Stalin Showed Mercy in 1938 and Lovelorn Pilot Won a Bride

Nearly 50 years ago, a lovelorn young Briton flew a light plane into the Soviet Union in search of his Russian sweetheart and apparently so moved dictator Josef Stalin that he was allowed to marry her and take her back to England.

The story, some details of which were echoed in last week’s flight to Moscow’s Red Square by teen-aged West German pilot Mathias Rust, is recounted in memoirs published by Soviet writer Lev Sheinin in 1959.

However, a Soviet official who produced the Sheinin account said it is still too early to predict whether Rust will escape so lightly.

In his book, Sheinin, who is now deceased, identified the Briton as Brian Montague Grover and said his small craft landed on Nov. 13, 1938--as purges and spy-mania were sweeping the country--in the village of Glukhovo near Moscow.

At the time, Sheinin was an aide to Soviet State Prosecutor Andrei Y. Vyshinsky, who conducted most of the major purge trials.

Grover, in the writer’s account, announced to the startled Glukhovo villagers that he had come to see his beloved, pharmacist’s assistant Yelena Golius, whom he had met earlier in the decade in Grozny in the northern Caucasus while working as an engineering expert.

At his trial, Sheinin says, Grover was sentenced to one month in jail for crossing the Soviet frontier illegally.

The judge said he was taking into account the young Briton’s “sincere feelings.” A few days later, officials commuted the sentence.

Golius, Sheinin says, came to Moscow, and she and Grover were married, then left together for England.

Some Soviet citizens said they recalled the incident, which they believed was used to boost Stalin’s image in the wake of the purges. “I recall he was supposed to have said: ‘Love knows no frontiers,’ ” an elderly Russian said Sunday.