
The Tragedy of Newcomb Mott, Who Thought He Could Walk into Soviet Russia - scapecast
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/newcomb-mott-soviet-border-death-boris-gleb
======
Sharlin
Mathias Rust is another, more famous, unauthorized border-crosser. Thirty
years ago, in May 1987, the then-18-year-old West German took off from
Helsinki in his rented Cessna and due to various happenstances was allowed to
not only enter the Soviet airspace unchallenged, but to fly all the way to
Moscow and land next to the Red Square.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust)

Much less known, and much more tragic, is the story of two Finnish teenage
boys who, in 1946, set sail from Helsinki in their small boat. Their intention
was to voyage to Stockholm to meet some relatives, but as a result of
extremely bad luck and post-war Soviet paranoia ended up in a forced-labor
camp in Siberia.

[http://beaufortmagazine.fi/2014/08/seven-years-
sailing/](http://beaufortmagazine.fi/2014/08/seven-years-sailing/)

~~~
Scramblejams
This bizarre excerpt certainly piqued my curiosity:

>The boys decided to set up camp on a nearby island, but in the middle of the
night they woke to a scream. It sounded like a woman’s cry. “We were sure it
was a maniac or something. You could hear cries from different directions.”
The boys decided to leave the island in the middle of the night.

Wish I knew what that was all about! Too bad we don't know what island they
stopped on. Are there animals whose calls sound like a woman's screams?

Edit: Some Googling tells me they may have been hearing a group of red foxes.

~~~
knz
> Are there animals whose calls sound like a woman's screams?

Rabbits and coyotes can make sounds that'll make you wonder what you just
heard and if someone is in distress.

~~~
throwanem
Mountain lion queens, too. Sounds like a murder in progress and carries for
miles.

------
bobjordan
Interesting article. I've stood on the China side of a river between China and
North Korea, more like a stream really, where I could almost throw a rock into
North Korea. Still haven't worked up the courage to actually enter, though I
understand if you don't do anything stupid it's pretty much safe to visit.
This was up in Jilin Province, China, where Russia, China, and North Korea
meet. I've been there a few times and must admit it still feels a bit surreal
every time I'm there. I cant avoid recalling as a child during the Reagan era
and "Red Dawn", I'd really considered that this place must be hell-on-earth, a
communist axis-of-evil. But, it's a pretty cool place to visit.

~~~
FabHK
Just do a guided tour... I've been there with "Young Pioneer Tours" (YPT), and
have a picture waving a DPRK flag and having a beer on the North Korean side
of the DMZ.

Just don't do anything stupid, or you might be detained, like 22 yr old Otto
Warmbier from Ohio, who was also there with YPT and allegedly stole a
propaganda poster, and is now in North Korean labour camp.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Warmbier)

Crossing illegally from China is something I would not do...

~~~
djsumdog
..and from Cincinnati to. Oh Cincinnati.

------
rangibaby
I don't agree with harsh punishment of innocents, but mess with strict regimes
(this includes the US now) at your own risk:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_nationals_deta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foreign_nationals_detained_in_North_Korea)

/edit

to add to my comment, remember that the moment you step over the border you
are at the mercy of a regime that can treat you however it likes. It doesn't
matter whether Otto Warmbier actually stole that poster or not, since he's
spending 15 years in DPRK prison anyway.

~~~
rukittenme
> (this includes the US now)

Can you expand?

edit: I don't understand why this question was so poorly received. I didn't
know what this was in reference to and now I know having been given proper
information.

~~~
rangibaby
[https://youtu.be/V8U4Qn6iIIg](https://youtu.be/V8U4Qn6iIIg)

~~~
MegaButts
I didn't watch the entire video, so maybe it happened by the end, but I feel
like he's going to have a bad time with the law at some point.

That said, it was pretty funny how he could just repeat "am I being detained?"
until they all just gave up and let him go.

~~~
URSpider94
What you have to understand is that these videos are taken at checkpoints set
up many miles from the border by Homeland Security. The point is that they
can't detain you, even for a brief time, or search you or you car without
probable cause, which they don't have (and you can always refuse to answer
questions). However, there's no law against asking you to consent to a search,
and if you do it's perfectly legal. In fact, they can ask in such a way that
you assume that you have no choice, and that's still ok.

The videos (and there are tons of them) demonstrate over and over that if you
refuse to answer questions and ask if you are being detained / are free to go,
they will grudgingly admit that they can't stop you.

On the one hand, i love seeing people exercising their constitutional rights.
On the other hand, the fact that there's a sort of secret handshake to get out
of the situation when police are gaslighting you plays into the worst of the
"sovereign citizen" conspiracy theories that if you write some magic words on
your tax return you are exempt from paying taxes, and the like.

~~~
ENGNR
Here's one from Australia where some (drunk sounding) guys go through an
alcohol test without stopping, which is illegal and with inevitable results.
They thought they could use the 'am I under arrest?' strategy without
understanding the situation at all.

That said, I can see how the border checkpoints that are nowhere near the
border would be frustrating, and good on the locals for protecting their
rights.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsoUArgpo9s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsoUArgpo9s)

~~~
pjc50
Back in the 90s when parts of the UK were under martial law and armed
paratroopers operated late night checkpoints, going through one could be
fatal:
[http://www.1in12.com/publications/archive/stories98/clegg.ht...](http://www.1in12.com/publications/archive/stories98/clegg.htm)

(I went to university with a relative of the murdered girl)

------
jankotek
At that time Soviet Union was shooting their own people, who would try to
cross the border in opposite direction.

~~~
knz
People accidentally cross borders.

Another well know case was three sailors from the UK, Canada, and New Zealand
who accidentally sailed into Cambodian waters during the reign of Pol Pot.
They ended up being burnt alive after months of torture at the infamous S-21
building.

~~~
akkartik
Turns out the "burnt alive" part is unsubstantiated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dawson_Dewhirst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dawson_Dewhirst)

Still a terrible story, though.

------
camus2
> Explore, yes, by all means, just not near politically fraught international
> borders, even if you are a white man from America, with all the privilege in
> the world to marshal

I'm not an English native, can someone explain me what would be the meaning of
the verb to marshal in that sentence, in the context of using of the word
"privilege". I don't want to misinterpret the last point.

~~~
rangibaby
It means he has a lot of privilege.

~~~
mistermumble
If one wanted to overthink this, one could say there is a "calculus of
privilege" that depends upon context.

In many contexts (geographical and social contexts), being white, male and
America adds up to maximum privilege.

But in other contexts, white and male usually add up to a positive -- but
being American can subtract (which is why backpackers are returning to the
habit of sewing the Canadian flag patch on their gear, even if they are from
the US).

In the era of Trump, the attribute of being American has turned negative, in
many places.

I suppose the bottom line is that if you are placing yourself in different
contexts, don't assume that that calculus of privilege works the same way on
the Russian border as it does in Virginia or Indiana.

And if you are a Sikh in the United States, that calculus, which was at best
neutral, has now turned sharply negative, sad to say.

~~~
chatmasta
> In the era of Trump, the attribute of being American has turned negative, in
> many places.

This is a wild generalization that in the past nine months of traveling, I
have not experienced once. In fact you may be surprised to hear I found more
Trump supporters in Morocco, of all places, than I did detractors.

Regardless, even if someone hates trump, for most people it does not also
follow that they hate all Americans.

I would lose immediate respect for someone sewing the flag of another country
on their backpack; it's so presumptuous, arrogant, and self absorbed.

~~~
Frondo
Your post also seems like a wild generalization, to be honest.

I spent some time living abroad in the Bush years, in a variety of places
where Westerners almost never go. (I hate the beaten path...if I can see
photos of it on Flickr, I don't need to go there myself. That should help you
figure out where all I've been ;) )

Based on the anti-American sentiment I saw there, then, anti-American
sentiment in many parts of the world would not at all surprise me now.

And I didn't sew any flag on my backpack, but I sure didn't tell people I was
an American; I speak another language well enough (and with an indistinct
accent) that I usually told people I was from a non-Western country entirely.

If for nothing else, the haggling. Just passing as a non-Westerner got my
prices in North Africa cut by 90% every. single. time.

Hah, maybe they just liked your money!

------
anjc
Amazing how an author can turn an interesting story sour so quickly. The
"white privilege" thing doesn't even make sense here no matter how hard you
try to make it fit.

------
Someone
He should have taken a bicycle. At least recently, that, apparently was (I
think this loophole has been closed) legal _" There, refugees face a new
twist: Russian law bans foot traffic at the border and Norway fines drivers
for carrying migrants across — meaning the only way to cross is by bicycle."_
([https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-03/why-some-refugees-
are...](https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-03/why-some-refugees-are-choosing-
bike-across-russia-norway-border))

~~~
lobster_johnson
I have a journalist friend who covered this. Refugees from places like Syria
would be shuttled through several countries by bus and train, but also often
long distances by taxi, to land up in Nikel, where they'd have to pay some
exorbitant price for a bicycle so they could get across the border into
Norway. The law of course caused a huge market for bicycles in Nikel.

I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising individuals in Norway bought the
bikes back at reduced prices and shipped them back to Russia so the process
could begin again.

------
andrepd
"Explore, yes, by all means, just not near politically fraught international
borders, _even if you are a white man from America, with all the privilege in
the world to marshal_."

I found this closing remark rather unnecessary, especially since it was the
fact that he was American that got him into this mess.

------
dannylandau
Even after all the years that have passed, this story is still heartbreaking
to read. And I was born in the soviet union.

------
Grue3
You don't need to be a foreigner to be murdered in a Russian prison. Look up
Sergei Magnitsky.

------
Waterluvian
The last two sentences left a very sour taste in my mouth. Don't paint a naive
adventurer mindset as some sort of white, male, American "privilege."

~~~
cocktailpeanuts
It is somewhat true.

Anyway, it is a fact that there are clear discriminations when it comes to
traveling freely. I don't know if you have had a chance to become a non-
american woman traveling to the U.S., but a lot of times the people at the
consulate who approve your visa will start out from doubting you, and you have
to go through troubles to prove that you are not a prostitute. I am not
joking. This happens everyday, even for women who are legitimately visiting
the U.S. to get a PhD, etc.

This means these people normally can't even imagine doing things like crossing
the border illegally and get away with it. They have seen from past examples
how harsh the society is to their kinds.

However sad this is, you can't really blame anyone for this because
statistically speaking this happens a lot, and these people at the consulate
were naturally trained to act that way over time. I have also seen a lot of
illegal immigrants who came here naively thinking everything will work out,
and just became illegal immigrants. They try to find a guy to marry so they
can get out of the illegal status.

Also I cringe whenever I see the language "white male privilege" because this
term itself assumes inherent superiority. A lot of liberal activists throw
this language around without thinking, but this is completely missing the
point. These racism, sexism, etc. exist all around the world and is not
specific to a white country. If you go to another country where the majority
is Asian or African or whatever, you no longer have "white male privilege",
you are a second class citizen. The people from these cultures believe they
are the most superior race/culture/etc. Which means the "White" from "white
male privilege" is a made-up illusion for some of these Americans.

My point is, racism, sexism, etc. all exist and are very real. And they are
contextual. I am not a social justice warrior but I do think people should
know what's going on.

Just wanted to share my two cents.

------
rodionos
It's been always the case of real-politik at play. Some people can get a
multi-year business visa on arrival even if their passport is revoked (Snowden
et al).

~~~
Piskvorrr
Do not confuse the 1970s Soviet Union with present-day Russia. There are
indeed some similarities, but your comparison has so many differences that the
only actual conclusion is "very different stuff is very different".

~~~
rodionos
I don't think the intel agencies have changed much, they still swap operatives
as they see fit, it's an established routine. Case in fact: Chapman vs
Skripal.

------
camperman
In Soviet Russia, passport control stamps YOU!

------
coldtea
Meanwhile, hundreds of people have been killed by guards while crossing the
US-Mexico borders to immigrate. And several by vigilantes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_deaths_along_the_Mexic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migrant_deaths_along_the_Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_border#Incidents_of_Border_Patrol_use_of_force)

~~~
low_battery
Enough with this Whataboutism.

~~~
coldtea
Yeah, let's concentrate on a single incident from the cold war 60 years ago,
and forget the yearly deaths to this day on our side.

Because whataboutism.

And also they're mexican, and our side deemed it OK to kill them, so they
would have their reasons.

(As I wrote before, invocation of whataboutism is the laziest intellectual
excuse to put things in perspective and to be vigilant about all sides. It's
"lalala" hands on the ears denial pretending to care).

~~~
pvg
Let's also not forget the sack of Baghdad in 1258. You're deliberately
highjacking a thread that's about a specific story with something completely
different. This isn't 'caring' or some unflinching exercise of intellectual
rigour. It's just inane.

~~~
coldtea
> _You 're deliberately highjacking a thread that's about a specific story
> with something completely different._

Where by "something completely different" you mean "with something of the
exact same nature (people killed because of crossing a border) that still
occurs often today"?

Conversations naturally expand to similar stories and greater lessons and
perspective on things. Heck, a Rust announcement on HN will almost always
expand to discussing type theory or static-vs-dynamic languages, Golang and
C++ and same with everything else. That's what different _threads_ are for.

What's inane is to artificially constrain a discussion, just to never break
the echo chamber.

~~~
jryle70
No, the proper analogy is to vent against Java multi threading complexity in a
Go concurrency topic, which serves nothing but distraction to the discussion.

To illustrate that, how about we talk about the brutal crackdown of illegal
immigration in Russia: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/06/russia-
immigra...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/06/russia-immigrants-
concentration-camps)

Or expand even further -- to understand the anti-immigration sentiment --
let's discuss how the Chinese "invade" Russia's far east:
[http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/russia-china-and-the-far-
east...](http://thediplomat.com/2016/01/russia-china-and-the-far-east-
question/)

See my point?

You're free to open a new thread about US immigration issues. In fact there're
already plenty of ongoing threads exploring the bad side of the politics,
society, economy in the US. Are you worried your new thread wouldn't pique the
interest around here?

~~~
coldtea
> _To illustrate that, how about we talk about the brutal crackdown of illegal
> immigration in Russia:_

Not sure what the point is though. Why shouldn't we talk about this (brutal
crackdown of illegal immigration in Russia) in a subthread on this article?

It also seems totally relevant, e.g. to compare USSR-era border control to
today's Russia, etc.

> _Are you worried your new thread wouldn 't pique the interest around here?_

No, I'm worried about artificially limiting discussion to very narrow confines
around a single particular topic.

Which doesn't even make sense. How much stuff can anybody here say about
Mott's case in particular? And what's to say about it specifically that's not
already in TFA?

It's the wider implications and issues around that that we all can contribute
something to, and that's what makes conversation interesting.

------
pipio21
How do you know he was not an spy?

Spies don't have the name "spy" on the forehead, but are people that serve
their country obtaining information from another (preferably)with some excuse
or alibi.

History tells us that anyone could be a spy, from sailors to tailors,
including prostitutes.

I had family members in former Soviet Republics. Some of them risked their
lives running away. That someone intelligent was so naive to not understand
the danger is unconceivable for me. Norwegians knew for sure and told him.

~~~
Piskvorrr
"A naïve tourist" and "spy pretending to be a naïve tourist" are hard to
distinguish without further data - it is impossible to tell either way.

