Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS translation, dated 29 January 1992, reproduces an IZVESTIYA article by Marat Zubko about Soviet submarine U-137, which ran aground near the Karlskrona naval base in Sweden on 27 October 1981. It reports former commander Anatoliy Gushchin's claims that the submarine carried nuclear weapons and that he had orders to blow it up. It also quotes Swedish commander Karl Andersson likening claims of submarine incursions to flying saucers. Captain 1st Rank Vladimir Vazhov disputes the order claim and describes two Soviet minisubmarines.
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## Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1992 ## Document 3 of 12 Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Status: [STAT] Document Date: 29 Jan 92 Category: [CAT] Report Type: JPRS report Report Date: Report Number: JPRS-UMA-92-008 UDC Number: Author(s): Marat Zubko: 'The Order Was to Blow Up the Submarine: With Not Only the Crew but Also Nuclear Torpedoes'', and comments of Captain 1st Rank Vazhov on statement by submarine Captain Gushchin, by V. Litovkin] Headline: On Claims of Commander of Submarine Grounded off Sweden in 1981 Source Line: 92UM0479A Moscow IZVESTIYA in Russian 29 Jan 92 Morning Edition p 6 Subslug: [Article by Marat Zubko: "'The Order Was to Blow Up the Submarine: With Not Only the Crew but Also Nuclear Torpedoes'', and comments of Captain 1st Rank Vazhov on statement by submarine Captain Gushchin, by V. Litovkin] FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE: 1. [Article by Marat Zubko: "'The Order Was to Blow Up the Submarine: With Not Only the Crew but Also Nuclear Torpedoes'', and comments of Captain 1st Rank Vazhov on statement by submarine Captain Gushchin, by V. Litovkin] 2. [Text] Once again the need arises for us to continue discussion of the subject raised in the article 'The Order Was to Blow Up the Submarine Together With the Crew'' (IZVESTIYA, No 293, 1991). Moreover this occasion is so serious that in our opinion the Russian leadership must intervene, and give the public the complete picture as to what happened to the Soviet submarine U-137, which ran aground in a fjord in southern Sweden in 1981. 3. Let me recall that the article above was written largely on the basis of the recollections of Vasiliy Besedin, the submarine's deputy commander for political affairs, who stated that the crew had been ordered to defend the vessel to the last, and that in the worst case it was to batten down the hatch and blow up the submarine together with the crew. To the question troubling the Swedes, 'Were there nuclear weapons aboard?', he replied in the negative, although Swedish experts who analyzed water samples asserted the opposite. 4. In a subsequent article, ''Why the Political Deputy Commander Didn't Blow Up Himself and the Submarine'', our newspaper (IZVESTIYA, No 302, 1991) turned the floor over to Captain 2d Rank A. Bulakhtin, former deputy chief of the USSR KGB's special department for the
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 7 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.