Vincent V. Severski: “Plac Senacki 6 PM” (“Senate Square 6 PM”, 2022)

The work

The Polish Literary Bibliography lists the novel (2022, 567 pp.) with the subject headings: nuclear weapons, submarines, perestroika, intelligence; time of action 1990–2021.²

According to the publisher’s description, in October 1990 the nuclear submarine “Dmitry Donskoy”, commanded by Captain Golitsyn, sails from the Zapadnaya Litsa base with a large nuclear arsenal, alarming the Americans and the British. MI6 sends an agent, Martin, to Helsinki, while in the background the USSR falls apart and Vladimir Putin’s state is born.¹

The real background

According to historians at the US Department of State, Gorbachev’s reforms weakened the Party’s hold on power; after the failed coup by hardliners in August 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus founded the Commonwealth of Independent States in early December, and on 25 December 1991 Gorbachev resigned as President of the USSR. Boris Yeltsin became President of an independent Russia.³

The British foreign intelligence service whose agent plays the game in Helsinki in the novel is the SIS (MI6). According to the IPN catalogue, in the late 1980s Severski worked in the rezidentura in Stockholm, in the Nordic region where part of the story takes place.⁴

What is accurate and what is invented

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesThe collapse of the USSR and its dates are history; the submarine “Dmitry Donskoy”, Captain Golitsyn and the agent Martin are fictional characters and events – the publisher’s description does not present them as real, and we have found no source for such a voyage. A review quoted by a bookshop praises the book’s authenticity but notes that there is less action than in the author’s earlier books.¹