The Hunt for Red October question

The death of his wife is the reason given. I suspect that as an experienced cold war warrior he also appreciated that a tactical nuclear submarine that was virtually undetectable would shift the balance too far from the stalemate that was required for world peace.

I think that in the book it said that Ramius' wife had some sort of infection that pennecillin would have cured. However, as the Soviet doctors weren't paid any more money if they did their jobs well, they were lazy and gave her shots of water instead.
Personally, I think that he was more or less dissillusioned by communism as a whole, rather than him having a more specific hate for the Soviet party.

While his motivation probably began with the death of his wife, I believe it grew from there. Her death, due to the complete incompetence of a "politically reliable" doctor, woke Ramius up to the flaws in his society. He came to accept that a society as corrupt as that which existed in the Soviet Union was not worthy of his service.

To me the reason he deflected, as many of you already stated, was because his wife died. The Soviets work force doesn't cares about their job only the stats, this resulted in a fatal error caused by physician which eventually lead to the death of his wife. Yes revenge was his motive and I cant blame him that's for sure.

There's no question he was disillusioned by the State. As a professional Naval officer, he would feel contricted by the Kremlin. Witness his antipathy toward the Political Officer, whom he had killed. This disenchantment was expanded when his wife died, and the inferior Soviet political system failed to save her.

In the book it was instigated by the unnecessary death of his wife due to substandard/diluted antibiotics and an incompetent/drunkard surgeon who was protected due to his connections with the state. His Lithuanian heritage seems to have possibly also played a role. One thing that I didn't like about the movie (in general I think it's a great movie, don't get me wrong) is that his motivation didn't really make a whole lot of sense in the Hollywood version, something along the lines of The Red October being built "for only one purpose, to start a war." My first thought when I watched/heart that was, "couldn't you say the same about all of our super quiet submarines that can't be detected by the Russians by that logic?"

Dr. Leonardo Noto
Physician, Author, and Owner of "The Health and Medical Blog with a Personality," www.leonardonoto.com

What Ramius did was treason. Just think of it another way if he would have been a commander of an American submarine and given his personal reasons if he would try to defect to Soviet Union, would that be justified.

It's been a while since I read the book. From what I remember either his wife or his child died and he blamed the Soviet system for it so he got disillusioned and turned on them.

Yes Masha, that is correct. His beloved wife and child were killed and he blamed the State. Defecting was his revenge!

Pure revenge against the State. I think he was always disillusioned but the death of his wife precipitated the defection. Don't forget that his officers also had varying reasons for defecting and most of those were motivated by revenge on a State that had betrayed them.

I agree with those that think we was disillusioned

with communism....after the death of his family he had no reason to stay

His need to defect is a plot device, Clancy doesn't really grasp what defection means or why anyone would have problems betraying the Soviet Union (which he sees as entirely evil), so the whole thing is a paper-thin.
To anyone with different views, it just looks odd.