Execution within 24 hours. A short history of the law on “non-returnees”

On 21 November 1929, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VCIK) and the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR adopted a decree that turned the Soviet state into a deadly dangerous place for anyone who decided not to return from abroad. Western press immediately dubbed the document “Lex Bessedovsky” – after the Soviet diplomat Grigori Bessedovsky, whose scandalous defection from the embassy in Paris became the symbol of the “third” emigration wave.

In the early 1920s only a handful remained abroad; by the end of the decade the count was already in the hundreds. Diplomats, trade mission employees, intelligence officers, artists, and intellectuals were fleeing. The communist state declared such people “outlaws”. The decree provided for the confiscation of all property and execution within 24 hours of possible capture. Moreover, the law was retroactive – it applied to everyone who had ever refused to return.

Those who remained in the USSR also suffered. The practice of taking hostages became official state policy. Wives and children of “traitors to the Motherland” from the military were sent to camps or exiled. According to the text of the decree, adult family members living with the traitor or dependent on him were deprived of all rights and exiled to remote regions of Siberia for 5 years. Military relatives who knew about the planned escape but did not report it received 5 to 10 years in the GULAG system.

After Stalin’s death, the death penalty was replaced by long prison terms (up to 15 years), but the essence remained the same: a person who had once gone abroad ceased to be the master of his own fate and the lives of his loved ones. The Soviet man was the property of the Soviet state.

Yet the Iron Curtain could not completely stop those who longed for freedom. High-profile defections of artists, athletes, scientists and writers continued right up to the collapse of the USSR.

1920s – the first wave of intelligentsia

1921 – Alexander Alekhine, chess player, world champion (France)

1922 – Fyodor Chaliapin, opera singer (France → USA)

1924 – George Balanchine (Georgi Balanchivadze), choreographer (France → USA)

1928 – Sergei Rachmaninoff (tried already in 1917, finally succeeded in 1928)

1929 – Grigori Bessedovsky, diplomat, Paris – the law was named after him because his action prompted its adoption

1929 – Boris Bazhanov, Stalin’s personal secretary (France)

1930s – the first Chekists and military

1930 – Georgy Agabekov, OGPU resident in Turkey (France)

1937 – Ignaty Reiss, NKVD intelligence officer (Switzerland; killed in 1938)

1938 – Genrikh Lyushkov, head of Far East NKVD (Japan)

1938 – Alexander Orlov, NKVD resident in Spain (USA)

1940s – war and the first loud post-war cases

1944 – Victor Kravchenko, author of “I Chose Freedom” (USA)

1945 – Igor Gouzenko, GRU cipher clerk (Canada) – the start of the Cold War

1948 – Oksana Kasyankova and Artemi Grigoryan, ballet dancers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs ensemble (UK)

1950s

1954 – Vladimir and Yevgenia Petrov, diplomats (“Petrov Affair”, Australia)

1954 – Pyotr Deryabin, KGB major (Austria → USA)

1954 – Nikolai Khokhlov, KGB captain, contract killer (West Germany)

1973 – Larisa Mondrus and Egils Schwartz, outstanding jazz and pop singer and her husband – conductor and orchestra leader, both from Latvia (West Germany; preparations since 1958)

1960s

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev, ballet (France)

1961 – Anatoli Golitsyn, KGB colonel (Finland → USA)

1963 – Yuri Nosenko, KGB lieutenant colonel (Switzerland → USA)

1964 – Yuri Krotkov, KGB agent, writer (UK)

1966 – Georgy Okulovich, KGB agent (USA)

1967 – Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s daughter (USA via India)

1970s – the golden age of ballet and sports defections

1970 – Natalia Makarova, Kirov Theatre prima ballerina (UK)

1973 – Larisa Mondrus and Egils Schwartz (West Germany)

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Kirov Theatre soloist, also from Latvia (Canada → USA)

1974 – Valery and Galina Panov, ballet (Israel via hunger strike)

1976 – Viktor Korchnoi, chess player (Netherlands → Switzerland)

1976 – Viktor Belenko, pilot, hijacked MiG-25 (Japan → USA)

1977 – Galina Vishnevskaya and Mstislav Rostropovich, outstanding opera singer and cellist (deprived of citizenship in 1978)

1978 – Maxim Shostakovich and Dmitri Shostakovich Jr. (West Germany → USA)

1979 – Alexander Godunov, Bolshoi Theatre soloist (USA)

1979 – Leonid and Valentina Kozlov, Bolshoi Theatre soloists (USA, together with Godunov)

1979 – Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, Olympic figure skating champions (Switzerland)

1979/1980 – Gidon Kremer, violinist

1980s – the last loud cases before perestroika

1980 – Andrei Tarkovsky, film director (Italy)

1981 – Ernst Neizvestny, sculptor (via Vienna to USA)

1982 – Vladimir Voinovich, writer (West Germany, deprived of citizenship)

1983 – Andris Liepa, Bolshoi Theatre soloist (UK)

1985 – Oleg Gordievsky, KGB resident in London (UK)

1985 – Vitaly Yurchenko (defected to USA, “returned” after 3 months – controversial case)

1987 – Mikhail Danilov and Lyudmila Vlasova (failed defection: she was forcibly brought back)

1989 – Nina Ananiashvili, Bolshoi Theatre prima ballerina (began working permanently abroad)

1989 – Vladimir Malakhov, Bolshoi Theatre soloist (Austria → Germany)

1990 – Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov, figure skaters (USA)

1990 – Marina Klimova and Sergei Ponomarenko, ice dance pair (USA)

1990 – Natalia Bestemianova and Andrei Bukin (USA)

1991 – Ilya Reznik, songwriter (USA, later returned)

1991 – Alexander Rosenbaum (Israel, later returned)

Chronology of the most famous “cultural” defections

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev (Le Bourget airport, Paris)

1970 – Natalia Makarova (London)

1973 – Larisa Mondrus and Egils Schwartz (Munich)

1974 – Mikhail Baryshnikov (Toronto)

1974 – Valery and Galina Panov (Israel)

1977/1978 – Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich

1979 – Alexander Godunov + the Kozlovs (New York)

1979 – Belousova and Protopopov (Switzerland)

1980 – Andrei Tarkovsky (Italy)

1990–1991 – mass exodus of figure skating and ballet stars (Gordeeva/Grinkov, Klimova/Ponomarenko, Bestemianova/Bukin, etc.)

From 1991 onwards, “defections” ceased – the borders opened and it became possible to leave legally. Yet over 70 years the Soviet Union lost hundreds of outstanding artists, athletes, scientists and intelligence officers who chose freedom over fear for themselves and their families.