Customer Reviews

Mig Pilot: The Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was so blown away by this book I had to meet Viktor in person and now count him as a personal friend. The book is factual in every respect and is difficult to put down once started. John Barron is an excellent author and did a first class job of writing Viktor's story. In addition to an exciting escape story it reveals why the Soviet Union had to collapse of its own ineptitude, deceit, and corruption. It details humorous incidents such as army pilots' mess-hall riots due to bad food. Mig Pilot is also a biography of an exceptional man whose intelligence saw through a lifetime of brainwashing. The story is humorous in places and engrossing from beginning to end. It starts right out with Viktor's desperate and harrowing escape flight to freedom in his top-secret Mig-25 Foxbat, then in subsequent chapters details the life events that led to his courageous decision to "go for broke" and make his live-or-die dash to freedom. It illustrates how America probably could have given the Soviets all of its top secrets and they would have found a way to screw up making use of them.Viktor is not only a first class pilot, he is also a true hero. Don't lend this book to anyone and expect to get it back.

I read this book to pieces -- literally -- when I was in my early teens, and just seeing the paperback cover reproduced here on Amazon ("Russia gave him everything a man could want -- except freedom" -- printed on the back) brings me way, way, waaaaay back, to an old story that never gets old.

Viktor Belenko was a Soviet fighter pilot who defected to Japan in the 1970s -- in his top-secret Mig 25 "Foxbat", at the time the world's fastest and most feared interceptor. On the surface he seemed an extremely unlikely candidate to jump the fence of the worker's paradise: the son of a decorated partisan fighter of the Second World War, he had overcome his poverty-stricken family's lack of political connections with a Samurai-like work-ethic and, against all odds, become a pilot of the most coveted and jealously-guarded aircraft in the USSR. He made good money, had the best priveleges, and could have looked forward to a cushy retirement when he was only 40 years old. His defection was as much a question of "Why?" as a question of "How?"

Author John Barron writes a compact, highly readable account of Belenko's life and the long series of incidents which turned him from an idealistic young communist, who sheds tears over the death of Stalin, to a man so filled with hatred for the regime he seeks not merely to escape it but to hurt it in the most grievous possible way -- by handing its most precious secrets to the enemy.

"Mig Pilot" is one of those stories that can be enjoyed on several levels. Read through quickly, it is a first-class adventure, a "will he or won't he get away with this" thriller. Read more slowly and thoughtfully, it is a terse, often humorous, yet ultimately horrifyingly revealing tale of what life was like under the communist system -- a system so corrupt, incompetently managed and morally bankrupt it drove some to suicide, most to intellectual surrender, and a tiny few to risk their lives just to get the hell away from it.

Barron litters the book with anecdotes about the grotesquerie that was the Soviet Union: about buildings so shoddily constructed they crack apart with their inhabitants still in them; officials so corrupt they refuse to perform their jobs unless paid substantial bribes; crime so rampant that people are stabbed to death for the clothes on their backs; enlisted men treated so badly they riot, desert and murder; and a system of informers so all-pervading that only the most dishonest man could ever rise to the top. Everywhere you look is filth, corruption, lying, hypocrisy, and cant, all set to the tune of patriotic music and propaganda slogans that bear about as much resemblance to reality as a Tom & Jerry cartoon. It's Orwell's "1984", with worse technology.

Ultimately, though, the book is not about oppression but rather freedom -- the indestructable, indefatigable desire for human beings to breathe and think and speak their minds, without wondering if the secret police will take them away to a death camp or a mental institution for their troubles. Belenko, for all his perks and petty priveleges, found himself unable to play the role of [...]to the communist party's pimp. He risked everything on the gamble that, somewhere over the horizon, there was a better way. If Barron, who is admittedly jingoistic American patriot of the cardboard sort, made the better way look a bit too close to perfect....well, to Belenko's eyes, maybe close to perfect was perfect enough. To paraphrase Howard Fast, whose (ironically) pro-communist novel "Spartacus" served as Belenko's lifelong inspiration:

"As long as men suffered, and other men profited from those who suffered, the name of Viktor Belenko would be remembered, whispered sometimes and shouted loud and clear at others."[...]

I read this book twice while the Soviet Union still stood. The book is brilliently written. You get a view of life inside the former Soviet Union, inside their millitary and civillian life, and you see through the eyes of a refugee when he first experiences America. The story helps you to appreciate what you have here. Lt. Belenko is a very courageous man.

A must read for those interested in POLITICAL/SOCIAL history. It offers a fairly short and candid look into the Russia of the 60's and 70's- from living conditions to how its citizens were taught to view the west. After the defection, we learn Belenko's realizations and revelations of the real America

I note that the other reviews of this book have been either four or five stars and I am not about to buck the trend.

John Barron has crafted an interesting albeit short work on an event that sailed right by me in the 70s. His description of Lieutenant Belenko's life in the USSR is as riveting as his description of the actual defection flight itself. Mr. Barron has forced me to look elsewhere for more material on Viktor Belenko and, in so doing, I have found him to be a genuinely likeable man, a hero (to the West, at least), and someone I admire a great deal..

..Viktor Belenko, by the way, says nothing to discredit Mr. Barron's worthy effort. It's an old book, but a worthwhile glimpse into the politics of the old Soviet Union and the cold war.

I was introduced to this book by my brother, but I originally didn't want to read it. I thought it would be dull, and as some other non-fiction books I've read: boring. However, from the very first page the book captivated me. I found myself constantly wanting to return from my daily activities, and dive right back in. The author and Lt. Blenko themselves bring communist life to the front stage and put a face on it.

This would be an excellent book for anyone looking for a quick manly adventure story, whether adult or youth, male or female, and would be a wonderful gift for any left-wing extremist trying to pervert society with communist ideals.

I read this book while stationed in Germany in the mid-eighties. The guy who loaned it to me said it should be required reading in our schools. Belenko's escape is exciting, but the bird's eye view of the Soviet system is what I thought was most interesting.

Here is a fighter pilot, part of the cream of the crop; yet when you read about his experiences in the Soviet Union you realize that his life was not anything wonderful. Imagine what life was like for the average Soviet citizen. Someone who did not enjoy the perks of being a pilot.

Although I read it about 25 years ago, I don't recall it as being jingoistic. Barron wasn't waving the American flag throughout the book. Books dealing with the high level of politics and history are important, but detailed accounts of personal experiences can place things in sharper focus. This book does that.

I read this book only once, many years ago, having checked it out of the library of a U.S. airbase in South Korea. I still think of portions of it often. I am a non-fiction reader by nature, so I esteem a true story to be of infinitely more value than any great tale of rings or of teenage witches.
Surprisingly, this book has very little to do with flying. It is mostly about what it was like to live in the Soviet Union and to be taught constantly about the Evil Americans. The most remarkable part of the story is how Viktor Belenko came to his decision to defect, which I will not dare to spoil here.
I have been in the U.S. Air Force for a long time, most of that time as a pilot. Whenever the frequent opportunity arises to whine about how I'm underappreciated, and how the government and the Air Force and the base housing office and the squadron seem to be run by a committee of morons, I think about Belenko's description of how the airbase where he was a fighter pilot removed snow from the runway. Then I count my blessings again. I was not particularly patriotic before I read MiG Pilot. But after reading it, and subsequently flying throughout the world and seeing people in several countries still plowing fields with an ox in the 21st Century, I have learned how wonderful it is to live in a place where people pay extra money to help themselves eat less food, while not for a moment even realizing how incongruous it is. Better still, I appreciate the opportunity to have become a military pilot without my family having any necessary political connections. Were I a billionaire, I would fund my own production of MiG Pilot, the movie, with Matt Damon as Viktor Belenko. You get the idea. Read the book.

This book paints an insightful picture of Soviet life and politics during the Cold War, and Belenko's story within that Soviet context is very interesting. The book is great.

Lt Belenko defected with his Mig 25 aircraft to Hakkaido, Japan in 1976. the Americans tore it apart and analyzed every inch, before the Ford government shipped it back to the Russians in pieces. Belenko requested asylum in the USA and it was immediately granted. The story of how he got there is a short but fascinating read about the former Soviet Union.