Every war produces its share of heroes and its share of criminals. The Second World War in the Soviet Union was no exception. The country faced its own problems with draft evaders and deserters, and wartime law punished them harshly. Those caught were either shot in front of their fellow soldiers, given long prison terms, or sent to the special punishment battalions that served as an alternative to prison.
But one deserter never reached any of those fates. Instead, he vanished into the taiga, the endless Siberian wilderness, and built a life so strange and so complete that he came to be known by two names: Tarzan, and the Tiger Robinson. The man was Maxim Gursky. Depending on the account, he either dodged the draft or deserted from the army in 1943.
Rather than face retribution, he fled to relatives living in the village of Christian, in the Ubinsky District of the Novosibirsk region. Gursky stayed in touch with his family, but he did not live among them. He lived in the boundless forest, aware that discovery would mean certain punishment. To avoid it, he built an entire network of dugouts and wooden shelters spread over an area of several tens of square kilometers.
He prepared hiding places throughout the woods and stocked them with food. He never stayed long in any one spot, constantly moving through the taiga to avoid leaving a pattern that could be tracked. Gursky was a man of enormous physical strength. He had possessed that strength from birth, and it served him well.
Even in a confrontation with a bear, he reportedly came out the winner. His daily survival was simple and direct. He picked berries, gathered mushrooms, collected nuts, hunted animals, and took eggs from bird nests. In secluded clearings, he cleared patches of land, plowed them by hand, and planted small vegetable gardens, growing potatoes to sustain himself.
A journalist who studied his history described the life Gursky built: he constructed several hidden huts, made dugouts, caught fish, hunted birds and animals, and harvested mushrooms, berries, and nuts for the future. Armed only with a knife, Tarzan could always take down the master of the taiga, the bear. Remarkably, in all his years in the wilderness, Gursky fell ill only once. He had good health from birth, and he lived in an environment untouched and completely clean, a combination that kept him strong.
Then came a stroke of extraordinary luck. During the war, American Bell P-39 Airacobra fighter planes had been supplied to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease program. In the taiga, Gursky came across one of these downed aircraft. On board he found a fully working machine gun and a box of ammunition.
He adapted the weapon for hunting, and from that moment he became the true master of the forest, capable of killing any predator or large animal. He carefully disguised the plane with branches and camouflage so that it would not be accidentally discovered from the air. His second great find was a dynamo electric generator, which allowed him to light his hidden dwellings. Despite the constant fear of being exposed, Gursky occasionally had to make contact with the outside world.
He went to villages where he exchanged animal skins, furs, and other goods for the things he needed. In terms of food, he lacked nothing. He clothed himself in warm garments made from the skins of animals he had killed. It might seem strange that the local residents never reported this mysterious guest to the authorities.
The likely reason was the innate reticence of Siberians, people who tend not to interfere in another person’s affairs, and especially not in another person’s life. The one thing the taiga could not provide was the affection of a woman. His strong and healthy body demanded its instincts, but he knew well that any attack on a woman would lead to investigation, exposure, capture, and execution. One day, however, the Tiger Robinson got lucky.
In the forest he encountered a young girl who was gathering mushrooms. It was a chance encounter, and Gursky forced her to come with him. Later, the girl said that they had walked for several days, and only at night. Gursky was clearly afraid of being followed and discovered, and he kept wandering, so the girl could not understand where they were going or how she might find her way back.
That was how Gursky gained a companion. From this point, the accounts diverge. According to one version, the girl, who had become pregnant, managed to escape. According to another, Gursky himself let her go, realizing that it was simply impossible to give birth in the taiga without special training and medicine.
Given how difficult it would be for a woman to survive alone in the forest, especially while pregnant, the second version seems more likely. Most probably, Gursky not only showed the girl the way but escorted her to the nearest village. And that, in the end, led to his exposure. The return of the missing girl to the village caused a shock.
Most of all, it shocked the police. A criminal case had been opened immediately after the girl’s disappearance was reported, and it had been declared successfully closed. One of the local young residents had been convicted and sent to prison for the crime. But when the missing victim returned on her own, the case against the innocent man was dismissed and he was released.
After the girl told the police what had really happened, a special team was sent to search for the strange kidnapper. The girl led the officers to an area of the taiga near the village of Lusink. There, Maxim Gursky, who had not expected visitors, was detained. When he was brought into the village, he struck everyone with his appearance.
He was a man of enormous stature, with long hair and an equally long beard, and his clothes were made entirely of animal skins. He looked like a real Robinson Crusoe. What happened to Gursky afterward is not known for certain. Some claim that the former deserter was convicted and, after his release, returned to the village.
Others say that he was not prosecuted at all. Gursky was caught in 1953, eight years after the end of the war, and possibly after the death of Stalin. In the atmosphere of confusion and shifting power that prevailed in the country at that time, law enforcement officers most likely had little interest in solving the complicated case of the Tiger Robinson. Another reason he may not have been held accountable was that he had not actually deserted.
He had evaded the draft. After a soldier has taken the oath, breaking it is punishable by law, even in peacetime. But Gursky most likely evaded conscription without ever taking the oath, so there was simply no reason to arrest a civilian for leaving the taiga. And, surprisingly, the girl who had been his companion may not have filed any complaint at all.
For all these reasons, Gursky escaped prosecution both for evading military service and for the kidnapping. After the former hermit had been brought back among people, one of the villages even offered him the position of foreman of hunters. He was respected by the locals for his strength, his endurance, his amazing diligence, and his ability to navigate the taiga without difficulty. But Gursky could not stay with people for long.
After a short time, he went back into the forest, although he no longer lived there hiding from anyone. The girl later gave birth to his son. It is not known whether Gursky took her back into the taiga with him, and there is no record of what happened to the most famous deserter of the Soviet Union after that. It is not known where he died or where he was buried.
Perhaps the Soviet Robinson remains somewhere forever, in the vast, boundless expanses of the taiga.