On October 1, 1955, physicist Qian Xuesen arrived in China on a cruise ship, and the ship home was five years late. As early as 1950, Qian Xuesen's family was preparing to return to China, but as a result, they were stopped by the US FBI at the dock where the ship was boarded, and Qian Xuesen was defiled by "endangering the national security of the United States", and was first imprisoned, and later placed under house arrest with his family. Until 1955, the Chinese government, under the mediation of the international community, exchanged 11 captured American pilots for Qian Xuesen.
Today, it seems that with 11 prisoners who do not dry anything and eat dry food, to exchange for a big scientist, we have done this business without loss.
In fact, throughout the Cold War period, there were countless "hostage exchanges" around the East and West worlds, and hostile countries would exchange prisoners of war after the war, especially the captured pilots, which was an important chip for hostage exchange. Even in peacetime, hostage exchange activities are very hot, such as the CIA spies captured by the Soviet Union, the KGB agents captured by the United States, and the informants or spokesmen of the United States and the Soviet Union in war-torn areas, which will be reserved for exchange once they fall into the hands of the enemy.
In the 1970s, when the struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union was fierce, the United States and the Soviet Union even offered chips for each other's "political prisoners", which perfectly reflected the phrase "the enemy of the enemy is a friend". The "Kolbaran Exchange Incident" in 1976 was a political prisoner exchange, and this transaction was said to be a "win-win situation between the United States and the Soviet Union", and the Soviet people also circulated a saying: "Exchange a rogue for Comrade Kolbaran, this is the best deal in the world!" ”
Who are the hooligans and comrades in the mouths of the Soviet people? How did the U.S.-Soviet hostage swap proceed? Is this really a "win-win" deal?
As the "beacon" of the free world, the United States has always liked dissidents in other countries, and anyone who complains about the government can be cultivated as a "seedling", and if this person has a party background or is famous in art, he will become a friend of the United States. In the 1970s, there was a soviet called Vladimir. Bukovsky's man, perfectly in line with American standards.
Born in 1942, Bukovsky came from a well-to-do family, the son of a well-known Soviet journalist and one of the official Pen Holders of the Soviet Union. He was born during the Great Patriotic War and had to flee Eastern Europe with his parents to live in Asia before returning to Moscow after the war. Influenced by his father, the younger Bukovsky had always had a fondness for writing, and began to submit articles to newspapers and magazines in elementary school.
By high school, the rebellious Bukovsky and a few classmates were engaged in underground literary creation, simply by writing a "forbidden book." The content of these books is dissatisfaction with society or pornography. Bukovsky's career was discovered by the school not long after he started, and at the age of 17, he was directly expelled from high school, and later had to go to night school to get a high Chinese.
In 1960, Bukovsky was admitted to Moscow University majoring in biology, and his parents hoped that he would study well and become a doctor when he came out. As a result, Bukovsky still lost his pen, and in college, he and a few like-minded friends continued to publish secret magazines full of needles and incitement to the Soviet system.
His remarks quickly caught the attention of the Soviet government, and after a year at the university, In 1961 Bukovsky was expelled from Moscow University and became an unemployed vagrant. In the Soviet Union at that time, "unemployment" was an extremely dangerous state, socialist countries pay attention to everyone's labor, everyone dedicated, Butkovsky did not have a skill, nor was he willing to do manual work, writing reactionary articles at home all day, and gradually became notorious.
In the Soviet Union at that time, people called such people "rogue literati."
In 1963, Bukovsky was arrested by soviet authorities on charges of "seducing the innocent masses of the people against the opposition and the Soviet government," an ideological-level crime that was a felony at the time. However, the psychiatrist examined Bukovsky for chronic schizophrenia, so instead of going to jail, he went to the Leningrad Psychiatric Hospital for treatment for two years.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bukovsky went in and out of the psychiatric hospital, went to jail and was treated in a psychiatric hospital for 12 years, and he still went his own way after each treatment, and the Soviet government could not do anything. In 1971, Bukovsky secretly sent a letter exposing the Soviet government's use of mental hospitals to imprison political prisoners in the West, which attracted the attention of Europe, and Bukovsky, a "rogue literati", suddenly became a hero of resistance to tyranny in the eyes of Westerners.
The Soviet government, unable to do anything, later threw Bukovsky directly into prison, but no one could have imagined that the United States would later offer him a high stake.
In 1973, a coup d'état in Chile that shocked the world broke out, and the U.S.-backed warlord Pinochet overthrew the government with his army and ousted President Allende. President Allende refused to give in, and he held the AK47 in a fierce battle with the rebels in Congress, and finally died on the battlefield. The reason for the overthrow of Allende's government was simple: he was a socialist, a Marxist leader who wanted to build a socialist state in Chile, and the United States would never tolerate it.
After the Chilean coup, socialists in the country were imprisoned in concentration camps by the military junta, and Comrade Corbaran, the leader of the Chilean Communist Party, was imprisoned in the Dawson Island concentration camp and tortured.
Korbaran was no ordinary man either, and he was well known in South America as an old communist fighter and a good friend of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. After Korbaran's arrest, the Soviets had been trying to rescue him, but to no avail. The Soviet Union wanted Korbaran to save the situation in the Latin American revolution, a man of great prestige in South America, and if the Soviet Union remained indifferent after his arrest, it would undermine the confidence of the socialist revolutionaries in South America.
The Soviet Union sent diplomats to contact the United States many times, hoping that the United States would operate the military government to release Korbaran, but the Americans would not send a favor to the Soviet Union in vain, and the Americans proposed to "exchange".
The Soviet government immediately inspected the political prisoners who now have heads and faces in the country, and few of them are famous in the West, and at this time, the legendary "mentally ill man" Bukovsky came to the fore, this person is notorious in the Soviet Union, but he is very famous in the West, and NATO countries have asked about this person several times and attached great importance to him.
So in December 1976, Soviet leader Brezhnev decided to exchange "rogue" Bukovsky for Corbalan, the leader of the Chilean Communist Party, and the United States agreed after hearing the news. The United States and the Soviet Union decided to exchange prisoners in Zurich, Switzerland, without any conditions attached and without making it public.
Early in the morning of December 18, 1976, Bukovsky was awakened from his sleep by a group of soldiers, and he was so frightened that he thought he was going to be executed in secret. Bukovsky was dressed in a new outfit and escorted by "Alpha" special forces to the airport, where planes flew directly to Zurich.
After arriving in Zurich, the Soviets found that the reporters were already crowded here, and it turned out that the United States had sent out the news of the rescue of Soviet political prisoners, and the whole West was paying attention to the exchange.
The exchange between Korbaran and Bukovsky proceeded quickly, and the next day Korbaran flew to the Soviet Union, stopping first in Minsk, Belarus, and then reaching the Kremlin on December 20. Brezhnev cordially received Korbaran, whom he called "a great rescue" and preached the Soviet Union's concern for the world's revolutionary comrades.
Bukovsky also flew to the United States by plane, and he was also received by U.S. President Carter and became a celebrity in the United States.
The exchange between Korbaran and Bukovsky is well known and is known as a successful exchange in both the East and the West, and the United States and the Soviet Union feel that it is very profitable from the government to the people, but in fact, the real benefits of this exchange are very low.
First look at the rogue literati Bukovsky, although he is very famous, but after arriving in the West, everyone finds that he is exaggerated, his talent and insight are limited, and he is very different from the previous Nobel Prize literati, and he is not the anti-government leader imagined by the Americans. After arriving in the United States, Bukovsky quickly "disappeared from the crowd", and finally could only write an exaggerated autobiography, expose the dark scenes of the Soviet Union, and sell books throughout the United States to earn money.
As the Soviet Union disintegrated under Bargochev in the 1980s, Bukovsky became less and less famous, and he later became a "human rights watcher" in Britain.
The second half of Korbaran's life was also relatively uneventful, and after the Chilean coup, the Soviet Union itself knew that the socialist cause in South America would be difficult to succeed. Korbaran lived in the Soviet Union for 6 years before returning to Chile in 1983. In his later years, Corbaran did little politically, and became a well-known Chilean writer mainly by writing books and making arguments.
Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union directly benefited much from the two men in exchange, but because the contrast between the rogue literati and the Communist leaders was too great, the Soviet people's "good deal" was passed down.
Text/Shogakuno
Resources: 1. "The Long-Standing Popularity of the Soviet Union in Sending Dissidents to Mental Hospitals", Yu Yizhong 2. "Analysis of the Reasons for the U.S. Interference in the Allende Government of Chile", He Xi