On Claims of Commander of Submarine Grounded off Sweden in 1981

This document is a JPRS report dated January 29, 1992, which compiles articles from the Russian newspaper IZVESTIYA regarding the 1981 grounding of the Soviet submarine U-137 in a Swedish fjord. The text highlights a public debate concerning the orders given to the crew during the incident. Specifically, it references the recollections of Vasiliy Besedin, the submarine's deputy commander for political affairs, who claimed the crew was ordered to defend the vessel to the last and, in a worst-case scenario, to destroy the submarine along with the crew. The report also addresses the controversy surrounding the presence of nuclear weapons on board. While Besedin denied the presence of nuclear weapons, the document notes that Swedish experts who analyzed water samples at the time asserted the opposite. The report further mentions that subsequent articles in IZVESTIYA involved commentary from Captain 1st Rank Vazhov and A. Bulakhtin, a former deputy chief of the USSR KGB's special department, as part of an ongoing effort to clarify the events surrounding the U-137 incident for the public.