From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   Viktor Belenko, Who Defected to the West in a Jet Fighter, Dies at 76   
   By Clay Risen, Nov. 18, 2023, NY Times   
   Lt. Belenko died on Sept. 24 at a senior center near Rosebud, a small town in   
   Southern Illinois. He was 76. His son Paul Schmidt said his death, which was   
   not widely reported at the time, came after a brief illness.   
      
   Viktor Belenko was the flower of Communist youth. Born into proletarian   
   poverty, he had worked himself up through the career and party ranks to become   
   a member of the country’s elite Air Defense Forces, a separate branch from   
   the Soviet Air Force that    
   was charged with defending the motherland from attack.   
      
   But along the way he became disillusioned with the Soviet system. He had been   
   promised material rewards for his hard work; instead, despite his elite   
   status, he felt he was being treated like an expendable cog in a creaking war   
   machine.   
      
   He kept his doubts to himself — so much so that in the early 70s he received   
   the choicest of assignments: to train on the MiG-25, one of the Soviets’   
   newest weapons.   
      
   Through the 50s and 60s, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had fought a high-altitude   
   arms race, building bigger, faster bombers and reconnaissance aircraft. The   
   United States had the upper hand, given the expanse of territory the Soviets   
   had to defend.   
      
   Then, in the early 70s, American intel agencies and their allies detected a   
   new aircraft in the Soviet arsenal: an enormous fighter, capable of flying   
   miles above the earth, several times faster than sound.   
      
   The plane, which the North Atlantic Treaty Organization called the MiG-25   
   “Foxbat,” had something else: wide wings, suggesting that it was also   
   highly maneuverable. This was the weapon the West had long feared, believing   
   it was capable of taking down    
   supersonic bombers and reconnaissance jets that had, until then, flown through   
   Soviet airspace with impunity.   
      
   Now Lt. Belenko was going to give them one as a gift.   
      
   He had plotted his escape for months, waiting until he and his squadron went   
   on an unarmed training mission over the Sea of Japan, putting him close to   
   freedom and rendering his colleagues unable to stop him.   
      
   After he landed, Japanese officials handed Lieutenant Belenko and his plane to   
   the Americans. The plane was dissected and analyzed before being returned, in   
   pieces, to the Soviets, a few weeks later. Lt. Belenko received asylum, then   
   flew to the United    
   States to be interviewed.   
      
   The MiG-25 turned out to be a paper eagle. Its giant wingspan was not for   
   maneuverability but simply to lift the plane and its 15 tons of fuel off the   
   ground. It couldn’t even do its job: Though it flew fast, it was no match   
   for the American aircraft    
   it was meant to take down.   
      
   Of great value, though, was what Lt. Belenko told the Americans about   
   conditions and morale within the Soviet armed forces.   
      
   American officials had long believed that Soviet military personnel were   
   chiseled supermen. Lt. Belenko revealed that they were often half-starved and   
   beaten down, forced into cramped living spaces and subject to sadistic   
   punishment at the tiniest    
   infraction.   
      
   During a visit to a U.S. aircraft carrier, he was astonished that sailors were   
   allowed unlimited amounts of food, at no cost. He once bought a can of cat   
   food at a grocery store, not knowing it was for pets; when someone pointed out   
   his error, he    
   shrugged and said it still tasted better than the food sold for human   
   consumption in the Soviet Union.   
      
   And he was astounded to learn about the inadequacies of his aircraft’s inner   
   workings, which, despite his elite status, he had never been allowed to see.   
      
   “If my regiment could see five minutes of what I saw today,” he told a   
   companion, “there would be a revolution.”   
      
   Viktor Ivanovich Belenko was born on Feb. 15, 1947, in Nalchik, a Russian city   
   in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.   
      
   His father worked in a factory, his mother on a farm. Even by Soviet   
   standards, they had very little money. But Viktor applied himself to his   
   studies and to his Communist Party activities, becoming a member of the Young   
   Pioneers, a youth group that    
   trained future party members.   
      
   He had little idea about life in America, except that it had to be better than   
   what he encountered in the Soviet Union.   
      
   “I've been longing for freedom in the U.S.,” the Japanese police quoted   
   him saying. “Life in the Soviet Union has not changed from that existing in   
   the days of Czarist Russia, where there had been no freedom.”   
      
   Congress passed an act in 1980 to give Belenko citizenship. Eager to escape   
   attention, he took the surname Schmidt and moved around often, mostly living   
   in small towns across the Midwest. He worked as a consultant to aerospace   
   companies and government    
   agencies.   
      
   His marriage to Coral Garaas ended in divorce. Along with his son Paul   
   Schmidt, Belenko is survived by another son, Tom Schmidt, and four grands.   
   Though some reports said he had left a wife and child behind in the Soviet   
   Union, Belenko told his son that    
   this was untrue and the result of Soviet propaganda.   
      
   After the Cold War ended, he began to make occasional appearances at air shows   
   and returned to calling himself Viktor Belenko. But he never sought to   
   capitalize on his moment of international fame.   
      
   “He lived the most private life,” his son Paul said. “He flew under the   
   radar, literally and figuratively.”   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/world/europe/viktor-belenko-dead.html   
      
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