near Moscow, where they were assigned comfortable apartments. The very best of them traveled overseas, demonstrating new planes at air shows. To a young junior lieutenant just out of the academy, these were dazzling possibilities.
Two years before at Vaziani, an Air Force celebrity delegation visited the base as part of a “Bridges Between Generations” morale-boosting tour meant to cheer up units bound for Afghanistan. The group included a couple of cosmonauts, an old Hero of the Soviet Union Shturmovik pilot, and even a woman veteran of the war, who had flown with the famous Night Witches, the Po-2 biplane squadron. One of the senior members of the delegation was Lieutenant General Stepan Mikoyan, son of the famous designer. After the usual patriotic speeches, I privately asked General Mikoyan the best approach to eventually becoming a test pilot.
“Civilian or military?” he asked, looking me over.
“Is there much difference, Comrade Lieutenant General?” I asked.
He smiled, a suave Moscow operator. “Well, my young friend,” he said, “I think you’re best qualified for the military program.”
Without being explicit, Mikoyan indicated that family connections were a prerequisite for the civilian test pilot school at Zhukovsky near Moscow. But the military test pilot school at Akhtubinsk, south of Volgagrad, was open to the best-qualified Air Force and PVO pilots.
After learning about Akhtubinsk, I informally queried the Ministry of Aviation and Air Force Personnel Command in Moscow when I was there for a physical exam at the Central Aviation Hospital. The officers I had spoken to had not been very forthcoming.
When Boris Orlov delivered the first MiG-29 to Tskhakaya in July, I asked him directly how I could cut through the red tape to make a formal application to Akhtubinsk.
“I want to become a test pilot,” I told Orlov. “I’ve already been briefed on the process in Moscow. I just need advice on how to best prepare for the exam. I hear it’s a rough one.”
Orlov nodded and smiled with the same knowing, sophisticated expression as General Mikoyan. Orlov folded his thumb. “Study everything about every airplane you’ve flown.” He now folded his index finger. “Practice your technical flying skills. They are very important. A test pilot must fly with smooth precision in all flight regimens.”
He explained that the public image of the test pilot as a rough-and-tumble fighter jockey was completely inaccurate. Military test pilots were obliged to accurately apply engineers’ requirements, day after day, month in, month out.
“In test aviation, Sasha,” Orlov told me, “there’s no substitute for precision. The engineers fill the aircraft with data recording instruments. They soon find out who can produce, and who cannot.”
I was developing these skills, but I certainly did not have the blat necessary for nomination to the Zhukovsky civilian test pilot school. So that autumn I began assembling the seemingly endless stack of command endorsements and flying and education records that I needed to submit with my preliminary applications to Akhtubinsk.
Even in the intense MiG-29 transition program, we could only fly so many sorties a week. But I didn’t travel much during this period because I wanted to be among the first in the regiment to qualify on the new aircraft. My social life was rather tame. When I wasn’t studying aviation manuals, preparing for test pilot’s school, I’d get together with friends to watch a soccer match on television or perhaps go fishing in one of the nearby lakes. When I’d first come to Tskhakaya, I had met Alexander and Yuri Olmelchenko, two brothers from Siberia who were maintenance officers at the base. Like many Siberians, they were physical culture enthusiasts. Their particular sport was weight lifting, an activity I practiced irregularly to stay in shape for high-performance flight.
Alexander had a girlfriend named Yelena, who had an apartment in the same building as our deputy division commander, a colonel named Alexander Baglai. He lived one floor above on the same podyezd, the mutual “staircase,” which made them all neighbors. Yelena was a friend of Colonel Baglai’s oldest daughter, Jana.
That’s how I met Jana Baglai. Yuri and I were drinking tea at Yelena’s apartment one Saturday afternoon that summer when Jana came over to have her hair set for her school graduation party that night. She was eighteen, a remarkably good-looking girl, tall with long dark hair and blue-green eyes. When we shook hands, I tried not to stare too obviously at her figure, but that was difficult. Even in blue jeans and an old sweater, she was a head-turner.
But I was just as impressed with her manner. She seemed unusually mature and responsible for her age. And I wasn’t surprised to learn she was going to begin the State University in Kiev that September as a chemistry student. Her father had been a MiG-23 regimental commander in Hungary, one of the best assignments in the Air Force. In the “fraternal Socialist republics” of Eastern Europe, you received double pay and the Voyentorgs were stuffed with luxury goods unobtainable back home.
But Jana Baglai didn’t give the impression of a shallow young girl simply interested in Levi’s and Toshiba stereos. Chatting briefly that afternoon, I learned that Jana, as the oldest child, had been responsible for her younger brother and sister since she herself was a little girl, which probably explained her own quiet maturity.
At the Armavir Academy I had first experienced the matchmaking that was so prevalent in the Soviet professional military officer corps. Young lieutenants with good prospects were courted by single girls in military families, with the active encouragement of their parents. An Air Force pilot was an especially valuable catch. Unlike ground force officers, pilots were rarely heavy drinkers, they had solid engineering degrees, and their prospects for assignment overseas (where pay was double and luxury goods readily available) were good.
I had been dragged into one of these romantic intrigues almost by accident. My last year at the academy I met an attractive young fashion design student named Svetlana at a dance club in Armavir. She was there on a blind date with one of my classmates, but quickly latched onto me. We chatted as I walked her home that night. Her father was a senior VVS colonel stationed in Tbilisi, who had just returned from overseas. She made a point of mentioning that her family had come back from their year abroad laden with luxury goods they had purchased with their hard currency. When I told her of my assignment in Georgia, we exchanged phone numbers and addresses.
To my great surprise, Svetlana showed up in Samara as an uninvited guest when I was home on my postgraduation leave. My mother and I had been working on Grandma’s little apartment, and when we returned home that night, my grandmother said we had a “surprise guest.” It was Svetlana, who had come to Samara to take a course and had simply moved in with my family. Since we had to sleep in the same small room, she was obviously hoping a romance would develop quickly. But I kept her at arm’s length. Then she followed me to Georgia and told everyone we were “probably” going to become engaged. This was awkward for me because her father, an important senior officer, had insisted I stay with his family in Tbilisi while I was processed into the district.
Before I knew what was happening, I had a fiancee, and her parents were sending out wedding invitations. Luckily I had followed the advice my mother had given me at the end of my leave. “Whatever you do,” she warned, “don’t sleep with her.”
I had not. And that was fortunate. When I finally realized the unnatural pressure Svetlana and her family were subjecting me to, I bit the bullet and told her the engagement was canceled. Her family raved and shouted, but at least they couldn’t claim I had dishonored their daughter by seducing her and then canceling the wedding.
I had never met Jana’s parents, Colonel Baglai or his wife, and I knew for certain that my first meeting with Jana had been an accident, so I didn’t think about her much that summer. I was also preoccupied with my qualification flying on the new aircraft, so dating a good-looking young university student was not my top priority.
But then Yuri’s girlfriend, Yelena, let me know that Jana was definitely interested in seeing me again. She came home to Tskhakaya on her fall vacation late that autumn and asked Yelena to invite the two of us to dinner. As luck would have it, I had just completed my qualification flights on the MiG-29 and had sneaked off to the mountains to celebrate. When I returned to the base, Jana’s brief autumn vacation was almost over. But we did manage to join Yuri and Yelena for dinner the night before Jana went back to Kiev.
Again I was taken by both her good looks and her calm maturity. She seemed to have adjusted well to university life, but like all students, complained good-naturedly about the dormitory food.
“And none of the girls have any decent music,” Jana told me. “I’ve got a tape deck, but I’ve listened to all my old tapes until they’re worn out. I was hoping I could copy something new…” She scowled theatrically. “But who wants to copy Bulgarian ‘disco’?”
