Sergei Nikolayevich Kourdakov (Russian: Сергей Николаевич Курдаков; March 1, 1951 – January 1, 1973) was a self described former KGB agent and Soviet Navy officer who from his late teens allegedly 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 by jumping from a Naval trawler into the Pacific. Kourdakov swam ashore to Haida Gwaii, 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. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Caroline Walker, an American Evangelical Christian journalist and filmmaker who hoped to adapt The Persecutor for the big screen, travelled to the Russian Federation and attempted to confirm the memoir of Kourdakov. Instead, Walker's interviews with Russians who had known Kourdakov before his defection exposed that The Persecutor was a work of fiction; made up first in order to be granted political asylum in Canada and then repeated incessantly and written down in order to build a financially lucrative career as an Evangelical author and public speaker in the West. A documentary film, produced by Damian Wojciechowski, followed Caroline Walker during and after her research trip to Russia, 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.
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 then went back to Novosibirsk to once again live in the train station and steal from the food stalls. Eventually he was caught and sent to another orphanage, this one in Baryshevo. He later said that living in that orphanage had been a turning point in his life. In his autobiography, he wrote "An atmosphere of fear prevailed throughout the home. We were afraid of the aunts and uncles (orphanage employees). They were afraid of Big Irene and Uncle Nichy, who, in turn were afraid of the party leaders. Barysevo became a camp of hate and fear, divided between the wardens and the children."
He soon discovered that the orphanage at Barysevo had a caste system-esque society created by the orphans, with "slaves" on the bottom, "lieutenants" in the middle, and the "king" at the top. Starting off as a slave, he soon challenged a lieutenant and won his position. By the time he was fourteen years old, he became king, replacing his friend Nikolai who was transferred to a different orphanage. As king, he met a thirteen-year-old boy whose parents were declared unfit to be parents due to their religious beliefs. Due to the boy's own Christian beliefs, he was nicknamed "the Deacon". Sergei soon befriended him and ordered any teasing towards him to stop.
At the age of fifteen, Sergei Kourdakov joined Komsomol, also known as the Communist Union of Youth. The director of the school he attended, known as Comrade Skripko, saw interest in him and had convinced him to join. Sergei cultivated a great interest in Marxism-Leninism, one that was not particularly shared with his friends in his orphanage. During high school, he was also excelling in all of his school subjects and learned to speak German. The school director eventually offered him the opportunity to lecture younger classes about on various subjects, generally subjects having to do with communism.
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.
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.
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 academy and during his military summer vacation, he traveled again to Novosibirsk to visit his old friends, who were all involved in gangs. Shortly after attending a peace conference he was invited to between a gang his friends were in and another nearby gang, Kourdakov was shot in the left breast in revenge by a member of the other gang. Miraculously, he survived because the bullet first shot through multiple layers of clothes and through his thick address book and all of his identification papers before lodging itself in his skin.
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.