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Peter Truscott's 'Kursk: Russia's Lost Pride' is a brilliant read, gripping and at the same time historically accurate. Its is a very well written account of the events before and after a faulty hydrogen-peroxide fuelled torpedo exploded aboard the Kursk on 12 August 2000. Looking at the preface, Dr Truscott has certainly done his research thoroughly, and is an Oxford-educated historian with over a decade of working as a specialist on Russia. He describes not only the appalling events around the sinking of the Kursk submarine, but actually explains why the disaster happened in the first place, and what motivated President Putin and the Russian military in their reaction to tragedy. To my mind, this book is unique for three reasons. It points out that the Russians had a real fear that the West would use the Kursk's sinking to steal its military secrets. This explains why they were so reluctant to accept the proffered rescue help from the West. They were paranoid about Western spying agencies, but as Truscott points out, perhaps they were right to be paranoid. The level of mutual spying since the Cold War seems greater than ever, including in and under the Barents Sea. However, Russian paranoia can't forgive the appalling indifference and callousness shown to survivors aboard the Russian nuclear sub. The Russian President and the Navy High Command made it pretty clear the crew were expendable in the drive to protect the Kursk's military secrets. The Russians rescue assets may have been greatly inferior to the West's, but they obvioulsy preferred to try and fail with their own obsolete rescue equipment, than bring in the West with its state-of-the-art gear. Britain's LR5 mini-sub wasn't even allowed to go into the water during the rescue operation.
Secondly, the book shows how President Putin effectively 're-nationalised' the main media after the criticism he received from the media after the Kursk fiasco. He had disastrously stayed on holiday in Sochi on the Black Sea, refusing to meet the crew's relatives for 10 days. Since he took control of NTV and ORT, and closed down TV6, the Kremlin effectively controls all three main TV channels. Although the 'independent' Russian media was widely praised at the time of the accident for critcising Putin, its not so independent now two years on. Putin will easily get re-elected, for as this book shows, he has successfully purged the media, the military (sacking 14 senior Navy officers) and cowed the political opposition.
Thirdly, Peter Truscott shows that the 23 initial survivors of the two explosions of the Kursk had no way of getting out of the aft escape chamber. The design of the escape chamber meant it couldn't be 'flooded up' from the inside to let the men escape, so instead they had to await rescue from a submersible which never managed to 'mate' with the aft escape hatch. If they had been British submariners in a British sub they could have got out in the first few hours, as the ninth compartment started to flood, pressuer rose and the oxygen started to run out. Depth was not a problem, they were down at around 350 feet; British Navy divers have 'escaped' in training sessions from 500-600 feet. The key is to avoid hypothermia and the bends, and a handy decompression chamber could be vital.
All these details are unique and orginal, and together with a description of what the submariners and their families went through, I think this book is great and is the definitve account of what happended with the Kursk, and why it happened.
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