dropped in front of and behind the ship, as well as cannon fire. Storozhevoy's steering was damaged and she eventually came to a stop. The pursuing vessels then closed in, and the frigate was boarded by Soviet marine commandos. By then, however, Sablin had been shot in his knee and detained by his own crew, who had also unlocked the captain and the other captive officers. Sablin was charged with treason, court-martialled in June 1976 and found guilty. Although this crime usually carried a 15-year prison sentence, Sablin was executed on 3 August 1976. His second-in-command during the mutiny, Alexander Shein, received an eight-year prison sentence. The other mutineers were freed. In 1994, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation reviewed the sentences with a possibility of posthumous rehabilitation. The court partially rehabilitated Sablin rather than fully exonerating him and Shein (who had by that time served his sentence). Reports of the mutiny in the West The Kremlin did not want news of the uprising to spread and was therefore willing, perhaps even prepared, to present it to world public opinion as an attempted defection to the West – contrary to Sablin's intentions. The Gulf of Riga can be left northward only through a narrow passage between the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa and the mainland. A ship making for Leningrad from Riga that wishes to avoid such confined conditions must initially head west toward the Swedish island of Gotland. Sablin steered this course, which could give the mistaken impression that the Storozhevoy was heading to Sweden or even NATO-member Denmark instead of Leningrad. Until the end of the Cold War, Western intelligence believed that the crew had planned to defect. Gregory D. Young was the first Westerner to investigate the mutiny as part of his 1982 Masters thesis Mutiny on Storozhevoy: A Case Study of Dissent in the Soviet Navy, and later in the book The Last Sentry by Young and Nate Braden. The thesis was placed in the United States Naval Academy archives where it was read by Tom Clancy, then an insurance salesman, who used it as inspiration to write The Hunt for Red October. Quotes External links References Bibliography 1939 births 1976 deaths Anti-revisionists Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Deaths by firearm in Russia Russian people executed by the Soviet Union Executed Soviet people from Russia People executed by