Stanislav Petrov

“Preventing the deaths of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people was a costly decision for Petrov”(Matthews). Stanislav Petrov was an officer that registers apparent enemy missile launches in a secret bunker southwest of Moscow where the Soviet Union monitored its early warning satellites positioned over the United States. Petrov grew up in Vladivostok in the Soviet far east, he was a very caring and smart child. The important people in his life would be his father Yevgraf, who flew fighter aircrafts during World War II and his mother who was a nurse. Stanislav Petrov was married to Raisa Petrov and had a son named Dmitri and a daughter named Yelena. His selflessness as an individual was shown as he was concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with his own. Likewise, he was a leader because of why he decided not to fire back when the nuclear warnings went off. Petrov single-handedly prevented WW III through his selfless character and stepping up to be a leader in a stressful situation, proving he is a deserving hero.

Stanislav PetrovPetrow_semperoper2.JPG: Z thomasderivative work: Hic et nunc [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]Firstly, Stanislav is selfless for risking his job and saving billions of lives in one decision. This was displayed when decided to report the nuclear alert as a system malfunction: “‘I had a funny feeling in my gut”, he told the Washington Post in 1999. ‘I didn’t want to make a mistake. I made a decision, and that was it”’(Steele). He was taking a huge risk but he choose to do what he believed was right: “If he had been wrong, and he somehow survived the American nuclear strike, he likely would’ve been executed for treason”(Matthews). He knew that if the nuclear alert was right, he would have died and would have lost his job. Stanislav would have also been investigated and the government would have thought he was on the Soviet Union’s side and trying to wipe out the United States. He actually got investigated even though he was right about the false alarm: “At first he was praised for his action, but after an investigation was reprimanded for failing to record everything properly in the log book”(Steele). He was never treated like a hero, they still thought he was siding with the Soviet Union even though he saved everyone's lives from another war. If it wasn’t a false alarm like he believed, his mistake would have been catastrophic and irreversible. The government's military wouldn’t have any time to respond, which would leave his country vulnerable to a nuclear attack. The risk that he put out showed his selflessness, saved billions of lives and we are all very grateful today.

Secondly, Stanislav was stepping up to be a leader in a stressful situation when he decided to not fire back when the nuclear warnings went off. This decision was very surprising because many would have just followed military instructions and fired back immediately. The system mistook the sun’s reflection off clouds for a missile: “He decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm. This was a breach of his instructions, a dereliction of duty. The safe thing to do would have been to pass the responsibility on, to refer up. But his decision may have saved the world”(Aksenov). He saved the world and he was still treated unfairly and deprived of the recognition he deserved. No one even knew about his heroic characteristics: “The government deemed the incident classified, so he remained silent for years. The press found out about his story in the late 1990s, years after the Soviet Union collapsed, according to the BBC”(Phillips). He never felt the need to tell his story because he was very modest, he never even told people about his death. A lot of the public and the media did not know he died until Karl Schumacher, a German activist who found out about Stanislav several years ago and became his friend, called his family on Sept. 7 to wish the former military officer a happy birthday. Petrov’s son told Schumacher that his father had died months ago. He always told everyone he was not a hero, but in the eyes of everyone around he was. He stood up in a very important situation and did what no one else had the courage to do. He also was very calm in this stressful situation: “In this heightened atmosphere, Petrov’s response to the computers’ warning of missile launches was remarkably cool-headed”(Steele). He acted like he knew what to do, which made everyone else calm. He has many heroic traits that helped him a lot in this situation.

Stanislav Petrov prevented a Cold War through his selflessness as a individual and his leadership in a important situation. He is an inspiration from his actions in saving the world from firing missiles at the Soviet Union and not starting a war that didn’t need to be started. He doesn’t even consider himself a hero, he constantly just repeats that he was just in the right place at the right time: “But he does not think of himself as a hero. ‘That was my job, but they were lucky it was me on shift that night’, he says”(Aksenov). He didn’t feel the need to tell everyone what he did, he just stayed silent and lived his life. This teaches us to always trust our gut and do what you believe is right no matter the risk.

Works Cited

Aksenov, Pavel. “Stanislav Petrov: The Man Who May Have Saved the World.” BBC News, BBC, 26 Sept. 2013, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831.

Matthews, Dylan. “35 Years Ago Today, One Man Saved Us from World-Ending Nuclear War.” Vox, Vox, 26 Sept. 2018, www.vox.com/2018/9/26/17905796/nuclear-war-1983-stanislav-petrov-soviet-union.

Phillips, Kristine. “The Former Soviet Officer Who Trusted His Gut - and Averted a Global Nuclear Catastrophe.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Sept. 2017, www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/18/the-former-soviet-officer-who-trusted-his-gut-and-averted-a-global-nuclear-catastrophe/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.40ad9ccbda72.

Pirani, Fiza. “'The Man Who Saved the World' Died and the World Didn't Notice - Who Was Stanislav Petrov?” Ajc, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 18 Sept. 2017, www.ajc.com/news/world/the-man-who-saved-the-world-died-and-the-world-didn-notice-who-was-stanislav-petrov/0EgMxqN7DNmCNiI89g4gSI/.

Steele, Jonathan. “Stanislav Petrov Obituary.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 Oct. 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/11/stanislav-petrov-obituary.