,
student of the 5th year of the radio engineering faculty of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI). Born on January 13, 1936 in the city of Pervouralsk. Team leader for this trip. At the time of the tragedy, he was 23 years old.
,
student of the 4th year of the radio engineering faculty of the UPI, was born on January 29, 1938 in the village of Dvoretskaya Polyana, Streltsy district, Kursk region. At the time of the tragedy, he was 21 years old, and he celebrated his last birthday right on the campaign three and a half days before his death.
,
4th year student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the UPI, was born on May 12, 1938 in the village of Kegostrov on the island of Kego, which is located within the city of Arkhangelsk at the mouth of the Northern Dvina. She was only 20 years old when she died on February 2, 1959 in the valley of the Lozva River on the banks of its Fourth tributary under Mount Holatchakhl.
(always asked to call himself Alexander or Sasha),
from 1941 to 1945 was a member of the Great patriotic war, took an active part in the hostilities and had four awards, a 1950 graduate of the Institute physical education Byelorussian SSR, was born on February 2, 1921 in the village of Convenient Krasnodar Territory, before the trip he worked as a senior instructor at the Kourovskaya camp site in Sverdlovsk region, but just before the campaign he quit. By age, he was the oldest in the campaign, he was 38 years old.
,
student of the 4th year of the Faculty of Physics and Technology of the UPI, was born on November 16, 1934 in the city of Sverdlovsk. At the time of the tragedy, he was already 24 years old, since before entering the institute he graduated from the Sverdlovsk Mining and Metallurgical College named after I. I. Polzunov and managed to work for one year at the Research Institute of Glavgorstroy (p/o box 3394). In 1954 he entered the All-Union Correspondence Polytechnic Institute at the Faculty of Metallurgy, and in 1956 he transferred to the UPI for the 2nd year.
,
student of the 5th year of the radio engineering faculty of the UPI, was born on January 12, 1937 in the village of Cheremkhovo, Kamensky district, Sverdlovsk region. She was 22 on the day of her death.
(friends called him Yuri)
1957 graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the UPI, born on February 7, 1935 in the city of Zugres, Donetsk region of Ukraine, at the time of the campaign he worked as an engineer in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 at plant number 817 (nowadays known as the Mayak production association), he could celebrate his 24th birthday in the campaign, but he always remained 23 years old.
,
1958 graduate of the mechanical faculty of UPI, born on January 11, 1936 in Moscow, worked as an engineer in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 at plant number 817 (nowadays known as the Mayak production association), shortly before the start of the campaign he turned 23 years old.
,
Graduated in 1958 from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the UPI, was born on June 5, 1935 in the city of Osinniki, Kemerovo Region, at the time of the campaign he worked as a foreman in Sverdlovsk, he was 24 years old.
,
4th year student of the Faculty of Engineering and Economics of the UPI, was born on July 19, 1937. He was the tenth participant in the campaign. But at the beginning of the campaign he was blown away, he fell ill and returned home. That's why he stayed alive. It cannot be said that Yuri Yudin was the only survivor in the Dyatlov group, since he did not reach Mount Holatchakhl, and, accordingly, he was not in a tent on the slope of this mountain. Yuri Yudin participated in the search for the dead Dyatlovites and then for many years took part in various events on a private investigation into the death of the Dyatlov group and in events to perpetuate the memory of their friends. Over the years, he has repeatedly taken part in television shows, filming films and gave numerous interviews.
Yuri Efimovich Yudin died on April 27, 2013.
Photo from the campaign of Igor Dyatlov's group - on a ride we got from Vizhay to the village of logging workers.
In the photo, the hike of the Dyatlov group - from the loggers' village to the abandoned village, which was previously part of the IvdelLag system, backpacks were carried on a cart. The next day, January 28, Yuri Yudin, who fell ill, returned on a cart, and the remaining 9 tourists continued skiing.
In the version about the murder of the Dyatlov group, evidence appeared that led to new conclusions. The reason for this was the appearance on the program "Actually" of the only witness - pensioner Benjamin. Old man claimed to know the killer and was the last person to see the live group.
Tourists before their difficult hike stopped in the village of Vizhay, which was a special regime camp. There they were greeted cordially, after which the group went to the village "41 quarter". Prisoners and civilian workers lived there, who mined wood. Despite their past, they treated the tourists with care, fed them and showed a couple of films. Radio amateur Valentin Degterev believes that there were no attempts to persuade the girls from the group to have sex.
Eyewitness Veniamin claims that the commander sent him, along with a horse and a coachman, to accompany the Dyatlov group to the Second Northern Mine. At the same time, the witness was confused in the testimony. According to him, people were walking, and the photographs show that they were skiing.
At the very beginning of the campaign, the tenth member of the group, Yuri Yudin, refused to travel. On the footage, Degterev noticed a lagging tourist, but found an oddity.
“There are eight people in the picture. One takes a picture. There are nine in total. And where is our soldier named Benjamin? So where is he?!" Valentine wrote.
Witness Veniamin claims that he led the Dyatlovites to the Mansi dwelling, where they were met by a certain Andrey. At the same time, the criminal case states that no one lived in the settlement at that time. According to Benjamin, it was this man who was the killer, since the tourists did not share alcohol and money with him.
Valentin, a radio amateur, suggested that there were illegal gold miners in this village.
"The business was a source of considerable income for the head of the camp, as well as for his subordinates. Somehow, the Dyatlovites saw how this production was going," Degterev added.
Several people attacked the Dyatlov group and dealt harshly with them, since in those days execution was prescribed for illegal gold mining.
Thus, the real reason for what happened was that the tourists saw the forbidden and paid for it. The authorities knew the truth, but deliberately confused the matter so as not to aggravate relations with the Mansi people.
The pass is named after Igor Dyatlov, the leader of an expedition of tourists who planned to climb to a height of 1,79 m in the Subpolar Urals. On the night of February 2, 1959, Dyatlov and eight other members of his group died under unclear circumstances.
Experienced young people who climbed the mountain not for the first time, for some reason turned out to be half-dressed, some without shoes and almost all without outerwear. It is also strange that the tent was cut up - the guys got out of it hastily, also for an unknown reason. The injuries of the victims also raise many questions: traces of nosebleeds as in barotrauma, damage to internal organs, numerous bone fractures, and all this in the absence of traces of external influence.
The death of the Dyatlov tourist group is one of the most mysterious and terrible incidents of the 20th century, which happened on the night of February 1-2, 1959 in the Northern Urals, when a group of tourists led by Igor Dyatlov died under unclear circumstances. Here and below are photos taken by the participants of the hike:
At the moment when, having set up a tent on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (translated from Mansi - “Mountain of the Dead”), the tourists were getting ready for bed, something happened that made them leave the shelter in a panic, starting down the slope. All were later found dead, presumably from the cold. Several people had severe internal injuries, as if they had fallen from a height or been hit by a car at speed (no significant skin damage was found).
The group consisted of skiers from the tourist club of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI, Sverdlovsk): five students, three engineers graduates of the UPI and an instructor of the hostel, veteran Semyon Zolotarev. The group leader was a 5th year student of UPI, an experienced tourist Igor Dyatlov. The other members of the group were also not beginners in sports tourism, having experience in difficult hikes.
One of the participants in the campaign, Yuri Yudin, dropped out of the group due to sciatica when entering the active part of the route, due to which the only one from the whole group survived. He was the first to identify the personal belongings of the dead, and he also identified the bodies of Slobodin and Dyatlov. In the 1990s, he was deputy head of Solikamsk for economics and forecasting, chairman of the Polyus city tourist club. Lyudmila Dubinina says goodbye to Yudin. On the left Igor Dyatlov with bamboo ski poles(Metal was not yet available).
The first days of the hike along the active part of the route passed without any serious incidents. Tourists advanced on skis along the Lozva River, and then along its tributary Auspiya. On February 1, 1959, the group stopped for the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (Kholat-Syakhl, translated from Mansi - "Mountain of the Dead") or peak "1079" (on later maps its height is given as 1096.7 m), not far from nameless pass (later called the Dyatlov Pass).
The first days of the hike along the active part of the route passed without any serious incidents. Tourists advanced on skis along the Lozva River, and then along its tributary Auspiya. On February 1, 1959, the group stopped for the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl or peak "1079" (on later maps its height is given as 1096.7 m), not far from the nameless pass (later called the Dyatlov Pass).
On February 12, the group was supposed to reach the end point of the route - the village of Vizhay, send a telegram to the institute's sports club, and return to Sverdlovsk on February 15. The first to express concern was Yuri Blinov, the head of the UPI tourist group, which drove up with the Dyatlov group from Sverdlovsk to the village of Vizhay and left from there to the west - to the Prayer Stone ridge and Mount Isherim (1331). Also, Sasha Kolevatov's sister Rimma, Dubinina and Slobodin's parents began to worry about the fate of their relatives. The head of the UPI sports club, Lev Semenovich Gordo, and the department of physical education of the UPI, A. M. Vishnevsky, were waiting for the group to return for another day or two, since earlier there had been delays on the route for various reasons. On February 16-17, they contacted Vizhay, trying to establish whether the group was returning from the campaign. The answer was no.
Search and rescue operations began on February 22, a detachment was sent along the route. Around for hundreds of kilometers there is not a single settlement, completely deserted places. On February 26, a tent covered with snow was found on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl. The wall of the tent facing down the slope was cut. The tent was later dug up and examined. The entrance to the tent was opened, but the slope of the tent, facing the slope, was torn in several places. A fur coat stuck out in one of the holes. Moreover, as the examination showed, the tent was cut from the inside.
At the entrance inside the tent lay a stove, buckets, a little further cameras. In the far corner of the tent - a bag with maps and documents, Dyatlov's camera, Kolmogorova's diary, a bank of money. To the right of the entrance lay the products. To the right, next to the entrance, lay two pairs of boots. The remaining six pairs of shoes lay against the wall opposite. Backpacks are spread out at the bottom, they are wearing padded jackets and blankets. Part of the blankets are not spread out, warm clothes are on top of the blankets. An ice ax was found near the entrance, and a flashlight was thrown on the slope of the tent. The tent was completely empty, there were no people in it.
During the trip, the group members took pictures with several cameras, and also kept diaries. Neither photographs nor diaries, by the way, helped to establish the exact cause of the death of tourists.
Further, the search engines began to open a continuous series of terrible and cruel mysteries. Traces around the tent indicated that the entire Dyatlov group suddenly left the tent for some unknown reason, and presumably not through the exit, but through the cuts. Moreover, people ran out of the tent into the bitter cold without shoes and partially dressed. The group ran about 20 meters away from the entrance to the tent. Then the Dyatlovites in a tight group, almost a line, in socks through the snow and frost went down the slope. The tracks indicate that they walked side by side without losing sight of each other. Moreover, they did not run away, namely, with the usual step, they retreated down the slope.
After about 500 meters down the slope, the tracks were lost under a layer of snow. The next day, February 27, one and a half kilometers from the tent and 280 m down the slope, near the cedar, the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were found. At the same time, it was recorded: Doroshenko had a burnt foot and hair on his right temple, Krivonischenko had a burn on his left leg and a burn on his left foot. Near the corpses, a fire was found, which had sunk into the snow.
Rescuers were struck by the fact that both bodies were stripped down to their underwear. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. Beneath him is a broken branch of a tree, on which, apparently, he fell. Krivonischenko was lying on his back. All sorts of small things were scattered around the bodies. There were numerous injuries on the hands (bruises and abrasions), the internal organs were full of blood, Krivonischenko was missing the tip of his nose.
On the cedar itself, at a height of up to 5 meters, branches were broken off (some of them lay around the bodies). Moreover, branches up to 5 cm thick, at a height, were first filed with a knife, and then broken off with force, as if hanging on them with their whole body. There were traces of blood on the bark.
Nearby, cuts with a knife with broken young firs and cuts on birch trees were found. Cut tops of firs and a knife were not found. At the same time, there were no assumptions that they were used for a firebox. Firstly, they do not burn well, and secondly, there was a relatively large amount of dry material around. Almost simultaneously with them, 300 meters from the cedar up the slope in the direction of the tent, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found.
He was slightly covered with snow, reclining on his back, with his head towards the tent, his arm around the trunk of a birch. Dyatlov was wearing ski trousers, underpants, a sweater, a cowboy shirt, and a fur sleeveless jacket. On the right leg - a woolen sock, on the left - a cotton sock. The clock on my hand showed 5 hours and 31 minutes. There was an icy growth on his face, which meant that before he died, he breathed into the snow.
Numerous abrasions, scratches, deposits were revealed on the body; a superficial wound from the second to the fifth fingers was recorded on the palm of the left hand; internal organs are filled with blood. Approximately 330 meters from Dyatlov, up the slope under a layer of dense snow 10 cm, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was found.
She was warmly dressed, but without shoes. His face showed signs of nosebleeds. There are numerous abrasions on the hands and palms; a wound with a scalped skin flap on the right hand; encircling the right side, passing to the back of the skin; swelling of the meninges.
A few days later, on March 5, 180 meters from the place where Dyatlov's body was found and 150 meters from the location of Kolmogorova's body, the body of Rustem Slobodin was found under a layer of snow of 15-20 cm. He was also quite warmly dressed, while on his right leg he had a felt boot worn over 4 pairs of socks (the second felt boot was found in the tent). On the left hand of Slobodin, a watch was found that showed 8 hours 45 minutes. There was an ice build-up on his face and there were signs of nosebleeds. A characteristic feature of the last three found tourists was skin color: according to the recollections of rescuers - orange-red, in the documents of the forensic medical examination - reddish-crimson.
The search for the remaining tourists took place in several stages from February to May. And only after the snow began to melt, objects began to be discovered that indicated to the rescuers right direction wanted. The exposed branches and scraps of clothes led to the hollow of the stream about 70 m from the cedar, which was heavily covered with snow.
A large tent of the Dyatlov group, sewn from several small ones. Inside was a portable stove designed by Dyatlov.
The excavation made it possible to find at a depth of more than 2.5 m a flooring of 14 trunks of small firs and one birch up to 2 m long. On the flooring lay a spruce branch and several items of clothing. According to the position of these objects on the flooring, four spots were exposed, made as "seats" for four people. The bodies were found under a four-meter layer of snow, in the bed of a stream that had already begun to melt, below and slightly away from the flooring. First they found Lyudmila Dubinina - she froze, kneeling, facing the slope at the waterfall of the stream.
Mansi "runes". The traditional system of Mansi individual "marking". The signs are called "tamgi" ("tamga" in singular). Each Mansi has his own personal tamga. It's like a generic business card, a signature that is left in any memorable places- as a rule, places of hunting or parking. Let's say a hunter got an elk, butchered it and left it to take it out later. He makes a stes and marks it with his tamga.
The other three were found a little lower. Kolevatov and Zolotarev lay in an embrace "chest to back" at the edge of the stream, apparently warming each other to the end. Thibaut-Brignolles was the lowest, in the water of the stream. Krivonischenko and Doroshenko's clothes - trousers, sweaters - were found on the corpses, as well as a few meters from them. All clothes had traces of even cuts, as they had already been removed from the corpses of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko. The dead Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev were found well-dressed, Dubinina was dressed worse - her jacket was made of faux fur and the cap turned out to be on Zolotarev, Dubinina's unbooted leg was wrapped in Krivonischenko's woolen trousers. Krivonischenko's knife was found near the corpses, with which young firs were cut near the fires. Two watches were found on Thibault-Brignolle's hand - one showed 8 hours 14 minutes, the second - 8 hours 39 minutes.
At the same time, all the bodies had terrible injuries received in their lifetime. Dubinina and Zolotarev had fractures of 12 ribs, Dubinina - both on the right and on the left side, Zolotarev - only on the right. Later, the examination determined that such injuries can only be received from a strong blow, like hitting a car moving at high speed or falling from high altitude. It is impossible to inflict such injuries with a stone in a person’s hand. In addition, Dubinina and Zolotarev do not have eyeballs - they are squeezed out or removed. And Dubinina's tongue and part upper lip. Thibaut-Brignolles has a depressed fracture of the temporal bone. Very strange, but during the examination it was found that the clothes (sweater, trousers) contain applied radioactive substances with beta radiation.
According to experts, the start of climbing the mountain in bad weather was Dyatlov's mistake, which may have caused the tragedy.
One of recent photos. Tourists are clearing a place for a tent on a mountainside.
The last and most mysterious photo. Some believe that this shot was taken by someone from the Dyatlov group when the danger began to approach. According to others, this shot was taken while the film was being removed from the camera for processing.
Here is a schematic picture of a hypothetical incident and the recovered bodies. Most of the group's bodies were found in the head-to-tent position, and all were located in a straight line from the cut side of the tent, for over 1.5 kilometers. Kolmogorova, Slobodin and Dyatlov did not die while leaving the tent, but on the contrary, on the way back to the tent.
The whole picture of the tragedy points to numerous mysteries and oddities in the behavior of the Dyatlovites, most of which are practically inexplicable.
- Why did they not run away from the tent, but retreated in a line, with the usual step?
“Why did they need to kindle a fire near a tall cedar in a windswept area?”
Why did they break cedar branches at a height of up to 5 meters when there were many small trees around for a fire?
“How could they get such terrible injuries on level ground?”
“Why didn’t those who reached the stream and built sun loungers there survive, because even in the cold it was possible to hold out until the morning?”
- And finally, the most important thing - what made the group leave the tent at the same time and in such a hurry with practically no clothes, no shoes and no equipment?
The tent discovered by the search group:
Initially, the local population of the northern Urals, the Mansi, was suspected of the murder. Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov and their relatives fell under suspicion. But none of them took the blame. They were more afraid of themselves. Mansi said that they saw strange " fireballs". They not only described this phenomenon, but also drew it. In the future, the drawings from the case disappeared or are still classified. "Fireballs" during the search period were observed by the rescuers themselves, as well as other residents of the Northern Urals.
And on March 31, a very remarkable event occurred: all members of the search group who were in the camp in the Lozva valley saw a UFO. Valentin Yakimenko, a participant in those events, in his memoirs very succinctly described what happened: “It was still dark early in the morning. The orderly Viktor Meshcheryakov left the tent and saw a luminous ball moving across the sky. Woke everyone up. For 20 minutes we watched the movement of the ball (or disk) until it disappeared behind the mountainside. We saw him in the southeast of the tent. He moved in a northerly direction. This phenomenon shocked everyone. We were sure that the death of the Dyatlovites had something to do with him.” What they saw was reported to the headquarters of the search operation, located in Ivdel. The appearance of a UFO in the case gave the investigation an unexpected direction. Someone remembered that "fireballs" were observed approximately in the same area on February 17, 1959, which was even published in the newspaper "Tagil Worker". And the investigation, resolutely rejecting the version of "malicious Mansi killers", began to work in a new direction. Well-preserved traces of the Dyatlovites:
The Mansi legends say that during the time of the global flood on Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, 9 hunters disappeared earlier - they “died of hunger”, “boiled in boiling water”, “disappeared in a terrible radiance”. Hence the name of this mountain - Kholatchakhl, in translation - the Mountain of the Dead. The mountain is not a sacred place for the Mansi, rather the opposite - they always bypassed this peak. The discovery of a storage shed made by the Dyatlovites with supplies that they left here so as not to drag excess cargo up the mountain. One of the strange circumstances of the case is that, fleeing from an unknown danger, the tourists did not go to the storehouse, where there was food and warm clothes, but in the other direction, as if something was blocking the path to the storehouse.
There are many versions of what happened, which can be divided into 4 groups: natural (an avalanche descended on the tent, the tent collapsed under the weight of the attacking snow, the snow that attacked the tent made breathing difficult for tourists, which forced them to leave the tent, etc., the impact of infrasound formed in the mountains , ball lightning, this also includes versions with attacks by wild animals and accidental poisoning), criminal (attacks by Mansi, fugitive convicts, special services, military, foreign saboteurs, illegal gold miners, as well as a quarrel between tourists) and man-made (testing of secret weapons (for example , vacuum bomb), hitting a tent with snowmobiles or other equipment, etc.) and, finally, fantastic (evil mountain spirits, UFOs, Bigfoot, air electric discharge explosions of comet fragments, toroidal tornado, etc.).
There is a version of A. I. Rakitin, according to which the group included secret KGB officers: Semyon Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and, possibly, Yura Krivonischenko. One of them (Kolevatov or Krivonischenko), portraying an anti-Soviet young man, some time before the campaign, he was “recruited” by foreign intelligence and agreed, under the cover of a campaign on the route, to meet with foreign spies disguised as another tourist group and transfer samples of radioactive materials from his enterprise in the form of clothing items containing radioactive dust (in reality, this was a "controlled delivery" under the supervision of the KGB). However, the spies revealed the group's connection with the KGB (possibly when trying to photograph them) or, conversely, they themselves made a mistake that allowed the uninitiated members of the group to suspect that they were not who they claim to be (they used the Russian idiom incorrectly, discovered ignorance of the well-known for the inhabitants of the USSR fact, etc.). Deciding to eliminate the witnesses, the spies forced the tourists to undress in the cold and leave the tent, threatening firearms, but not using it to make the death look natural (according to their calculations, the victims must have inevitably died at night from the cold). The corpse of Igor Dyatlov in socks:
It is worth noting that at all times a lot of tourists died. Mostly from the cold. Thus, the death of a group of tourists in the winter in itself was not something extraordinary. Out of the ordinary it was made by various mysterious circumstances. The peculiarity of the incident lies in the fact that all "realistic" versions (such as the version about an avalanche) rest on these inexplicable nuances and inconsistencies, which suggests that the group encountered something from the category of "unknown". The official version read: “Given the absence of external bodily injuries and signs of a struggle on the corpses, the presence of all the values of the group, and also taking into account the conclusion of the forensic medical examination on the causes of death of tourists, it should be considered that the cause of their death was an elemental force, which people overcome were unable to."
The death of the Dyatlovites fell on last period the existence of the old system of supporting amateur tourism, which had the organizational form of commissions under the Sports Committees and Unions of Sports Societies and Organizations (SSSO) territorial entities. There were tourist sections at enterprises and universities, but these were disparate organizations that interacted poorly with each other. With the growing popularity of tourism, it became obvious that the existing system could not cope with the preparation, provision and support of tourist groups and could not provide a sufficient level of tourism security. In 1959, when the Dyatlov group died, the number of dead tourists did not exceed 50 people per year in the country. Already in the following year, 1960, the number of dead tourists almost doubled. The first reaction of the authorities was an attempt to ban amateur tourism, which was done by a decree of March 17, 1961. But it is impossible to forbid people to voluntarily go on a hike in quite accessible terrain - tourism turned into a “wild” state, when no one controlled the training or equipment of groups, the routes were not coordinated, only friends and relatives followed the deadlines. The effect followed immediately: in 1961, the number of dead tourists exceeded 200 people. Since the groups did not document the composition and route, sometimes there was no information either about the number of missing persons or about where to look for them. The corpse of Dubinina by the stream:
By the Decree of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of July 20, 1962, sports tourism again received official recognition, its structures were transferred to the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (trade unions), tourism councils were created, commissions under the SSOO were abolished, organizational work to support tourism was largely revised and reformed. The creation of tourist clubs on a territorial basis began, but work in organizations did not weaken, but intensified due to the wide information support that appeared due to the exchange of experience of amateur organizations. This made it possible to overcome the crisis and ensure the functioning of the sports tourism system for several decades. Igor Dyatlov's body:
Special agencies suggested that the relatives of the victims bury them in the village closest to the pass, but they insisted that the bodies be brought home. All children were buried in mass grave at the Mikhailovsky cemetery in Sverdlovsk. The first funeral took place on March 9, 1959 with a large crowd of people. According to eyewitnesses, the faces and skin of the dead guys had a purple-bluish tint. The bodies of four students (Dyatlov, Slobodin, Doroshenko, Kolmogorova) were buried in Sverdlovsk at the Mikhailovsky cemetery. Krivonischenko was buried by his parents at the Ivanovo cemetery in Sverdlovsk. The funeral of tourists found in early May took place on May 12, 1959. Three of them - Dubinina, Kolevatov and Thibault-Brignolles - were buried next to the graves of their group mates at the Mikhailovsky cemetery. Zolotarev was buried at the Ivanovo cemetery, next to the grave of Krivonischenko. All four were buried in closed coffins. In the early 1960s, a memorial plaque with their names and the inscription "There were nine of them" was erected at the place where the tourists died. On the stone remnant on the Dyatlov Pass, an expedition in 1963 installed a memorial plaque in memory of the "Dyatlovites", then in 1989 another memorial plaque was installed there. In the summer of 2012, 3 plates were fixed on the outlier with the image of the pages of the magazine "Ural Pathfinder" with publications about the "Dyatlovites".
Later, a lot of articles and books were written on this topic, several documentaries were shot. In 2011, the British company Future Films took on the screen adaptation of Alan K. Barker's book "Dyatlov Pass" in the style of a "horror film", in February 2013 Renny Harlin's film "The Mystery of Dyatlov Pass" was released. Dyatlov Pass today:
(function(w, d, n, s, t) ( w[n] = w[n] || ; w[n].push(function() ( Ya.Context.AdvManager.render(( blockId: "R-A -347583-2", renderTo: "yandex_rtb_R-A-347583-2", async: true )); )); t = d.getElementsByTagName("script"); s = d.createElement("script"); s .type = "text/javascript"; s.src = "//an.yandex.ru/system/context.js"; s.async = true; t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t); ))(this , this.document, "yandexContextAsyncCallbacks");
More than half a century ago, a mysterious and tragic event took place in the mountains of the Northern Urals. At the beginning of February 1959 for an unknown reason nine tourists died.
After this tragedy, three deputy chairmen of the KGB lost their posts at once, which was an unprecedented event in the history of the most powerful intelligence service in the world.
A FEAT ON A SCHEDULE
Ski trip to one of the peaks of the Poyasovyi Kamen ridge of the Subpolar Urals, Mount Otorten, was conceived by members of the tourism section of the Ural Polytechnic Institute. S. M. Kirov in the autumn of 1958. The route belonged to the highest category of difficulty.
The group had to overcome more than 350 km in severe winter conditions in 16 days and climb the Otorten and Oiko-Chakur mountains. The campaign was timed to coincide with the XXI Congress of the CPSU and was supported by the leadership of the Ural Polytechnic University.
The initial composition of the group consisted of twelve people, but in the end, on January 23, 1959, ten people set off from the Sverdlovsk railway station: Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Doroshenko, Georgy (Yuri) Krivonischenko, Nikolay Thibault-Brignolles, Lyudmila Dubinina, Semyon (Alexander) Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and Yuri Yudin. It must be said that the group was only nominally considered a student group, since four of them were no longer students by that time, and some had nothing to do with UPI at all.
The composition of the group was diverse. The youngest was 20-year-old Dubinina. The instructor of the Kourovskaya camp site Zolotarev, who joined at the last moment, turned 37. The head of the group, Dyatlov, was 23. Despite his youth, Igor Dyatlov was already a very experienced tourist and had more than one route of varying difficulty behind him. And the rest were far from newcomers. In addition, they already had experience of joint campaigns and all of them, with the exception of Zolotarev, knew each other well and were a solid, friendly and proven team of like-minded people.
Each person was on the account, and it was all the more insulting to lose one of the participants in the very first days of the campaign. Due to aggravated sciatica, already after the first transition from the settlement of the 41st quarter to the non-residential settlement, the 2nd Northern mine was forced to leave the route of Yu. Yudin. acute pain prevented him from moving at the planned speed even without a backpack.
The loss of one of the experienced male hikers forced the group leader to reconsider the schedule and postpone the date of the group's arrival back to Sverdlovsk in case of a successful completion of the trip from February 10 to February 12. However, no one doubted this outcome. And no one could have foreseen that this unfortunate absurdity would save Yuri Yudin's life - the only one of the whole group.
Based diary entries one can only partially restore the picture of what happened: on the evening of February 1, 1959, a group led by Dyatlov set up camp near Mount Otorten in order to climb to its summit the next morning. However, subsequent events did not allow the group to fulfill the intended ...
Neither on February 12 nor later did the group get in touch. Some delay did not particularly alarm the leadership of the institute. Relatives were the first to sound the alarm. At their request, a search and rescue operation was organized, which began only on February 22. Everyone took part in the search for the missing people: from students and tourists to army units and special services.
Moreover, all further events took place under the close control of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB. The level of what happened is evidenced by the fact that to investigate the tragedy near Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, a state commission was created, which included: Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs M.N. Shishkarev, Deputy Chairman of the Sverdlovsk Regional Executive Committee V.A. F. T. Yermash, prosecutor of Sverdlovsk N. I. Klinov and Major General of Aviation M. I. Gorlachenko.
Pay attention to the last figure in this list. It would seem, what is a military pilot to do here? Nevertheless, some data allow us to assert that the Major General of the Air Force was not included in the commission by chance. The case was under the personal control of the 1st Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A.P. Kirilenko.
TERRIBLE FINDINGS
The official investigation on the question of the causes of the tragedy on the night of February 1 to 2 could not give an answer. Or didn't want to. The criminal case was closed on May 28, 1959. In a document compiled by an employee of the Ivdel procurator L. Ivanov, it was said: "... it should be considered that the cause of their death was an elemental force, which people were not able to overcome."
Nevertheless, enthusiasts continued the search. Today, there are several dozen versions of the reasons for the death of the Dyatlov group. Among them:
Unfavorable weather conditions;
Quarrel between tourists;
Death at the hands of the local population;
Attack by escaped prisoners;
Clash with special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs;
Paranormal phenomena (mysticism and UFOs);
Technogenic catastrophe (version by G. Tsygankova);
Avalanche (version by E. V. Buyanov);
KGB special operation cold war(version by A. I. Rakitin).
I must say that the investigations conducted by volunteers are respected, and some of them answer, if not all, then many questions.
On February 27, one and a half kilometers from a tent found half-buried and frozen in snow, set up on the slope of Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, the bodies of Yury Doroshenko and Yury Krivonischenko were found. Almost immediately, three hundred meters above, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found. Then, under a thin layer of dense snow, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was found, and on March 5, the body of Rustem Slobodin was found.
The next two months of searching yielded no results. And only after the warming, on May 4, they found the rest. The bodies were at the foot of the mountain under a layer of snow 2.5 m thick in the channel of a stream that had already begun to melt. First, the body of Lyudmila Dubinina was found, and the rest were found a little downstream: Alexander Kolevatov and Semyon Zolotarev lay at the edge of the stream in an embrace “chest to back”, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles was downstream, in the water.
The first assumption was that the tourists were caught in severe bad weather. With a hurricane gust of wind, part of the group was blown down the mountainside, the rest immediately rushed to their aid. As a result, people were swept up the slope by a hurricane, and as a result, everyone froze. However, later the investigation abandoned this version, since subsequent findings did not fit into it.
There could be no question of psychological incompatibility. Who would go on such a difficult and dangerous route with untested or conflicting people? This should be known at least then in order to understand: all members of the group trusted each other, each of them deserved the right to be among the lucky ones, and everyone stood up for each other with a mountain. Thus, the version about the death of all members of the group as a result of a quarrel also did not stand up to criticism.
A careful examination of the camp revealed several signs pointing to a crime. At the same time, it cannot be said that it was like a robbery, as if the group was faced with some criminal elements. Enough large sum money, as well as watches, cameras and even alcohol remained intact. Only one camera disappeared, along with a refilled film. But at the same time, the tent was torn and beyond repair. The examination showed that it was disabled from the inside.
But by whom and for what purpose? However, valuables left behind and a damaged tent indicate that the criminal version is untenable. It is unlikely that fugitive criminals would have left themselves without a roof over their heads, when at night the thermometer could drop to the 50-degree mark.
It has been suggested that the group was mistakenly destroyed by a special unit of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which confused tourists with criminals who had escaped from places of detention. But knowledgeable people argue: in this case, small arms would definitely be used, and gunshot wounds would not have happened. And they were not on the bodies.
The idea was put forward that tourists went to the sacred slope of the prayer mountain and were killed by representatives of the local population (Mansi). However, as it turned out, there is no prayer mountain in these places, and all the witnesses characterized indigenous people as calm and friendly to tourists people. As a result, the suspicion with Mansi was removed.
People who are prone to mysticism and sincerely believe in the other world, argue with fervor: everything happened because the group violated the boundaries of a sacred place guarded by spirits. Like, not without reason they say: this zone is forbidden for a person, and the name of Mount Otorten (the Mansi call it Lunt-Khusap-Syahyl), where the group was going to move in the morning, is translated “Do not go there”.
However, A. Rakitin, who devoted several years to research, claims: in fact, "Lunt-Khusap" means "Goose's Nest", and it is connected with the lake of the same name Lunt-Khusap-Tur at the foot of the mountain. Fans of the other world insisted: the tourists recklessly set up their last camp on the slope of Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, which means “Mountain of the Dead” in the Mansi language. Confirmation is that even Mansi hunters do not enter these places.
Tourists were killed by something unknown and terrible. In particular, the nephew of Igor Dyatlov later testified: all the dead had gray hair. However, the lack of people in this area is also explained in a very prosaic way: these regions are too scarce in game, and there is simply nothing for hunters to do here. Yes, and the terrible name of the Mountain of the Dead, with a more accurate translation, turns into "Dead Mountain".
V. A. Varsanofyeva - geologist, doctor of sciences, who worked for a long time at the Institute of Geology of the Komi Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, argued that the gloomy name was given to the mountain only because there was nothing on its slopes, not even vegetation - only scree and stones covered with lichen. Thus, the mystical version also looks untenable.
Adding to the mysteries was the fact that all the bodies were found far from the camp, while most of the people found themselves on this extremely frosty night (up to -30°C) half-dressed and without headgear, six were barefoot, on their feet were only socks. Some were not dressed in their clothes, two were only in their underwear. The version of E. Buyanov was seriously considered, who claimed that an unexpected avalanche had occurred, and it was this event that forced people to leave the camp in a hurry, half-dressed.
However, according to other experts, with a slope of only 15 degrees, the formation of an avalanche is unlikely. Although this does not rule out snow shifts, and with sufficient density, there is a possibility of serious compression injuries found on the bodies found. However, the skis stuck in the snow remained in a vertical position, which worked against this version.
Everyone agreed on one thing: some emergency circumstances forced the tourists to leave their sleeping bags and tent in extreme haste in order to save their lives. But what hostile force made them do it? What could be stronger than the fear of death from the cold? The motives of the behavior of hardened and psychologically mature people at the moment when their fate was being decided have not yet been identified.
Unanswered questions multiplied. Some frozen bodies were in the position of defenders. But from whom or from what? It did not add clarity, and the fact that some of the bodies were found large burnt areas and traces of serious injuries, both intravital and post-mortem. Strong indentation of the sternum, numerous fractures of the ribs and other bones of the body were noted, which could be obtained as a result of compression, the powerful impact of external forces.
Yu. Krivonischenko and L. Dubinina had damaged eyeballs, S. Zolotarev had them completely absent, and the girl also had no tongue. A. Kolevatov has a broken nose, deformed neck and damaged temporal bone. Tourists received all these injuries during their lifetime, as evidenced by hemorrhages in nearby organs. All the clothes had a strange purple tint, and experts found traces of gray foam in Y. Doroshenko's mouth.
It should be noted that already initial stage significant inconsistencies have been identified. Some experts claim that the holes in the tents were made by the tourists themselves for the fastest possible evacuation due to a sudden danger. Others insist that the tent was deliberately damaged by some hostile force in order to exclude the possibility of its use in the future, which in the conditions of the Northern Ural frosts, which reached critical levels, would have guaranteed to lead to the death of people.
And both of these statements are in direct contradiction with the statements of the third: the tent frozen in the snow was originally intact and damaged during the clumsily conducted search operation. At the same time, they refer to the conclusions of the investigator of the prosecutor's office V. I. Tempalov, who in his detailed description the scene did not say a word about her damage.
ON GUARD OF THE HOMELAND, BUT NOT PERSON
The most popular version is associated with weapons testing, in particular with the launch of missiles. They talked about the components of rocket fuel, the impact of the blast wave, explaining the compression injuries. In confirmation, the excessive radioactivity of the clothes of tourists recorded by the investigation is given.
But this version looks strange. Weapon tests are usually carried out at special test sites with the appropriate infrastructure capable of recording the damaging effect. In addition, not a single document on the tests carried out in that area has been published since then. On the contrary, data have become available that refute this version.
At that time, there were no rockets in the USSR capable of flying from the launch site (Tyura-Tam, later Baikonur) to the site of the tragedy, and spacecraft carrier rockets were oriented to the northeast and, in principle, could not fly over the Northern Urals. And in the period from January 2 to February 17, 1959, there were no launches from Tyura-Tama.
Sea-based missiles, which were tested at that time in the Barents Sea area, had a flight range of no more than 150 km, while from the place of death to the coast was more than 600 km. Air defense missiles, adopted at that time, could fly at a distance of no more than 50 km, and the nearest launcher was deployed only a year later. However, we will return to air defense.
OIL FOR BLOOD
It is impossible not to take into account another serious version. She claims that the reason for the death of tourists is a man-made disaster caused by tragic coincidence circumstances. In part, this version echoes the version of the above-mentioned E. Buyanov about the avalanche.
The whole country was preparing for the opening of the XXI Congress of the CPSU. At that time, it was customary to report on new labor achievements. The discovery of a new oil and gas field and, most importantly, a timely report about it promised considerable privileges to all those involved.
But there was little time left. To carry out urgent reconnaissance work on the order of the government, the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources Protection of the USSR and the Ministry of Aviation, methanol was delivered by the world's largest An-8T aircraft, which was specially converted for the transport of dangerous goods.
Methanol is extremely toxic and, when exposed to humans, causes respiratory paralysis, swelling of the brain and lungs, and vascular collapse. In addition, the optic nerve and the retina of the eyeball are affected. An emergency situation that arose in flight forced the crew commander to get rid of the cargo and, loitering, merge it in hard-to-reach and deserted places. Unfortunately, the group's route passed in the An-8T flight area, and the tourists were exposed to a poisonous substance intended for completely different purposes.
Methanol has the ability to dissolve snow and ice, turning them into a fluid mass. It is used in gas and oil fields to prevent clogging of oil wells, underground gas storages and main gas pipelines with crystalline hydrates resembling ice. In addition, for geophysical work in special occasions The method of radioactive tracers was used. There is reason to believe that the An-8T was carrying radioactive methanol.
A large amount of the substance that settled on the snow cover in the highlands contributed to the liquefaction of huge masses of snow. And this is what provoked the formation of a heavy ice-snow landslide on a slope with a steepness of only 12-15 degrees. According to the version, it was precisely such a mass of liquefied snow that covered the tent with tourists on that February night. And it is the sprayed methanol that is the cause of the purple tint of the clothes.
Given the traces of radioactive contamination and the nature of the injuries, this version seems much more realistic than the UFO version. Although she does not answer the question why only part of the clothes of the dead
was radioactive. True, the author of the version explains this as follows: clothes soaked in a poisonous radioactive substance were removed from the corpses in order to conceal the cause of the death of the group. And yet there were questions that this version could not answer.
KGB VS CIA
From a certain moment, testimonies about strange fireballs observed in the area where tourists died began to appear in the criminal case. They were repeatedly seen by residents of the Northern Urals, including search engines. According to eyewitnesses, a fireball larger than two lunar diameters grew in the sky. Then the ball faded, blurred across the sky and went out.
It is on the basis of this evidence that the supporters of the "Martian" version insist that the tragedy is connected with UFOs. But that was later, but for now, a decision is being made to conduct a radiological examination of the clothes of the dead. The results showed that there were traces of radioactive substances on the clothes of two participants in the campaign. In addition, it turned out that G. Krivoni-shchenko and R. Slobodin were the bearers of state secrets and worked at the secret enterprise Mailbox 10, which develops atomic weapons.
Things began to take a completely unexpected turn. The reason for the creation of the state commission with such high status. Subsequently, it turned out that a specialist in radioactive contamination A. Kikoin took part in the examination of the scene of the incident as a team leader, and even with unique equipment.
The international situation of that time should also be remembered: in the conditions of the flaring Cold War, the USSR hastily forged a nuclear shield. This makes the conclusions clearer. official investigation, because everything that was connected with the state secret was carefully hushed up. Still would! After all, nothing that can carry radioactive traces of top-secret production should not leave the restricted area.
Because isotopic traces carry comprehensive information about what and how reactors produce. In those days, for foreign intelligence, there was nothing more valuable than this data. Especially since we are talking about the late 1950s, when the nuclear potential of the USSR for Western intelligence was a secret behind seven seals. All this gave a completely unexpected direction for researchers.
Among the dead was another difficult figure: Semyon (Alexander) Zolotarev. He introduced himself as Alexander when meeting the rest of the group. A. Rakitin in his study claims: Zolotarev was a KGB agent and carried out an absolutely secret mission with Krivonischenko and Slobodin. His goal was to control the transfer of clothes with traces of radioactive substances to a group of American agents.
Based on their analysis, it was possible to establish what exactly was produced at the secret factory. The whole operation was developed by specialists from the Lubyanka and pursued one goal: disinformation of the main enemy. The campaign itself was only a cover for an operation of national importance, and the students were used in the dark.
Apparently, during the meeting of agents and couriers, something went wrong as planned by the special services, and the entire Dyatlov group was destroyed. Their death was staged in such a way that the tragedy looked as natural as possible. That is why everything was done without the use of firearms and even edged weapons.
It was not difficult for the elite fighters. According to the position of some of the bodies and the nature of the injuries, it can be assumed that the dead had to deal with masters of hand-to-hand combat, and burn marks indicate that the presence of signs of life in the victims was checked in this way.
But the question arises: how did foreign intelligence agents get into the deserted and hard-to-reach region of the Northern Urals? Unfortunately, there is a very simple answer to this: until the early 1960s, NATO planes flew into the territory of the USSR from North Pole practically unhindered, and throwing a group of paratroopers into deserted places was not particularly difficult.
It is no longer a secret that in the middle of the 20th century the USSR had no effective system Air defense, and the availability of "strato jets" in NATO countries - RB-47 and U-2 aircraft capable of climbing to a height of more than 20 km - made it possible to carry out agents and aerial reconnaissance with high efficiency in almost any area of interest to them. The following facts testify to the impunity of the NATO Air Force: on April 29, 1954, a group of three reconnaissance aircraft made a daring raid along the route Novgorod - Smolensk - Kyiv.
On Victory Day - May 9, 1954 - an American RB-47 flew over Murmansk and Severomorsk. On May 1, 1955, reconnaissance aircraft appeared over Kiev and Leningrad. May Day demonstrations of Soviet workers were photographed, who sincerely believed that "the Red Army is the strongest of all, and did not even suspect that spy planes were literally flying over their heads.
According to American aviation historians, in 1959 alone, the intelligence of the US Air Force and the CIA made more than 3 thousand flights! The situation looked absurd: the center was flooded with reports of foreign aircraft flying over the country, and domestic aviation experts declared that “this cannot be.” But this concerned not only the USSR. The technical superiority of the U-2 over the then existing air defense systems was so obvious that the CIA, with undisguised cynicism, used these aircraft around the world.
As it turned out, the fireballs had nothing to do with UFOs either. These are just huge flare bombs parachuted down to illuminate for the purpose of photographing. large territories and secret objects at night. Now the inclusion of the general of aviation in the composition of the commission becomes understandable.
However, another question arises: how could the CIA agents leave the scene? After all, without escape routes and evacuation, this operation lost all meaning.
And if the air defense forces were powerless, then you can’t say the same about the KGB. Shut down train stations, comb everything possible locations the appearance of strangers for the special services of labor was not. And to pass hundreds or even thousands of kilometers unnoticed in the winter in the conditions of the Subpolar Urals is beyond the power of anyone. And here a truly unique know-how comes to the fore.
HEAVEN HOOK
In the fall of 1958, the Americans, using parachutes, landed two scouts on the drifting Soviet polar station North Pole-5, which had been mothballed two years earlier. The Americans were interested in all the draft documentation related to meteorological observations in the Arctic and the means of communication used by Soviet polar explorers.
And here - attention! After completing the mission, the scouts were evacuated and taken on board the aircraft with the help of unique system, developed by designer Robert Fulton and installed on the P2V-7 Neptune reconnaissance aircraft. This device was designed to pick up a person who is on the surface of the earth and deliver him on board an aircraft flying over him. The device was dubbed the "skyhook" and proved to be surprisingly simple, safe and effective to use.
The evacuee was dropped a container, which contained a warm overall with a special harness, a mini-aerostat and a balloon with compressed helium. All this was accompanied by a nylon cord about 150 m long. One end of the cord was attached to a mini balloon, and the other to a harness. Dressed in overalls and filling the balloon with helium, the passenger launched it into the sky. The evacuator aircraft, using a special device installed outside the fuselage, at a speed of about 220 km / h, cut a stretched nylon cord and, using a winch, lifted a person aboard the aircraft.
The first US Marine Corps Sergeant Levi Woods to be flown aboard an aircraft in this manner was. It happened on August 12, 1958. Subsequently, the "skyhook" was tested in various conditions applications: on the water, in the mountains, in the forest area. The reviews were the most positive. At least two such interceptors are known to have been based in Europe.
With a flight range of 7,000 km, the Neptunes could carry out an emergency evacuation of scouts from almost anywhere in the European part of the USSR. This version is indirectly indicated by the loss of a camera with refilled film. Perhaps he was taken as one of the evidence of the meeting of agents with couriers.
To date, many who are interested in this topic recognize that A. Rakitin's version looks the most realistic. However, opponents of such conspiracy theories retort: this is impossible, since the authorities did not prevent participation in the search operation a wide range civilians, from whom in this case it was necessary to hide real reasons tragedy.
Perhaps, over time, new data will appear that reveal the mystery of the death of nine tourists on a February night in 1959. However, the number of those who know the true reasons tragic events more than half a century ago, steadily tends to zero. Will we ever know the truth? Unknown. Do we have a right to this? Undoubtedly. This would be a worthy manifestation of respect for the memory of the dead. Along with the Dyatlov Pass already existing in the Northern Urals and marked on the maps.
Alexander GUNKOVSKY
At the end of January 1959, an expedition led by UPI student Igor Dyatlov went on a hiking trip to the mountains of the Northern Urals. The team consisted of seven boys and two girls. The search group found the guys a month after the start of their journey. The bodies of the team members were found at a distance of one and a half kilometers from the tent. Most of the comrades died from hypothermia, while others had severe internal injuries. The official opinion of experts on the death of the expedition members: "The reason for the death of the tourists was an elemental force, which they were not able to overcome." And not another word. More than 50 years have passed since the death of the members of the Dyatlov expedition, but why this happened is still not clear. The investigation raises new questions.
The last campaign of the group was timed to coincide with the XXI Congress of the CPSU. The task was to go through the forests and mountains of the Northern Urals on a ski trip of the 3rd (highest) category of difficulty (according to the classification of sports hikes in force at that time, adopted in 1949). For 16 days, the participants of the trip had to ski at least 350 km in the north of the Sverdlovsk region and climb the North Ural mountains Otorten and Oiko-Chakur.
On January 23, the group left Sverdlovsk by train for Serov, where they arrived on the morning of January 24. In the evening we took a train to Ivdel. We arrived in Ivdel at night from January 24 to 25, in the morning of the same January 25, the Dyatlovites went by bus to Vizhay, where they spent the night in a hotel. On the morning of January 26, the group hitched a ride to the logging camp. There, on January 27, they put their backpacks on the cart allocated by the head of the forest area, got on their skis and went to the abandoned village of the 2nd Northern mine, which was previously part of the IvdelLAG system; on the same day, it turned out that Yuri Yudin could not continue the campaign due to pain in his leg. Nevertheless, he reached the 2nd Northern with a group to collect stones for the institute and, perhaps, hoping that the pain would pass before the start of the active section of the route. On the morning of January 28, Yudin, after saying goodbye to the group and giving his comrades his part of the total cargo and personal warm clothes, returned back with a cart. Further events are known only from the discovered diary entries and photographs of the participants in the campaign.
The first days of the hike along the active part of the route passed without any incidents. Tourists advanced on skis along the Lozva River, and then along its tributary Auspiya. On February 1, 1959, the group stopped for the night on the slope of Mount Holatchakhl (Kholat-Syakhl, translated from Mansi - "Mountain of the Dead") or peak "1079", not far from the nameless pass (later called the Dyatlov Pass). On February 12, the group was supposed to reach the end point of the route - the village of Vizhay, send a telegram to the institute's sports club, and return to Sverdlovsk on February 15. The first to express concern was Yuri Blinov, the head of the UPI tourist group, which drove up with the Dyatlov group from Sverdlovsk to the village of Vizhay and left from there to the west - to the Prayer Stone ridge and Mount Isherim (1331). Also, Sasha Kolevatov's sister Rimma, Dubinina and Slobodin's parents began to worry about the fate of their relatives. The head of the UPI sports club, Lev Semenovich Gordo, and the department of physical education of the UPI, A. M. Vishnevsky, were waiting for the group to return for another day or two, since earlier there had been delays on the route for various reasons. On February 16-17, they contacted Vizhay, trying to establish whether the group was returning from the campaign. The answer was no. The search began.
search operation
The search party found an empty tent with a cut wall facing down the slope. “The entrance to the tent was facing the pass. The tent is almost completely covered with snow. The entrance to the tent was open. Sheets protruded from it, serving as a canopy. The slope of the tent, facing the slope, was torn closer to the entrance and a fur jacket stuck out in the hole. The ramp facing down the slope was torn to shreds. A pair of tied skis lay in front of the entrance. At the entrance, inside the tent, there was a stove, buckets, one with a flask of alcohol, a saw, an ax, and cameras a little further. In the far corner of the tent is a bag with maps and documents, Dyatlov's camera, Kolmogorova's diary, and a bank of money. To the right of the entrance were groceries, next to them were two pairs of shoes. The remaining six pairs lay against the wall opposite. Somewhere in the middle of the tent - felt boots, 3.5 pairs. Near the crackers lay a log taken from the place of the last night. Backpacks are spread out at the bottom, they are wearing padded jackets and blankets. Part of the blankets are not spread out, warm clothes are on top of the blankets. In the half of the tent closest to the entrance, crackers scattered on blankets, skins from loin were found” - a description of the tent from the materials of the criminal case. Transcription from the film "The Secret of the Dyatlov Pass".
One and a half kilometers from the tent and 280 m down the slope, near the cedar, the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were found. Rescuers were struck by the fact that both bodies were stripped down to their underwear. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. Beneath him is a broken branch of a tree, on which, apparently, he fell. Krivonischenko was lying on his back. All sorts of small things were scattered around the bodies. At the same time, it was recorded: Doroshenko’s foot and hair on the right temple were burned, Krivonischenko had a burn of the left leg 31 × 10 cm and a burn of the left foot 10 × 4 cm. A fire was found next to the corpses, which disappeared into the snow. On the cedar itself, at a height of 4-5 meters, branches were broken off (some of them lay around the bodies), traces of blood remained on the bark. Nearby, cuts with a knife with broken young firs and cuts on birch trees were found. Cut tops of firs and a knife were not found. At the same time, there were no assumptions that they were used for a firebox. Firstly, they do not burn well, and secondly, there was a relatively large amount of dry material around.
Almost simultaneously with them, 300 meters from the cedar up the slope in the direction of the tent, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found. He was slightly covered with snow, reclining on his back, with his head towards the tent, with his arm around a birch trunk. Dyatlov was wearing ski trousers, underpants, a sweater, a cowboy shirt, and a fur sleeveless jacket. On the right leg - a woolen sock, on the left - a cotton sock. The clock on my hand showed 5 hours and 31 minutes. There was an icy growth on his face, which meant that before he died, he breathed into the snow.
About 330 meters from Dyatlov, up the slope, under a layer of dense snow 10 cm, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was found. She was warmly dressed, but without shoes. His face showed signs of nosebleeds.
Rustem Slobodin's corpse was found 180 meters from the place where Dyatlov's body was found and 150 meters from the location of Kolmogorova's body with the help of iron probes under a layer of snow of 15-20 cm. He was also quite warmly dressed, while on his right leg he had a felt boot worn over 4 pairs of socks (the second felt boot was found in the tent). On the left hand of Slobodin, a watch was found that showed 8 hours 45 minutes. There was an ice build-up on his face and there were signs of nosebleeds.
There were no signs of violence on the bodies of the first tourists found, all people died from hypothermia (at autopsy, it was revealed that Slobodin had a craniocerebral injury (skull crack 16 cm long and 0.1 cm wide), which could be accompanied by repeated loss of consciousness and contributed to freezing). Other hallmark there was a skin color: according to the recollections of the rescuers - orange-red, in the documents of the forensic medical examination - reddish-crimson.
Only after the snow began to melt, objects began to be found that indicated the rescuers in the right direction to search. The exposed branches and scraps of clothes led to the hollow of the stream about 70 m from the cedar, which was heavily covered with snow. The excavation made it possible to find at a depth of more than 2.5 m a flooring of 14 trunks of small firs and one birch up to 2 m long. On the flooring lay a spruce branch and several items of clothing. According to the position of these objects on the flooring, four spots were exposed, made as "seats" for four people.
At 75 meters from the bonfire, where the first bodies were found, under a four-meter layer of snow, in the channel of a stream that had already begun to melt, the remaining tourists were found below and slightly away from the flooring. First, they found Lyudmila Dubinina - she froze, kneeling, facing the slope at the waterfall of the stream. The other three were found a little lower. Kolevatov and Zolotarev lay in an embrace "chest to back" at the edge of the stream, apparently warming each other to the end. Thibaut-Brignolles was the lowest, in the water of the stream.
Krivonischenko and Doroshenko's clothes were found on the corpses, as well as a few meters from them - trousers, sweaters. All clothes had traces of even cuts, as they had already been removed from the corpses of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko. The dead Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev were found well-dressed, Dubinina was worse dressed - her faux fur jacket and cap ended up on Zolotarev, Dubinina's unbowed leg was wrapped in Krivonischenko's woolen trousers. Krivonischenko's knife was found near the corpses, with which young firs were cut near the fires. Two watches were found on Thibault-Brignolle's hand - one showed 8 hours 14 minutes, the second - 8 hours 39 minutes. Although the bodies showed signs of decomposition, no visible injuries were found upon examination at the place of death. Only Kolevatov had burn marks on his arms and sleeves.
During the autopsy procedure in Ivdel, it turned out that three of the four had severe injuries. Dubinina and Zolotarev had fractures of 12 ribs, Dubinina had fractures on both the right and left sides, Zolotarev only on the right. Since traces of hemorrhage into the internal organs were recorded during fractures, it was concluded that the injuries were received in vivo.
Thibaut-Brignolles had a severe craniocerebral injury (a depressed fracture of the right temporal parietal region in a 9 × 7 cm area and a 17 cm long fracture at the base of the skull with extensive hemorrhage in the right temporal muscle), which led to death (according to the conclusion of the forensic expert). In the area of the right shoulder, there was a diffuse bruise 10×12 cm on the anterior inner surface. Kolevatov did not have any serious injuries, except for damage to his head caused by an avalanche probe, with which they searched for bodies.
No trial or investigation...
Reliable information about what exactly the members of the group did in last hours his life and in what sequence, not so much. Numerous gaps in information make it difficult to understand what happened to the end and complete clarity.
However, the investigation lasted three months. Versions were different. None have been confirmed. The conclusion was made: “Given the absence of external bodily injuries and signs of a struggle on the corpses, the presence of all the values of the group, and also taking into account the conclusion of the forensic medical examination on the causes of death of tourists, it should be considered that the cause of their death was an elemental force, which people overcome were unable to." But the matter was kept secret.
25 years after the closing of the case on the death of the Dyatlov group, it could be destroyed "in the usual manner" according to the terms of storage of documents. But the prosecutor of the region, Vladislav Ivanovich Tuikov, instructed the case not to be destroyed as "socially significant." Therefore, it was preserved in the archive of the Sverdlovsk region, and it was preserved in full.
The full case file has never been published. Directly acquainted with the materials small group researchers; the rest had access to a few scanned and posted on the Internet photographs, excerpts from the protocols of examinations and interrogations. However, it is possible that the case contains Additional materials, which can change the perception of the events that have occurred.
The conclusions of professionals - tourists and climbers, with some discrepancies in assessments, in general and as a whole boil down to the fact that for some reason on the evening of February 1 or at night from February 1 to 2, spending the night in a tent on a treeless mountainside, members of the group in hurriedly left the tent and moved down the slope towards the forest. People left partly without getting dressed, without shoes, without getting the necessary things and equipment from the tent, not wearing all their outer clothing. It is this fact - the reason for the group leaving the tent - that represents main question in this tragedy.
There are many versions of the reasons that prompted the group to leave the tent, and each has its own weak points. There are also a certain amount of super-unusual, unexplained features seen during the autopsy: for example, a barely noticeable purple tint of clothing, Dubinina's missing tongue and eyeballs of men, the strange skin color of the dead or the fireballs that witnesses spoke of.
Evgeny Buyanov in the book "The Mystery of the Dyatlov Accident" gives the following classification of versions of what happened:
1. Versions explaining the accident by the action of natural factors
2. Man-made versions linking the accident with some kind of weapons testing, etc.
3. Criminal versions that explain the death of the group by a crime committed by fugitive criminals or by representatives of the authorities, or by representatives of the opposition, for example, hiding saboteurs
4. Other versions (UFO action, accidental poisoning, etc.)
Used materials from Wikipedia
