Comment by Mikhail_Edoshin

There were many "escapes", some weren't so romantic. E.g. for some escapees the drive to what they viewed as freedom was so intense that they did not hesitate to kill someone, e.g. a stewardess on a hijacked plane.

To see a bigger picture let's juxtapose these escapes with the life of Luke of Simferopol (N. F. Voyno-Yasenetsky). He was a surgeon and a bishop of the Orthodox church. He opposed the anti-church policies of the Soviet government, was sent into an exile into Siberia and nearly died there. Then the war came. So he wrote a letter to Soviet officials asking to be sent to work in a hospital near the front, where his surgical skills would be of much use. At the end he added: "When the war is over I'm ready to go back to exile".