileges of my father’s high position in the Party. I chose to believe that my career and my “noble” birth would shield me from the squalor in which the Party is content to leave the narod, the common people of our nation. My punishment for this, as you know, is a wife murdered at the hands of my brother nachalnik, another son of a nobleman, a doctor who operates while drunk, and is protected because his father sits on the Leningrad Central Committee. I was a fool to trust “the system,” but I trusted it, and like so many of my countrymen, I was myself betrayed.
But unlike others, I can have my revenge. By the time you read this, my Red October will be in mid-Atlantic. Find and destroy me if you can. See how well you have trained me! See how well you have designed my ship! See how well you have trained my officers and crew, that they will follow my orders without question! See yourself how well “the system” has treated me, Comrade! Then see how well it will treat you.
This is no joke, Uncle Yuri.
/s
M. A. Ramius
Now that most exciting and well-written of submarine stories is complete.
Editor's note: The first major press interview with Tom Clancy that appeared after The Hunt for Red October was published, in Time magazine of 4 March 1985, quoted President Reagan wondering, "How in the world did he have all this knowledge?" According to Time, Clancy answered, studying "the major unclassified books dealing with Soviet submarines, such as Combat Fleets of the World and Norman Polmar's Guide to the Soviet Navy. Another important resource was the $9.95 war game Harpoon, devised as an instruction manual for Naval ROTC cadets, which comes with a 40-page rule book of strategy and tactics for Soviet-American naval engagements."