Gennadiy Vasilevich Bolonin (1945) — chief designer of Lazurit Central Design Bureau
The unexpected happened: during a dive into the ocean depths, the bathyscaphe Priz became trapped, caught in the broken fishing nets of an unlucky seiner and hopelessly entangled in them. The surface was one hundred and ninety meters above, and every attempt to ascend proved fruitless. Snared in nets and cables, the deep-sea vessel hung motionless at the bottom of Berezovskaya Bay off the coast of Kamchatka.
The oldest member of the seven-man crew was Gennadiy Vasilevich Bolonin, the bathyscaphe's designer. He knew the situation was nearly hopeless, yet panic — or even confusion — meant certain and swift death. The old naval motto "I am perishing, but I will not surrender" lived in the memory of every man aboard. Some hope of rescue remained. But who could respond to an SOS, when no vessels were expected anywhere nearby? The cold expanses of the Bering Sea are empty of human presence. Still, it was better to wait than to condemn oneself to death in advance. The senior man had every moral right to do whatever was necessary to keep the crew from slackening, and to ensure that no one aboard the stricken bathyscaphe lost composure. …Gennadiy Vasilevich was a few weeks away from his sixtieth birthday. He had been born in the year of victory, 1945, in Sormovo District. His father worked at the aviation plant; in 1949 he was arrested and only rehabilitated more than ten years later. Naturally, the whole family endured its share of hardship. Even so, Gennadiy managed to finish secondary school and go on to study at the shipbuilding faculty of the Gorky Polytechnic Institute. He joined the Lazurit Central Design Bureau as a young designer, and the work there gripped him so completely that without it he would have lost his reason for living. Working on the equipment and development of submersibles for deep-sea research, Bolonin became one of the foremost specialists in the field in the world… In a situation that seemed utterly desperate, the most logical step was to calculate how much time fate had allotted them. Bolonin set about the calculations. The dive had been planned to last four hours; now the task was simply to survive. Two Russian vessels attempted without success to free the bathyscaphe using anchors, but the cables snapped. Among all seven men, they had a few liters of water, a small amount of crumbled hardtack — and, most precious of all, seven canisters of carbon-dioxide absorbent. It was precisely the quantity of absorbent that determined how long the involuntary captives could survive at depth. Life aboard had to be strictly regulated if they were to hold out as long as possible. The ration: two sips of water and ten to fifteen grams of hardtack per person per day. A canister of carbon-dioxide absorbent was opened only when the threat of losing consciousness became real. The crew members had grown so weak that it took two of them together to open even one of these "canned" containers. The electrical power was running out. Watch was kept without fail. One day passed, then a second, then a third… "I am perishing, but I will not surrender!" — they honored this naval tradition, known since the time of Russia's first sovereign Ivan III. It was how besieged Russian fortresses had answered their enemies; it was how Russian ships, fighting to their last shot in fierce battle, had signaled their defiance. Rescue came. At the last possible moment, the British deep-sea vehicle Super Scorpio arrived and managed to cut through the deadly bonds with its manipulator arms. At that blessed hour the sea was calm, and dozens of vessels had gathered around the site of the disaster. Our bathyscaphe surfaced right in the middle of an international fleet assembled to honor both the rescued and their rescuers. The crew emerged in true naval fashion — composed and dignified — though weakness and hunger nearly knocked them off their feet. They had preserved their honor and endured an almost unimaginable ordeal lasting seventy-eight hours. All were awarded the Order of Courage; the decree was signed by President of Russia V. V. Putin on 4 September 2005. On his sixtieth birthday, Gennadiy Vasilevich received this toast: We raise our glasses, every one, To your courage and your fortune won, And to the luck that guides your fate! Precisely so — not to blind luck, but to fortune earned. That is more fitting. Because strength of will can hardly be called mere luck. And there is no shortage of it in Gennadiy Vasilevich Bolonin, the current chief designer of TsKB Lazurit.