THE FATEFUL VOYAGE OF THE SOVIET SHIP POBEDA Part 2.

 

WHO WAS THE DIPLOMAT'S WIFE?

'In front of numerous witnesses, the wife of one of the Soviet diplomats suddenly announced that she did not want to return to the USSR. After that, the woman managed to escape from the ship to the shore, where representatives of the American special services took her under their wing.'

These words jumped out from the page of an article published in a Russian online magazine in September 2018. It went on to discuss the luggage and belongings of this woman which had been left onboard in a storage room. Rumours at the time spoke of the real seat of the fire being that storage area and not the where the film was stored.

It is said that sparks were seen to fly from that location and the fire quickly spread along the carpets and curtains and the timber that lined the walls. All of the places that had been 'disinfected' prior to the departure of the POBEDA from New York.

This incident rang bells, some time ago when first writing about the POBEDA, numerous books and articles were read through and one came to mind. The departure of the ship from New York had been delayed due to certain baggage that had to be searched. You can find the book, Lina & Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev via the link and here is the actual caption:

A delay of 4 hours apparently to search Jenny's baggage? It is quite possible that it wasn't just Jenny's baggage that was searched.

That being the case, then just who was the Soviet Diplomat's wife who defected? We know of one diplomat who was on the passenger list, Pavel Fedosimov. We also know that his wife, Vera Fedosimova, was not listed as being amongst the passengers.

What we have is yet another aspect of the Fedosimov question, was he onboard? Was his name on the list of people to be arrested by Fadeyev? We do know that according to Vassiliev's notes that Pavel Fedosimov code-named 'STEPAN', was recalled to Russia because he was suspected of being about to betray the Mother Country. Is this why we have been unable to find any more photographs of him?

Did he actually board and leave the ship? If that's what happened, then in my view there were two possible locations where that could have happened.

The confusion surrounding the disembarkation of the Armenian repatriates when the POBEDA docked at Batumi is one, the image below is believed to have been taken at that time:

The other opportunity would have been at Odessa when the surviving passengers and crew were taken off the rescue vessel the Vyacheslav Molotov. Once again the chaos that one would expect to accompany the arrival and offloading of the survivors would provide excellent cover for one or perhaps more people to slip away. There are no known photographs of that particular event, hopefully, a reader of this blog may help us out with that.

More questions and yet again, no sign, as yet, of any photographs of Pavel Fedosimov after 1947. Let me repeat, that if we can find photographs of him after 1948, then he would no longer be a candidate for the Somerton Man.

With thanks to the publishers of the article: https://www.mk.ru/social/2018/09/20/tayny-istorii-tragediya-na-sovetskom-teplokhode-byla-teraktom-mirovogo-masshtaba.html. And many thanks again to Aleksander Vassiliev for the incredible amount of work he has carried out on the Soviet KGB files, you'll find a link to those files here: https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2019/07/somerton-man-kgb-vassilievs-notebooks.html

For those interested, you can also use the yandex.ru search engine to look for information on Pavel Fedosimov, you'll find some interesting information but no photographs apart from the ones that appear on this blog. If searching for ships, try here: http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/photo.php?lid=3140372