Sergei Kourdakov

Sergei Nikolayevich Kourdakov was a self described former KGB agent and Soviet Navy officer who from his late teens allegedly carried out more than 150 raids in underground Christian communities in regions of the Soviet Union in the 1960s. At the age of twenty, he defected to Canada while a naval officer by jumping from a Naval trawler into the Pacific. Kourdakov swam ashore to Haida Gwaii, and converted to Evangelical Christianity. He is known for having written The Persecutor, an autobiography that was written shortly before his death in 1973 and published posthumously. Since its publication, it has been the source of varied criticism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Caroline Walker, an American Evangelical Christian journalist and filmmaker who hoped to adapt The Persecutor for the big screen, travelled to the Russian Federation and attempted to confirm the memoir of Kourdakov. Instead, Walker's interviews with Russians who had known Kourdakov before his defection exposed that The Persecutor was a work of fiction; made up first in order to be granted political asylum in Canada and then repeated incessantly and written down in order to build a financially lucrative career as an Evangelical author and public speaker in the West. A documentary film, produced by Damian Wojciechowski, followed Caroline Walker during and after her research trip to Russia, Forgive Me, Sergei, won numerous awards worldwide.