Sergei Kourdakov

Kourdakov's death stirred up much controversy among Christian anti-communist organizations and elsewhere. Jesus to the Communist World general director Richard Wurmbrand, himself a former prisoner and torture victim in Soviet-controlled Romania, accused Underground Evangelism of exploiting the young defector. On January 4, he wrote an open letter to the organization stating that Sergei Kourdakov "should not have been brought on the stage [into publicity] with its perils before having been a member of a church growing in grace and knowledge." Andrew Semenchuk, the west coast representative of the Slavic Gospel Association stated that he and other Russian Baptist church members who heard Sergei speak at a Santa Ana felt that he "should not have been thrust into such a situation—speaking on subjects 'completely beyond him.'"

Sergei Kourdakov's death had been dubbed as "strange and uncertain." Upon moving to California, Kourdakov moved in with a Christian family. Because he began making public appearances so often, he started worrying for his safety, so he began taking a revolver that belonged to the family's father with him whenever he traveled anywhere. To celebrate the New Year, Sergei went on vacation with Ann Johnson, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the family he was living with first to Disneyland, then to a ski lodge in Running Springs, California. On January 1, 1973, Sergei Kourdakov was found dead in his motel room in Running Springs, California, killed by a gunshot to the head. In his room was an unfinished typewritten paper (which he was preparing for Senator Strom Thurmond with regard to receiving permanent residency in the US), a champagne bottle, and the gun borrowed from the family's father.

Due to the circumstances, Sergei Kourdakov was initially announced to have died by suicide. Many, notably Underground Evangelism founder and then-president L. Joe Bass, repudiated this claim. After a more thorough investigation, Kourdakov's death was ruled an accident on March 1, 1973, stating that while Sergei was playing with his revolver, he probably accidentally shot himself. However, due to Kourdakov's status as a former high-rank KGB agent who defected to North America and publicly opposed Communism, some believe that he was assassinated by another KGB member in order to silence him. Sergei himself had considered the possibility of an assassination attempt, hence the revolver, stating that he "was in the Soviet Intelligence. They do not warn twice", and that, if anything were ever to happen to him, "it would have all the appearances of an accident." L. Joe Bass was quoted on an Underground Evangelism newsletter saying that "What better than midnight on New Year's Eve, and what better place than that small, tourist-packed resort area for Sergei Kourdakov to have an 'accident'?"

After his death, his body was sent to Washington, D.C. on January 10, 1973, where an English funeral service by Reverend Richard Halverson, a Presbyterian pastor, and a Russian service at a Russian Orthodox church were held. Sergei Kourdakov was buried in a Russian section of Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C., United States on January 11, 1973.

Some of the criticism towards Underground Evangelism was its alleged exploitation of Kourdakov for profit. According to the Los Angeles Times, by 1973, the young Christian "had become the feature of the organization's literature." In addition to placing Kourdakov on a tour of over twenty speaking engagements during his short time in the organization, Underground Evangelism sold taped versions of his story priced at four dollars. Myrus Knutson, board chairman of Jesus to the Communist World, made a statement saying that "it may be unfair to say it, but they [Underground Evangelism] smelled money."

On May 1, 1972, Kourdakov joined Underground Evangelism and moved to California where he moved in with a family that had heard his story and offered him a place to stay. He spent his time traveling all over the United States speaking in schools, universities, and bible studies about his life and the state of Christian communities in the Soviet Union. He also spent much of his time making live radio broadcasts about Christianity and the evils of Communism in Russian, which were broadcast to the Soviet Union. While living in the United States, Kourdakov spent three weeks in The Pentagon demonstrating how Soviet submarines are made.

In January 1971, Kourdakov graduated from the Petropavlovsk Naval Academy as a radio officer and was assigned to duty on a Soviet Navy destroyer. After more than a month on the destroyer, Sergei was sent back to the naval base for two weeks. There, he asked to be transferred to a ship near the United States coast, a request that was approved. On March 4, 1971, Sergei Kourdakov left the Soviet Union for the last time to board a Soviet submarine. A few months later on June 25, Kourdakov was transferred to the Soviet trawler Ivan Sereda, which was in need of a radio officer.

By late August 1971, the Elagin began heading back to the Canadian coast. A few days later, Kourdakov received a message saying that he was to be transferred to the Maria Ulyanova in five days, which would then head back to the Soviet Union. Desperately, Sergei Kourdakov tried thinking of a good escape strategy. During those five days, the ship encountered a severe storm, and the captain ordered him to radio Canadian authorities and request to enter Canadian waters in order to avoid the storm. Sergei quickly realized this would be his very last opportunity. On September 3, 1971, around 10 pm, Kourdakov plunged into Canadian waters.

Many of these raids continued in similar fashions [May-Dec. 1970]. The leaders of the worship groups were usually arrested and sentenced to many years in Siberian labor camps. Along with the duties of being the leader of the police group, Sergie Kourdakov continued studying at the naval academy, hoping to become a radio engineer in the Navy. He still retained his position as the leader of the academy's Communist Youth League and continued to compete in the school's sports, primarily consisting of wrestling, judo, karate, and track.

On April 22, 1970, Sergei Kourdakov attended a live televised major Communist party convention to celebrate the 100th birthday of Vladimir Lenin and honor the future leaders of the party. He was invited to receive an award which honored him as the Number-One Communist Youth of Kamchatka Province, for which he prepared and gave a fifteen-minute speech, which was broadcast nationwide. There he met Comrade Orlov, the party leader for Kamchatka. During the banquet following the convention, Orlov, drunk with vodka, invited him into the private dining room reserved for party leaders. What waited inside shocked Kourdakov. Inside he saw all sorts of expensive delicacies he did not expect to see and vodka "flowing like water," but more importantly, he witnessed the state of the party leaders—drunk, passed out, or drinking themselves to unconsciousness. Many of them had their faces in their food and one was lying on the food serving tray. Comrade Orlov had excused himself and when he came back, continued drinking. Soon, he began criticizing Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, and eventually communism itself, at one point shouting that "Communism is the worst curse that has ever come to man!" This was a turning point in Sergei's life. He later wrote that he had been a genuine and firm believer in communism. But after witnessing the hypocrisy of those top party leaders, his goal in life had changed: "From now on, there was only one goal: Get to the top! If the game was played by cynicism and ruthlessness, I'd play it that way."

By mid-1970, Sergei Kourdakov was beginning to notice new patterns in the ways the Believers worshiped. Although they usually split into groups of around fifteen, they began meeting in groups of ten or less, which required Sergei's group to perform more raids in order to have as much of an effect on the Believers. He also began to notice an increase in Believers, which made it seem to him that the bigger the fight they put up, the larger they grew. Soon the group was operating on a tight schedule instead of just being called in whenever they were needed. Another trend he noticed was that may of the new Believers were young people, often as young as him. This made little sense to him, as he had a hard time understanding how Christianity could appeal to young people so much. With all of these operations occurring, news of the group began to spread throughout the public.

By July 1970, the group had accumulated many handwritten religious texts. On one particular day, the police captain Dimitri Nikiforov asked Kourdakov and Matveyev to go to the basement of the police station and burn some of the texts for heat. While Victor left to get some vodka for themselves, Sergei sat down there trying to figure out what "young people see in this trash." As he thought of Natasha, a sense of curiosity overcame him and he picked up a text, which happened to be an incomplete copy of the Gospel of Luke and began reading until Victor came back. Kourdakov later wrote in his autobiography about his experience when reading the book for the first time:

In late July 1970, Kourdakov was sent to Novosibirsk for military duty. Although he was to stay in Novosibirsk in case of a military emergency, he took a plane to Moscow to visit the tomb of Vladimir Lenin for the second time, hoping that being near his body would give him a sense of direction, something the corpse fell short on. Leaving the tomb that day, Sergei made his decision. He would leave Russia. He soon formulated a plan that would involve him swimming across the Tisza river to Hungary using an aqua-lung he acquired at a black market. He even went as far as obtaining Hungarian currency and making his way to the border, but after seeing the immense amount of security at the border, he quickly realized that it would be impossible. With his military leave ending, Kourdakov flew back to Petropavlovsk. Soon enough he was back to conducting raids against the Believers' meetings. He later wrote that because he was dissatisfied and ill at ease at the time, the last raids he led were the most vicious.

While working at his Communist Youth League office in May 1969, Sergei Kourdakov was visited by Ivan Azarov, a well-known KGB official. He came to tell him about a "special-action squad" he was forming as an official but secret branch of the city's police. After telling Kourdakov that he had gone through his record all the way to his days in Children's Home Number One and complimented him on his ability to captivate people so well during speeches, he stated his desire to place him as the leader of this new group. Although Sergei tried thinking of reasons to reject the offer while Azarov was telling him all this, he immediately reconciled after hearing the pay he was to receive for each operation—twenty-five rubles. At the time he received seven rubles per month as a naval cadet and if he were to become an officer in the Navy, he would still only receive seventy rubles per month.

After graduating school, Kourdakov faced the decision on what career path to take for his military obligation and chose the Navy. With high honors and grades, and an outstanding recommendation from his old school director, he applied to and was accepted into the Alexander Popov Naval Academy in Leningrad. Although a newcomer, he was chosen to be the leader of the school's Communist youth organization due to the record of his leadership in his previous organization. At the academy, Kourdakov met Pavel Sigorsky, a Pole who taught him Polish. After completing a year of study at the academy in July 1968, he continued his studies at the Petropavlovsk Naval Academy in Kamchatka, at the Eastern border of Russia.

Before going to the naval academy, Sergei Kourdakov spent two weeks in Blagoveshchensk, a city that borders China, serving in a naval military unit against the Chinese army. At one point he partook in a small battle. Finally in late September 1968, he arrived at the port city Petropavlovsk. Again, because of his past experience and record, he was chosen to be the leader of the academy's Communist Youth League. From then on, along with his studies, he was in charge of carrying out orders sent from the Komsomol headquarters in Moscow, listening to the grievances of cadets and argue in favor of them if he was convinced the cadet was right, and discipline any cadet who appeared to be undermining Communist commitments, often shocking them into performing better. In just that single year at the academy, Kourdakov served as the League leader, performed well in his studies, organized entertainment events for the cadets, lectured at nearby schools on many current events topics, and competed in all of the sports offered by the academy.

By this time Sergei Kourdakov had already become the leader of the Communist Youth League of his area. He graduated from his school in June 1967 and was awarded a silver medal for being the second best student in his grade level. For much of the last year of school, he focused on pushing and improving the League as much as he could, hoping to make it the most successful one in his district, a position that was indeed awarded to it during the judging of Leagues, which happened annually.

In the summer of 1965, Kourdakov and two close friends of his obtained a large amount of hashish from Turkestan and began a narcotics business. Initially successful, his business ended after a group of gang members that discovered he was carrying the narcotic took him into an alley and stabbed him in the back for it, almost killing him. While recovering from his injury, Sergei realized that he had to make a decision for what he would do with his life: either follow the course of his friends and continue dealing in the underworld or seriously focus on building a career in communism. He chose communism.

For ten days, he lived in Novosibirsk, thieving from food stands until he was caught and sent to the police. He was promptly sent to an orphanage then known as Children's Home Number One, where he joined the Octobrianiks, a Soviet youth organization required for all children grades one through three. After three years, he was transferred to an orphanage for older children forty miles away in Verkh-Irmen. There he joined Youth Pioneers, the Communist youth organization required for children nine through fifteen. Sergei also joined a gang that turned into a reign of terror for the city. In response to this looming threat, the police ordered the orphanage to be shut down in 1961 and all the children separated to different orphanages.

Sergei Nikolayevich Kourdakov (Russian: Сергей Николаевич Курдаков; March 1, 1951 – January 1, 1973) was a former KGB agent and naval officer who from his late teen years carried out more than 150 raids in underground Christian communities in regions of the Soviet Union in the 1960s. At the age of twenty, he defected to Canada while a naval officer on a Soviet trawler in the Pacific and converted to Evangelical Christianity. He is known for having written The Persecutor (also known as Forgive Me, Natasha), an autobiography that was written shortly before his death in 1973 and published posthumously. Since its publication, it has been the source of varied criticism. Caroline Walker, a US Christian journalist, attempted to document the story of Kourdakov, but her findings revealed that the story was largely a fake made up in order to earn political asylum in Canada. The documentary produced by Damian Wojciechowski about Walker's findings, Forgive Me, Sergei won numerous awards worldwide.

According to The Persecutor Sergei Kourdakov was born on March 1, 1951, in Novosibirsk Oblast, Soviet Union. His father Nikolai Ivanovich Kourdakov was a soldier in the Soviet Army and a political activist who was a very loyal supporter of Joseph Stalin. He led a brigade in the Winter War and led a unit under General Konstantin Rokossovsky in World War II. After the war, Nikolai helped set up a military base and became the base chief. Although Sergei was told that his father died by being shot, he found out much later from a friend of his father's that when Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union, he had ordered the elimination of important officers who had supported Stalin in order to consolidate his power, and that Nikolai Kourdakov had been one of them. Sergei lived with his mother until her health began to deteriorate and when he was four years old, she became very ill and died. He was invited to live with a family who had known his mother. It was there that he learned to read and count. Sergei got along well with everyone in the family except with their son Andrei, whom he believed to be mentally handicapped. At the age of six, he decided to run away after Andrei tried to kill him by shoving his head into a filled bathtub.