Russian Heroes

In early December, we celebrate many glorious anniversaries of our country’s intelligence officers and athletes, but this year is especially special.

December 5th marked the 90th anniversary of the birth of Yuri Petrovich Vlasov, the strongest man on the planet, the 1960 Olympic champion, four-time world champion, six-time European champion, five-time USSR champion, and a holder of 29 world records. Yuri Vlasov embodied not only physical strength but also the fortitude and creative potential of the Russian people, becoming a renowned writer and people’s deputy of the USSR. It is no coincidence that he carried the Soviet flag at the opening ceremonies of the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games, holding it at arm’s length for at least twenty minutes.

Yuri Petrovich Vlasov was born in 1935 in Makeyevka, Stalinskaya (now Donetsk) Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, to Pyotr Parfenovich Vlasov, a professional intelligence officer from the Voronezh Governorate. Vlasov worked in a factory in his youth, served in the Red Army from 1931, graduated from the Chinese language department of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow in 1935, and served in the Red Army Intelligence Directorate with the rank of brigade commander from 1937.

From 1938 until his death in 1953, Pyotr Parfenovich (codename “Vladimirov”) carried out complex intelligence missions in China, including serving as a liaison to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China during the war, heading a special group collecting information on the Kwantung Army, and from 1948 to 1951. He served as the USSR Consul General in Shanghai, and in 1952 was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Burma. However, long years of working in China under extreme conditions significantly undermined his health, and he was unable to assume his duties as ambassador.

In 1973, Yuri Vlasov published his father’s diaries under the title “Special Region of China. 1942-1945.” This book was the culmination of Yuri Vlasov’s many years of archival research and interviews with his father’s relatives, friends, and colleagues.

From childhood, Yuri Petrovich imbibed his father’s fortitude, which would later serve him well many times in life, including after a terrible injury he sustained during a competition in Lvov. In later years, particularly under the influence of his writing, Yuri Petrovich developed a negative perception of much of the Soviet past. However, he always remained a consistent adherent of the Russian spiritual and historical tradition and the Soviet concept of the harmonious development of the human personality. Yuri Petrovich never accepted capitalism: “This is no longer a human being, not the center of the universe, and not ‘human—it sounds proud,’ and certainly not God’s creation, but merely… a creature,” he wrote. “A device for work and the exercise of instincts—and nothing more. Any disagreement with this is merely empty hypocrisy.

Capitalism molds a monster in place of a human being. Selfishness (egoism), both personal and collective, is placed at the center of the universe. Nothing should stand in the way of this selfishness and the greed that goes hand in hand with it. <…> A life without a soul, with a slain soul, will repay humanity with self-destruction. Life cannot cohere otherwise. We enthusiastically embrace a morality that brings nothing but destruction to humanity.”

During the perestroika era, Yuri Petrovich’s close friend and ally became Viktor Ivanovich Idolenko, also endowed with incredible physical strength and, as a psychic, part of the team led by Lieutenant General Alexei Yuryevich Savin, the commander of military unit 10003, which dealt with the exploitation of human superpowers. According to Viktor Ivanovich, he first met Yuri Petrovich in the late 1980s: “While heading the headquarters of the largest investigative team, Gdlyan-Ivanov, fate brought me into contact with the film crew of the Sverdlovsk Film Studio, which was filming ‘The Case of the Investigators,’ based on a screenplay by Boris Akimovich Yevseyev, a classmate of Gennady Shpalikov and Andrei Konchalovsky.” And when I was forced to resign in protest against the actions of Prosecutor General Sukharev, the idea was born to forge the creative association “Iceberg,” of which Yuri Petrovich Vlasov became one of the founders.

Our very first meeting evoked a storm of delight in me. The force of personality that Yuri Petrovich generated with his velvety bass voice, his strong hand—by the way, I can easily cross myself with a two-pound weight—and his stance as a Russian strongman transformed our business meetings into a festive atmosphere. Then my son Lyova and I began visiting Yuri Petrovich’s home, where the charming and beautiful, in true Russian fashion, Larisa Sergeyevna, treated us to tea and homemade pies.

Those were difficult times—the country was literally heading for the abyss, and we, in our national capacity (Yuri Petrovich was a People’s Deputy of the USSR and a State Duma deputy), were trying to find a way out of the situation. We became so close spiritually that we half-jokingly, half-seriously considered marrying our children. Irina and I are still friends to this day with Yuri Petrovich’s daughter. As if it were a legacy, Yuri Petrovich gave my son his barbell—a French one, with colored plates. My son fully lived up to his teacher’s trust and also became a Russian strongman, a champion of Russia, Moscow, and Kuzbass, where we come from, in powerlifting.

The decisive factor in these successes was precisely the spiritual component — ​​our circle of friends at the time included Alexey Yuryevich Savin, Anatoly Evgenievich Akimov, Pyotr Petrovich Gariaev, and Yuri Petrovich Vlasov. On their direct instructions, I traveled to Bulgaria to see Vanga, who had recently been visited by Natalya Petrovna Bekhtereva. My son graduated from the university’s law faculty and, absorbing the energy emanating from these people, achieved phenomenal results. He was larger than Yuri Petrovich. While Vlasov was the first in the world to clean and jerk 200 kg, Lev Sibirsky was the first in powerlifting to reach 300 kg. But the main characteristic of these two Russian giants was that they were both intellectuals. It was not for nothing that Yuri Petrovich liked to say: “The strength of the body is nothing compared to the strength of the mind.””

Yuri Petrovich Vlasov passed away in 2021, and Lev Sibirsky died in a swimming pool two years later under mysterious circumstances, carefully concealed from the public. Today, Lev would have turned 50, and tomorrow, Yuri Petrovich would have turned 90. In memory of these remarkable men, true Russian heroes, Viktor Ivanovich Idolenko created a playground in his Chertanovo neighborhood, which he named “Lev Sibirsky — Sport.” He uses his modest pension to purchase custom-made medals of Yuri Petrovich Vlasov for young champions.