Missile Carrier For Sale: Tour Siberia in Style

Thanks to Itar-Tass, I went on a wild goose chase through the "Black Earth" region of central Russia last month. I don't regret it. For one thing, I discovered that this farming country, which I had always thought of as the "boring belt," is very beautiful, with rolling hills and lines of birch trees, all golden at this time of year. For another, I met Vladimir Pleskov, an interesting man working on a unusual project, even if it was not exactly what Itar-Tass had led me to expect.


In August, the Russian-language service issued one of the funny stories with which the news agency is now trying to leaven its official reports. A group of New Russians, it said, had been held up while on vacation in Siberia by traffic police who fined them for driving vehicles too wide for the roads. Not satisfied with Jeeps, these New Russians were touring the Omsk region in SS-15 missile carriers that they had converted into luxury caravans.


What a great story, I thought, but it would have to be checked. I found out that the caravan owners came from the Black Earth town of Yelets. I set up a photographer to take pictures of the vehicles. Here, for the record, is the truth.


The "New Russian," Vladimir Pleskov, is a retired army officer who grew up on the Kuril Islands and retains a fascination for the Far East. Some time ago, he and his friends did indeed purchase from a local military plant some old missile carriers -- 10 to be exact, minus the rockets, of course. They had seen films of the Paris-to-Dakar car rally and had the idea of using the vehicles for similar expeditions across Siberia to Chukhotka.


Eight of the carriers stand on a piece of waste land outside Yelets and are, at present, little more than scrap metal. Nothing for my photographer here. Two of the vehicles were done up for this summer's trip to Siberia but they cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as luxury caravans. Pleskov shows me his vacation pictures. A tentlike structure has been fitted to the top of each vehicle to provide rough sleeping quarters, and that is the extent of the conversion. Why can I only see photos of these "caravans?" Because the caravans themselves were confiscated by the Siberian police.


Accompanied by two Russian emigr?s who are his financial backers and other friends who brought their children along for the ride, Pleskov set off in June on an experimental trip to see if it would be possible in future to take foreign tourists on Siberian safari vacations. Their departure coincided with the hostage crisis in Budyonnovsk. Someone saw Pleskov's little convoy and made an anonymous telephone call to the Omsk police, saying that armed Chechens were on the road.


The Omsk police chief, a certain Colonel Derevyanko, "wanted to earn himself a medal," as Pleskov wryly put it. He scrambled OMON and Spetsnats forces and surrounded the travelers, holding them under armed guard for three days even though it was clear they were harmless.


"Derevyanko had made a complete fool of himself, but he could not admit it," said Pleskov. "His face had to be saved. And so the police used Tass to put out their disinformation about the GAI and the caravans."


Pleskov, initially taciturn and not very welcoming, seems delighted that a journalist has bothered to get to the bottom of his story and invites me home for tea. For my part, I have learned again the lesson that no information in this country should ever be accepted at face value.