It’s 1988, you get a copy of the popular Tetris for DOS and are given a cute animation of Moscow’s Red Square as a welcome gift. In addition, a small white plane flies across the screen in front of you, with a big sign on its tail that says “Play Tetris!“That’s exactly what you’re going to do, but there’s someone in the Soviet Union who’s not happy about that.

Alexey Pajitnov’s title became a worldwide success, but that plane could not overcome the censorship of the USSR, because that flying machine meant much more than it seems at first glance. The white Cessna was a reference to Mathias Rust, a German pilot who at the age of 19 had the audacity to land a few meters from the Kremlin and then bypassing Soviet defense systems.

The event occurred in 1987 during a multi-week trip that began in Uetersen, West Germany, then jumped to Iceland, went to Norway, from there to Finland, and finally ended in Moscow. He lied to aviation authorities while in Helsinki, claiming that after refueling the plane he was going to Stockholm. However, he turned east at Sipoo to fly over the Baltic Sea and On the way to the capital of Russiabut he also took advantage of a special circumstance.

The day he accomplished the feat was a holiday for border guards, which meant security was significantly relaxed. Finnish controls lost him as soon as he arrived. penetrated Soviet airspace and was so lucky that a MiG jet fighter did not stop him. He came close to the plane and could see the pilots, but they concluded that it must be a friendly plane.

“Of course I was afraid of losing my life. I considered whether it was really responsible and reasonable to take that kind of risk. Finally I came to the conclusion that I had to take the risk. I made the final decision about half an hour after takeoff. I changed course to 170 degrees and went straight to Moscow.”

He was clearly flying at a very low altitude so that the radars would not detect him and he just had to fly in the same direction, although with enormous tension in his body. “I could not believe that he had actually survived. At that moment I calculated that My chances of survival were 50/50 “And when I got to my destination, I knew I was really lucky,” Rust says. After landing, he was apprehended by KGB troops, although this last step was not easy.

When he arrived at Red Square he realized that it was full of people, so he kept circling in the air until he decided that the most appropriate thing to do would be land on a bridge near St. Basil’s CathedralAs if his luck wasn’t already up, Russian police told him that the structure was normally full of huge cables, but that they had been removed that morning for maintenance.

No one believed his story that he had acted alone, that he was not from East Germany, and even less that his first statement was that “I am here on a peace mission from Germany.” Because yes, that was Rust’s goal: nothing more and nothing less than to strengthen ties between the United States and the USSRwho had watched in frustration as a meeting between the top leaders of the nations in Reykjavik came to nothing. He wanted to end the Cold War once and for all, because “every human being on this planet is responsible for some progress and was looking for an opportunity to participate in it.”

Mikhail Gorbachev understood that such a humiliation would have consequences, so he replaced both his defense minister and the commander-in-chief of the air defense force. 2,000 officers were dismissed from their duties And this cleanup was convenient for the president, as he used the incident as an excuse to get rid of those who were not so sympathetic to his policies. Rust was tried on September 2, 1987 and sentenced to four years of hard labor.

He spent 432 days in Lefortovo prison and was able to return home on August 3, 1988 after being released by State Secretary Andrei Gromyko. Of course, the tribute to the event was seen in Tetrisbut ELORG – the Soviet state organization responsible for the import and export of computer hardware and software – intervened and removed the white Cessna from the exhibit.

Later revisions of the game no longer show the aircraft, but other changes were made to the color of some backgrounds or their replacement. After all, the USSR still owned the license for the game. Tetris At that time they would not tolerate such a deplorable fact being freely disseminated.

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