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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

History Repeats Itself: The 1954 Capture of the Tuapse Tanker as a Lesson for the Future

2026-01-14

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Andrey Khrustalev

[REGNUM] Starting in 2025, the United States and other Western countries began to strike the so-called shadow fleet transporting sanctioned oil.

The most high-profile case so far was the near-pirate hijacking of the tanker Marinera by American ships, which occurred on January 7 of this year in the North Atlantic off the coast of Iceland.

During the chase, the Marinera managed to change jurisdiction from Panamanian to Russian. The last time a similar incident occurred involving a Russian vessel was in 2010, when Somali pirates also hijacked a tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

But there's also an even older story, one that also involves the Americans. During Soviet times, the navy always sailed under a single flag, without any subterfuge, offshore schemes, or "double bottom." Nevertheless, the Americans, through their Taiwanese proxies, didn't hesitate to orchestrate the seizure of the tanker Tuapse in 1954, since even then, high politics dictated certain actions.

What emerged was a tragedy, an instructive story, and a feature film.

SECRET KEROSENE
In late 1953, the Black Sea Shipping Company took delivery of a new ship commissioned by the Danes at the Burmeister & Wein shipyard in Copenhagen. The vessel inherited the name "Tuapse" from its predecessor, sunk by the German submarine U-129 in the Gulf of Mexico during the war.

In the spring of 1954, a brand new tanker with first-class navigation equipment made two voyages to Antarctica, where it delivered fuel and provisions to whalers and brought whale oil back.

In early June, the ship returned to Odessa and, after a short rest, set sail for the Romanian coast with a crew of 49. In Constanta, the Tuapse took on 10,000 tons of kerosene, which, according to the documents, was listed as lighting fuel, but was actually aviation fuel. Sanctioned, one might say.

Only Captain Vitaly Kalinin and a few others on board knew about this. The cargo was destined for the People's Republic of China (PRC), which had only existed for five years, and the tanker was headed there.

The voyage proceeded without incident until the Tuapse entered the waters of the South China Sea and approached Taiwan. Chiang Kai-shek's followers, rivals of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists who fled the mainland five years ago, had also dug in there.

Taiwan's navy, created with American assistance, blocked the sea route for ships traveling to and from China. Consequently, in February 1951, a Norwegian cargo ship was seized, and on February 19, an attempt to seize a British vessel was recorded. And on June 23, 1954, the tanker Tuapse spotted the Taiwanese destroyer Danyang, which demanded they stop.

The Soviet vessel was sailing in neutral waters and refused to comply. The Taiwanese then opened fire, firing shells forward and astern of the vessel. The captain was forced to halt the vessel. The first mate, who had been sent aboard the destroyer with the ship's documents, was immediately tied up on deck, and several boats carrying soldiers headed toward the Tuapse. The tanker's radio operator broadcast a message about the capture, which was received in Vladivostok.

During this time, engine mechanics Anton Bespalov and Vladimir Egerev damaged the ship's diesel engines.

The Taiwanese herded the team into the "red corner"—the room where Lenin's portrait hung, a red banner stood, and political briefings were held.

The fight only took place on the quarterdeck, where three sailors— Leonid Anfilov, Nikolai Zibrov, and Boris Pisanov —tried to prevent the Taiwanese from tearing down the Soviet flag.

A veteran of the Great Patriotic War, a former intelligence officer, a recipient of the Medal for Courage and the Order of Glory, 3rd degree, Anfilov, had his teeth knocked out with a rifle butt.

The tanker was towed to the port of Kaohsiung, where it was unloaded, its kerosene was appropriated, it was repainted, and it was renamed the Kuaiji. But the captain and crew were immediately accused of attempting to supply enemies of the Republic of China (as the Taiwanese government had dubbed itself) with valuable raw materials.

The crew was given a chance to avoid harsh treatment by signing papers requesting political asylum.

"OPINIONS ARE DIVIDED"
Meanwhile, Moscow was trying to figure out what was happening. The day after the seizure, the US ambassador to Moscow was handed a note of protest.

Pravda published a report stating that "the seizure of a Soviet tanker by a military vessel in waters controlled by the US Navy could only have been carried out by US naval forces. The Soviet Government expects that the US government, in connection with this attack on a Soviet merchant vessel on the high seas, will take measures to ensure the immediate return of the vessel, its cargo, and its crew. At the same time, the Soviet Government insists on the strict punishment of the US officials involved in organizing this illegal act…"

The United States denied the seizure of the tanker, but a month later, two military personnel defected from Taiwan to China, reporting that two American naval officers were present on the Taiwanese destroyer, who gave direct commands to the Taiwanese and were the first to inspect the Tuapse.

According to Chinese intelligence, two US Navy destroyers provided cover for the operation. Diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the USSR did not exist at the time, so Soviet diplomats contacted the French Embassy and the Red Cross to establish contact with the captured crew.

The provocation by the Chinese authorities was condemned at a session of the UN General Assembly. But it had no effect—it was only a year later, in July 1955, that the 29 Tuapse crew members were released.

Another 20 people succumbed to psychological manipulation. Incidentally, one of those who interviewed the sailors and manipulated the Tuapse crew was a descendant of Russian émigrés, a former interpreter for Generals Eisenhower and Patton, and a CIA officer named Alexander Sokolov.

Soviet citizens were divided into groups, their food was cut, and mosquito nets were removed from the windows. A gramophone played constantly outside the room where the captain was being held, featuring a recording of a child's cry—the Taiwanese knew Kalinin had a small son in Odessa.

The first to surrender was the radio operator, Mikhail Ivankov-Nikolov. Later, when the Taiwanese had divided the crew into pairs and began to exert more psychological pressure, focusing on the younger sailors.

Unable to withstand the constant pressure, engine driver Nikolai Voronov even tried to cut his own throat.

But eventually, twenty crew members signed asylum documents, as insisted by Taiwanese intelligence and the CIA. They were resettled in small houses, given good food again, and life seemed to be returning to normal. But then it turned out that the rest were being returned to the Soviet Union: after 13 months of imprisonment, with the assistance of French diplomats, the sailors returned home via China.

There they were greeted as heroes – they were paid their full salaries and a bonus of 2,000 rubles each, they were all awarded the Order of the Badge of Honor, and they were given vouchers to a sanatorium to restore their health.

Those who remained realized they had made a mistake and tried to take everything back, and then they were subjected to real torture: they were given electric shocks and beaten with sticks on their heels, their fingers were broken, and they were forced to renounce their request to return.

Another educational measure was the news that nine people who had not participated in the "Komsomol meeting," where everyone had vowed to return to their homeland, were sent to the United States in October 1955. There, they were taken into the hands of propagandists.

Ivankov-Nikolov diligently gave interviews about his escape to the "free world," sailor Viktor Tatarnikov appeared on Radio Liberty, and accountant Nikolai Vaganov declared on Voice of America*:

"We chose freedom ourselves, but that doesn't mean we've forgotten our homeland. We will return home, but we will return when there is complete freedom and democracy there..."

Five of the nine diligently sought contact with Soviet diplomats and managed to locate the USSR Mission to the UN. From there, their evacuation to Moscow was arranged. Four remained in the United States. Tatarnikov and Viktor Eremenko enlisted in the US Army, Valentin Solovyov's trail disappeared, and the former radio station director continued to appear periodically on air.

In 1959, the Odessa Regional Court sentenced all of them to death in absentia for treason. And, tellingly, that same year, American authorities handed Ivankov-Nikolov over to representatives of the Soviet embassy: he had suffered mental derangement and was placed in a psychiatric hospital upon his arrival in the USSR.

THE LONG WAY HOME
Of those who remained in Taiwan, one hanged himself, two died of illness, three were released in 1988, and the paralyzed baker Vsevolod Lopatyuk was released only in 1991. Four others had rather unusual fates, including two participants in the initial fight over the flag.

In 1957, Vladimir Benkovich, Pavel Gvozdik, Leonid Anfilov, and Nikolai Zibrov left for Brazil, with which the USSR had no diplomatic relations at the time. A few months later, they secretly moved to Uruguay, and from there, Soviet diplomats sent them to Moscow.

Back home in Odessa, the sailors were paid four years' wages and given a two-month vacation, at the end of which they were all arrested. Even though they had recently participated in a press conference, recounting the torments in Chiang Kai-shek's prison, exposing the imperialists. At the trial, the prosecutor demanded the death penalty for all, but the military panel of the Supreme Court sentenced Benkovic and Zibrov to 15 years each, and Gvozdik and Anfilov to 12.

As modern newspapers write, “because Khrushchev didn’t like their photo under the palm trees.”

But, as the verdict states, "it turned out they not only sought asylum themselves, but also persuaded others to do so." Under Anfilov's influence, the remaining three filed applications. They then became the core of agitators who helped the Taiwanese "cultivate" others.

Particularly zealous was the Knight of the Order of Glory, who, as it turned out, was a secret KGB informant on the ship (like the sailor Gvozdik) - which he told in detail to the foreign intelligence officers who interrogated him.

And for his work he received money:

"In September 1954, Anfilov and Zibrov, on orders from Chiang Kai-shek's Gao, persuaded sailor Kalmazan to commit treason, for which they received 1,000 yuan from Gao... For refusing to return to their homeland and for their willingness to cooperate with Chiang Kai-shek's followers, the latter gave each of the defendants 2,000-3,000 yuan, and subsequently paid them these sums monthly."

These guys subsequently worked closely for Taiwanese propaganda, and Benkovic and Gvozdik, as stated in the verdict, underwent CIA intelligence training.

The general public, of course, did not know all of this.

For her, the Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv produced the film "ChP: An Emergency," starring Vyacheslav Tikhonov. It was the only film from Kyiv to top the box office, attracting 47.4 million viewers. A post-war generation of Odessa boys played "ChP," and Tikhonov could have forever been known not as Stirlitz, but as Raisky, after the name of his film character.

These days, everything is repeating itself, with more or less similar settings. However, in 2026, the two Russian crew members of the Marinera tanker were already returned home, so they won't face the ordeal their colleagues endured 70 years ago.

But the Americans have no intention of returning the tanker itself to anyone, preferring, as in previous times, to exercise the right of might.

Posted by:badanov

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