Sergei Kourdakov

Sergei Nikolayevich Kourdakov (Russian: Сергей Николаевич Курдаков; March 1, 1951 – January 1, 1973) was a former KGB agent and naval officer who from his late teen years 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 on a Soviet trawler in the Pacific and converted to Evangelical Christianity. He is known for having written The Persecutor (also known as Forgive Me, Natasha), 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.

Early life

Sergei Kourdakov was born on March 1, 1951, in Novosibirsk Oblast, Soviet Union. His father Nikolai Ivanovich Kourdakov was a soldier in the Soviet Army and a political activist who was a very loyal supporter of Joseph Stalin. He led a brigade in the Winter War and led a unit under General Konstantin Rokossovsky in World War II. After the war, Nikolai helped set up a military base and became the base chief. Although Sergei was told that his father died by being shot, he found out much later from a friend of his father's that when Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union, he had ordered the elimination of important officers who had supported Stalin in order to consolidate his power, and that Nikolai Kourdakov had been one of them. Sergei lived with his mother until her health began to deteriorate and when he was four years old, she became very ill and died. He was invited to live with a family who had known his mother. It was there that he learned to read and count. Sergei got along well with everyone in the family except with their son Andrei, whom he believed to be mentally handicapped. At the age of six, he decided to run away after Andrei tried to kill him by shoving his head into a filled bathtub.