Soviet Union Naval Officer. He was involved in the short-lived "Red Banner Mutiny" (aka "Red October Mutiny") of late 1975, in which he attempted to start political unrest in the Soviet Union by way of the theft of a warship. His title was "zampolit", or political officer, responsible for the political well-being of the crew. In the early-morning hours of November 9 1975, Sablin, with the assistance of several crew members, took control of the missile frigate "Storozhevoy", locked the Captain and others in their cabins, and departed port at Riga, Latvia S.S.R., with the intention of sailing to Leningrad to broadcast a radio message to the masses about the “hypocrisy of the Brezhnev Kremlin” and ferment an uprising to return the country to a purer form of communism. Soviet forces caught up to the ship within 6 hours of leaving port and disabled it with bombs before it entered Swedish territorial waters near the island of Gotland. All of the mutineers were captured; several received dishonorable discharges as punishment and released; one received 6 years in a labor camp; and Sablin, instead of the normal 15 years for such an act, was executed (on personal orders from Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev himself); Sablin's family found out about the execution several months later, and to this day they have no knowledge as to the final location of the body. The "Storozhevoy" was repaired and transferred to the Pacific Fleet; it was later (2004) sold to India as scrap. Although according to friends and family he was a committed communist, his action was so audacious and unprecedented that it was thought he was going to defect to the west, taking the ship with him. A paper on the incident filed away at the U.S. Naval Institute led author Tom Clancy to use it as the basis for his best-selling novel "The Hunt for Red October".