YMMV / The Devils Alternative

• Anti-Villain: Drach and his team, depending on how sympathetic one is to their motives and aims. Hijacking the tanker and threatening an ecological disaster are immoral acts. But the hijackers are struggling to free their ancestral homelands from a regime that has killed millions and committed cultural genocide against the non-Russian peoples of the USSR. Also, Drach is not a sadist and genuinely wants to avert loss of life (notably, the crew member publicly 'murdered' turns out to be very much alive); he simply feels that his actions are necessary to liberate Ukraine.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The Ukrainian hijackers might seem somewhat more sympathetic to a 21st century reader after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Ukrainians' refusal to submit.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: It may seem grandiose for Andriy Drach and his fellow revolutionaries to believe that assassinating the head of the KGB would spark uprisings throughout the U.S.S.R., or that causing Ukraine to secede from the U.S.S.R. would cause the dissolution of the whole country. Yet in 1991 (after the novel was written), Ukraine's referendum to secede from the U.S.S.R. precipitated all the remaining Soviet Republics to vote likewise, causing just such a dissolution.
• The Woobie: Ludwig Jahn, the jailer at the German prison where Mishkin and Lazareff are held. The KGB put pressure on him to assassinate the two men, blackmailing him with threats to his family, and he kills himself.