A Stranger in Moscow

The Last Flight of Mathias Rust 

(Part 2)

(On May 28, 1987, Mathias Rust flew solo from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow, landing in the middle of Red Square, the heart of the "evil empire" and arguably the most heavily defended city on the planet. His stunt made him temporarily the most famous pilot in the world, but the fallout was far-reaching, changing not only the trajectory of his own life but also that of the Soviet Union)

 Nothing. Rust was alone.

Expecting his plane to be stormed by armed troops and KGB agents, Rust waited. All around the Square people seemed nervous or stunned, not sure what was going on. Some thought Rust’s plane might be Gorbachev’s private aircraft. Others thought it all might all be part of a movie production, or perhaps some sporting event. Once they realized both the plane and pilot were foreign, and that whoever was at the controls had just pulled off one of the most magnificent exploits they had ever witnessed, they drew closer. 

“A big crowd had formed around me,” Rust recalls. “People were smiling and coming up to shake my hand or ask for autographs.”

There was much chatter, but little communication. Rust spoke no Russian and most of the crowd spoke no German or English. A young man approached Rust, a street artist who sold paintings of famous Moscow landmarks to tourists waiting in line at Lenin’s Mausoleum. He did speak English, and after determining that the young daredevil did also, he approached Rust. 

Where did you come from?

Rust explained that he had flown from the West and that he wanted to talk to Gorbachev, that he had a goodwill message to deliver to the Soviet leader. He wanted to show the world that Gorbachev was a man peace. 

The young man told Rust he could not help arrange a meeting with Gorbachev, but he was happy to act as an interpreter, fielding questions from the growing crowd. 

Rust went on to explain how he had flown from Helsinki, and about how after he crossed the border a Soviet interceptor had pulled alongside him, looked him over, and then let him continue. 

The crowd could hardly believe what they were hearing. “They all wanted to talk to me,” Rust says. “One woman came up and gave me a piece of bread.” The young artist explained to Rust that he had just received a special gift. He said it was a Russian custom to give a new friend a piece of bread.

“Now,” he told Rust, “you have a new friend.”

Everyone was smiling. The atmosphere was festive. 

Among the onlookers were many in Army uniforms, cadets from a nearby academy of the Soviet Army. But they were just part of the crowd. One cadet approached Rust and told him that while he admired his courage and initiative, but Rust should have applied for a visa and made an appointment with Gorbachev. The cadet then thought for a moment, saying of course they likely would have refused such a request. 

“Instead of keeping him in prison,” said another onlooker of Rust, “they should hive him a medal, not Hero of the Soviet Union, just hero.”

One old man complained that the young man was crazy, that the plane could have “landed on their heads.”

Another man denounced the stunt as “hooliganism,” saying “there are laws, after all.” But, the man then added. “it was beautiful hooliganism.” 

Though Rust may not have seen them, KGB agents were nearby. As he chatted with onlookers and waited for what would happen to him, plainclothes agents moved through the crowd, interviewing people and confiscating cameras and notebooks. A British tourist traveling with a group happened to have a video camera, and taped one of Rust’s passes. The man hid the camera under his jacket andsnuck it back onto his tour bus. After smuggling the camera out of the country, he sold the tape to a television network.

Nearly a half-hour had passed. A large, black and very official-looking limousine drove up. Seeing the car, Rust thought that the KGB had finally arrived to take him away. Out of the car stepped an enormously tall, powerfully built man wearing a dark blue overcoat with medals covering his chest and a dress military cap. He strode forward, trailed by his deputies, waving the crowd aside and stepping right up to Rust. The huge man then began speaking in Russian. Through his makeshift interpreter, Rust learned the man was the police commissioner of Moscow. The commissioner said he had gotten a call just a few minutes before from one of his policemen who had told him that an aircraft from abroad had landed in Red Square. He said he couldn’t believe it, that he figured his men were pulling his leg, so he came over to see for himself. 

He then asked to see Rust’s passport. After examining it, he handed it back. 

“Very fine, you are a West German citizen, but where is your visa stamp?”

Of course, there wasn’t one. 

“Oh that will be a very confusing matter to be solved.”

He then offered Rust some cigarettes. Rust told him he didn’t smoke.

“Oh, you don’t smoke. Well then, would you like some vodka?”

Rust said he didn’t drink, either.

“What is this? You don’t smoke. You don’t drink. I hope you at least like sex.”

Rust said he had no problem with sex.

“Well, I can’t offer you a woman right now,” said the commissioner. “Maybe later.” 

Rust could not believe it. “I expected to be quickly surrounded by police. I expected more hostility. After all, these were the first Russians I had ever met. I was surprised at how warm and friendly they all seemed.” He had grown up thinking Russians were all gruff and unfriendly. “I never would have expected this warmth.”

More than an hour had passed when a pair of Army trucks carrying soldiers arrived. Armed troops leapt out of the trucks and began clearing the crowd, which by then had grown to about 200 people. Many, however, did not want to leave, and began to complain. The soldiers started shouting at them and, holding their rifles against their chests, began shoving them roughly aside. Other soldiers started putting up metal barricades around the plane. 

With the crowd dispersed, Rust was left with just a few officers. At around 8 p.m., three men in plain clothes approached. One was younger, perhaps 30 years old, and the other two were around 45 or 50 years old. The younger man acted as interpreter, speaking to Rust in German. He asked to see Rust’s passport. Rust handed it over. The older man looked it over but didn’t say anything. He handed it to the third man, telling Rust they needed to keep it for a while. Rust was asked if he was carrying any weapons. No. Could they look inside the aircraft? Rust said sure. After peering through the glass, they asked Rust to open the plane. Because Rust had covered all his baggage with a blanket, they asked if Rust would pull back the blanket to show them. They then asked for the keys, and directed to a small sedan parked nearby. Don’t worry, Rust was told, they would take care of the plane.

Rust was brought to a yellowish-beige building, a rather unimposing structure that looked as if it could be an apartment block or some minor governmental ministry. The car pulled up to a security gate. The front gate opened. The car drove in and stopped. The gate closed behind it and the front gate opened. The car drove into a small yard and parked. Rust was escorted from the car and taken inside.

The place was Lefortovo prison, the notorious complex used by the KGB to hold political prisoners. Among its more recent residents at the time were dissident Natan Sharansky and American journalist Nicholas Daniloff. The prison and interrogation center would be Rust’s home for the next 14 months. 

 

Mass Confusion and High Humor

 

Military analyst Pike was at the U.S. embassy in Moscow on business, he recalls, when he looked out the window and saw a small airplane circling over Red Square. Gee, that’s peculiar, thought Pike. There’s no private aviation in the Soviet Union. Hell, there’s no private anything.

Valery Boldin, Gorbachev’s chief of staff, said he was in his office at the Kremlin when he, too, looked out and saw the small plane circling over the Square. But he thought nothing of it, as recently a number of helicopter and airplane flights over the city had been authorized in order to shoot footage for historical and documentary films. When, a short time later, he got a call from the Interior Ministry saying that a German sports plane had landed next to the Kremlin, he could not believe it, so he demanded confirmation.

Word spread quickly through the city. An American journalist working in Moscow received an excited call from a Soviet friend asking if it was true that a foreign plane had landed in Red Square. It seemed impossible, the journalist thought, but he decided to have a look for himself, “just for the hell of it.” Sure enough, at the base of St. Basil’s Cathedral, cordoned off by barriers and guarded by militiamen, was a small airplane. The reporter went up to one of the guards and asked what kind of plane it was. Without a trace of irony, the officer answered, “What plane?” 

The landing quickly became the fodder of jokes. U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock, was hosting a reception at his residence, Spaso House, when he learned of Rust’s landing.

      “Have you heard? They’ve renamed Red Square.”

      Really. To what? 

“Why, Sheremetyevo III, of course,” referring to the international airport's two main terminals.

      German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher confessed to reporters in Bonn that, “I laughed my head off” when told of the landing. Officially, however, the West German government was more coy in its approach. Sokesman Friedhelm Ost told reporters the landing must have been a mistake. “It appears this involves a pilot who has made a mistake in navigation.” 

Tass, the official Soviet news agency would wait a full day before issuing a statement, an indication of the level of confusion and embarrassment the landing had caused within the highest levels of the government. The following day Soviet television read the statement on its evening news program, but it was buried deep into the show, the last item before the sports report. The statement simply said that a small plane from the West had intruded into Soviet airspace 120 miles west of Leningrad and that the plane had landed in Moscow—without specifying exactly where it had done so.

In Hamburg the next morning, Rust’s parents, his mother Monika and father Karl-Heinz, were at home. Karl-Heinz had had taken the day off in order to enjoy a long weekend. Around 9:00 a.m., the phone rang. It was Mathias’s flight instructor, Rüdiger Heise. “Did you hear anything about this German guy who landed in Moscow last night?” asked Heise. No, answered Rust’s parents, they had not watched the television news. After telling them what he knew, Heise asked, “You don’t think its Mathias?” 

No, answered Monika. “I just talked to him the other day. He was about to fly back from Helsinki.”

About two hours later, Rust’s name was released. 

“Oh God,” Monika said, “it’s true.”

Almost immediately, their phone started ringing. Journalists descended on their house. Why did he do it? Did they know about it in advance? Who helped him? 

Rust’s parents had nothing to say. Desperate for news of their son, they got on the phone. They called the Defense Ministry in Bonn. Directed to a public affairs officer, they asked what he knew about the German plane landing in Moscow.  

“What! A German aircraft landed in Moscow? My God! What military unit? What type of aircraft? A fighter? A helicopter?”

No, it was a private aircraft, Rust’s parents explained. 

“Well, that’s none of our business,” the officer said. “We have nothing to do with that!” He hung up the phone.

Next they called the Foreign Minister’s office. A spokesman told them they were in touch with the German embassy in Moscow and were trying to find out the details for themselves. The embassy would call them when they had more information.

The story was instantly front-page news around the world, but with little official information available, reporters struggled to describe what how and why Rust did it. Most assumed that Rust must have hedgehopped his way across Soviet territory, flying low enough to evade Soviet radar. Some figured he must have followed rail lines linking Leningrad to Moscow. One newspaper printed that Rust did the stunt on a bet, another that he did it to impress a girl. Yet another printed a story that he did it in order to drop leaflets seeking to free Rudolf Hess, the nonagenarian Hitler lieutenant, from jail. The Communist newspaper Pravda printed a story that Rust was a patsy in an international plot in which he was supposed to be shot down and killed in order to provoke an international incident. 

Some experts said the landing pointed to the vulnerability of Soviet air defenses to bomber or cruise missile attacks. A few realized the whole thing was simply a fluke, and that, militarily, the landing meant nothing. “It must have been a Stealth Cessna,” joked one U.S. Air Force official. Another diplomat said he was actually encouraged the Soviets didn’t shoot Rust down, as they had four years earlier with KAL 007. He speculated that perhaps it was an indication of improved relations.

Soviet citizens took great delight in Rust’s stunt. After all, for years the Soviet military had been practically immune to criticism, and had grown accustomed to treating the general public in a haughty, high-handed manner. Many were only too glad to see the military brass brought down a notch or two. 

But it was no laughing matter for the Soviet military. That night, while the city enjoyed a massive fireworks display that lit up the sky for Border Guards Day, the annual day to honor of the country’s Air Defense Forces, Soviet authorities considered how to treat this crisis. 

Meanwhile, in East Berlin, Valentin Falin, a career Soviet diplomat then accompanying Gorbachev to a meeting with other Warsaw Pact states, had returned to his delegation find the atmosphere suddenly very tense. Falin thought his colleagues’ mood an overreaction, especially given that Gorbachev seemed to take the news of Rust’s landing quite calmly. 

“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Gorbachev said quietly.

 

Gorbachev Takes Charge

 

At Vnukovo Airport, at a section of the field reserved for official government flights and visiting dignitaries, the full Politburo awaited the return from East Berlin of Gorbachev and his entourage. Standing together on the tarmac, such receptions were a long-standing tradition, one of those ceremonial functions where official photographs of the event would be published the following day in Pravda, then pored over by Western Sovietologists seeking clues to subtle shifts in the power structure at the top of the political hierarchy. Stepping down from the plane, Gorbachev greeted his colleagues with the usual smiles and comradely bear hugs. But, having cut short his Warsaw Pact summit to deal with this crisis, Gorbachev’s eyes were filled with anger. 

Gorbachev led the Politburo members and Central Committee secretaries into a small room off the reception hall of the terminal. “It’s a national shame,” he fumed. “This is as bad as Chernobyl” [the nuclear power plant disaster the year before]. 

Although he had had his misgivings about the military, particularly following disputes over his approach to arms control and in dealing with the Americans, Gorbachev had up to that point had been careful to avoid any direct confrontation with his military commanders. Instead, he hoped he could achieve large-scale cuts in military expenditures simply successfully negotiating arms reductions with the West. 

Gorbachev’s hands-off approach, however, was about to change. His wife, Raisa, quickly smelled a conspiracy, concluding the entire thing had been staged by the military in order to embarrass her husband and damage his standing in the eyes of the public and foreign leaders. 

Gorbachev’s chief of staff, Valery Boldin, says the Rust affair permanently hardened his boss’s attitude toward the military.  “Now he was filled with savage hatred for them and never forgave them for their little ‘joke’,” Boldin writes. From then on, Boldin says, Gorbachev took every opportunity to denounce the military. 

“They have disgraced the country, humiliated our people,” Gorbachev said of his commanders. “But fine, at least everyone here, and in the West, will know where power lies. It is in the hands of the political leadership, the Politburo. This will put an end to gossip about the military’s opposition to Gorbachev, that he’s afraid of them, and they’re close to ousting him.” 

After an hour and a half, the group emerged. Gorbachev, flushed and glowering, grumbled, “Politburo meeting tomorrow at eleven,” and walked to the car.

 

The Investigation

 

Rust got perhaps two or three hours sleep. At around 7 a.m., the small access window of the cell door clanged open, followed by the shout, “Dobray uttra, padom!” (Good morning, get up!). 

Rust got up and, following his cellmate’s lead, straightened the sheets and blanket on his cot. About five minutes later, the trap door on the cell clanged open again. Rust handed his bowl and cup out through the window, which were returned with a helping of thin noodle soup, along with some bread and water. Rust ate just a couple of bites. Still wrung out from the previous day, he went back to bed. He had barely laid down when there was a loud banging on the door. His cellmate explained that during the daytime inmates were not supposed to cover themselves with a blanket. They were only allowed to lie on the bed, but not under a blanket. He could use his coat to cover himself, if he needed. Rust tried, but ended up just laying on top of the cot, shaking in a fetal position.

At around 9 a.m., the guards woke up Rust and brought him back to the investigation center. In a routine that would delineate his life for the next three weeks, Rust was questioned for eight hours, breaking once when he was returned to his cell for lunch, usually some porridge or bread. 

The questioning was very repetitive: Are you sure you didn’t do this with anybody? Did you drop off anybody en route? Did you bring anything in with you? Did you throw anything out of the plane? 

Given the level of planning put into the flight, and the number of apparent coincidences and lucky breaks that Rust benefited from, the investigators could not believe this was the work of one man, much less an idealistic boy. In their mind, Rust had to be part of a much larger plot.

Take the date itself, May 28. It was Border Guards Day, the annual holiday in celebration of the national defense forces. Many speculated Rust chose that day thinking the border would be more lightly defended, or perhaps to maximize the embarrassment it would cause the military.

“I heard about that afterwards,” Rust says. “I said, ‘I’m a West German. How should I know about your holidays?’ It was just a lucky circumstance. I didn’t know.” 

His interrogators pulled out the maps Rust used. They pointed to the airfields and navigation frequencies and told him he must have obtained them from the CIA or the German military. They asked him whom he had contacted. “I told them, ‘No, I didn’t contact anyone from the German government or the CIA.’ “ Rust says. “I just filled out the order form from the German company and I received them in the mail to my home.”

So they sent the maps to the Soviet consul general in Hamburg. The consul general was then asked to place an order for the same maps from the same company. Sure enough, the consul general received them in the mail just as Rust had. The investigators then returned to Rust and said, “Yes, we know you are telling the truth.” 

The plane itself was put on the back of a flatbed truck and hauled to a hangar at Sheremetyevo Airport, where it was broken down completely. The investigators found the plane’s emergency locator transmitter, a beacon device required on most general aviation aircraft that activates automatically after a crash to assist search and rescue crews trying to locate the wreck. Not knowing about aviation in the West, the investigators told Rust they believed he installed the device to send a signal to somebody else so they could follow where he was going.

“That’s not so,” Rust said. “The device is required as a safety precaution.” But the investigators did not believe him. Later on, they returned and said to Rust, “Yes, you were right.” 

Rust’s investigators showed him photos of the Moskvoretsky Bridge on which he landed. In the photos were many sets of wires stretched out across the bridge, each about two meters apart. They asked Rust how he could possibly land with so many wires in his way. Perplexed himself, Rust explained that when he landed he could only see three sets of wires. Upon further investigation, the Soviets learned that the morning Rust landed a public works crew had removed all the wires for maintenance purposes, replacing them all the next day after Rust landed. Their instinct told them it was all part of the grand conspiracy, that somehow Rust had gotten the crew to remove the wires, but they knew Rust was lucky, that it was just coincidence—one of the many coincidences that helped Rust that day. 

“You must have been born with a shirt,” they told Rust, using a Russian expression to say Rust was lucky. 

On June 23, the investigation was completed. Shortly afterward, Soviet prosecutors charged Rust with illegal entry, violation of flight laws and “malicious hooliganism.” Rust pleaded guilty to all but the last charge. There was, he argued, nothing malicious in his intentions.

 

A Quiet Coup

 

By long-standing tradition, Politburo meetings took place every Thursday on the third floor of the government building in the Kremlin, beginning at the stroke of 11:00 a.m. The large conference hall, located directly above the office once used by Stalin, was a gloomy room dominated by a large table covered in green felt. Perpendicular to this table was the chairman’s table, on which rested an inkstand, a clock, a bell and a control panel for a series of maps hidden behind a movable wall. The seating arrangement was based strictly on status and seniority. 

Anatoly Chernyaev, Gorbachev’s chief foreign policy advisor, gave Gorbachev a memo he had written the night he returned from East Berlin. In it, Chernyaev said that, because of Rust, “a great military power was reduced to a joke in the space of a minute.” The problem was not technical, Chernyaev said, “to spot such a tiny aircraft, 1930s-era technology would suffice.” The bigger problem was the breakdown of discipline and leadership in the military, along with the its culture of secrecy and infallibility. “The army used to be the most off-limits, beyond all criticism. What criticism could there be? No one even had a remote idea, nor had they any right to know, how the army spent the hundreds of billions of rubles it was unconditionally allocated.”

It was time, Chernyaev said, for change. Gorbachev’s “new thinking” needed to include real military reform, and as such “a general of a new type should become minister of defense.” Exactly who this “new type” of military leader might be, Chernyaev didn’t venture to say, but the message was clear: it was time to go beyond making simply proclamations and speeches about military reforms. It was time to take charge.

Gorbachev may not have needed Chernyaev’s encouragement. He had already made up his mind. From the very beginning, there was a palpable tension inside the hall that morning.. 

Gorbachev opened with a scorching attack on “the complete helplessness of the Defense Ministry, which still has to explain this extraordinary incident to the party and the people.” Gorbachev then sat stone-faced as Defense Minister Marshal Sergei Sokolov and Chief Marshal of Aviation Alexander Koldunov, tried to explain through their aides how the world’s most vaunted air defense system managed to allow a deluded boy to fly straight into the innermost sanctum of the Soviet empire.  

General Ivan Lushev, the deputy defense minister, told the gathering that Rust presented a situation for which military planners had never prepared and could never have predicted. The elaborate radar and anti-aircraft systems, he said, were designed to intercept military aircraft, not slow-flying small planes at low altitudes. If anything, he argued, Rust proved the system did work. He was picked up and tracked on radar. Fighter-interceptors were sent aloft. It was simply a fluke he was allowed to proceed unchallenged.  

No one was buying it. And as a growing chorus of Politburo members stood to voice their opinion, Gorbachev sat scowling at his defense ministers. Finally, he took the floor.

Exactly how Rust managed to get through the country’s supposedly impregnable air defenses didn’t really matter, Gorbachev said. The real issue was leadership and accountability. The problem was an army whose top leaders were “apprehensive of the party’s turn toward perestroika and the new thinking.” He demanded stronger leadership at the defense ministry “to increase the military establishment’s sense of political responsibility.” Then, turning to defense minister Sokolov, he said, “I don’t question your personal integrity, Sergei Leonidovich, but under the present circumstances, if I were you. I would resign at once.”

Sokolov, a former tank commander and a hero of the Great Patriotic war against the Nazis, looked shaken. He stood at attention and resigned on the spot. Gorbachev did not hesitate to accept the resignation “on behalf of the Politburo,” adding that it would be announced as a retirement, sparing Sokolov total public humiliation. After a 15-minute break, Gorbachev returned and announced the appointment of Dmitri Yazov, a little-known general whom Gorbachev had plucked from the Soviet Far East earlier that year and appointed deputy defense minister in charge of personnel. In picking Yazov, Gorbachev bypassed dozens of more senior officers, violating the pecking order and long-standing tradition. In doing so, Gorbachev appointed a defense minister whose absolute loyalty to him was assured.

Also fired was Air Marshal Koldunov. The Politburo statement released for the television news that evening was unusually harsh, saying that Sokolov and Koldunov “had shown intolerable unconcern and indecision” during the incident, which testified to the “serious shortcomings” in the air defense forces in general.

In subsequent days and weeks, the “Rust Massacre,” as it came to be called, would see about 150 officers brought to trial. Hundreds of others were fired or forced to retire. By the end of 1988, in addition to Sokolov and Koldunov, all deputy ministers but two, all the first deputy chiefs of the General Staff, the commander and the chief of staff of the Warsaw Pact forces, all the commanders of the groups of forces and fleets, and all military district commanders had been changed. Even during Stalin’s bloody purges of the Red Army in 1937-38, the percentage of change in top-level posts was not as high. 

The swiftness and vigor with which Gorbachev acted stunned many. Gorbachev had, noted career diplomat Anatoly Dobrynin, “accomplished a quiet coup.” Rust, added one senior official jokingly, should be awarded the Order of Lenin, the nation’s highest decoration.

In seizing the opportunity, Gorbachev had suddenly shown himself to be a strong and decisive leader. The Rust incident became a turning point for Gorbachev. 

Afterwards, he became more forceful and imperious, less inclined to solicit the ideas of others and increasingly disposed to dismiss those who disagreed with him. But his harsh treatment of the military embittered many career officers and bureaucrats, feelings that would fester and come back to haunt Gorbachev when perestroika started running into problems.

More important than the replacement of specific individuals, analyst John Pike says, was the change Rust’s flight precipitated in the public perception of the military. The myth of Soviet military superiority had been punctured, and with it the almost iconic reverence the public had held for the military. One former Soviet colonel described walking around in uniform in the city where he was stationed and sensing the feeling of scorn by ordinary civilians. After all, the Soviet public had made enormous economic sacrifices to support the military-industrial complex.

For decades, Pike says, Soviet citizens had been led to believe “the West was poised to destroy them and that they just couldn’t let their guard down, that if they let their guard down for an instant that they would be obliterated.” It was this logic that perpetuated the Cold War. Now, Pike says, “the challenge was how do you turn it off? How do you turn it off without things flying apart.” Gorbachev had talked about changes in the military, changes that hinted the Soviet Union could let down its guard without being destroyed by external forces. Letting Rust land, Pike argues, “was an initial test of that hypothesis.”

In retrospect, Gorbachev was right. External forces would not destroy the Soviet Union. Ultimately, of course, internal forces would do the job.

The next issue for Gorbachev was what to do about Rust. Of course, he could bypass the legal process altogether and simply put Rust on a plane home. In fact, as it became increasingly clear that Rust had acted alone, a chorus of voices stepped forward to urge Gorbachev to do just that. 

Valentin Falin, a career diplomat and head of the Novosti news agency, had been predicting as much in interviews with the Western press. He had also met briefly with Rust’s parents, and mentioning the possibility of Rust being handed over to Germany for trial.  

Foreign policy advsior Chernyaev wrote a memo to Gorbachev and suggested that the general secretary meet with Rust. “Maybe you could receive him (or have a telephone conversation?). And you could say something to him such as: ‘Listen, you punk, what do you think you were doing? It’s enough that you risked your own life, but you also endangered others. You could have done enormous harm to your country. You almost pushed the world to the brink of catastrophe.” The gesture, Chernyaev mused, would prove the compassion of Gorbachev’s “new thinking” and be a propaganda boon to boot.   

Viktor Chebrikov, KGB chief, reporting to the Politburo, said that KGB investigators, though not trained psychiatrists, believed “there are signs that Rust doesn’t have all his marbles.” But Chebrikov had forbidden psychiatric tests on Rust because of the notorious reputation of Soviet psychiatry. If they did, he said, the West will scream, “he flew in normal but returned insane.” Instead, Chebrikov recommended that the Soviet Union hand Rust over to the West German courts in Hamburg, where he already faced charges for taking the plane and violating flight regulations.

One Politburo member protested, saying, “If this young lad had landed in front of the White House in Washington, what would they have done with him?”

Chebrikov answered, “In the first place, they would have shot him down,” provoking an outburst of laughter.

At that, Gorbachev’s eyes narrowed. He spoke with fury: “What is this? So he wanted to meet me? Many people meet with me… No, it was a clear provocation! We took 150 officers and generals to court, discharged the minister of defense. Maybe we shouldn’t have? And now we’re to tell him ‘go on, fly home.’ No, democracy does not mean weakness. He broke the law three times, and so by those laws must be punished. The investigation is finished, right? Let’s have a trial then. Everything as it should be. The law says one to ten years. The court will decide. And then we’ll see.”

 

Trial and Aftermath

 

On September 4, 1987, after a three-day trial, a panel of three judges found Rust guilty of all charges and sentenced him to four years at Lefortovo. The prison, though starker and more restrictive than a labor camp, ensured Rust’s safety. He spent his time there quietly and was afforded special privileges: He was allowed to work in the garden and receive visits by his parents every two months.

But jail is still jail. Rust was allowed just one shower a week. The barren cell had no window, just a milky pane of glass that allowed light in. The antiquated heating system meant it was always frigid in the winter and sweltering in the summer. The lone light bulb in the ceiling burned day and night, and most meals consisted of bread and some bland soup (Rust lost 22 pounds while in jail). 

On June 1, 1988, during a summit in Moscow, President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signed documents putting into force a historic treaty to eliminate intermediate nuclear forces in Europe. From his jail cell, Rust heard the news and took a quiet satisfaction that maybe, in a small way, he had a hand in it. Two months later, on August 3, Rust was released on order of the Supreme Soviet in what Tass described as a “goodwill gesture.” 

After serving his 14 months in a Moscow jail, Rust returned home, but not as a hero. The West German press, initially enamored with “the new Red Baron” had since turned on Rust. For his part, Rust did not help his situation. He refused to play up to the press, and repeatedly snubbed them. In return, he was hounded and ridiculed. The stiff, seemingly arrogant young man was called everything from a dangerous fool to a madman or even a traitor. Among the hundreds of letters he received, many were death threats. Outside his parent’s apartment building, vandals had painted: “Go Back to Siberia!”

Rust struggled to readjust. While working in a hospital in Hamburg in 1989 he suffered a breakdown. In an episode his lawyer later likened to post-traumatic stress syndrome, Rust stabbed a young woman, seriously injuring her. Of course, the German press loved it. “To them, it only confirmed to them that I was mad,” Rust says. “They said the flight to Moscow was the first indication, but now I had blood on my hands. Who knows what he’ll do next?” 

Prosecutors sought to put Rust away for eight years for attempted murder. Rust’s attorney, however, discovered documents proving the Soviets had drugged Rust with a powerful truth serum during his detention and interrogation. The drugs had long-lasting psychological effects, his attorney alleged, and thus he convinced the court that Rust was not culpable for his actions. Rust got off relatively lightly, sentenced to a term of 15 months, getting out in 1993.

Upon his release, unable to work, unable to even go out without people pointing at him or calling him a murderer, Rust’s life fell to depths he could not imagine. He left Germany and moved to the Caribbean island of Trinidad, a place where nobody had heard of him or his famous flight. He got a job, met a girl and got married. 

But controversy followed him wherever he went. During a visit home for Christmas in 2000, Rust found himself back in court facing a shoplifting charge. Rust denied the charge, but was fined 2,000 Euros. He returned to Trinidad.

Even in absence, Rust became a popular topic of rumor and innuendo. He was said to have returned to live in Russia, to have married the daughter of an Indian sultan and converted to Hinduism, to have lost millions and gone bankrupt, to have died. As a result, he avoided the press, gave few interviews and did everything he could to distance himself from his famous flight.

In 2001, he moved back to Germany, settling first in Berlin. “I got tired of the warm weather and the single season. That and I thought I was just killing time there.” And by then, the German press seemed to have lost interest in him.

“I had a friend in London who did investments through a firm in Luxembourg, and while I was Trinidad he asked me to help him make contacts and work out some deals. So I did. I would try and find investors for his business deals. I did, and it worked out, so I have continued. It’s nice.”

Rust never flew a plane again, but he never lost his idealism. In 2002, he started a new enterprise, Orion and Isis, a mediation service designed to “fight violence by providing proper redress.” Unlike traditional mediation services that try to resolve labor or business disputes, Rust spent much of his time in the occupied territories of Israel, negotiating hostage releases. In 2004, Rust suspended the service to work full-time doing business deals.  

Now divorced, Rust looks back on his flight and says, “It gave me new respect for life, my life. I’ve experienced both aspects of life: the greatest feeling of achievement and happiness by flying to Moscow, and the absolute bottom, where I fell to the depths of the darkest corner of my soul. There was an odd balance.”

One of the few items Rust saved from his flight to Moscow is his pilot’s logbook. The final entry lists the flight between Bergen, Norway and Helsinki on May 25, 1987. There is no entry for his flight to Moscow. Asked why, Rust shrugs and says, “because I never completed my mission.” That is, he never got to meet Gorbachev. 

The Cessna 172 Mathias Rust flew, D-ECJB, now hangs in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin.