Red Bikini Girl

"I know that my parents in the Voroshilovgrad region will be terribly upset, but I could not help myself." Liliana Gasinskaya

1979 was the year the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan, revolutionaries established an Islamic republic in Iran, and China launched its one-child policy. It was also the year the West became transfixed with a scantily clad Ukrainian woman who leapt from a Soviet cruise liner and into the spotlight in Australia.

Liliana Gasinskaya was 18 years old when on January 15, 1979, she left everything but her swimsuit behind, squeezed through a porthole in her staff cabin on the Leonid Sobinov, and swam for 40 minutes in Sydney Harbor before reaching shore and asking to stay for good.

"I put on my red bikini and left my ring on my finger because I knew that I could not carry anything at all with me otherwise I might be caught," Liliana Gasinskaya, Daily Mirror

Never mind that she was from Ukraine's modern-day Luhansk region, as far as the public was concerned Gasinskaya was a prized Cold War defector from Russia, and admiring readers followed every step the "Red Bikini Girl" took in her introduction to the West.

Runaway Russian: Why I Risked My Life -- Girl Flees Red Liner

-- Daily Mirror (Sydney) "Please let me stay. I don't want to go back to Russia. I'll kill myself if they try to send me home." Russian Swim Girl Can Stay In Australia. Bikini Red Is A True Blue!

-- Daily Mirror (Sydney) "She promptly celebrated with a meal, a drink -- and a swim in a new bikini." Lillian: The Red Bikini Girl -- Without The Bikini

-- Penthouse "Since childhood, I hated the communist system. It doesn't work because people are constantly lying."

Liliana Gasinskaya quickly transformed herself into a model, DJ, and actress upon being allowed to stay in Australia. (CTK)

Gasinskaya told the Daily Mirror, whose staffers hid the asylum-seeker from Soviet authorities in exchange for an exclusive photo shoot and interview, that she was 14 when she first began thinking about ways to get out of the U.S.S.R.

When she learned that people were being recruited to work on Soviet cruise ships, she signed up for training and was eventually assigned to work as a waitress on the Leonid Sobinov, a ship operated by the Soviet Black Sea Shipping Company that regularly sailed from the United Kingdom to Australia.

"It looked beautiful -- a place where I knew I would be very happy," she told the Daily Mirror about seeing a photograph of Australia for the first time.

And at first, everything worked out splendidly. Gasinskaya's original request for political asylum was changed to refugee status, which was accepted within a week of her entering Australia.

A follow-up article in the Daily Mirror celebrated the development, reporting that well-wishers had showered Gasinskaya with cash and clothes to help ease her transition and that she was preparing to meet one of her heroes, rocker Rod Stewart.

But the country's adoption of the Red Bikini Girl didn't go over well with everyone, coming just a few years after the country dropped its "White Australia" policy that barred immigrants of non-European ethnicity.

Gasinskaya, better known as the "Red Bikini Girl", received plenty of attention in her new home. (Getty Images)

To many, the fast-track acceptance of Gasinskaya while hundreds who entered the country illegally were being deported, and tens of thousands who had applied for legal immigration had been denied, was a clear-cut case of "cheesecake immigration."

"It is easy to conjure up popular support with a front page spread of an attractive, single, young, Caucasian woman," read a letter to the editor in The Age, "but she is no more brave and in need than the Vietnamese refugees."

Gasinskaya stayed, passed a modeling course in Sydney, adopted the anglicized version of her name, Lillian, and briefly married the Daily Mirror photographer behind her first exclusive photos.

In late 1979, she attracted more attention when she was named Pet Of The Month for the first Australian edition of Penthouse magazine.

The magazine was given an "R" rating, preventing it from being distributed in some areas of Australia, and Gasinskaya's nude modeling debut opened a censorship debate when the country's Channel 10 television station commissioned a documentary called "So You Want To Be A Centerfold" that was deemed "unsuitable for broadcast" by a sister station.

She continued to pursue her career, working as a go-go dancer, a DJ, and appearing on popular Australian soap operas. The song Red Bikini Runaway, featuring the lyrics "Do you like my bikini, it's red," even entered her exploits into popular culture.

But her stay in her new home was threatened when it was alleged in 1981 that she had traveled home on a Soviet passport.

Gasinskaya's daring defection was not welcomed by everyone, including one tourism executive who said it was "a pity it happened."

Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Minister Ian Macphee ultimately told parliament that an investigation "was able to establish that at no stage had she visited the Soviet Union," and that there were no grounds for revoking her refugee status.

However, he also noted that she had lied to investigators and had admitted that she had applied for the return of her Soviet citizenship, the possession of which would mean she would lose Geneva Conventions protections for refugees.

"In making these applications Miss Gasinskaya was no doubt motivated by an understandable desire to see her family again," Macphee announced on April 8, 1981. "Her applications however raise new issues, the significance of which Miss Gasinskaya does not appear to comprehend."

Mick Young, the shadow minister for immigration and ethnic affairs, was more to the point.

"We have spent a considerable amount of taxpayers' money to find out about Miss Gasinskaya's activities," he told parliament. "If she is not prepared to accept this country and its laws, perhaps she should seriously consider returning to the Soviet Union."

She remained in Australia and in the public eye, marrying a real estate magnate in 1984. After that marriage ended in 1988, the trail goes cold, with most reports suggesting she moved to England and quietly raised a family.