The full composition of the Dyatlov group with brief biographies and photos. Obituary for Igor Dyatlov

Where arrived on the morning of January 24th. Describing this day, Yudin made an oft-quoted entry in the group's general diary:

January 24th.
7.00 Arrived in Serov. We traveled with Blinov's group. At the station, they met horror with how hospitable: they did not let them into the room and the policeman pricked up his ears; everything is calm in the city, there are no crimes and violations, as under communism; and here Yu. Krivo<нищенко>sang a song, at one moment they grabbed him and took him away.
Noting for the memory of Mr. Krivonischenko, the sergeant explained that clause 3 of the internal regulations at the stations forbids disturbing the peace of passengers. This is perhaps the first station where songs are prohibited, and where we sat without them. We go to Ivdel from Serov at 6.30 pm. We received a very warm welcome at the school near the station. The supply manager (she is also a cleaner) heated water for us, provided everything she could and what was needed to prepare for the campaign.
Free all day. I want to go to the city, for example, to local history museum and on an excursion to the met<аллургический>factory, but a lot of work with the distribution of equipment and its preparation.
12-2.00. During the break between the 1st and 2nd shifts, a meeting with the students was organized. There were so many, so many, and they were all so curious.
Zolotarev: “Children, now we will tell you ... Tourism happens, it gives an opportunity ...” Everyone is sitting, silent, afraid. Z. Kolmogorova: “Tra-ta-ta-ta, what’s your name, where have you been, wow, well done, and lived in tents!” And it went, and it went. The questions were endless. I had to show and explain every little thing from a flashlight to a tent. The guys took two hours, they did not want to let us go. They sang songs to each other. The whole school accompanied us to the station. The thing ended with the fact that when we left, the kids roared and asked that Zina stay with them and be their leader, they would all listen to her, study well.
In the car, some other young alcoholic demanded half a liter from us and stated that we had stolen it from his pocket.
Dispute - a conversation about love at the provocation of Z. Kolmogorova. Songs. Revision, Dubinina under the seat. Garlic with bread, without water. And we arrived in Ivdel at about 12.00.
Large waiting room. Complete freedom of action. They took turns watching all night. The bus to Vizhay will leave early in the morning.
Yudin

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 hitchhiked to the logging camp (settlement 41 quarters). 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 went with a group to the 2nd Northern in order 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 general 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 serious incidents. Tourists skied 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).

On the same day, 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. Below 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, knife cuts 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 relatively a lot 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.

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.

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 corpse of Rustem Slobodin was found under a layer of snow of 15-20 cm using iron probes. 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.

The location of all three bodies found on the slope, their poses indicated that they died on the way back from the cedar to the tent.

There were no signs of violence on the bodies of the first tourists found, all people died from hypothermia (an autopsy revealed that Slobodin had a traumatic brain injury (a crack in the skull 16 cm long and 0.1 cm wide), which could be accompanied by repeated loss of consciousness and contributed to freezing). Another characteristic feature was the color of the skin: according to the recollections of the 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. At the same time, rescuers first of all searched for people on the side of the mountain. The pass between peaks 1079 and 880 and the ridge towards Lozva, a spur from peak 1079, the valley of the continuation of the 4th source of Lozva and its continuation from the mouth along the valley of Lozva for 4-5 km were also investigated. But everything was to no avail.

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 clothing led to a hollow in 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.

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. “It was as if blacks were lying in coffins,” one of the participants in the funeral remarked. 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.

official investigation

The official investigation was launched after the initiation of a criminal case by the prosecutor of the Ivdelsky district, Vasily Ivanovich Tempalov, on the fact of the discovery of corpses on February 6, 1959, and was carried out for three months.

Vladimir Ivanovich Korotaev, an investigator from the Ivdel prosecutor's office, began an investigation into the death of the Dyatlov group. After V. I. Tempalov visited Sverdlovsk along with the case, the investigation was entrusted to the forensic prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office, Lev Nikitich Ivanov.

In one of the cameras, a photo frame (taken last) was preserved, which shows the moment of excavation of snow to set up a tent. Given that this frame was shot with a shutter speed of 1/25 second at aperture 5.6, with a film sensitivity of 65 GOST units, and also taking into account the density of the frame, we can assume that the installation of the tent began around 5 pm on February 1, 1959 . A similar picture was taken with another camera. After this time, no record and no photographs were found.

Mysterious 33rd photo frame from Yuri Krivonischenko's film. According to one version, it was made in a tent when “someone” looked into it, according to another version, it depicts luminous balls in the sky, which were rumored during the search period. In Rakitin's version, this frame is considered a film development defect.

The attention of researchers of the death of the group was attracted by the 33rd frame of the film from the camera of Yuri Krivonischenko. The most common version suggests that the frame was taken from a tent and was the last one that night. Meanwhile, Aleksey Rakitin suggests that the ill-fated photograph is the work of a forensic expert who, before removing the film, first pressed the shutter to find out if it was cocked (the 1950s Zorky models did not have any marks, by which it was possible to determine the position of the shutter without pressing it) and rewound it back into the cassette, and therefore this 33rd photograph captures what at that moment fell into the field of view of the lens (taking into account unadjusted sharpness and shutter speed).

The investigation found that the tent was abandoned suddenly and at the same time by all the tourists:

The location and presence of objects in the tent (almost all shoes, all outerwear, personal belongings and diaries) indicated that the tent had been abandoned suddenly and simultaneously by all the tourists, and, as established in the subsequent forensic examination, the lee side of the tent, where the tourists settled down heads, turned out to be cut from the inside in two places, in areas that ensure the free exit of a person through these cuts.

Below the tent, up to 500 meters in the snow, there were traces of people walking from the tent to the valley and into the forest ... Examination of the traces showed that some of them were left with an almost bare foot (for example, in one cotton sock), others had a typical display of felt boots , feet shod in a soft sock, etc. The tracks of the tracks were located close to one another, converged and again diverged not far from one another. Closer to the border of the forest, the tracks turned out to be covered with snow. Neither in the tent nor near it were found signs of a struggle or the presence of other people.

Investigator V. I. Tempalov, who was among the first at the scene of the tragedy, testified about the tracks: “Down from the tent 50-60 [m] from us on the slope, I found 8 pairs of footprints of people, which I carefully examined, but they were deformed due to winds and temperature fluctuations. I failed to establish the ninth trace, and it was not. I photographed the tracks. They walked down from the tent. The tracks showed me that the people were walking at a normal pace down the mountain. The tracks were visible only on the 50-meter section, there were none further, since the lower from the mountain, the more snow. All this indicated that there was an organized retreat in a dense group, there was no disorderly and "panic" flight from the tent.

The head of the search, E.P. Maslennikov, in a radiogram dated March 2, 1959, indicated that the reason why the tourists left the tent was unclear:

The main mystery of the tragedy is the exit of the entire group from the tent. The only thing other than an ice ax found outside the tent, a Chinese lantern on its roof, confirms the possibility of one person going outside, which gave some reason for everyone else to hastily abandon the tent.

The investigation initially worked out the version of the attack and murder of tourists by representatives of the indigenous people of the northern Urals Mansi. Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov and their relatives fell under suspicion. Some were imprisoned in a pre-trial detention cell, accused of forcibly entering a tent with tourists. None of them took the blame. However, soon with the help of an employee of one of the Ivdel studios, who was invited as a witness to investigator Korotaev's office, it was established that the cuts in the tent were made not from the outside, but from the inside. The appointed examination confirmed the statement of the weaver:

The nature and form of all (...) damages indicate that they were formed from the contact of the fabric on the inside of the tent with the blade of some kind of weapon (knife).

The examination found that on the slope of the tent, facing down the slope, there were 3 significant incisions - about 89, 31 and 42 cm long. 2 large pieces of fabric were torn out and were missing. In addition, there was a cut from the ridge to the side wall, located in the part of the slope farthest from the entrance, near the very rear wall. At the same time, the damage was caused by cutting from the inside with a knife, and the blade did not immediately cut through the fabric, that is, the one who cut the tarpaulin had to repeat his attempts over and over again.

As a result, the Mansi were released. In turn, the Mansi said that they saw strange "fireballs" over the place of death of tourists. They not only described this phenomenon, but also drew it. According to Korotaev, after the case was transferred to L. N. Ivanov, the drawings disappeared from the case. "Fireballs" during the search period were observed by the rescuers themselves, as well as other residents of the Northern Urals.

Meanwhile, the search for the remaining tourists began to be seriously delayed, and no main version was formed, although the government commission demanded certain results. Under these conditions, the investigator Lev Ivanov, having multiple testimonies of disinterested persons, began to develop in detail the "technogenic" version of the death of people associated with some kind of tests. He once again visited the scene of the accident, explored the forest, and together with E.P. Maslennikov examined the scene. They found that some young fir trees at the edge of the forest had burnt marks, but these marks were not concentric or otherwise. There was no epicenter. At the same time, the snow was not melted, the trees were not damaged.

After finding the corpses of four tourists in the stream, at the insistence of L. N. Ivanov, their clothes were sent to the Sverdlovsk SES for radiological examination. The chief radiologist of Sverdlovsk Levashov made the following conclusion:

Items submitted for examination (sweaters, trousers) contain radioactive substances. Individual samples of clothing contain a slightly overestimated content of a radioactive substance, which is a beta emitter. The detected radioactive substances are washed away during washing, that is, they are not caused by a neutron flux and induced radioactivity, but by radioactive contamination with beta radiation. The lack of appropriate instruments and conditions in the laboratory did not allow for radiochemical analysis to determine the chemical structure of the emitter and the energy of its radiation.

Transcription from the film "The Secret of the Dyatlov Pass".

According to Anatoly Gushchin, a journalist from Oblastnaya Gazeta of Yekaterinburg, radiation from clothes only slightly exceeds the natural background in Yekaterinburg - 10 ... 18 microR / h.

Ivanov reported on the results revealed to the second secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU A.F. Eshtokin, after which the latter, with the approval of the 1st secretary A.P. Kirilenko, gave a completely categorical instruction: absolutely everything should be classified, sealed, handed over to the special unit and forgotten about it . In addition, a non-disclosure agreement was taken from all participants in the search for the Dyatlov group for 25 years.

The criminal case was closed on May 28, 1959 due to the absence of a crime event. The decision to terminate the criminal case states:

“Knowing the difficult conditions of the relief of height 1079, where the ascent was supposed to be, Dyatlov, as the leader of the group, made a gross mistake, expressed in the fact that the group began the ascent on February 1, 1959 only at 15.00. Subsequently, along the ski trail of tourists, preserved by the time of the search, it was possible to establish that, moving towards the valley of the fourth tributary of the Lozva, the tourists took 500-600 m to the left and instead of the pass formed by peaks 1079 and 880, they went to the eastern slope of peak 1079. It was Dyatlov's second mistake.

Having used the rest of the daylight hours to climb to peak 1079 in a strong wind, which is common in this area, and a low temperature of about 25 degrees, Dyatlov found himself in unfavorable overnight conditions and decided to pitch a tent on the slope of peak 1079, so that in the morning of the next day, not losing altitude, go to Mount Otorten, to which there were about 10 km in a straight line.

It was concluded:

“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 were unable to overcome ".

After checking in Moscow by the Prosecutor's Office of the RSFSR, the case was returned on July 11, 1959, and by order of the prosecutor of Sverdlovsk N. Klinov, for some time it was kept in a secret archive (sheets 370-377 of the “case”, containing the results of a radiological examination, were handed over to the Soviet secret archive) . But then it was declassified and handed over to the archive of the Sverdlovsk region. At the same time, the RSFSR prosecutor's office, after checking the case, did not report any new information and did not give any instructions to “classify the case”.

Autopsy results

On March 4, 1959, Boris Alekseevich Vozrozhdenny, an expert of the regional Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, and Ivan Ivanovich Laptev, a forensic expert from the city of Severouralsk, examined four bodies of dead tourists delivered to Ivdel. This work was carried out in the premises of the morgue of the Ivdel penal colony. The following was recorded:

1. Doroshenko - bodily injuries (bruises and abrasions) belong to the category of lungs without health problems; numerous traces of frostbite of the extremities were revealed (“the terminal phalanges of the fingers and feet are dark purple”); internal organs are full of blood; fractures of bones and cartilage are not fixed;
2. Krivonischenko - numerous abrasions, scratches, deposits were revealed; the tip of the nose was missing; two burns were recorded - a burn of the left leg 31×10 cm and a burn of the left foot 10×4 cm;
3. Kolmogorov - frostbite 3-4 degrees of phalanges of the fingers; numerous abrasions ranging in size from 1.5 * 1.0 cm to 0.3 * 3.0 cm on the hands and palms; wound 3.0 * 3.2 cm with a scalped skin flap on the right hand; encircling the right side, passing to the back, skin shedding measuring 29.0 * 6.0 cm; swelling of the meninges;
4. Dyatlov - numerous abrasions, scratches, deposits were revealed; on the palm of the left hand, a superficial wound was recorded from the second to fifth fingers, up to 0.1 cm deep; internal organs are filled with blood.

For all the dead, it was concluded that death was caused by exposure to low temperatures (freezing). Time of death - 6-8 hours after the last meal.

On March 8, 1959, B. A. Vozrozhdenny conducted a forensic medical examination of the corpse of Rustem Slobodin. Recorded: numerous abrasions, scratches, deposits were revealed; in the areas of the right and left temporal muscles diffuse hemorrhages with impregnation of soft tissues; from the anterior edge of the left temporal bone forward and upward, a crack up to 6.0 cm long and with a divergence of edges up to 0.1 cm, the crack is located from the sagittal suture at a distance of 1.5 cm; discrepancies of the temporo-parietal suture of the skull bones on the left and right (determined as postmortem). But at the same time, the expert noted that the bones of the base of the skull were intact and there was no pronounced hemorrhage in the subcerebral membranes.

Vozrozhdenny specifically pointed out: “The specified closed trauma of the skull was caused by a blunt instrument. At the moment of occurrence, it undoubtedly caused a state of short-term stunning of Slobodin and contributed to the rapid freezing of Slobodin. Taking into account the above bodily injuries, Slobodin could move and crawl in the first hours from the moment they were inflicted. Slobodin's death came as a result of his freezing.

On May 9, 1959, forensic expert B. A. Vozrozhdenny, together with forensic expert Henrietta Eliseevna Churkina (examined the sections of the tent), performed an autopsy and examination of the bodies of the last four members of the deceased group of Igor Dyatlov. The autopsy was also carried out in the premises of the morgue of the Ivdel penal colony. The expert found and described the bodies of the dead in the following condition:

1. Dubinin - the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th ribs were broken on the right, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th ribs were broken on the left; absence of soft tissues in the region of the superciliary arches, bridge of the nose, eye sockets and the left temporo-zygomatic region. The bones of the facial part of the skull are partially exposed; in the region of the left parietal bone, a soft tissue defect measuring 4.0 * 4.0 cm, the bottom of which is the parietal bone; eyeballs missing; the cartilages of the nose are flattened (but the bones of the back of the nose are intact); absence of soft tissues of the upper lip on the right with exposure of the upper jaw and teeth; the tongue is absent in the oral cavity;
2. Zolotarev - on the back of the head on the right, a wound 8.0 * 6.0 cm with bone exposure, fractures of 2,3,4,5 and 6 ribs on the right; lack of eyeballs; absence of soft tissues in the region of the left eyebrow, 7.0*6.0 cm in size, the bone is exposed.
3. Kolevatov - behind the right auricle in the zone of the mastoid process of the temporal bone, a wound of an indefinite shape measuring 3.0 * 1.5 * 0.5 cm penetrating to the bone (that is, the mastoid process of the temporal bone); in the region of the eye sockets and superciliary arches - the absence of soft tissues with the exposure of the bones of the skull, the eyebrows are absent;
4. Thibault Brignoles - diffuse hemorrhage in the right temporal muscle. A depressed fracture of the temporo-parietal region measuring 9.0 * 7.0 cm (the area of ​​depression of the temporal bone 3.0 * 8.5 * 2.0 cm). Multi-comminuted fracture of the right temporal bone with the transition of the bone crack into the anterior cranial fossa to the supraorbital region of the frontal bone. Another crack - with a divergence of edges from 0.1 cm to 0.4 cm - on the back surface of the Turkish saddle with a transition to the middle cranial fossa.

The expert concluded:

• Kolevatov's death was caused by exposure to low temperatures (freezing);
• Dubinina's death - as a result of extensive hemorrhage in the right ventricle of the heart, multiple bilateral fracture of the ribs, profuse internal bleeding into the chest cavity. These injuries could have occurred as a result of exposure to a large force that resulted in a severe closed fatal injury to the chest. Moreover, injuries of a lifetime nature are the result of exposure to great force, followed by a fall, throw or bruise of the chest;
• Zolotarev's death - as a result of multiple bodily injuries;
• the death of Thibaut-Brignolle - as a result of a closed multi-comminuted depressed fracture in the region of the vault and base of the skull, with profuse hemorrhage under the meninges and in the substance of the brain in the presence of low ambient temperature.

In addition, B. A. Vozrozhdenny, in a conversation with L. N. Ivanov, explains the nature of the bodily injuries of Thibault-Brignolles in this way:

• Question: "From the action of what force Thibault-Brignoles could receive such a wound?"
• Answer: “As a result of a throw, a fall, but, I believe, not from the height of my height, that is, I slipped, fell and hit my head. An extensive and very deep fracture of the vault and base of the skull was received by a blow equal in strength to a blowback by a car moving at high speed.
• Question: "Is it possible to assume that Thibaut was hit with a stone that was in the hand of a man?"
• Answer: "In this case, soft tissues would be damaged, but this was not found."

Publication of the case

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. A small group of researchers got acquainted directly with the materials; 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 file contains additional materials that may change the perception of the events that took place.

In June 2012, the Public Foundation "In Memory of the Dyatlov Group" began raising funds to copy the original criminal case from the archives of the Yekaterinburg GASO.

Investigation work

The search engines and the investigation had specific tasks: the first thing was to find the group, dead or alive, while the investigation was to establish the presence or absence of a crime. The bodies of all the dead were found, and the collected information and examinations showed that there were no signs of a crime, and the case was closed. However, the investigation did not answer the question - how did the people act after they left the tent, under what circumstances were four tourists injured, and how did it happen that no one survived.

Consequence specific tasks search engines and the investigation became that the case materials are fundamentally incomplete, and they lack important information, which would allow to understand the causes of the events that occurred. There are many gaps:

In other words, in fact, 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.

According to the results of the investigation, for shortcomings in the organization of tourist work and weak control, the bureau of the Sverdlovsk city committee of the CPSU punished in the party order: director of the UPI Siunov, secretary of the party bureau Zaostrovsky, chairman of the trade union committee of the Criminal Procedure Code Slobodin, chairman of the city union of voluntary sports societies Kurochkin and union inspector Ufimtsev. Chairman of the board of the sports club UPI Proudly removed from work.

Versions

The conclusions of professionals - tourists and climbers, with some discrepancies in assessments, in general and in general boil down to the fact that for some reason on the evening of February 1 or at night from February 1 to February 2, spending the night in a tent on a treeless mountain slope, 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 is the main issue in this tragedy.

There are many versions of the reasons that prompted the group to leave the tent, and each has its own weak spots. There are also a number of super-unusual, unexplained features seen during the autopsy: for example, a barely noticeable purple tint to clothing, Dubinina's missing tongue and eyeballs of men, the strange skin color of the dead, or 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 explaining 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.)

Natural

Avalanche

The version suggests that an avalanche descended on the tent, after which the tent collapsed under a load of snow, the tourists cut the wall during the evacuation from it, which made it impossible to stay in the tent until the morning. Their further actions due to the onset of hypothermia were not quite adequate, which ultimately led to death. It was also suggested that the serious injuries received by some of the tourists were caused by the avalanche.

As suggested by E.V. Buyanov, one of the reasons for the avalanche was cutting the slope at the site of the tent. At the same time, the injuries of some tourists are explained by the load of a large mass of snow due to the squeezing action when resting on the hard bottom of the tent. Buyanov, referring to the book “Feeling of snow. Guidelines for assessing avalanche danger" (A. Rudneva, A. Adobesko and M. Pankova, M., 2008), notes that the accident site of the Dyatlov group is located in an area with a "weak" avalanche danger, where "avalanches occur in separate places and descend in snowy years": an area related to "inland continental regions with avalanches from recrystallized snow" .

Opponents of the avalanche version point out that experienced climbers from the search groups did not find any traces of the avalanche. Neither the tent itself nor the wires to which it was attached were moved, and the ski poles stuck in the snow were not knocked down. A pile of snow on the tent would inevitably lead to the collapse of the slope and would make it impossible to apply those cuts that were made. The choice of retreat of the group down from the avalanche is not entirely clear, although all tourists know that it is necessary to go sideways, and retreat down is deadly wrong in the event of an avalanche. In addition, if severe bodily injuries of several tourists were inflicted by an avalanche, then the selectivity of the traumatic effect on Dubinina, Zolotarev and Thibault-Brignolles is completely incomprehensible, and it seems unlikely that three such seriously injured people could be moved from the tent to the place where their bodies were found. In the published documents of the investigation, in particular, the expert directly rejects the possibility of independent movement of Thibault-Brignolles, based on the injuries he received. The rescuers did not find the concentration of traces that would inevitably have formed when carrying the wounded. The selectivity of the avalanche, which mercilessly mutilated people, but very prudently did not affect thin-walled metal products such as mugs, flasks, buckets, chimney pipes, looks strange.

Collapse of the tent with a relatively small pile of snow

According to some calculations, setting up a tent with digging a layer of snow on a weak slope and the prevailing weather conditions - the temperature transition from zero to -30 ° C in one night - in the complex could contribute to the fact that a layer of snow slid down onto the tent, which did not continue its movement behind it . This version explains the abandonment of the tent and its condition, and the explanations for further events are similar to the avalanche version and have the same weaknesses: it is not clear why the tourists, instead of digging out equipment and clothes from under the snow, the whole group went down the slope .

Buyanov explains it this way - the tent was half-filled, it was very difficult to dig something out of it in the dark in the cold and with a strong wind, loose snow again crumbled down when trying to dig it out, it is possible that the slope would collapse again - all this, not to mention injuries and psychological shock, contributed to the realization that it was necessary to leave the mountain as soon as possible. In addition, being on the mountainside itself was dangerous - because of the possibility of a repeated avalanche in case of attempts to dig out things. And again - with a strong wind and frost, poorly dressed people stay there for any long time was tantamount to suicide. It was necessary to immediately seek shelter, a place protected from the wind, where one could light a fire and try to keep warm. This is exactly what the guys from the Dyatlov group tried to do, going down to the forest, where they had a storehouse. However, a fatal mistake was made - they went down the wrong slope and the storehouse remained on the other side of the pass. The group realized this already at the very edge of the forest. After that, leaving the seriously wounded and giving them their outer clothing, the strongest went back up to the tent.

The writer Boris Akunin adheres to a similar version:

I think that nothing mysterious happened there at the pass.
At night, when the group was getting ready for dinner and changing clothes for bed, because of the strong wind, the snow layer moved, the tent was half filled up. Frightened that this was an avalanche, the guys rushed down the slope. We decided to make a fire at a safe distance and wait for the morning to understand whether there is a danger of an avalanche or not.
We started to freeze. Obviously, there was a dispute between the two leaders - the senior group Dyatlov and the instructor Zolotarev. Three went with Zolotarev into a ravine, where they dug a hole or a hole in the snow, laying down cut trees. Five remained at the cedar, but after a while they realized that they would not hold out until morning. Separated again. Two for some reason (perhaps they were afraid to return) did not budge, and Dyatlov, Slobodin and Kolmogorova decided to take a chance, went back to the tent for warm clothes and skis. These five people are frozen.
One of the "Zolotarevtsy" returned to the cedar when Krivonischenko and Doroshenko had already died, and took off their warm clothes.
Hiding in a ravine, the four, in principle, made the right decision, but misfortune happened to them. Most likely, the dug up snow collapsed and crushed three to death, and the fourth, for example, stunned. In May, a stream of melt water carried the bodies several tens of meters from the floor. Eyeballs and tongue were pecked by a bird or eaten away by some other living creature.
This is the overall picture of what I think happened. A number of unanswered questions remain, but each of them can be answered rationally without going beyond the framework of this concept.

Impact of sound

There are versions according to which the cause of the incident was the sound (or infrasound) impact of natural or man-made origin.

This version is not confirmed by anything and can only be considered as a conjecture, since there are no facts indicating the presence of infrasonic radiation in that place. As well as there are no facts (experiments, evidence) confirming that such an impact is generally possible. It should also be noted that a sound source of such strength is a very powerful thing, it simply does not occur in nature, and an artificially created one is very expensive and costly.

Other versions

There are also a number of versions explaining what happened by a collision with wild animals (for example, bears, wolves, elks), poisoning of group members with methyl alcohol or drugs, the consequences of a natural phenomenon (for example, ball lightning).

However, there were no other traces around the tent, except for the traces of the Dyatlovites themselves. On the other hand, a collision with wild animals (for example, bears, wolves, elks) could occur in the area where the last four dead were found in the spring. In this area, there were no traces of both people and animals, as they were swept up by snow.

Criminal

Attack by escaped prisoners

The investigation requested nearby ITUs and received an answer that no prisoners escaped during the period of interest. In winter, shoots in the Northern Urals are problematic due to the severity of natural conditions and the inability to move outside permanent roads. In addition, this version is opposed by the fact that the prisoners would hardly have left money, food and alcohol untouched.

Death at the hands of Mansi

The places where the Dyatlovites died are indeed mentioned in Mansi folklore. From the book by A. K. Matveev “The Peaks of the Stone Belt. Names of the mountains of the Urals ":

“Kholat-Syakhyl, a mountain (1079 m) on the watershed ridge between the upper reaches of the Lozva and its tributary Auspiya, 15 km southeast of Otorten. Mansi "Kholat" - "the dead", that is, Kholat-Syahyl - the mountain of the dead. There is a legend that nine Mansi once died on this peak. Sometimes it is added that this happened during the Flood. According to another version, during the flood, hot water flooded everything around, except for a place on the top of the mountain, sufficient for a person to lie down. But Mansi, who found refuge here, died. Hence the name of the mountain ... "

However, despite this, neither Mount Otorten nor Kholat-Syakhyl are sacred to the Mansi. According to the conclusion of the forensic experts, the craniocerebral injuries of Thibaut-Brignolles and Slobodin could not have been caused by a stone or other weapon - then the external tissues would have been inevitably damaged. During the investigation, this version was worked out among the first, but was subsequently refuted.

From the decision to terminate the criminal case:

The investigation did not establish the presence on February 1 or 2, 1959 in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bheight "1079" of other people, except for a group of tourists Dyatlov. It has also been established that the Mansi population, living 80-100 km from this place, is friendly to Russians - it provides tourists with accommodation for the night, provides them with assistance, etc. The place where the group died is considered unsuitable for hunting by Mansi in winter and reindeer herding.

Under the decision are the signatures of the investigator, whose case was in production, ml. Counselor of Justice (corresponds to the army rank - major) L. Ivanov and early. Investigation Department of the Sverdlovsk Regional Prosecutor's Office, Counselor of Justice (corresponds to the army rank - Lieutenant Colonel) Lukin.

Quarrel between tourists

This version was not taken as serious by any of the tourists who had experience close to the experience of the Dyatlov group, not to mention the greater one, which the vast majority of tourists have above the 1st category according to the modern classification. Due to the specifics of training, in tourism as a sport, potential conflicts are eliminated already at the stage of preliminary training. The Dyatlov group was similar and well prepared by the standards of that time, so the conflict that led to the emergency development of events was extremely unlikely under any circumstances. Aleksey Rakitin noted that, judging by the published photographs, at the very beginning of the journey, everyone in the group was in a great mood, which makes it even more impossible that their death could be the result of a sudden internal conflict.

Murder by employees of IvdelLAG on domestic grounds

The death of tourists occurred as a result of a conflict with local law enforcement officers involved in poaching. Employees of IvdelLAG, out of hooligan motives, attacked a tourist group, which led to death from injuries and hypothermia. .

conspiracy theories

There are a number of versions according to which the military or special services are to blame for the death of the Dyatlov tourist group:

Version about the impact of some test weapon

It has been suggested that the tourists were hit by some kind of weapon being tested, the impact of which provoked a flight, and possibly directly contributed to the deaths. As damaging factors, such as vapors of rocket fuel components, a sodium cloud from a specially equipped rocket, and a blast wave were named, the action of which explains injuries. As confirmation, the radioactivity of the clothes of some tourists recorded by the investigation is slightly increased compared to the natural background. The rumors about secret tests can be confirmed by a number of coincidences found in the history of rocket development at the Uralmash plant. Since 1955, the MR-12 meteorological rocket and the Onega complex have been manufactured there. The missile unit was phased out in 1963 - the same year the Otorten area was reopened to tourists.

Of the evidence, only a strange railway line near the village of Polunochnoye rests directly on the mountainside, fragments of rockets found by the hunter Lednev a couple of years later in the Kholat-Syakhyl region, and old photos of clearings in the wilderness. In favor of the version can be attributed to the messages: the search engine Syunikaev about the cannonade in the first days of the search; prosecutor Ivdel Tempalov, a former artilleryman, who noticed suspicious craters from a helicopter on the opposite slope of Kholat-Syahyl; and A.P. Kirilenko himself, who sent the relatives of the dead for a pension “to the military”.

But, on the other hand, how should a rocket fall in order to deprive the eye and tongue? In addition, the missile range involves roads, buildings, a village, an airfield, a radar station. There were no traces of this.

The version about the tour group as witnesses of secret tests

It has been suggested that the death occurred at the hands of the military, who removed unwanted witnesses of some secret exercises or tests.

The version of the escaped prisoners and the search party

Also, there is a hypothesis about the destruction of the tourist group by a detachment of soldiers looking for runaway prisoners. However, there were no escapes during this period. No signs of a struggle were found near the tent. In addition, on the one hand, the guards had the right to immediately open fire on those who had escaped (and there were no traces of the use of firearms), on the other hand, the assumption that the soldiers did not distinguish fugitive prisoners from tourists and that the tourists became to resist the authorities.

Version of "controlled delivery" (author Alexey Rakitin)

There is a version of A.I. Rakitin, according to which the group included secret KGB officers: Semyon Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and Yura Krivonischenko. One of them, posing as an anti-Soviet young man, was “recruited” by foreign intelligence some time before the campaign and agreed, under cover of the campaign, to meet with foreign spies disguised as another tourist group on the route and hand over samples of radioactive materials in the form of items of clothing containing radioactive dust (in reality it was a "controlled delivery" under the supervision of the KGB). However, the spies revealed the group’s connection with the KGB (perhaps 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 with firearms, but not using it, so that death looked natural (according to their calculations, the victims should have inevitably died at night from the cold). Rustem Slobodin tried to resist the attackers and was beaten by them, as a result of which he lost consciousness while moving away from the tent. This was not immediately noticed by the rest, Dyatlov went in search of Slobodin, then Kolmogorov; they died of hypothermia. To facilitate the orientation of those who had left, a fire was lit. Noticing the firelight, the agents realized that the tourists were able to organize themselves for survival and decided to finish them off. The survivors had dispersed by that time, and as they were discovered, to obtain information and to eliminate them, agents used torture and hand-to-hand combat techniques - this is how bodily injuries, torn out tongue and eye sockets are explained. The bodies of the four tourists, discovered later than everyone else, were thrown into the ravine in order to make it difficult to detect them. The saboteurs searched the tent and the bodies of the dead and seized the cameras with which they were photographed, as well as the death records of the tourists.

Paranormal

This group of versions uses fantastic and mythological entities, such as yeti, to explain the incident. Most of these versions come from various kinds of researchers of paranormal phenomena, ufologists, psychics, etc., who find in the circumstances of the death of the Dyatlov tourist group some features similar to the alleged behavior of the phenomena or objects studied by these specialists. There are a number of fantastic versions of the reasons for the death of the Dyatlov group.

An incident in the context of the history of Russian tourism

The death of the Dyatlov group, for all its drama, is not a unique event both for that time and for sports tourism in general. The fame of this particular case is associated with the active work of relatives and friends of the victims, who made significant efforts to perpetuate the memory of the victims and publicize the circumstances of the tragedy. An important role is also played by the uncertainty of the main cause of the accident - the circumstances of leaving the tent. In many other cases they are well known. But to this day, such incidents periodically occur, and far from always their circumstances are clarified in their entirety.

The death of the Dyatlovites fell on last period the existence of the old amateur tourism support system, which had organizational form commissions under the Sports Committees and Unions of Sports Societies and Organizations (SSSO) of 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. The very next 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 death of the Dyatlov tourist group in literature and art

Literature

Documentary prose

• Oleg Arkhipov."Death under the heading "Secret"". Reflections on the tragedy of the group of Igor Dyatlov, publishing house "Istina", Tyumen, 2012

Fiction

In mid-2005, the Ural magazine, in which Anna Matveeva's story appeared four and a half years ago, published Anna Kiryanova's mystical thriller "Hunting Sorni-Nai". The novel was based on the story of the death of the Dyatlov group, but the novel itself was neither a documentary nor an artistic version of real events. Given that the name of the protagonist of the novel was Dyatlov(but not Igor, a Egor; this was the only coincidence in the novel of the real surname and the surname of the character), the editors of the magazine and the author declared that the "Hunting of Sorni-Nay" is an "aesthetic rethinking" of the "Ural myth" about the death of the tourist group. However, the published magazine version of the novel was noticed not so much by literary critics as by friends and associates of tourists who died almost half a century ago. Kiryanova spoke about this in an interview:

After the publication of the book, a group of elderly friends of the Dyatlovites chased me, accusing me of having amassed a huge fortune by publishing this novel in the Ural magazine, that I insulted honor and dignity ...<...>If the city is called "Sverdlovsk", I cannot call it "Zhopinsk". These academicians stood with posters under my windows, and since then I decided not to write anything like that. Apart from trouble, I have gained nothing from the publication of this novel. Of course, I then went out and calmly told these friends of the Dyatlovites that it was necessary to write denunciations, requests and demands in 1959, and not in 2005.

Biography and episodes of life Igor Dyatlov. When born and died Igor Dyatlov, memorable places and dates of important events in his life. Dyatlov quotes, Photo and video.

Years of life of Igor Dyatlov:

born January 13, 1936, died February 2, 1959

Epitaph

“Where to look for evil, and it may be too late.
Just not lucky the first time - but seriously.
And the tattered age of the blizzard with a naughty patron.
Wind, rocks and snow are beyond measure, beyond laws…”
From Evgeny Sadykov's song "Wind, Rocks and Snow" in memory of the Dyatlov group

"And let them talk, yes, let them talk,
But - no, no one dies in vain!
From the song by Vladimir Vysotsky "Peak"

Biography

The biography of Igor Dyatlov is a short life story of a talented young man, an inquisitive young guy who was fond of sports tourism and dreamed of doing science. Perhaps, if it were not for the death of the Dyatlov expedition, Igor Dyatlov would have become famous as a famous scientist, and not as a fifth-year student who tragically died during a hiking trip.

He was born in Pervo-Uralsk, everyone in Igor's family was fond of science, constantly inventing and making something. Dyatlov, while still a schoolboy, converted a gramophone into a device that recorded sound on x-ray film, and on his first trip, where he went as a seventh grader, he took with him a radio receiver he personally assembled. It was then that he fell in love with tourism, it became his passion, which, a few years later, took his life.

Already at the institute, he became chairman of the UPI tourist group. It was difficult to get into the Dyatlov group, he made high demands on the participants - not only physically, but also morally. He carefully prepared the guys for hiking, together they learned to walk in bundles on the slopes, navigate the terrain, arranged overnight stays in the cold season. The Dyatlov tourists were very prepared, which only further complicates the unraveling of the circumstances of the death of the Dyatlov group.

The Dyatlov group, which went on a campaign in 1959, consisted of nine people. The tourists planned to ski 350 km and conquer the peaks of Oiko-Chakur and Otorten. On January 23 they left Sverdlovsk by train, and on January 27 they were last seen alive. The alarm was sounded when they did not send a telegram to the institute about the end of the campaign, and soon the search began, which was conducted by experienced rescuers, and then by the military and Mansi hunters. First, an empty tent was discovered, one wall of which was cut out, and there was no one inside. At the same time, all the backpacks and warm clothes remained in place, as if the tourists left her naked in the cold. Nearby, they found the first two bodies, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko, stripped to their underwear and with burns from a fire. A few meters from them lay Igor Dyatlov without outerwear and shoes and Zinaida Kolmogorova, also without shoes. The rest were found only in early May, after the snow began to melt.

The funeral of the Dyatlov group took place in several stages, the grave of the Dyatlov group is located at the Mikhailovsky cemetery in Yekaterinburg, in addition to the grave of Krivonoshchenko, he is buried at the Ivanovo cemetery. The Dyatlov case was dismissed on May 28, 1959 with the wording "due to the lack of corpus delicti". The secret of Dyatlov has not yet been revealed. The pass, where the death of the Dyatlov group occurred, was renamed the Dyatlov Pass in memory of Dyatlov and the rest of the dead tourists.

life line

January 13, 1936 Date of birth of Igor Alekseevich Dyatlov.
September 1944 Beginning of studies at secondary school No. 12 in Pervo-Uralsk.
1951 Dyatlov's first hike.
1954 Graduation from school, admission to the UPI.
1956 Inclusion of Dyatlov in the national team for tourism of the Sverdlovsk region, participation in a hike of the highest category in the Eastern Sayan.
1957 Campaign in the Northern Urals under the leadership of Dyatlov.
1957-1958 The election of Dyatlov as the chairman of the UPI tourist section.
January 23, 1959 Departure of the Dyatlov group from Sverdlovsk to Serov for a hike.
February 2, 1959 Date of death of Dyatlov and the death of the Dyatlov group.
March 9, 1959 The funeral of the members of the Dyatlov group - Kolmogorova, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko.
March 10, 1959 The funeral of Dyatlov and Slobodin.
May 12, 1959 The funeral of Dubinina, Kolevatov, Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev.

Memorable places

1. Pervouralsk, where Dyatlov was born.
2. Ural Federal University (former Ural Polytechnic Institute), where Dyatlov studied and in the ski club of which all members of the Dyatlov group consisted.
3. Serov, where the Dyatlov group arrived on January 24, 1959
4. Ivdel, where the Dyatlov group arrived on January 25, 1959
5. Dyatlov Pass, near which the death of the Dyatlov group occurred.
6. The village of Vizhay, which was supposed to be the final destination of the expedition of the Dyatlov group.
7. Mikhailovskoye cemetery, where members of the Dyatlov group were buried.
8. Ivanovo cemetery, where Krivonischenko, one of the members of the Dyatlov group, is buried.

Documentary about the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass

Episodes of life

When Igor Dyatlov set off on his tragic winter trip in 1959, he promised his mother: “That's it, the last time we are. Last time". His words turned out to be prophetic.

The cause of death of the Dyatlov group was first called freezing, but some experts came to the conclusion that Dubinina died as a result of a hemorrhage in the heart and multiple fractures, Zolotarev - as a result of bodily injuries, Thibaut-Brignolles - as a result of a closed fracture in the region of the vault and base of the skull. An expert from the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination Vozrozhdeny, during an interrogation by forensic expert Ivanov, expressed his opinion that Thibault-Brignolles, Dubinina and Zolotarev received their injuries as a result of exposure to a large force, similar to that which could arise from an air blast wave.

There were several versions of Dyatlov about the causes of the death of his group - from criminal to mystical, but none of them found reliable official confirmation. For example, there was a version that there was a conflict in the group, or another one that experienced tourists made a number of mistakes and could not coordinate their actions in critical weather conditions. An avalanche seems like a plausible explanation. Another version is the impact of infrasound, which could cause uncontrollable fear among tourists, which allegedly explains their flight. Other versions are the test of a secret weapon, death at the hands of spies, UFOs. In each of the versions, even the most plausible, there are many inconsistencies. Many articles, books, programs, documentaries and even feature films were dedicated to the memory of the Dyatlov group, but, alas, the history of Dyatlov is still full of white spots.

condolences

“The Dyatlov accident is a tragic accident. And a lesson for all of us. Any accusations are inappropriate and unfair. But all the mistakes must be seen - and the mistakes of tourists, and the mistakes of the investigation, and the mistakes of the authorities, and the mistakes of human delusions. The Dyatlov group perished in the struggle in the same way as a group of honest patriotic soldiers perishes in an unequal battle. They did not leave their perishing comrades, they fought the elements to the end as best they could, as best they could! And they fell in the struggle, giving all their strength, all the warmth of their hearts.
E. V. Buyanov, B. E. Slobtsov, authors of the documentary book “The Mystery of the Death of the Dyatlov Group”

The secret of the Dyatlov pass

The mysterious death of the group in the Northern Urals still haunts the minds of people. There is something mysterious about the tragic events of February 1959. Psychics, ordinary people, professors and writers are wondering what could have happened on that fateful night when students, having cut open the tent, ran out into the cold, naked. Towards my death

More than half a century ago, a group of 9 students from the Ural Polytechnic Institute died under mysterious circumstances in the Urals. The leader of the group was Igor Dyatlov, a fifth-year student, and the pass was later named after him.

Monument to the dead

A movie was made based on this incident. The Dyatlov Pass Incident is a feature film directed by Renny Harlin based in part on real events that occurred in the winter of 1959 in the Northern Urals. The premiere of the tape took place on February 28, 2013 simultaneously in Russia. It premiered in the US (limited release) and UK in August 2013. In the USA, the film was released under the name Devil's Pass (Russian: Devil's Pass).

Many documentaries with investigations, assumptions and versions have also been released. One of them is presented on this site: http://russia.tv/video/show/brand_id/39685/episode_id/281403

Yuri Koptelov, one of the participants in the 1959 investigation.

The film is based on a tragedy that took place in Sverdlovsk in 1959, when a group of students led by Igor Dyatlov went to a ski crossing, but never returned.

Viktor POTIAZHENKO from Vladimir participated in the search for the missing UPI students. He told us about the tragedy that shook Sverdlovsk, and also shared his opinion about the death of the tour group.

Hope to the last

Sasha Linni, vlad.aif.ru: - How did it happen that you participated in the search for Igor Dyatlov's group?

Igor Dyatlov

Victor Potyazhenko: - At that time I was 26 years old, I served as the commander of the helicopter unit of military unit 32979. It was really called "separate-mixed aviation squadron of the commander of the district." Was considered secret. On the Day of the Soviet Army, an operational officer on duty suddenly calls us from the military district: “Comrade Potyazhenko, immediately fly to Ivdel, we had an accident there. great tragedy. The general will fly with you. Yak-12 and AN-2 aircraft will also fly.

Ludmila Dubinina

SL: - Did the NKVD officers instruct you before the flight?

Kolmogorov

VP: - Nobody instructed.

Dyatlov Pass. Halt

SL: - What were your thoughts before the flight?

V.P .: - I thought, if a general is flying, it means that somewhere in the Urals there is a serious emergency. We flew to Ivdel. The general went to inquire about the situation. He returned and said - for now, you sit here, I'm going to fly by plane and look at this area. He flew in and said: “The area is simple. Mountains are mountains, you can fly safely. I fly home, you stay here for the senior aviation chief. Colonel Ortyukov, a senior teacher in military affairs at the UPI, was appointed senior. We were faced with the task of conducting aerial reconnaissance and finding the missing group, delivering people and cargo to the place of search.

SL: - Was the flight to the "Mountain of the Dead" difficult?

V.P.: - I landed the helicopter with difficulty. Ortyukov flew with me, the prosecutor of the district or region, someone else, I don’t remember. Several specialists who brought a radio station to keep in touch with the airfield.

SL: - Have you noticed anything unusual?

VP: - A cynologist and two search dogs were flying with us. At the airfield, the animals behaved calmly, but growled at strangers. When they landed on the mountain, the dogs refused to get out of the helicopter, they whined. The dog handler was surprised that they behaved this way.

Where did they disappear to?

SL: - When was the tent of the missing students discovered?

V.P .: - "Mountain of the Dead" is elongated, I sat down lower. I turned around, began to take off, flew 700 meters, I see a square below. I show Colonel Ortyukov - look what it is, it looks like a tent. You can not sit down, the slope is large. Arrived home. Ortyukov says - go rest, tomorrow we'll see what to do. We wake up in the morning, Ortyukov has already come for us. He says - yesterday I contacted the radio operators, on a tip they found a tent covered with snow. We'll fly over there now and see. This time we had a prosecutor, an investigator, Ortyukov, a correspondent with us. They flew in and said - let's go inspect the tent. And I, the driver, was not part of their group. They went and I followed. Let me see what it is.

SL: - What was found in the tent?

V.P.: - We approached the tent, sprinkled with snow on one side, the wall was cut from the inside. Inside, things are not touched: clothes are lying, sleeping bags, a flask smells of alcohol, a camera, a piece of sausage, meat, a piece of bread broken, apparently eaten. When I looked into the tent, I noticed a “combat leaflet” glued to the wall. This is how we did it in the army. On a piece of paper in bold pencil is written "Evening Otorten".

SL: - Students jumped out of the tent "who was in what"?

VP: - The investigator showed traces of students who ran out of the tent. Ortyukov said they found the bodies. We started to follow the tracks. We see one corpse lies, then two more. Found another one last night. The corpses were stiff, frozen. It was evident that the students were in what they were, when they were preparing to go to bed, and ran out in that. There were no outerwear. Boots, jackets, hats - everything was left in the tent.

SL: - Did you communicate with local residents - Mansi?

V.P.: - I brought them to the search site. Their answer is yes, why do we need this. We warn people not to go to this mountain. This is a sacred area, we go around it.

SL: - They say the corpses were orange.

VP: - I saw ordinary corpses.

SL: - Did you sign an agreement on non-disclosure of what you saw? Have you discussed the tragedy?

V.P.: - Then for several days I simply transported search engine soldiers. The soldiers are not from the NKVD, mostly guards from the camps. I didn't sign anything. At the place of searches - discussed. They arrived at the airport - silence. What did you see - who cares?

SL: - When did you find the rest of the hikers?

V.P.: - In early March, they found another corpse. On May 5, they said - fly in, we found the last ones, we need to pick them up. The bodies looked different from those in February. I remember someone wanted to see them, I said no, they are so scary that it would be bad.

SL: - Were you thanked for your help in the search?

V.P.: - The director of the institute invited me and the crew to UPI. They thanked me and gave me a Zorkiy-4 camera. The director told me - if you want to study with us, we will register you.

SL: - Where were the dead students buried?

V.P .: - They decided to hush up the "lost" case. At first they wanted to bury the students right in the mountains. But parents and relatives were outraged. There were strikes, the whole of Sverdlovsk was buzzing - it is illegal, wrong to bury in secret. They brought the bodies to Sverdlovsk. They wanted to bury them in a common grave, without a procession. The people were outraged. As a result, they buried in Sverdlovsk the way the relatives wanted.

Failed tests?

SL: - What are your thoughts about the death of the "Dyatlovites"?

Dossier

Viktor POTYAZHENKO was born in 1933 in the Azerbaijan SSR. He graduated from the First Helicopter School in the city of Pugachev. He served in the village of Aramil in military unit No. 32979 as deputy squadron commander. He left for Chelyabinsk as a squadron commander. He worked for 8 years in Izhevsk as a deputy commander of an aviation training center. Moved to Vladimir in 1975. Air Lieutenant Colonel. Master of Sports of the USSR, champion of the USSR in helicopter sports.

VP: - Margarita Ivanovna (pilot's wife) answered this question: - I was a radio operator at the Ivdel airfield. A radiogram came from the search site: “We have a rocket. Specify which rocket. The soldiers who worked there all fled. I sent a telegram with a request to Sverdlovsk and Moscow. They answered me - there was no launch in that area. But the search engines saw something unusual.

SL: - Your wife told me about the radiogram. Did anyone from the search engines tell you about UFOs?

V.P.: On April 1, when the search for the missing was still going on, I flew to the Otorten area. The lieutenant from the search group told about an unusual phenomenon. The soldiers came to the tent in the evening, had supper and went to bed. The orderly read the newspaper, "guarded" the stove. He sat, then he was already jerked - it was bright in the tent, the sun was shining. Overslept! "Climb!" - screams. He jumped out into the street, and a huge luminous “donut” hangs over his head. Soldier in the tent - guys, come out, look. While they were sorting it out, everything disappeared, pitch darkness. The lieutenant woke up. They began to count each other. One disappeared - ran outside to the toilet. Let's go look for him. The lieutenant brought everyone back so that they would not get lost in the dark. The missing person came back. It turns out that he went to the toilet, saw a bright glow, then darkness, nothing to see. Hears an echo from all sides - his name is. He stood there until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

S.L .: - Maybe the "Dyatlovites" were killed by a rocket?

V.P.: - The crew and I assumed that while the people were in the tent, some flying rocket exploded. The students studied nuclear physics. Perhaps they thought it was a nuclear explosion. And where to escape in the mountains from radiation? Everyone jumped up and ran into the valley. They thought that after the shock wave left, they would return for things. When the crew and I came down, it was striking that the fir trees over the snow were of the same color, and where the snow had fallen, of another. No one identified violent bullying of students. Some of them had injuries, as if from a blast wave, when a person is crushed by something “strong” of indefinite size. Someone says that the students went blind running out of the tent. But since the fire was kindled, it means that they saw ...

Anatoly Gushchin - The price of a state secret is nine lives

The price of a state secret is nine lives?

The first radiogram about the tragedy in the mountains was received by

The tragedy at the Mountain of the Dead: documents and versions

In the very north of the Sverdlovsk region, where the crystal clear tributary of the Lozva, the Auspiya River, originates, there is a mountain that many now know about - Kholat-Syakhyl. Mountain of the Dead, in Mansi. According to legend, once upon a time - a very long time ago - a whole group of Voguls died on it. How this happened and why, probably no one knows. However, the chilling name of the old-timers is associated precisely with that long-standing tragedy.

But forty years ago, in February 1959, Mount Kholat-Syakhyl reaffirmed its sad right to be called by this terrible name - not far from it, on the gentle eastern slope of Mount Otorten, nine tourists from the Urals died under mysterious circumstances. polytechnic institute.

This mystery still excites many people, and so far it has not been revealed.

Since the beginning of democracy and glasnost declared in the country, interest in it has flared up with renewed vigor: it has become possible to openly discuss previously taboo topics, to put forward bolder assumptions. Numerous newspaper publications appeared - journalists substantiated their versions, direct participants in the search for missing tourists broke their vow of silence. For almost ten years now, everything connected with the investigation of this extraordinary incident has ceased to be considered secret; the criminal case itself, which was opened then on the fact of a mysterious death, was also declassified. The regional prosecutor's office gave me the opportunity to get acquainted with him without delay. Moreover, the deputy prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region, Viktor Petrovich Tuflyakov, kindly agreed to give the necessary professional explanations on all the questions that arose when I read the materials of the investigation.

However, as the details became clearer, the darkness around the main spring of events thickened more and more. And the meaning of the essay, which I now dare to offer the reader, is not to finally shed light on the true cause of the incident, but to convey the feeling of the hellish abyss, on the edge of which I found myself, after studying a pile of documents and listening to the testimonies of many eyewitnesses.

But - let's go in order.

Nothing predicted...

Ten of them went on a campaign: Igor Dyatlov - the leader of the group, Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Kolevatov, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Krivonischenko, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles, Yuri Doroshenko, Alexander Zolotarev and Yuri Yudin.

The youngest of them was Dubinina - twenty years old. Dyatlov was twenty-three. The oldest was the instructor of the Kourovskaya camp site Zolotarev - thirty-seven years old.

Slobodin, Krivonischenko, Thibaut-Brignolles had already graduated from the UPI by that time, they worked as engineers. The rest were still students.

But in general, the group was experienced, "sung", went on campaigns, including in the Northern Urals, which went more than once.

And how well it all began at that time! ..

From Kolmogorova's diary: "January 23. Camping again! We are sitting in room 531. Or rather, we are not sitting, everyone, on the contrary, is feverishly scurrying about: they put stewed meat, condensed milk in backpacks.

Y.Krivo: - Where are my pimas? Shall we play the mandolin on the tram? Oh, hell, they forgot the salt - 3 kg.

Slavka Khamzov has arrived.

Hey! Give me 15 kopecks. Call.

Everyone reached into their pockets, counting money. The room is such an exciting mess...

Here we are on the train. Many songs covered. We disperse to places at 3 o'clock in the morning. I wonder what awaits us on this trip? What will be new? Yes, the guys today solemnly took an oath not to smoke for the entire trip. How much will they have, can they do it without cigarettes?

The taiga flickers outside the windows ... "

"January 24. At 7.00 we arrived in Serov. At the station they were met inhospitably: a policeman did not let him in. Yu. Krivo suddenly started singing a song. In an instant they grabbed him and took him away. passengers. This is, perhaps, the first station where it is forbidden to sing ... "

From Yudin's diary: "We arrived in Serov. We leave for Ivdel at 6.30 pm, settled in a school near the station. We were met very warmly. The supply manager (cleaning lady) heated the water, provided everything we needed.

Was free all day. During the break between shifts, they organized a meeting with the students. There were so many of them! .. And they are all so curious.

The guys didn't want to let us go. They sang songs to each other. Nearly the entire school escorted us to the station. When they got on the train, the guys even roared. They asked Zina to be their counselor.

In the wagon. Dispute-discussion about love, clearly provoked by Kolmogorova ... "

From Krivonischenko's diary: "On January 26, 1959, we slept in the so-called "hotel". Some were in bunks for 2 people, and some on the floor. We got up at nine. We agreed that we would be taken to the 41st station in a GAZ-63 car We left only at 01:10 pm We arrived at 04:30 pm We got cold and went with songs.

On the 41st, we were greeted warmly, taken to a separate room in the hostel. We talked for a long time with the workers.

The attendants cooked dinner. Rustic plays the mandolin..."

From Doroshenko's diary: "27.1.59. The weather is good, the wind is in the back, fair.

We agreed that ryuks (backpacks. - A.G.) would be taken to the 2nd Northern Ryuk on a horse. (From the 41st to it - 24 km.) And themselves - with legs.

We heard a number of forbidden prison songs (Article 58). Bought 4 rolls of soft warm bread. Two pieces. ate right away. Yes, Yura Yudin suddenly fell ill ...

2nd Northern is an abandoned village of 20-25 houses. Only one is suitable for housing. The oven smoked heavily. Jokes were thrown almost until 3 am ... "

From the diary of Thibaut-Brignolles: "January 28. The weather smiles at us - 8 degrees. It's a pity to part with Yudin, but ...

We gathered for a long time: smeared the skis, adjusted the bindings. We left at 11:45. We go up the Lozva. Ice in places. You have to stop often.

At 5.30 - a halt. Today is the first night in a tent. The guys are fiddling with the stove. Dinner. Then we rest for a long time by the fire. Zina, under the guidance of Rustem, tries to play the mandolin. Again discussion. Of course, about love. We get into the tent. The hanging stove blazes with heat...

(We note in passing that the hanging stove was made by Dyatlov. - A.G.)

From Dyatlov's diary: "January 30. Today is the third cold night on the shore. The stove is a great thing.

After breakfast, we go along Auspiya, again there is ice ... We meet the Mansi parking lot. Weather: during the day - 13, in the evening - 26. A sharp drop. The wind is strong, southwest.

The deer trail is over. Snow depth up to 120 cm. The forest is thinning. Birches and pines are gone, dwarfed, ugly. Feel the height. Business for the evening. We are looking for a place to bivouac. They quickly built a fire and pitched a tent ... "

From Kolmogorova's diary: "January 30. It got colder. The attendants (S. Kolevatov and K. Thibault) made a fire for a long time. Reluctance to get out of the tent. Around 9.30 - passive rise ...

And the weather! The sun is playing. We go, like yesterday, along the Mansi path. Sometimes we notice notches on trees, zateski - Mansi "writing". In general, there are a lot of incomprehensible, mysterious signs. There is an idea to give a name to our campaign - "In the country of mysterious signs."

The trail goes to the beach. We're losing track. We break through the forest. But soon we turn again to the river - it is easier to go along it.

About 2 hours - lunch: loin, a handful of crackers, sugar, garlic, coffee.

Good mood.

At five o'clock - stop for the night. It took a long time to choose a place. We returned about 200 meters back. Deadwood, tall spruces. Here is the fire! Kolya Thibaut changed his clothes. He starts arguing with Kolevatov over which of them should sew up the tent. But then he takes the needle himself.

Sasha Kolevatov has a birthday today. Congratulations, we give a tangerine. He immediately divides it into 8 slices ... "

From Dyatlov's diary: "January 31. We follow the old Mansi ski trail. Apparently, leaving the deer, he went on skiing. The trail is not visible well, we often get lost. We pass 1.5 - 2 km in an hour.

We are gradually moving away from Auspiya. The rise is smooth. The spruces ran out, a rare birch forest went. Here is the edge of the forest. Nast. The place is bare. You need to choose accommodation. We descend to the south - to the valley of Auspiya. This is apparently the snowiest place. Tired, they set about arranging a lodging for the night. Firewood is scarce. A fire was lit on logs, it is reluctant to dig a hole. We dine in a tent. Warmly...".

This is all that the guys themselves managed to tell about their last campaign.

There are no other diary entries in the criminal case. Although on the first of February the travelers held pencils in their hands for sure - on that day a “combat leaflet” was issued (rather than a wall newspaper, but there are no signs that it was hung out on some “wall” - whether in a tent, on the trunk of a neighboring tree - hung out ) called "Evening Otorten".

The editorial read: "Let's meet the 21st Congress of the CPSU with an increase in the number of tourists!"

Obviously, the article under the heading "Science" was designed for the "sensation": "In recent times in scientific circles there is a lively discussion about the existence of Bigfoot. According to the latest data, Bigfoot live in the Northern Urals, in the region of Mount Otorten.

Of course, it is more than strange that on February 1, no one wrote a single line in their diaries. The decision to terminate the criminal case says the following on this score: “One of the cameras retained a photo frame (taken last), which shows the moment of excavation of snow to set up a tent. (It’s not clear only, in the forest, on the mountain? - A.G. Considering that this frame was shot with a shutter speed of 1/25 sec at aperture 5.6, with a film sensitivity of 65 GOST units, and also taking into account the density of the frame, we can assume that the tent was set up around 5 pm February 1, 1959. A similar picture was taken by another device (For some reason, these photographs are not in the file. - AG).

After this time, no record and no photographs were found."

Well, taking pictures after five, already almost at dusk, probably makes little sense. But God himself ordered to write at least a couple of words! And not only "after this time", but also in the morning. Until about three o'clock, the group was in the Auspiya valley, building a storehouse for food.

Let's return to the document: "Knowing the difficult conditions of the relief of height 1079, where the ascent was supposed to be, Dyatlov, as the leader of the group, made a gross mistake, expressed in the fact that the group began the ascent on February 1, 1959 only at 15.00.

Subsequently, along the ski trail of tourists, preserved by the time of the search, it was possible to establish that, moving towards the valley of the fourth tributary of the Lozva, the tourists took 500-600 m to the left and instead of the pass formed by peaks 1079 and 880, they went to the eastern slope of peak 1079.

This was Dyatlov's second mistake.

Having used the rest of the daylight hours to climb to peak 1079 in a strong wind, which is common in this area, and a low temperature of about 25 degrees, Dyatlov found himself in unfavorable overnight conditions and decided to pitch a tent on the slope of peak 1079, so that in the morning of the next day, not losing altitude, go to Mount Otorten, to which there were about 10 km in a straight line.

“According to the protocol of the route commission,” we read the resolution further, “the head of the Dyatlov group on February 12, 1959 had to telegraph to the UPI sports club and the physical education committee (comrade Ufimtsev) about their arrival in the village of Vizhay.

Since the deadline has passed, and there is no information from the group, the students began to insistently demand that measures be taken to search."

Frankly, not right away.

The death of the children becomes known

Nevertheless, some thoughts already in those days crept in, one more terrible than the other. These were tourists who had recently returned from the north of the region, who were supposed to meet on February 9-10 near Mount Oiko-Chakur with a group of Dyatlov. But that did not happen. But something else came to mind...

“That early morning,” journalist V. Vokhmin wrote in one of the Yekaterinburg newspapers in 1993, “Georgy Atmanaki and Vladimir Shavkunov got up at six in the morning to cook breakfast. They lit a fire. The sky was overcast, as often happens in February. Soon in the east, at a height of about 30 degrees above the horizon, a milky-white spot spread, quite impressive in size - 5-6 lunar diameters.The spot consisted of several concentric circles.

Look how the moon has been sketched, ”Georgy remarked.

Firstly, there is no moon, and secondly, it must be in the other direction, - the comrade replied, after thinking for a couple of seconds.

At the same moment, a bright star flashed in the very center of the spot. A few more moments will pass, and it will begin to increase, rapidly moving west. And then it will appear as a huge fiery disk of milky color, 2-2.5 lunar diameters in size, surrounded by the same pale rings.

The guys stood as if under hypnosis, and came to their senses only when the disk began to fade. At that very moment, they rushed to wake up their comrades ... "

The disappearance of the Dyatlov group and this strange object in the sky - all this was now involuntarily connected in the minds of Atmanaki and Shavkunov.

As is known from the case, on February 18, the city committee for physical culture and sports requested Vizhay. The next day the answer came: "The Dyatlov group did not return."

On the 20th, they decided to send the chairman of the sports club UPI Gordo to Ivdel.

On the 21st, he flew to Ivdel on a special flight and began flying around the area where the route of the missing skiers ran.

On February 22, a headquarters for organizing searches was organized in the trade union committee of the UPI. A group of tourists-searchers was sent to Ivdel under the leadership of an employee of the trade union committee of the institute Slobtsov, which the very next day was abandoned by helicopter on the eastern slope of Mount Otorten.

On the 24th, local Mansi hunters were connected to the search for the Dyatlovites.

On the 25th, a group of tourists led by Grebennik was abandoned in the area of ​​Mount Oiko-Chakur. On the slope of Otorten - Axelrod's group. Another one - under the leadership of Karelin - was prepared for delivery to the Sampal-Chakhl region.

On February 26, Slobtsov's team, on the slope of height 1079, discovered the tent of the Dyatlov group, but without a single soul.

On the same day, all brigades of searchers were transferred to this place, which set up a base camp just below the forest line.

“In total, the camp,” the document testifies, “was concentrated: a group of Slobtsov - 5 people, Karelin - 5, Axelrod - 5, captain Chernyshev - 5, Mansi - 4, a group of operatives of senior lieutenant Moiseev with service dogs - 2 people. , radio operator - E. Nevolin.

Later, a group of athletes arrived from Moscow and Sverdlovsk consisting of: K. Bardin, Baskin, E. Shuleshko, Korolev, a group of cadets from the Ivdellag sergeant school, headed by Art. lieutenant Potapov - 10 people. and a group of sappers with mine detectors under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Shestopalov - 7 people.

The joint group was headed by the head of the search detachment, master of sports Yevgeny Polikarpovich Maslennikov, captain A.A. Chernyshev became the deputy.

Many of these people immediately after the end of the search work gave detailed reports to the investigating authorities. The reports are stored in the criminal case, and we will get acquainted with them later. But search engines did not have the right to share their impressions with everyone to whom it was important and interesting: a subscription was taken from them not to disclose what they saw for 25 years. (By the way, why would this be necessary if the guys died from a natural disaster or another everyday understandable reason? And a circumstance that is not without meaning: there are no receipts of non-disclosure in the investigation file. We can assume that this was the installation: there are no traces of secrets on paper So that later it would not occur to anyone, grabbing the end of the thread, to unwind the ball of mystery.) After the deadline, some of them wrote memoirs, handing over the manuscripts, some for printing, and some just for memory, to the UPI sports club.

February 27 - according to some documents of the case, on the 26th - according to others, 1500 meters from the tent, near the border of the forest, under a cedar, the remains of a fire were found, and near it the corpses of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko stripped to their underwear.

The first radiogram about the tragedy in the mountains was received by UPI on February 28, that is, a month after the death of the tourists.

Just on this day, international competitions for the world championship in speed skating among women began in Sverdlovsk. That is, the closed city was flooded with foreigners as never before. And at this time around the institute, and then around the world regional center rumors spread, the first, purely conjectural versions appeared. Some said that this murder was the work of the convicts of Ivdellag, others suspected the Mansi, who allegedly dealt with the Russians for religious reasons - for desecrating sacred places - and hid the corpses.

By the way, latest version worked hard and for a long time. At least twice the head of the Ivdel GOM Department of Internal Affairs, police major Bizyaev, received orders classified as "secret" with the requirement to check it. But the result was the same: Mansi had nothing to do with it. The Otorten and Kholat-Syahyl mountains are far from the sacred places of the Mansi.

Vladimir Askinadzi, already known to us, recalled: “Out of nowhere, suddenly a version appeared that students, they say, could go abroad! across the pole to America; add more mountains with their impassable snow, and thirty-degree frost! - A.G.). carefully looked for any evidence confirming the plans of the Dyatlov group to go abroad.

Of course, it was impossible to come up with a more ridiculous version of the disappearance of a group of tourists, but utter nonsense takes on some meaning if we assume that by launching such a “duck”, someone unknown, but omnipotent, tried to prepare public opinion for the fact that the corpses would not be found .

Or maybe, in fact, such an option was worked out somewhere - not Mansi, so abroad? And no one should ask questions.

What was found at the scene?

First of all, a tent.

This tent, apparently, had previously been with the Dyatlovites on more than one campaign and no longer looked like standard equipment, but a well-settled camping house, transformed by their hands in accordance with their tourist experience. It was gable, sewn from two four-seater tents. From the side of the entrance, a canopy made of a sheet was sewn to it - probably a convenient canopy in summer from rain and sun, and in winter - from too heavy snowfall. In the tent, as you already know, even heating was provided.

From the protocols of the investigation: “The tent of the Dyatlov group was set up on the slope of a spur running in this place at an angle of 18-20 degrees. The entrance to it faces the pass. A platform was cleared under the tent, on which the skis were laid.”

Apparently, eight pairs were laid, because the ninth, as stated later in the same document, was lying tied up in front of the entrance to the tent.

And here is the first riddle for you: why is the tent put on skis? Experienced hikers who have walked mountain routes more than once say that sometimes they do this in deep snow. But eight pairs of skis are not enough for the entire area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Dyatlov tent, and laying them out at intervals, with a lattice, is risky: it’s easy to break.

“The whole tent was almost covered with snow: one skate was sticking out of it from the side of the entrance. The entrance was open, sheets protruding from it, which served as a canopy.

During the excavations, it was found that the slope of the tent, facing the slope, was torn, a fur jacket was sticking out in the hole. The slope, facing the descent, was torn to shreds.

What would this fur jacket in the hole mean? Who with its help escaped from the wind and frost?

“Things in the tent were located as follows: at the entrance there was a stove (it immediately suggests: why was it not suspended? And why wasn’t it flooded, settling for the night? - A.G.), buckets (one contained a flask of alcohol), a saw, an axe. A little further lay cameras.

At the far end were found: a bag with maps and documents, Dyatlov's camera, a bank of money, Kolmogorova's diary (it does not say when the last entry was made in it. - A.G.). Dyatlov and Kolevatov's windbreakers lay right there. In the corner stood a sack of crackers and a sack of grits.

To the right (from the entrance), the rest of the products lay near the wall. Next to them is a pair of boots. The other six pairs of boots lay against the wall opposite.

Felt boots, 3.5 pairs, were found approximately in the middle of the tent. Near the crackers - a log taken from the place of the last overnight stay.

It would be interesting to know how it was established that - from the past. Moreover, for some reason there is nothing about the penultimate overnight stay in the case, as if professional investigators should not have been interested in this story.

“Backpacks are spread out at the very bottom of the tent. Quilted jackets (quilted jackets) are laid on them, and blankets on top. (According to other testimonies, the blankets were crumpled and frozen. - A.G.) There were also several pieces of skin from the loin. On top of the blankets lay warm clothes, and most of them ... "

Pay attention: everything there lay in relative order, there was no upside down in the commotion. There were sacks of breadcrumbs and cereals, and no one in the turmoil caught them with their foot, did not scatter a single grain. So, maybe there was no commotion? Then how to explain the broken walls of the tent? However, no, not even torn, but cut from the inside, as established by the examination.

The examination of the tent was carried out by the Sverdlovsk Forensic Research Laboratory about a month and a half after it was found - started on April 3, completed on April 16. Here are excerpts from a document signed by a senior expert, senior researcher Churkina:

“As a result, it was found that damage was found on its surface resulting from the impact of some kind of sharp weapon (knife), as well as gaps.

Damage No. 1 in the form of a broken straight line, with a total length of 32 cm. Above - a small puncture of the fabric measuring 2.2 cm. The corners of the hole are torn.

Damage No. 2, No. 3 have an uneven arcuate shape. Approximate length - 89 cm and 42 cm. There are no tissue flaps on both sides of damage No. 3. (That is, they form a hole. - A.G.).

Studies have established that on the inside of the tent, near the edges of the cuts, there are surface damage to the fabric in the form of minor punctures, tears and thin scratches. All are rectilinear.

The nature and form of all these injuries indicate that they were formed from the contact of the fabric on the inside of the tent with the blade of some kind of weapon (knife).

Who and why “contacted the fabric with the edge of the blade”, if there was no commotion? ..

Anyway, the rugged tent was empty...

But down the slope stretched from it (from the entrance or from a cut hole in the wall? This is not mentioned in the document) traces - 8-9 pairs. They are quite well preserved for about 500 meters. The paths of the tracks were located close to each other, converged and diverged again. Some of them were left almost barefoot, others - felt boots. Near the forest, all traces disappeared - they were covered with snow.

But whether the ski track leading to the tent has been preserved is again not mentioned in the documents of the investigation.

In the direction indicated by the footprints, only much further from the tent, the bodies of five dead were found. The body of Kolmogorova is at a distance of 850 meters, Slobodin is a kilometer away (Rustem was found the last of the five, on March 5), Dyatlov is about 1180 meters away, and Doroshenko and Krivonischenko are 1.5 kilometers away, near a bonfire under a cedar. All of them lay on one straight line, along the direction of the prevailing wind and within the hollow.

Kolmogorov was discovered by a search dog. Zina lay under a ten-centimeter layer of snow on her right side. She was dressed - in comparison with others - quite warmly, but without shoes. The position of the body, arms, legs seemed to speak for the fact that in the last minutes of her life she struggled on the slope with the wind.

Dyatlov was lying on his back (he was visible from under the snow), with his head towards the tent, as if clasping the trunk of a small birch with his hand. Clothing - ski trousers, underpants, sweater, cowboy shirt, fur vest. On the right leg - a woolen sock, on the left - a cotton sock. The clock on my hand showed 5 hours and 31 minutes.

Slightly powdered with snow, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko were found next to each other. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. Beneath it is a broken branch of a tree (as if Yuri fell on it from great strength- but why and from where?). Krivonischenko was lying on his back. Both of them are almost naked. Both of them are wearing only cowboy shirts and underpants, on their feet - thin socks. However, it is so recorded in the protocol. If you believe the photographs of the dead, taken on the spot, then one of them was completely barefoot. Pants are torn almost along the entire length of the leg. However, it is clear that the bare leg is not damaged - not torn into blood. But after all, he ran a mile and a half through prickly snow - it would have been torn all over like an emery; would have torn to shreds and thin socks. How did he run those one and a half kilometers? Of course, the examination could easily establish whether a person fled or not, but for some reason this question did not arise before her ...

Slobodin lay in approximately the same position as Kolmogorova. He was dressed relatively warmly - a black cotton sweater, under it - a cowboy shirt, fastened with all buttons. (In a patch pocket fastened with a safety pin, a passport, money - 310 rubles, a fountain pen.) Under the cowboy shirt - underwear, warm, fleece knitted shirt, on the body - a T-shirt. Trousers are ski, on a belt. In pockets - a box of matches, a penknife, a comb in a case, a pencil, a cotton sock. Under the trousers - blue satin trousers, on the body - underpants and shorts. On the right leg, shod in black felt boots, socks: cotton, then vigonye, ​​another cotton, then again vigonye. There is no felt boot on the left leg, only socks, put on in the same order. (His second felt boot, as they say in the case, was found in the tent). The Zvezda watch on the hand showed 8 hours and 45 minutes.

(By the way, Dyatlov has a watch on his hand, Slobodin has a watch, there will be other watches in the protocols of this case - and every time the investigators diligently record the time when they stopped, although it is obvious that this time does not mean anything at all. And many really important details, as we have already seen, for some reason did not interest criminologists.)

Found five - and the case stalled: it was not possible to find four more. There were even proposals - to suspend the search until spring. But there was already pressure from above: to search!

Party takes control

Rumors roamed the city, people boiled, asked questions, letters and telegrams flew to Moscow.

Pretending that nothing had happened was no longer possible; the authorities, according to the custom of that time, had to take the situation under their vigilant control. For this, on March 5, an emergency search commission of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU was created, headed by the deputy chairman of the regional executive committee, Pavlov, and the head of the department of the regional committee of the CPSU, Philip Yermash, the future head of Soviet cinematography. Yermash kept the first secretary of the regional committee Kirilenko informed of the events, and he kept Khrushchev himself informed. How could the search be turned off?

Meanwhile, the search engines by this time has noticeably diminished. The party committee of the UPI had to recruit the next groups of volunteers with difficulty: classes were going on, the session was approaching - life went on.

It must be assumed that the funeral of the first party of the dead became a difficult test for the party commission: the city was electrified by rumors, the funeral ceremony could gather many thousands of people; although the people were accustomed to obedience, having not forgotten their “leader and teacher” in six years, but if such a crowd gathers, just guess how it will behave. The authorities took precautionary measures: the crowd, as it were, was split in advance, determining the places of burial in different cemeteries: four on Mikhailovsky, and one (Yury Krivonischenko) on Ivanovsky, which by that time was considered already closed. And one more preventive measure: less information. They say that on the eve of the burial, the secretary of the party committee of the UPI tore off the announcement of the funeral from the wall in the lobby: they say, what kind of amateur performance is this?

On the day of the funeral, the funeral procession moved from the dormitory of the Physicotechnical Institute along Lenin Avenue to the square in front of the UPI. However, they did not reach the square: at the intersection with Kuzbasskaya Street (two years later it was renamed in honor of Gagarin), the path was blocked by militia from nowhere: turn, they say, to the left. To the left - that means straight to the Mikhailovsky cemetery. And no rallies for you ...

Later, from relatives L. Dubinina and R. Slobodin, I learned that the regional committee was generally against the funeral in Sverdlovsk. He insisted that they be buried in Ivdel, near the place of death. He especially put pressure on parents - members of the CPSU, urged them to be conscious. But they courageously stood their ground and did not succumb to persuasion.

In those days, the silence of newspapers and radio seemed completely indecent. Although journalists have made attempts to write about this more than once. Own correspondent of "Uralsky Rabochy" Gennady Grigoriev handed over the material immediately, as soon as he learned about the tragedy. But it was not published. As it turned out later, Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, himself suggested that Kirilenko, the secretary of the regional committee, should not rush into publications. Like, they'll find everyone else, then we'll see.

When they were found, Gennady Konstantinovich, having updated and expanded the material, again offered it to the newspaper. But the editor again shelved the manuscript: he could not print it by his own authority, and the regional committee did not give permission.

In order to print, the regional committee officials later explained, it was necessary to inform Khrushchev about this, but Kirilenko did not want to call him on this issue, to remind him of the tragedy.

Grigoriev was then motivated to refuse publication as follows: “Time, old man, a lot has already passed, is it worth it to stir up all this again, upset the parents and relatives of the dead once again? ..”

Ends don't meet

The last four corpses - Dubinina, Zolotarev, Thibaut-Brignolles and Kolevatov - were discovered only on May 4th. They lay under the very bank of the river, under a thick layer of snow, not very far from the fire, near which the bodies of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko had previously been found.

There are many contradictions and mysteries in the documents of the investigative case containing a description of this terrible discovery.

The most complete information was given in the decision to dismiss the case, signed by the forensic prosecutor from Sverdlovsk, junior justice adviser Lev Nikitich Ivanov. Here are the numbers: the bodies were found under a four-meter layer of snow, 75 meters from the fire pit under a cedar. And this is how they looked outwardly: "The dead Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev were found well-dressed. Dubinina was dressed worse - her faux fur jacket and cap were on Zolotarev, Dubinina's unbooted leg was wrapped in Krivonischenko's woolen trousers."

The fact that these four were wearing some of the clothes of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko - trousers, sweaters - is also mentioned in other documents. It is also mentioned that other items of clothing that belonged to the two tourists found earlier were also lying here. Other people's clothes had even cuts - apparently, they were removed from the corpses. When, by whom, for what purpose? It can, of course, be assumed that with these clothes someone tried to save the freezing here, but still alive guys. But three of the four were so rumpled that, according to the medical examiner, they could hardly have survived longer than Doroshenko and Krivonischenko, whose clothes were cut off. And it’s hard to believe that Kolevatov (the only one of the four who did not have serious bodily injuries) managed to light a fire and run from the fire to the snow hole (back and forth one hundred to one hundred and fifty meters in deep snow), so that later everything - still freeze next to these three. Yes, and his traces would probably have remained - but there were no these traces!

"Krivonischenko's knife was found near the corpses, with which young fir trees were cut at the fire," the decree reads further. And again the question is: how is it established that the firs were cut with this particular knife? The question for the essence of the matter, perhaps, is insignificant, but when the investigator once (remember the log “from the last parking lot?”), And another time gives out assumptions for established facts, the thought of fitting the results of the investigation to a predetermined scheme creeps involuntarily.

Here, clothes from dead bodies, for sure, could be cut off with that knife, since the clothes are here and the knife is also here. Or maybe the tent was shredded with the same knife? It was not difficult for the experts to confirm or refute these assumptions, but for some reason (why?) no one raised this question before them.

"Two watches were found on Thibault's hand," the order written by investigator Ivanov reads further. "One showed 8 hours 14 minutes, the second - 8 hours 39 minutes."

“A forensic autopsy established that Kolevatov’s death was due to low temperature (frost). He has no bodily injuries.

The death of Dubinina, Thibaut-Brignolles and Zolotarev - as a result of multiple bodily injuries.

Dubinina has a symmetrical fracture of the ribs: 2, 3, 4, 5 on the right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 on the left. In addition, there is an extensive hemorrhage in the heart.

Thibault-Brignolles has a massive hemorrhage in the right temporal muscle, respectively, a depressed fracture of the skull bones measuring 9x7 cm.

Zolotarev has a fracture of the ribs on the right 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 along the thoracic and midclavicular line, which caused death.

Here new riddle: four corpses are nearby, but three seem to be passed through some kind of terrible threshing machine, and the fourth has no injuries. Frozen and all. Or maybe it’s still Kolevatov, who, by some lucky chance, did not fall into that threshing machine, then cut off the clothes from the dead Krivonischenko and Doroshenko in order to save severely crippled, but still living friends from freezing? Probably, it would not be so difficult for forensic specialists who studied the scene of the crime to verify such an assumption, but for some reason this question did not interest them either. Now, forty years later, we can only reason based on the protocols they compiled, and the key details are not found in the protocols. Yes, at least: how was Kolevatov himself dressed when he was found?

But still, to one question that was asked both then and later by many, the document answers, although, you see, somewhat evasively:

"The investigation carried out did not establish the presence of other people, except for a group of tourists, on February 1 and 2, 1959 in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bheight 1079."

Well, well, maybe those appeared here a little earlier? Or later? For there were finds here, forcing us to assume that someone did visit this place (about them a little later). But the document does not clarify this issue and therefore ends with a pacifying conclusion:

“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 were unable to overcome ".

In parallel with the Sverdlovsk resident Ivanov, in those days, the prosecutor of the city of Ivdel, the junior adviser to justice Tempalov, conducted his investigation of the tragedy. In his protocol, the place of discovery of the corpses is indicated by slightly different numbers: "50 meters from the cedar (Ivanov had - 75. - A.G.), 4 corpses were found in the stream - three men and a woman. They were dug out from under the snow with a depth of 2 - 2.5 meters (Ivanov's snow layer thickness is 4 meters. - A.G.).

The bodies are in the water. The men lie with their heads down the stream, the woman against the stream.

The woman's body has been identified - it's Dubinina. She is wearing the following clothes: on her head - a balaclava, on her body - a yellow T-shirt, a cowboy shirt, two sweaters, leggings, ski pants. On the legs: on the left - 2 woolen socks, on the right - half a wrapped beige sweater.

On all the corpses - traces of decomposition. Two of them lie, as if embracing, without hats, in windbreakers.

Up the stream, six meters away from the footprints, a flooring was found at a depth of 2.5 meters. The flooring on the snow consists of 14 fir and 1 birch tops. It has things on it."

It is not clear what kind of flooring is, who, when and why it was built. And even think about how many labors it took to cut with a knife (and what else? We don’t talk about a saw) fifteen - well, not branches. Who among the perishing has found so much time and energy? Obviously, it was easier to get to the tent, and there were warm blankets, a stove, and food.

And things are unclear. For some reason, there is no complete list of things found at the scene of the tragedy. There is only a protocol for examining things found in late February - early March. But there is no addition to it, dated the beginning of May. It’s a pity: perhaps it would help to clarify something in Tempalov’s protocol: “Half of a beige sweater was found 15 meters from the stream, under a tree. an ebonite sheath for a knife was found, the same ones were found under the snow at the site of the discovery of the tent. A table spoon made of white metal was also found nearby ... "

These very ebonite scabbards are especially mysterious, especially since I did not find any other mention of them in the file. They do not appear either in the list of identified items or in the list of items unidentified by Yudin.

Oddly enough, he didn’t recognize a lot at all: glasses (- 4 to - 4.5 diopters in a green case; people with such myopia are not often found among tourists, if there was one among the Dyatlovites, it was not difficult to establish the owner of the glasses), axes - two large and one small, two-handed saw in a case, skis - 1 pair, ice ax - 1 pc. Covers for shoes - 9 pairs (all torn), mittens - 20 pieces. From dishes: 7 spoons, 5 mugs, three aluminum cups.

Of course, he did not reach the forest with the group, and therefore he could not see some things. But skis, axes, a saw, an ice ax are not needles. And it is unlikely that they appeared in the detachment only after January 28, when they said goodbye to a sick comrade. Moreover, they said goodbye already in an abandoned village, after which the route turned to places that were completely uninhabited.

Meanwhile, Yudin could not be denied observation: he even knew to whom what soap belonged ...

Two more details noted in this protocol also seem strange: the things found in the backpacks were folded randomly. And Dyatlov was dressed, according to Yudin, in his sweater, which he, when leaving, gave Kolevatov.

There are a lot of questions with this confusion in clothes. The case says: “The moment of the disaster caught the group while changing clothes. Therefore, the exit from the tent was extremely hasty. The tourists clearly understood that leaving the tent in this form was death. But they left. Therefore, the reason that forced them to leave it could be only fear of immediate death."

It is difficult to comprehend the logic of a forensic scientist: in order to avoid immediate death, the tourists rushed towards... certain death?! Most likely, he wanted to say something else - that some sudden and unknown horror fettered their minds and forced them to flee, not thinking about the consequences. Such a version would explain both the non-flooded stove and the confused clothes. But new questions would arise: why are the things in the tent stacked in relative order? Why wasn't there some of the sweat-drenched clothes thrown off by tourists? The protocol of inspection of the tent does not clarify the situation. On what, then, is the investigator's assertion about dressing based? Or again the solution of the problem is adjusted to the ready answer?

Riddles multiply

A forensic examination of the first five corpses was carried out on 8 March. Four, found later, on May 9 in the mortuary of the central hospital of the administration of the post office N-240 under the guidance of the forensic expert of the regional forensic medical examination bureau Boris Vozrozhdenny.

Reading the acts of a forensic medical investigation is, of course, not for the faint of heart, but in our case we cannot do without it. They nevertheless give a more complete picture than a concise, brief decision to dismiss the case, in which the forensic prosecutor L. Ivanov does not even pay attention to small scratches and abrasions on the corpses. But in vain. After all, it is one thing when they are received at the time of death, and another when scabs formed on them, because this means that they began to heal, and this, as you understand, is possible only during life.

About Rustem Slobodin, the protocol of investigator Ivanov only says that, unlike his comrades, who had numerous minor injuries, he was found to have a large, about 6 centimeters long and up to a millimeter wide, skull fracture and post-mortem divergence of the temporo-parietal sutures - on the left and right. And in the act of the forensic medical examination of the corpse, an incomparably more complex picture is presented: “In the middle part of the forehead, there are small abrasions of brown-red color of parchment density, slightly depressed. Above them are two linear scratches under a dry brown crust up to 1.5 cm long, located parallel to the superciliary arches at a distance of 0.3 cm from each other ... In the area of ​​​​the upper eyelid on the right, a brown-red abrasion measuring 1x0.5 cm. -brown color, pupils are dilated... On the back of the nose and in the area of ​​the apex of the nose, there are soft tissues of a brown-red color.At the tip of the nose, a section of soft tissues under a dry brown-cherry crust measuring 1.5x1 cm.The mouth is open.Traces of discharge from the opening of the nose gore."

Here, it would be better to extract control information from the protocol of examining the site of the tragedy: was there blood somewhere in the snow or on clothes? But there is not a word about that. Not in any document.

We read the act further: “The right half of the face is somewhat swollen, there are many small abrasions of irregular shape of parchment density under a dry crust, passing partially to the chin. On the left half of the face there are small abrasions of the same nature, among them one abrasion measuring 1.2x0.4 cm under a dry brown crust in the area of ​​the zygomatic tuber... Small abrasions of a dark red color on the neck on the left... In the area of ​​the metacarpophalangeal joints of the hands, protruding parts of soft tissues measuring 8x1.5 cm, covered with a dry parchment density crust, are deposited. of the left hand, the area of ​​sedimentation of brown-cherry color of parchment density, 6x2 cm in size ... "

And here's the conclusion: "Injuries received during life, as well as in an agonal state and posthumously."

As you can see, the medical examiner Vozrozhdenny describes all the pathologies he discovered with commendable scrupulousness. And yet, it turns out, he still admits a very significant oversight in doing so. As the specialists of the regional prosecutor's office explained to me, it is not supposed to lump together intravital and post-mortem injuries, it should be written specifically: these were received during life, but these - after death. For often very serious circumstances are hidden behind this difference. Here's how in this case: a whole bunch of intravital injuries are described that were not fatal (Slobodin died after all from hypothermia - the expert has no doubt about that). Then where does a person get serious post-mortem injuries?

The same negligence (if only such a definition is appropriate here) is found in other documents of the forensic medical examination in this case.

The act of examining the corpse of Lyudmila Dubinina states that on the surface of her left thigh there is a diffuse bruise of blue-lilac color measuring 10x5 cm with hemorrhage into the thickness of the skin, there is no tongue in the oral cavity ... "The death of L. Dubinina," the forensic expert concludes, " occurred as a result of an extensive hemorrhage in the heart, multiple bilateral fracture of the ribs, profuse internal bleeding into the chest cavity.These injuries could have occurred as a result of exposure to a large force, which resulted in a severe closed fatal injury to the chest. strength followed by a fall, a throw."

“For life”, according to the norms of the language, should mean either “for the rest of your life” (in this context, complete nonsense), or “after life” (and then what kind of “fall”, what kind of throw” could befall a dead body?). However, from the context it can be assumed that most likely for the investigator "life" is the same as "life". Well, then there are no big questions. And yet: if an unknown force slammed the girl on the ground when she was still alive, then how could it happen that there were no scratches or abrasions on her body, but only one big bruise on her thigh?

The same is with Alexander Zolotarev: "A fracture of the ribs is the result of a large force exerted on the chest at the moment of falling, squeezing or throwing." But there are no scratches or abrasions.

A complete mystery about Dubinina's lack of language: no and no, as if this is in the order of things.

Nicholas Thibault-Brignolles, in addition to a depressed comminuted fracture, has a length of one of the cracks in the skull - 17 centimeters. Investigator Ivanov does not write about this in his decision, although after the anatomy of the corpse he additionally questioned B. Vozrozhdenny about this serious injury. This conversation has been recorded.

Question: "From the action of what force Thibault-Brignoles could receive such a wound?"

Answer: “As a result of a throw, a fall, but, I believe, not from the height of my height, that is, I slipped, fell and hit my head. speed".

Question: "Is it possible to assume that Thibaut was hit with a stone that was in the hand of a man?"

Answer: "In this case, soft tissues would be damaged, but this was not found."

In the documents on the causes of death of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, it is noted that they received abrasions, scratches and skin wounds when they fell on snow, ice, stones. And investigator Ivanov would later add: and when climbing for knots for a fire on a cedar. But there is no confirmation of this in the examination. Why did the forensic scientist need this tree climbing?

So, everyone fell, but the nature of the injuries received was different. But what kind of force threw tourists like that? Hurricane wind twisted? But after all, the tent upstairs has not been torn down, the trees - pines, cedars - are intact.

It is worth adding a few more important circumstances - for all the dead, the forensic examination notes a peculiar, reddish-purple skin color. Moreover, both the face and the legs, the torso. Has anything been done to explain its cause? Everyone has dilated pupils (and what follows from this?), the absence of alcohol in the body. Everyone also took food at the same time - 6-8 hours before death.

After the autopsy of the corpses, parts of the internal organs were taken from all of them for chemical and histological analysis. The results of these studies are unknown. In his subsequent documents, the criminologist Ivanov does not even mention them.

There is another mysterious page that appeared in the case not immediately, but in mid-May: a physical and technical examination of clothing for the content of radioactive substances of the last four victims. Its results were sometimes withdrawn as irrelevant, then returned again. In the end, the decision to dismiss the case was not included.

“As a result of dosimetric measurements of solid clothing substrates,” the expert says, “the maximum load is set on a sweater - 9900 sprays / min. from 150 sq. cm. On other“ substrates ”it is much less. washout ranges from 30 to 60 percent.

When determining the type of radiation, it was found that the activity takes place due to beta particles. Alpha particles and gamma particles were not detected.

The lack of appropriate instruments and conditions in the laboratory did not allow for radiochemical analysis to determine the chemical structure of the emitter and the energy of its radiation."

Where did the radioactive dust come from on the clothes of the four? Is it a lot or a little - 9900 disintegrations per minute?

Here is the answer given to the relevant request by specialists from one of the laboratories of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences: “Unfortunately, the examination data on the contamination of the clothes of dead tourists, which are available in the case, are not enough. Was there natural background radiation at the scene?How did you establish the absence of gamma and alpha emitters?

Based on a maximum contamination level of 9900 sprays/min. for 150 sq. cm of the surface, then calculations show that the level of "phonation" of the sweater is only slightly higher than the natural background in Yekaterinburg - 10 - 18 microR/h.

It can be assumed that such an increase in radionuclide contamination is the result of atmospheric fallout from nuclear weapons tests at the northern test sites. It is noteworthy that it was on the sweater that the maximum levels of contamination were found. Perhaps this is due to the rather high sorption properties of the material, which could absorb radioactive substances from melt water on itself."

Note that the distance from Ivdel to Novaya Zemlya in a straight line is about one and a half thousand kilometers, quite a trifle for a radioactive cloud.

That is probably why investigator Ivanov sometimes hid the pages of the examination, then again hemmed them into the case. He probably just didn't know what to do with them. Although these beta radiations may have had something to do with the death of the group ...

Contradictory, inexplicable from the standpoint of everyday experience and common sense, the picture of the death of tourists, captured in the protocols and acts of the investigation (something leaked into everyday life), prompted the invention of the most fantastic versions of what happened. Moreover, there was no shortage of “building materials” for such versions: just when public opinion was agitated by the death of students, mysterious phenomena began to be observed in the Ural skies.

Intrigues of aliens - or?..

On March 31, 1959, one of the military units guarding the camp of prisoners in the north of the Sverdlovsk region was alerted.

“31.3.59 at 4 o’clock in the morning,” the father commanders telegraphed after the lights out to the higher command, “in the southeast direction, orderly Meshcheryakov noticed a large ring of fire, which moved towards us for 20 minutes, then hiding behind the hill. Before how to disappear, a star appeared from the center of the ring, which soon increased to the size of the moon, and then began to fall down, separating from the ring.

A strange phenomenon was observed by the entire personnel, alerted. Please explain what it is and its safety, as in our conditions it makes an alarming impression. Avenburg, Potapov, Sogrin.

This was far from the first alarm for an inexplicable cause. A month and a half earlier (the death of the Dyatlovites was not yet known) an unusual report was received addressed to the head of the Ivdel police department: dense cirrus clouds.Then the star freed itself from the tail, became even brighter and flew, as if inflating, forming a large ball, shrouded in haze.The star moved from south to east.

"Meteorologist Tokarev"

By an inexplicable coincidence, on the same day - February 17, 1959 - a sensational note for those times under the heading "Unusual celestial phenomenon" was published by the newspaper "Tagil Worker": "Yesterday at six o'clock 55 minutes local time in the east - southeast at an altitude of 20 degrees from the horizon, a luminous ball the size of the moon appeared. About seven o'clock a flash occurred inside it and a very bright core of the ball became visible. It itself began to glow more intensely, a luminous cloud appeared around it. The cloud spread over the entire eastern part of the sky. Soon after this there was a second flash, it looked like a crescent of the moon.Gradually, the cloud increased, a luminous point remained in the center.

A. Kissel, Deputy Head of Communications of the Vysokogorsky mine."

By the way, this is the only article about UFOs in the Ural sky that was leaked to the regional press in 1959. But soon after the funeral of the first five Dyatlovites, more precisely on March 29, a small article "Fireballs" appeared in the "Ural Worker" about a mysterious phenomenon that allegedly took place in a completely different part of the planet: "The inhabitants of New Zealand witnessed an unusual phenomenon: two large fireballs swept over the southern part of the north island of New Zealand.One of them fell into the sea at a distance of 80-140 kilometers east of Wellington.The fall of the ball caused a powerful shock wave that shook buildings in the coastal areas, shattered the windows in many houses located a few kilometers away from the coast. The glow of the ball was so strong that it was well observed even in bright sunlight. It is believed that the fireballs are large meteorites. "

Since the time of Tsar Saltan, it has been known that many miracles happen “beyond the sea”, so newspaper sensations of this kind do not particularly excite public opinion. However, celestial cataclysms of this magnitude, if they actually happened, could not be ignored by the scientific community. Meanwhile, the New Zealand balls did not become a new likeness of the Tunguska meteorite - they once appeared in a newspaper article published almost at the opposite point from the scene the globe they disappeared without a trace. By the way, in that publication there is no reference to any information Agency or other source of information. And a suspicion involuntarily creeps in: was it not a “duck” fabricated by the KGB in order to bring public interest on a false trail, distract him from certain circumstances that were supposed to be hidden?

For it is not known how it is in New Zealand, but in the Urals some fireballs were actually observed. They were seen - by the way, just in the region of the Mountain of the Dead - and UPI students looking for their missing friends. One of them, V. Meshchiryakov, like the Dyatlovites, then kept a diary, diligently recording his every step in it. Subsequently, this diary mysteriously disappeared from the dorm room. But other impressions do not have to be recorded on paper: living memory keeps them no less firmly. Therefore, many years later, the owner of the disappeared diary remembered well that he had seen “the same bug” - those same fireballs - in the sky near Otorten.

“I didn’t feel any fear. I recorded the time and began to carefully examine the object as it approached, since the flight path was approaching. When it passed the ridge, it became very visible. It was a smoky color ring, some kind of gas. gas, without changing boundaries, seemed to oscillate, flicker. The stars against the background of the object were first lost, and then began to be viewed. It seemed that the ring was either transparent or hollow inside. In a calm voice, I said into the darkness of the tent: "If anyone wants to look at this one" byaku, "come out."

It seemed to me that everyone was already sleeping, but the group immediately jumped out into the "street".

A bright star in the center of the ring, moving along with it, suddenly began to slowly descend, without changing its brightness and size. When the ring approached the slope of the mountain, the star was already at its lower edge.

Soon the object disappeared behind the nearest slope, and we were still standing, waiting for something.

About a minute or two passed, and then it seemed to us that behind the mountains, where the ring had disappeared, a beam of electric welding flashed, so that the contours of the ridge stood out.

We didn't get any sounds.

The entire flight of the ring took 22 minutes. According to the general opinion, the distance from us to the object at the closest point was no more than 3-5 kilometers.

Sleep was out of the question! Deviate the route of the ring by a few degrees, we argued to each other, and it could already cover both us and the former camp of the Dyatlov group on the slope!

We were sure that this was precisely the key to the death of our comrades.

In the morning they sent a radiogram describing a strange object. The answer did not come immediately, but only the next day with hints that, they say, we understand, we are tired, the psyche began to fail.

We gave the second, in a military dry, laconic way. Soon, despite the wind in the mountains, a helicopter flew in, quickly loaded us all, and an hour later we were sitting at the airfield in Ivdel, recovering from an almost vertical descent from a height of 400 meters, as a result of which some of them bled from the ears.

There, one of the leaders of the search expedition approached us and frankly advised us to remain silent about everything. I took this advice as an order and for the first time in so many years I am setting this story on paper just now ... "

So, has the answer been found? These flying objects are the killers of people in the mountains?

In 1990, the Sverdlovsk journalist S. Bogomolov, who was investigating the death of students, received just such an answer from Lev Nikitich Ivanov himself. The same investigator who led (or rather confused) this complex and secret case.

Here is a transcript of that conversation.

“I have my own explanation of what happened,” Ivanov said. - You can even put it in the headline in the newspaper - "The forensic prosecutor believes that the tourists were killed by a UFO! .." By the way, I assumed this even then. I do not undertake to unequivocally state whether these balls are weapons or not, but I am sure that they are directly related to the death of the guys.

But how do you imagine it? After all, there are no traces of an explosion near Otorten and the surrounding area.

And it did not exist in the usual sense for us - as an explosion of a shell, a bomb. It was different, well, as if the balloon had burst.

I guess that's how it happened. The boys had dinner and went to bed. One of them went out of natural necessity (there were traces) and saw something that made everyone immediately leave the tent and run downstairs. I think it was a glowing ball. And he did overtake them, or it happened by chance, at the edge of the forest. Explosion! Three or four are severely injured and die. According to the medical examiner of the Renaissance, it was something like a shock wave or a blow, like in a car accident. Well, then began the struggle for survival. You know, so many years have passed, I have seen all sorts of cases in my prosecutorial life, but I will not forget this story ... I don’t remember all the names, unfortunately. Two, who were found under the cedar... They tried to kindle a fire, climbed on the cedar for knots and shreds of their skin and muscles remained on its bark... Their comrade, who fell behind due to illness, helped a lot. Yudin, it seems. He knew who was wearing what and helped identify who was wearing what. All clothes were mixed up. They stripped the dead to save the living.

I am guilty, very guilty before the relatives of the guys - I did not allow them to the bodies. The only thing he made an exception for the father of Lyuda Dubinina was that he opened the lid of the coffin to show that his daughter was dressed as expected. He lost consciousness.

One thing justifies me - I did not fulfill my will. Kirilenko was then the first secretary, but he did not directly interfere in the matter, Eshtokin, the second secretary, "supervised" me. Several times during the investigation he called to the regional committee. Gave instructions. Game, of course, by today's standards. I did not work out the version about luminous balls. So they "hushed up" the matter ... "

When Lev Nikitich gave this interview, he was no longer working in Sverdlovsk, but as the prosecutor of the Kustanai region. The interview turned out to be one of the last in the life of a criminologist. Soon he was gone...

Tellingly, another investigator, Vladimir Ivanovich Karataev, names approximately the same reason for the death of tourists. In 1959, he worked in the Ivdel prosecutor's office and also began to conduct an investigation, but was then removed. Some of his memoirs have already appeared in print. I think that for the sake of completeness, it is worth citing them in their entirety.

“I was one of the first at the crash site. I quickly identified about a dozen witnesses who said that on the day the students were killed, a ball flew by. The witnesses - Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov - not only described it, but also drew it (drawings these materials were later withdrawn from the file.) All these materials were soon requested by Moscow, in particular by the deputy prosecutor of the republic, Urakov. I handed them over to the prosecutor, Ivdel Tempalov, who took them to Sverdlovsk.

Then Prodanov, the first secretary of the city party committee, invites me to his place and transparently hints: there is, they say, a proposal - to stop the case. Clearly, not his personal, nothing more than an indication "from above". I inform Tempalov, he calls Sverdlovsk and hears the same advice: there is nothing more for you to mess around with, it's time to stop the business. At my request, Prodanov also called Kirilenko. And I heard the same thing: stop the case. Literally a day or two later, I found out that Ivanov took it into his own hands, who quickly turned it off ...

Of course, it's not his fault. They also put pressure on him. After all, everything was done in a regime of terrible secrecy. Some generals, colonels came and sternly warned us not to loosen our tongues in vain. Journalists were generally not allowed to take a cannon shot. True, I did help one very nimble of them - Yuri Yarovoy from "To Change!" I pushed him into the helicopter as a witness. Risked, of course. Yes, and he would be unhappy if they knew who he was ...

At first, Mansi was unequivocally blamed for the death of tourists. Many of them then passed through the pre-trial detention cell. There were even proposals to torture them, as in 1937. But luckily it didn't come to that...

When the first group of Dyatlovites was dissected, only a very limited circle of people was allowed into the morgue: everything was guarded by the KGB. I was as an orderly.

Let me remind you that the cause of death of the first five people was called hypothermia. The forensic examination also had such preliminary information. But when one of the experts - his surname Hans - opened the skin on the head of one of the corpses, he involuntarily cried out in an inhuman voice: the skull was roughly flattened! Others were also mutilated. I called the leadership of the state emergency commission in Lozva and reported on the circumstances of the autopsy. They send me away. What are you saying? What injuries can there be, they are frozen? Do not believe me, I say, come. But they don't seem to have arrived...

I remember well: there were two large barrels of alcohol in the morgue. After the autopsy, we all literally almost bathed in them - in this way we were disinfected, however, not knowing from what ...

The mystery of the death of the Dyatlovites haunted me for many years. It still worries me. When glasnost began, I even tried to find Yuri Yarovoy in order to finally write the whole truth, but I found out that he died in 1980 in a car accident with his wife ...

I had familiar helicopter pilots in Ivdel - Gladyrev, Strelnik and Gagarin. Desperate boys. The car could even be parked in the yard of local residents. Somewhere shortly after the death of the guys I receive a message: the hunter Yepanchikov found some strange "piece of iron" in the taiga. We sit down in the helicopter, we fly to it. Indeed, the piece of iron was curious. But she was not interested in the investigation.

By the way, soon this wonderful crew of helicopter pilots crashed in the mountains, everyone died. There was a feeling that it was the death of the Dyatlovites that pulled a whole chain of other deaths with it. Just the real Russian version of "Octopus"!

My conclusion regarding the death of the Dyatlov group is one: they were killed by the explosion of some rocket that fell from the sky (one might say, a ball, a UFO). Because by the nature of the injuries, all of them were lifted quite high and thrown, hit the ground ... "

Probably, on this confession of a forensic scientist who studied the tragedy before it became the subject of incomprehensible intrigues of the “competent authorities”, one could put an end to our investigation. Even if these fireballs would remain a mystery for the time being. In the end, the physical nature of this obviously man-made phenomenon is not so important: it is enough to know that aliens have nothing to do with it (otherwise why would the state cover up all traces so zealously?), that the guys turned out to be accidental victims of some large-scale experiment, which should be declassified even after all that had happened, the country's leadership considered it inappropriate, perhaps judging that the dead could not be resurrected anyway. In a word, a normal tragic collision between the times of ideological unanimity and the Cold War.

That's how it is, but it doesn't turn out to be a beautiful tragically mournful ending! Some, albeit small, but numerous facts unfortunately do not fit into a harmonious plot with fireballs. And, therefore, it is impossible to put an end here.

Complicating circumstances

We have already met with a number of facts that are inconvenient for the version with balls - I will remind you of some without returning to their discussion.

Ebony scabbard and many other things not identified by Yudin. And by the way, where are the knives from those scabbards? Something is silent about them protocols of the investigation.

The relative order in the tent, from which the tourists ran out, according to the version of the investigator who closed the case, in a terrible hurry and panic. They ran out to run out, but someone else managed to cut it - from the inside! - the strong canvas walls of the tent were never found with a knife. Thoroughly shredded; even if the knife is very sharp, you can hardly do it in a matter of seconds. And did he cut it to pieces in order to jump out through the hole? Probably, it was not difficult to determine from the tracks.

Skis, somehow very carelessly laid out under the bottom of the tent. And what kind of skis were in front of the entrance to the tent? Didn't Yudin or some others recognize them? Was it the ninth or maybe the tenth (then where did it come from) couple?

However, it's not even about the details: just the version with balls makes you look at the whole situation from a different angle. How plausible is it that "fireballs" (we will continue to call these "unidentified objects" that way) could cause horror and fatal panic for seasoned tourists?

We will not discuss the reaction of the unit raised on alarm: the military were obliged to control the situation, to “watch”.

Remember better how V. Meshchiryakov and his comrades in the rescue group perceived “this bullshit”: for 22 minutes they calmly watched the approach and disappearance of a strange celestial object, not at all trying to run somewhere. And even the Mansi forest people, who were interviewed by the investigator Karataev, when they saw the balls for the first time and, as it seemed to them, very close - literally hundreds of meters away from themselves, did not panic and did not run headlong, losing their minds from them.

So do we have the slightest reason to believe that the Dyatlovites - people with a good technical education, sober-minded, trained and tested more than once in difficult campaigns - could behave like the natives who fell prostrate at the thunder of rifle shots, or the American Indians, who were embraced by the sacred awe at the sight of the horses brought by the Spaniards?

Of course, one can argue this way: other witnesses were lucky - the mysterious taiga UFOs flew around them, and the Dyatlovites, unfortunately, were at the epicenter of their damaging effect.

Well, it is quite possible to imagine such a plot. An early February evening was approaching; after a difficult many hours of march, the guys set up a tent and went inside to change and get ready for dinner and overnight. And at that moment, somewhere behind a nearby pass, a powerful glow arose, accompanied, perhaps, by an incomprehensible growing roar. The wall of the tent, facing that direction, was brightly lit. It doesn’t matter here - you got scared, you didn’t get scared: in any case, you see, you won’t sit in a tent. Someone jumped out in what they were, on the run, pulling on someone's felt boots, someone's quilted jacket. And there - a wall of fire is moving right at them from the mountain. There is no time for reasoning - they rushed downhill with all their might, overtaking each other ...

It’s just not clear why some of them were literally crushed by some terrible force, while others did not receive serious injuries and remained alive - in order, however, to still die later with an even more painful death, spending their last strength on somehow then to help hopelessly crippled, but still showing signs of life, comrades, and struggling with darkness, cold and uncertainty.

And the most incomprehensible was found below - where the corpses were found. First of all, traces of a fire near the cedar, under which the bodies of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko were found. Here is what one of the witnesses saw there - I quote the protocol: “Two or three meters from the corpses, behind the cedar, there were traces of a fire, quite large, judging by the fact that firebrands up to 80 mm in diameter were preserved, which burned out in half. Under the cedar was found a cowboy shirt, a handkerchief, a few socks, cuffs from a jacket or a sweater and many other small things, eight rubles of money, in banknotes of 3-5 rubles.Twenty meters around the cedar there are traces of how someone from those present cut off a young spruce forest with a knife. About twenty such cuts have been preserved, but the trunks themselves, with the exception of one, were not found.It is impossible to assume that they were used for fireboxes.Firstly, they do not burn well, and secondly, there was relatively much dry material around... "

Yuri Krivonischenko's father did not visit the scene of the tragedy, but conducted his own investigation, meticulously asking for details from his son's friends who participated in the search for the group. So his message to the prosecutor's office can be regarded as a fairly reliable source of information. And this is what attracted special attention of Alexei Konstantinovich: “The guys claim that the fire near the cedar went out not from a lack of fuel (near the fire. - A.G.), but from the fact that they stopped throwing branches into it. This, obviously, could be because the people who were around the fire did not see what to do, or were blinded.According to the students, a few meters from the fire there was a dry tree, and under it there was deadwood, which was not used.If there is a fire, do not use ready-made fuel is, it seems to me, more than strange ... "

Even more strange in this case, I will add on my own, is investigator Ivanov's statement that the guys climbed the cedar in order to cut off knots with a knife for a fire. Although he had to somehow explain the testimony of another witness: “... The side of the cedar facing the tent was cleared of branches to a height of 4-5 meters. These damp branches were not used and partly lay on the ground, partly hung on cedar knots. The investigator, as you can see, was careless: about the fact that the branches were cut for the fire, - his next speculation. Yes, they didn’t seem to be cut off - here is the testimony of another search engine (from the investigation file): “The lower branches of the cedar (dry) at a height of 2 meters were broken off, at a height of 4.5-5 meters - too.” But this clarification does not simplify, but significantly complicates the search for the truth, because it is difficult to explain who, why and how broke off the branches of the cedar at a height of five meters from the ground. In addition, some of them were found under the body of Doroshenko, who, just under the cedar tree, “lay face down, hands under his head. Under his corpse there were three or four knots of cedar of the same thickness. Another witness even claims (and I have already mentioned this) that these knots were broken in such a way that Yuri fell on them with force. That is, he made a fire, climbed high on a cedar (although there was a dry deadwood nearby) and fell flat, breaking off the branches? Some mystic...

So, the trail of a large fire, about twenty young fir trees cut with a knife and no one knew where, two birch trees, which someone also tried to cut, but did not cut to the end (another participant in the search mentions them): “The amount of work done near the cedar says about the fact that it would be impossible for two to fulfill it ... "

Well, we can assume that there were also Dyatlov and Kolevatov who were not injured. (When the cited protocols were drawn up, the bodies of Kolevatov and his three comrades were not found.) What then led them away from the saving fire? Strive to help others? But try to clearly explain how they ended up away from the fire, and, apparently, in a deep snow hole (who dug it, when and with what?) Dubinina, Zolotarev, Thibeaux-Brignoles? According to forensic expert Boris Vozrozhdenny, the injuries of each of them were so devastating that death was supposed to occur in 10-15 minutes. If an unknown force hit them while fleeing from the tent, then already near the cedar it should have been the dead. But on Dubinina - clothes cut off from Krivonischenko. So he froze earlier and Kolevatov brought his clothes to her? How did he know where she was? (Unless he himself dragged three of them there, but why?) And why couldn’t he then return to the fire, and so he stayed here? ..

And on Zolotarev, on the contrary, - Dubinina's clothes. When did he put it on? Another mistake in the tent?

Zina Kolmogorova could come to the light of the fire, crawl (as far as she could) - she was dressed quite warmly, but not shod. Of course, the fire was not lit immediately, during that time it was possible to get frostbite. Maybe she called for help and Dyatlov moved towards her, but did not reach?

With great stretch one has to build all these assumptions, and the more stretch, the less confidence that this is exactly what happened. And another important circumstance is that by the nature of injuries, by the presence of clothing, by the amount of work done, by location (by the fire, on a bare mountainside or in a snow hole), the tourists should have died not simultaneously, but at intervals, maybe up to several hours. Meanwhile, according to the conclusion of the forensic expert, everyone had their last meal 6-8 hours before death, which means that all of them - both those who were mortally injured and those who simply froze - died at about the same time ...

And then there is an incomprehensible flooring near the location of the last four; and then there are things found where, in theory, they should not have been (for example, room slippers 10-15 meters from the tent); and here there are still quite a lot of belongings that belong to no one knows (the things that Yudin did not identify were already mentioned, and here is another typical example: “I personally saw,” Boris Efimovich Slobtsov, a participant in the search, informed the investigator, “how a dark-colored cloth belt was found under a cedar with straps at the ends. Who owns this item and what it is intended for, I don’t know "...

All this taken together involuntarily arouses the suspicion that no matter how plausible the version with fireballs or some other “UFOs” of military purpose seemed, but this drama is unlikely to have done without the participation of actors unknown to us, who, in the course of action, preferred not to lean out from behind the scenes.

Who else could be there?

Versions on this score were put forward the most diverse.

Since the first version of this essay was published - on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the tragedy - in the newspaper "Uralsky Rabochiy", letters-responses, letters-versions began to come to the address of the newspaper. In the same place, in the editorial office, many of my meetings with people who have something to say about those long-standing events took place.

And how many curious judgments I happened to read and listen to!

For the sake of curiosity, it is worth quoting a letter from a Yekaterinburg pensioner: “What is there to guess? In my opinion, everything is clear as daylight. The students were scared by a connecting rod bear. He attacked the tent with a roar, began to tear, they jumped out in what they were, ran away, and then froze ... "Is it necessary to discuss?

But here's a more interesting letter. It was sent by Yekaterinburger V. Korshunov. He said about himself that in 1959 he served in Ivdellag and at that time he had heard a lot about the death of students. Hence his version.

“In the summer of 1959, some people from the convoy liked to quote a rhyme about a camel:

He walked and chewed slowly, Walking with his beloved to the dunes, Then he kissed her And, as usual, spat.

They said that Igor Dyatlov wrote it. How could the convoy recognize these lines? From whom?

In those days, there was a secret military unit in Ivdellag - the "death squadron". In a modern way, special forces. He reported directly to Moscow. His task is to suppress riots in the camps, to catch or eliminate runaway prisoners.

At the end of January 1959, after killing two guards, taking away their clothes and weapons, four hardened recidivists fled, led by a thief in law named Ivan. A "death squadron" was thrown to capture them, without warning about a group of tourists who had gone into the mountains. On that fateful evening, the students, having previously learned several thieves' songs on Vizhay, sang them in a tent. So there was an error. The special forces, confusing tourists with convicts, commit the gravest crime - burst into the tent and inflict fatal blows with butts on four.

What's next? They report on the radio about the incident to the command. In theory, it is necessary to initiate a criminal case, to judge the special forces, to punish the whole secret department. Impossible, this is the disclosure of state secrets. The order comes - "cover your tracks."

The investigation was then quickly curtailed in connection with this. At the same time, such secrecy was introduced with "flying balls", missiles, that the CIA was even seriously worried and soon sent a reconnaissance aircraft of Powers, which was shot down over Sverdlovsk on May 1, 1960, just on the way to Ivdel ... "

This is how all the i's are dotted in one fell swoop, even Powers' goal is explained. V. Korshunov's version is all the more tempting because vague rumors about some kind of connection between the deaths of students and the dangers of hiking in the “zones” zone have been circulating in Sverdlovsk for all these forty years. And here - almost an eyewitness.

But - not confirmed!

In a conversation with me, one of the participants in the search for the Dyatlov group, now a well-known expert in the North, Vladislav Georgievich Karelin, categorically dismissed the version with “special forces”. The fact is, he explained, that in the brigade of search engines there was a whole unit of soldiers led by officers. They said that there were no reports of escapes from the camps at that time. In winter, prisoners rarely escape at all. Investigator L. Ivanov, who was in charge of the case, was also interested in this information. If there was an escape, and even with the murder of the guards, the whole Ivdellag would know about it.

I’ll add on my own: the message that Dyatlov allegedly wrote poetry is also not confirmed. No one has heard of such a hobby. Even relatives. Including his brother, who studied with him at the same time at UPI.

And it has not yet been confirmed that a special unit was stationed in Ivdel under the official or unofficial name "death squadron". The author of the letter himself could not help in this. Moreover, he even found it difficult to at least give the names of one of those with whom he himself then served and who could, not by document, but at least verbally confirm his story.

It is curious that V. Karelin, who so categorically denies today the myth of the "death squadron", was one of the first who, forty years ago, put forward a version about the participation of "behind the scenes" characters in the bloody drama. “My opinion,” he then stated for the record, “only an armed group of people of at least 10 people could have frightened the Dyatlov group like that ...”

True, he now admits that this opinion was not entirely “mine”.

I must say that this line appeared in my protocol thanks to Lev Nikitich Ivanov himself. He imposed it on me by asking a provocative question, and then demanded that it be included in the protocol. And that's why. In the first days of the investigation, Ivanov said only one thing: "The students did not die by their own death, it was murder." We told him about "fireballs". But he was adamant. That is why I tried to get this thought into the protocols. And he achieved this.

Approximately ten days after the start of the investigation, Ivanov was recalled to Sverdlovsk, and then sent to Moscow for several days. And when he returned, we did not recognize him. It was a completely different investigator, who no longer said anything about the murder or about the "balls". And we often began to advise one thing: "Take less tongues" ...

From all this it is impossible to draw an unambiguous conclusion that someone else took (or did not take) part in the tragedy, but it is clearly visible that the authorities reacted rather painfully to this version, instructing investigator Ivanov: as soon as she began to take on flesh, so it immediately rushed to hush it up.

But since no one directly forced V. Karelin to abandon it - after much thought he himself considered it not convincing enough - it makes sense to get to know his current point of view better.

Not people, but rockets?

Vladislav Georgievich Karelin today explains the death of the Dyatlovites by an unsuccessful launch of a space rocket.

“It seems to me like this,” he argues. “By the opening day of the 21st Congress of the CPSU in the Kremlin, another rocket was launched. But it turned out to be unsuccessful. That is probably why, as journalist Yaroslav Golovanov writes in one of his books, he was so nervous during the work of the congress Sergei Pavlovich Korolev.And there was no report about another victory in space.The most terrible thing is that the flight path of this rocket and the path of tourists crossed.

When we found the tent, I very carefully examined everything around. The first thing that caught my eye was that the snow was slightly melted down the slope. Moreover, a strip of crust was quite clearly visible, on which traces were preserved. But, according to our calculations, for some reason, not nine people, but eight. I have not seen a single one left with a bare foot. And the tracks from the tent did not stretch for 500 meters, as Ivanov says in the case, but only for 250 - 300. And then they got lost. Then they reappeared right next to the forest, under the cedar, where there was a fire and where the bodies of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko were found. By the way, the ski tracks, along which the guys came to the slope, were not visible.

Everything shows that the tragedy occurred when the group was in a tent. Maybe she was getting ready for bed. At this time, someone out of necessity - there was one "mark" - went out into the "street" (one for a few hours of nine people - still suspiciously few. - A.G.) and noticed a powerful column of fire approaching at a low altitude . After a few seconds, he became visible even through the walls of the tent. There was a command to run, to escape. Who was in what was starting to jump out. There was no time to wrap up in quilted jackets. And the pillar of fire is already near. The group, hand in hand, rushed down. But the fire still covers them. The oxygen above them is almost burned out, there is nothing to breathe. In addition, tourists are dazzled. It is possible that they also inhaled rocket fuel components. They get lost on the slope, fall on the rocks and get injured, as the doctors say, incompatible with life. Those that find each other at the cedar are trying to fight for life, make a fire, but their strength is already running out. Soon they will freeze...

At first glance, the hypothesis is quite logical. By the way, it turns out very similar to what we got when we discussed the version with “balls”.

This means that the counterarguments can be put forward about the same.

But you can add others to them. Well, first of all, rocket specialists do not confirm that atmospheric oxygen is so powerfully burned out by fire flying out of nozzles. Yes, you don’t even have to be an expert: after all, a rocket is also designed to fly in an airless space, there is no oxygen “from outside” there; all that is needed to sustain the reaction in the nozzles is contained in the propellant itself.

Another counter-argument: the editorial offices of newspapers and private individuals have repeatedly made official inquiries about Baikonur. Here is a typical answer: “During the period you are interested in (from January 25 to February 5, 1959), no ballistic missiles and space rockets were launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Nothing was given, by the way, and official requests to the Ministry of Defense. Although the well-known rocket scientist B. Raushenbakh, in response to a request from the newspaper Uralsky Rabochiy, expressed his conviction that the "ends" of this story should be sought precisely in the military department.

The opinion of the scientist was unexpectedly confirmed by the message of the former head of the party of the Sverdlovsk aerial photographic forest management expedition "Lesproekt" I.V. Silov. As it turned out from his letter, Baikonur most likely has nothing to do with it. A military missile range covering several hundred thousand hectares - mostly swampy and inaccessible terrain for humans - was quite close to the places where the tourists died. Only slightly to the north, on the territory of the Tyumen region, in the area of ​​​​the sources of the rivers Malaya and Bolshaya Sosva.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have official documents with seals in this regard,” the author of the letter says. “We did not do aerial photography of that area, but the Mansi from the village of Suevat-Paul, where I lived for a long time, claimed that all the “fireballs” flew in that direction, along the eastern Ural ridge, and disappeared just in that region. But technology is technology. It does not always work like clockwork. And then, most likely, the technology was still being developed ...

I believe this accident was the fault of the Main Directorate of Strategic Missile Forces."

The testimony of a former aerial reconnaissance officer is all the more credible because it is indirectly confirmed by other sources. Geologists who worked in those parts told me that they had heard more than once about “fireballs” from the Mansi. “Balloons” supposedly were an almost familiar sight for them, but they did not fly throughout the Northern and Subpolar Urals. Reindeer herders north of Saran-Paul did not see them. So, it can be assumed that they either changed course, or few people saw them, since that area was almost not populated, or they really ended their flight somewhere here.

According to the information collected about the "balls" in the criminal case, it can be concluded that they were spotted by people mainly along the Nizhny Tagil-Ivdel line. But whether or not residents of the Perm and Tyumen regions observed them, there is no data.

Although, as we already know from the media, strategic weapons were being tested in the Perm region in those years. There, apparently, nuclear underground explosions were carried out - they were discussed, for example, on January 18 of this year in one of the broadcasts of the radio station "Freedom".

There are strange objects and very close to the place where the students died. About 20-25 kilometers from Auspiya, an empty and very deep mine, which was built by the military, is still preserved in the rock. According to eyewitnesses - the former director of the Ivdel hydrolysis plant N. Kotegov and the now deceased hunter V. Akulov, earlier, ten kilometers before reaching it, there were notices hanging by the road: "Forbidden Zone". The forest in those places - relic mountain cedar forests - was not cut by the prisoners.

I don’t dare to say exactly how one is connected with the other (“this mystery is great”), but only the “rocket” version, in the light of the above facts, seems to be not even without foundation. Moreover, a rocket is something much more real and understandable than the mysterious “fireballs”, which, for some reason, did not show themselves in the next forty years. And that is why today many of those who are still haunted by the mystery of the long-standing tragedy and who shared their observations and thoughts in the editorial office of the Uralsky Rabochy are leaning towards the “rocket” version. Among them are Petr Ivanovich Bartolomey - now a doctor of sciences, a professor at UPI (now Ural State Technical University, Ural State Technical University), and in the past - also a participant in the search for the Dyatlov group; former radio operator of the search group Egor Semenovich Nevolin; retired major Agofonov, who served in Ivdel when the tragedy occurred. The brothers Lyudmila Dubinina and Rustem Slobodin are also inclined to the same version. All these people have different ideas about the damaging factors of the fatal rocket (after all, no one has declassified them), but they agree on one thing: student tourists became victims of rocket tests. And it is high time, they insist, to remove the veil of secrecy from this crime.

Without knowing for sure what kind of rocket it was (if it really was), what its damaging factors are, you can fantasize almost limitlessly and explain almost all the mysteries that forensic specialists encountered at the scene of the tragedy. It can be argued, for example (go check it out!), that someone was thrown up by a blast wave and hit with force against stones, a crust of ice, a tree, and someone at that moment found himself in a protected hollow, but was blinded by the brightest flash ... But no other traces of that blast wave were found there, and the pupils of all the dead were equally dilated.

And again it will be difficult to explain the illogical actions of the victims, the incomprehensible flooring and unidentified things ...

In a word, the “rocket” version is convincing, but it is difficult to exclude the participation of outsiders in the tragedy.

That is why for all forty years these two versions not only coexist, but also gravitate towards each other, sometimes forming quite convincing symbioses.

And rockets, and people?

Here is the assumption expressed in a conversation with investigator Ivanov by the father of Lyudmila Dubinina - in those years, a responsible worker of the Sverdlovsk Economic Council (I quote the protocol):

“If some projectile was launched, but it deviated and did not hit the intended range, then, in my opinion, the department that fired this projectile should have sent aerial reconnaissance to the place of its fall and rupture. To find out what he could do there and, of course, to provide assistance to possible victims. If this was not done, then this is a callous attitude on the part of the department towards people, whether they are tourists or hunters. If aerial reconnaissance was sent, then, presumably, it picked up people ...

I did not share what was stated here with anyone, I think it is not subject to disclosure ... "

The reader, without my prompting, will see and appreciate the stamp of time on the psychology of a father who has just lost his beloved twenty-year-old daughter (let me remind you: it was Alexander Nikolaevich who fainted when he looked under the lid of Lyudmilin's coffin).

And forty years later, the same, in essence, version, only without roundabouts, without looking back at “possible - impossible”, was voiced on the city radio of Yekaterinburg by journalist Nikolai Porsev and a former graduate of the UPI, a tourist and educator of scouts of the Kirovsky district of Yekaterinburg, Yuri Kuntsevich, for a long time years studying the case of the Dyatlovites.

I see this tragedy like this, - said Yuri Konstantinovich. - There was no tent on the slope. What's the point of putting it there? The forest is only one and a half kilometers away. The camp of tourists was in the border of the forest. The military is testing a new weapon, for example, the neutron bomb already invented at that time - it kills all life, but leaves natural and man-made objects intact. Suppose the Dyatlovites did not suffer and remained alive (neutron rays strike in a straight line, tourists were protected by terrain folds). But they saw the effect of the bomb. Curiosity takes over, they go to the hill for reconnaissance, and there are people. Who? Those who are supposed to strictly guard state secrets. This unit flew in by helicopter to look at the test results. The Dyatlov group goes straight to them. What to do? The order comes: destroy! And the special forces carry out a terrible command. And then ... Further - a matter of technology. Staging natural death in extreme conditions. What do human lives mean when it comes to state secrets? Don't the events in Novocherkassk in the 1960s prove this?

Who knows, maybe that's what happened. Although another option is quite real: all the Dyatlovites just suffered, but remained alive. But this defeat is noticeable, it can no longer be hidden. What to do? Send them to the doctors to be diagnosed? This meant the full disclosure of state secrets.

Perhaps the Dyatlovites died not on the first of February, but a little later: after all, someone developed the plan, coordinated it ...

In this regard, it is logical to assume that no one dragged the corpses of the Dyatlovites along the slope. Most likely, they were carefully scattered from a helicopter, but from a low height. Is this not the reason for the presence of post-mortem injuries, but the absence of bruises? And what kind of bruises can there be or the same blood in a dead person, perhaps already stiff?

When the last four were thrown literally at one point, they made a deep well, a "pit" in the snow. Freezing people could hardly dig such a thing with their bare hands, and even in the center of a snowdrift, since it was pretty hard to crawl from the border of a deep snowdrift to the pit. Breaking through such snow is unrealistic even for a snowmobile. People would make a "burrow" from the edge. Although why is it needed when there is a fire nearby?

As for the thickness of the snow, when people were dumped, it most likely was really two meters. And a month later, by the beginning of the search - already all three. That is why none of the search engines came here to look. It never even occurred to them that there might be someone there. Although some noted that tourists could not go far without skis.

This is such a terrible outcome....

It must be admitted that both versions of the version with the “cleansing” of the Dyatlov group by some special unit also have fairly obvious flaws. If some talented (you can’t refuse this!) stage director staged a picture of the natural death of tourists, then why weren’t traces of “stage workers” preserved in the snow? And isn't there too much absurdity in the arrangement of "characters" and "props"? And if the corpses, not particularly wiser, were scattered from a helicopter (one of them, falling, could really break off the branches of a cedar, confusing the servant-investigator), then how to explain the appearance on the ground of quite numerous unidentified objects, traces of some kind of intensive work in around the fire (tops of trees cut with a knife, platform) and the fire itself?

On the other hand, without accepting the hypothesis about the “behind the scenes” participants in the drama, many details of the picture recorded in the protocols of the investigation simply defy explanation. Yes, and according to common sense: if we take the “rocket” version as a basis (and most enthusiastic researchers are leaning towards it today), then it is quite natural to assume (as Luda Dubinina’s father did in his time) that after an unsuccessful launch of a rocket into the territory, where the disaster occurred, a special group was sent. What she saw there and how she behaved is another matter. But the fact that the searchers who arrived on the scene two weeks later saw a somewhat changed picture can hardly be doubted.

Terrible, irresistible force

Let me remind you once again of the words with which Junior Counselor of Justice Lev Nikitich Ivanov ended the text of the resolution on the termination of the criminal case. Then, forty years ago, he expressed the opinion that the cause of the death of students "was an elemental force, which people were not able to overcome." Today it is difficult to get rid of the feeling that in this seemingly bureaucratic formula he deliberately encoded a deep thought that has not lost its relevance to this day.

He wanted to say - well, not directly, but at least hint - that the terrible, irresistible force that killed the guys was the state. He himself understood this very well, but he did not dare to speak openly about it, for he was also forced to obey that force.

There is no doubt that he was a talented criminologist, as evidenced by his subsequent successful service career. It is possible that this career would not have been so successful if he had failed then in the case of the death of students. And it was very difficult: it was necessary to build a plausible version of what happened, excluding the two main reasons, which for many who came into contact with the tragedy were quite obvious, but, alas, constituted a state secret. It is easy to guess that this is exactly what he received during the repeated calls “to the carpet” - they were mentioned above.

Of course, his task was greatly facilitated by the fact that the great teacher of Soviet lawyers had died only six years earlier, and society was not yet able (better to say: not bold) to demand proof of legal conclusions. So Lev Nikitich could fearlessly allow himself, where he considered it necessary, to speculate, add, suggest to the witnesses the direction of thought, but the facts and evidence that “threaten” the disclosure of the truth, he knew how not to notice, get around, or even hide somewhere ( destroy?). Today, when you communicate with witnesses of those events, these tricks of the investigation are somehow particularly persistently striking.

At one of the meetings in the editorial office of the "Uralsky Rabochy" there was a man in whose soul the tragedy on the slope of Mount Otorten left, presumably, a particularly deep imprint. I mean Yuri Yudin - the tenth member of the Dyatlov group, who, as you remember, left the route due to illness. He lived a long and meaningful life; now he works as deputy head of the administration of the Perm city of Solikamsk. And he might as well...

Leaving behind his comrades, he then went to Sverdlovsk, and then on vacation to Tabory, where his family lived. When I returned to the institute, everyone there already, as they say, was on their ears ...

When the corpses were discovered, they began to drag Yuri to the prosecutor's office, then to the gray house on Truda Square - to the regional committee. Looking at the confused and stunned student, the interlocutors calmly put their hands on his shoulders, asked him not to expand and not to punish himself for not being close to the guys - he would not have helped them in any way and would also have remained on that pass.

It is psychologically understandable why, in subsequent years, Yuri Efimovich avoided touching everything that reminded him of the tragedy that fate had so inexplicably removed from him personally. Some classmates from the institute could not understand his "indifference" in relation to the mystery of the death of his comrades, they reproached him for this.

But he responded to the invitation of the editorial office of the newspaper.

Now I am carefully reading the criminal case, - said Yuri Efimovich. - There is no specific version yet, but some facts cause alarm and suspicion that the group did not die so easily. It is surprising that such material evidence as notebooks and photographic films have disappeared from the case. I would like to see the strange ebony scabbard as well. But where are they?

I myself would add something to this list: where are the photographs mentioned in the case, taken by the Dyatlovites upon their arrival at the place of their last stop? Where are the results of the chemical and histological analysis of fragments of internal organs requested by the forensic medical examination? Where is the full list of things found by the investigation at the scene of the tragedy?

However, was there such a list? Today it is very striking that the investigator diligently avoided some facts and details. Or even deliberately distorted. And the list in some cases would probably make it difficult to manipulate the facts.

Here is what, for example, I read in a letter from Nikolai Ivanovich Kuzminov from Nizhnyaya Salda: “In 1959, I served in Ivdel and took part in the search for the Dyatlov group. We were led by the head of the UPI military department, Colonel Ortyukhov. We lived in a tent in the forest .

I remember how they found the last four. First, the Mansi Kurikovs found branches in the melted snow, which were, as it were, thrown by someone. Their chain stretched to the ravine. We began to clear a deep snowdrift and soon came across a flooring made of spruce branches. He had some clothes on. On the second day they dug up the corpse of a man, it had three watches and two cameras on it"...

As we know from the file, Thibaut-Brignolle had two watches on his hand, and they stopped at about the same time - about eight o'clock. By the way, like Slobodin. As for cameras - also a mystery. The protocols say they were found in a tent. It is quite possible that the author's memory is simply cheating - what if this important fact is distorted in the case? And the chain of branches stretching towards the ravine is not just an expressive, but also a significant detail - why is it not reflected in the investigative file?

Further, Kuzminov is quite interesting: “I can’t agree with the conclusions that the Dyatlovites were destroyed by the military. Nonsense, fiction of a journalist! I think that the tourists died because of the“ fireballs ”, which we also observed one of the nights, and then after 5-6 minutes they felt a clouding of their minds. They even began to disperse, like sleepwalkers, in all directions ... Later we were told that a new type of hydrogen fuel was being tested and there was nothing life-threatening in it ... "Here, it turns out, what versions discussed in the search engine camp. Were they somehow verified, or were the witnesses simply ordered to remain silent, and the investigation turned into an imitation of the investigation?

Of course, such evidence cannot always be taken for granted. Evaluating everything that I had a chance to read and hear after the publication of the newspaper version of this essay, I came to the conclusion that in the forty years that have passed since the tragedy, this story has acquired an incredible amount of speculation. And yet, doubts about the reliability of the materials of the criminal case are not the fruit of speculative fantasies.

Henrietta Eliseevna Makushkina testifies. Forty years ago, she had a different surname - Churkina, and it was she who did the examination of the Dyatlov tent. Here is what she says today: “It was not difficult to determine whether the tent was cut from the inside or the outside. However, along with this, we could name the date of the cut with an accuracy of one day. And also the thickness of the blade-knife. But these parameters are from us They didn't demand it. The task was set specifically and only one: to say whether the cuts were made from the inside or from the outside. And that's it. That's what we did...

I was also present at the medical examination of corpses, which was conducted by Boris Vozrozhdenny. I remember well when they took off their clothes and hung them on ropes, we immediately noticed that it had some strange light purple hue, although it was of various colors. I asked Boris: "Don't you think that the clothes are treated with something?" He agreed.

When it was discovered that Dubinina had no tongue, we were even more surprised. "Where could he go?" I asked again. But Boris just shrugged. It seemed to me that he was depressed and even scared "...

These confessions are certainly not myth-making: the lack of relevant data in the investigative file is striking even to a non-professional ...

Will this story have an end?

First of all, is it necessary? The parents of the dead children are no longer on earth - they, of course, would be bitterly satisfied with the knowledge of the truth. Already friends, peers, schoolmates of the dead have entered retirement age, giving way to new generations. There is no longer a state on earth that asserted its principles and priorities, regardless of human destinies and even human lives. What and to whom would today the establishment of the whole truth about that long-standing tragedy give?

Least of all, I count on the fact that the resuscitation of a case closed forty years ago will help to find one of the initiators or direct perpetrators of the murder and bring him to justice. Even if such a - living - participant in a dirty deed were found, he could hardly take on a significant share of the guilt, with all his weight lying on the cruel and soulless state machine, of which (like investigator Ivanov) he served as a small cog. This means that an act of just retribution would not bring the expected satisfaction to anyone.

But if the current state decided to clarify the situation by declassifying some documents, undoubtedly still kept in deep secrecy somewhere in the safes of the former KGB or military departments, this would be a strong and understandable sign for everyone that now it has become, well, , wants to become different... But there is no such sign!

There is also an important spiritual and moral aspect in this matter. The popular consciousness is fraught with the conviction that the secret will certainly become clear and that truth will eventually triumph over lies. But this does not happen by itself, but is achieved by the conscious efforts of people committed to the truth. Solving the mystery of the death of nine student tourists would increase the number of such people, would serve to strengthen the moral foundations of society.

But is it possible now to restore the true picture of what happened on that terrible February night on the snow-covered slope of a secluded mountain in a deserted taiga corner of the Northern Urals? After all, from the very beginning everything was so confused (and there is reason to believe that deliberately), and now, apart from the unreliable documents of the investigation, there is almost nothing to rely on.

But it turns out that people are still alive who are able to report a lot of things that are not in the protocols of forensic scientists.

And there are bound to be somewhere unclaimed documents so far - someone knows about their existence.

I will end my long and sad story with an almost farcical story - but what if the tip of the thread leading to the ball lies in it?

The fact is that a few years after the disaster, Yuri Krivonischenko's father Alexei Konstantinovich, driven to despair by the chicanery of the local ministers of Themis, sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU. So, they say, and so, I ask, as a communist, to tell the communists what is the true cause of my son's death.

And what would you think - the answer came to him. Everything is as it should be: on a beautiful letterhead, beautiful phrases. In a few words befitting the occasion, they expressed condolences to him, and also said that "those responsible for what happened were punished."

Of course, it could have been a standard reply. Or maybe in fact there were instances that were not everything, but such a high-profile case knew for sure and the perpetrators - not alleged, but real - in their own way, in a party way, were called to account. Not for the death of people, of course, but for the fact that, because of some nine corpses, another “byaka” kept in a terrible secret almost became the property of the newspapers ...

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 unable 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 went with a group to the 2nd Northern in order 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. different reasons. On February 16-17, they contacted Vizhay, trying to establish whether the group was returning from the campaign. The answer was negative. 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, knife cuts 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 (an autopsy revealed that Slobodin had a traumatic brain injury (a crack in the skull 16 cm long and 0.1 cm wide), which could be accompanied by repeated loss of consciousness and contributed to freezing). Another characteristic feature was the color of the skin: 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 clothing led to a hollow in 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 bed 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-Brignoles had a severe craniocerebral injury (a depressed fracture of the right temporal parietal region in an area measuring 9 × 7 cm and a crack in the base of the skull 17 cm long with extensive hemorrhage in the right temporal muscle), which led to death (according to the conclusion of the medical examiner). 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...

There is not much reliable information about what exactly the members of the group did in the last hours of their lives and in what sequence. 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. A small group of researchers got acquainted directly with the materials; 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 file contains additional materials that may change the perception of the events that took place.

The conclusions of professionals - tourists and climbers, with some discrepancies in assessments, in general and in general 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 mountain slope, 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 is the main issue 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 number of super-unusual, unexplained features seen during the autopsy: for example, a barely noticeable purple tint to clothing, Dubinina's missing tongue and eyeballs of men, the strange skin color of the dead, or 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

Contributing to the publication of the book. This is, of course, only a small part of the entire book. But this is convenient for those who do not want or are not able to order the entire book in print. In addition to the fact that you will contribute to the publication of the book, do a good deed to develop the history of your region, you will also receive a block of photographs from the films of tourists for the version. The first pages of the version are provided by the author to our portal.

Version-reconstruction of the death of the Dyatlov group based on the materials of the investigation in a criminal case, after studying the main versions of the death of the group, as well as studying other factual data that are significant and are direct or indirect confirmation of the version.

In 1959, a group of students and graduates of the UPI Sverdlovsk went on a hike of the highest category of difficulty in the mountains of the Northern Urals. Their route is completely unexplored. Tourists go on it for the first time. The leader of the campaign, Igor Dyatlov, planned to complete the campaign in 20 days, but no one was destined to return alive from the campaign. With the exception of one who left the group citing ill health. Having decided to spend the night on the mountain with a mark of 1079, tourists find themselves in conditions that stop their last trip. However, according to the itinerary of the trip, the group should not have stopped at this mountain at all. The search will be long and difficult. The finds will baffle everyone. It is no coincidence that the local Mansi people called this mountain Halatchakhl or "Mountain of the Dead". But is everything as mysterious and inexplicable as some people think? After studying the materials of the criminal case and other factual data that are relevant to the essence of the tragedy, the author creates a version-reconstruction of the death of tourists, which he presents to readers, based on facts, captivating the reader and offering to become a participant in the search and study of this difficult story.

1. Hike to Otorten

A trip to the Ural Mountains, to one of the peaks of the Poyasovoi Kamen ridge of the Northern Urals, to Mount Otorten was conceived by tourists from the tourism section of the sports club of the Sergey Kirov Ural Polytechnic Institute in the city of Sverdlovsk back in the autumn of 1958. From the very beginning, Luda Dubinina, a 3rd year student and several other guys, were determined to go on a hike. But nothing worked until an experienced tourist, who already had experience in leading groups, 5th year student Igor Dyatlov, took up the organization of the trip.

Initially, the group was formed in the amount of 13 people. In this form, the composition of the group ended up in the route project, which Dyatlov submitted to the route commission:

But later Vishnevsky, Popov, Bienko and Verkhoturov dropped out. However, shortly before the trip, the instructor of the Kourovskaya camp site on the Chusovaya River, Alexander Zolotarev, known almost exclusively to Igor Dyatlov, was included in the group. As Alexander, he introduced himself to the guys.

The tourists were going to take personal equipment and some equipment from the UPI sports club with them. The campaign was timed to coincide with the beginning of the 21st Congress of the CPSU, for which they even received a ticket from the trade union committee of the UPI. She subsequently helped to move to the starting point of the route - the village of Vizhay and beyond, gave the official status to tourists as participants in an organized event, and not a wild hike, when a group appeared in any public place where an overnight stay or passing transport was required.

The route that Igor Dyatlov was going to take with the group was new, so still none of the UPI tourists and even the whole of Sverdlovsk did not go. Being the pioneers of the route, the tourists intended to reach the village of Vizhay by train and by car, from the village of Vizhay to get to the village of Vtoroy Severny, then go northwest along the valley of the Auspiya River and along the tributaries of the Lozva River to Mount Otorten. After climbing this peak, it was planned to turn south and go along the Poyasovyi Kamen ridge along the headwaters of the headwaters of the Unya, Vishera and Niols rivers to Mount Oiko-Chakur (Oykachahl). From Oiko-Chakur in an easterly direction along the valleys of the Malaya Toshemka or Bolshaya Toshemka rivers, to their confluence into the North Toshemka, then to the highway and again to the village of Vizhay.

According to the Campaign Project, which was approved by the Chairman of the route commission Korolev and a member of the march commission Novikov, Dyatlov planned to spend 20 or 21 days on the campaign.

This hike was assigned the highest third category of difficulty according to the then existing system for determining the categories of hikes in sports tourism. According to the instructions in force at that time, the “troika” was assigned if the trip lasts at least 16 days, at least 350 km will be covered, of which 8 days in sparsely populated areas, and if at least 6 overnight stays are made in the field. Dyatlov had twice as many such overnight stays.

The release was scheduled for January 23, 1959. Igor Dyatlov intended to return with the group to Sverdlovsk on February 12-13. And earlier, from the village of Vizhay, the UPI sports club and the city sports club of Sverdlovsk should have received a telegram from him that the route was successfully completed. It was the usual practice of hiking and the requirement for instructions to report to the sports club. It was originally planned to return to Vizhay and give a telegram about the return on February 10th. However, Igor Dyatlov postponed the return to Vizhay to February 12. The precise engineering calculation of Igor Dyatlov underwent a change in schedule due to one emergency, which was the first failure in a group event. At the first stage of the campaign, Yuri Yudin left the route.

On January 23, 1959, the Dyatlov group began a trip to Otorten from the railway station in Sverdlovsk, consisting of 10 people: Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Rustem Slobodin, Yuri Doroshenko, Yuri Krivonischenko, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles, Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and Yuri Yudin. However, on the 5th day of the campaign on January 28, Yuri Yudin leaves the group for health reasons. He left with a group from the last settlement on the route - the village of the 41st quarter and went to the non-residential village of Second Severny, when he had a problem with his legs. He obviously would have delayed the group, as he moved slowly even without a backpack. He lagged behind. Lost formation. However, in that transition between these villages, 41 quarter-Second North tourists got lucky. In the village, tourists going on a hike towards the 21st Congress of the CPSU were given a horse. Backpacks of tourists from the village of 41 quarters to the village of Second Severny were carried by a horse with a driver on a sleigh. Ill Yuri Yudin returns to Sverdlovsk.

The equipment at that time of the development of tourism was very heavy and not perfect. Backpacks of an old design, very heavy in themselves, a bulky tent made of heavy tarpaulin, a stove weighing about 4 kilograms, several axes, a saw. An additional increase in the load in the form of a mass of backpacks and the departure of Yuri Yudin from the group in itself prompted them to postpone the control time of the group's arrival back to Vizhay for two days. Dyatlov asked Yudin to warn the UPI sports club about the postponement of the return telegram from February 10 to February 12.

The description of this reconstruction version contains a possible presumption of responsibility and seriousness of the intentions of the participants in the campaign to return alive and unharmed. Speculation regarding the unsportsmanlike behavior of the participants in the campaign, which caused the death of the group, is excluded.

• Dyatlov Igor Alekseevich born on 13.01.36 just turned 23 years old
• Kolmogorova Zinaida Alekseevna born on 01/12/37, recently turned 22 years old,
• Doroshenko Yuri Nikolaevich born on 01/29/38, on the 6th day of the campaign he turns 21 years old
• Krivonischenko Georgy (Yura) Alekseevich born February 7, 1935, 23 years old, he was supposed to be 24 years old during the campaign,
• Dubinina Lyudmila Alexandrovna born on May 12, 1938 20 years,
• Kolevatov Alexander Sergeevich Born 11/16/1934 24 years,
• Slobodin Rustem Vladimirovich born on 01/11/1936, recently turned 23 years old,
• Thibaut-Brignolle Nikolai Vasilievich born 06/05/1935 23 years old
• Zolotarev Alexander Alekseevich born 02.02.1921 37 years.

There is no contact with tourists. No one in Sverdlovsk knows how the campaign goes. There are no radios for tourists. There are no intermediate points on the route from where tourists would contact the city. On February 12, the sports club UPI does not receive the agreed telegram about the end of the trip. Tourists do not return to Sverdlovsk either on February 12, or on February 15, or on February 16. But the chairman of the UPI sports club, Lev Gordo, sees no reason for concern. Then the relatives of the tourists sounded the alarm. At that time, there were no structures of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, sports committees, trade union committees, city committees, with the support of internal troops and the armed forces, were engaged in the search for missing tourists. The search began on February 20, 1959. UPI students, the sports community of Sverdlovsk, and military personnel took part in the search. In total, several groups of search engines were recruited. The groups of search engines necessarily included UPI students. The groups were delivered to the areas that the Dyatlov group should pass along its route. The accident and its consequences were to be discovered by Dyatlov's classmates. The organizers of the search hardly doubted that the irreparable had happened. But the search was wide-ranging. The military and civil Aviation from Ivdel airport. The search for students was given great attention due to the fact that two participants in the campaign, graduates of the UPI, Rustem Slobodin and Yura Krivonischenko, were engineers from secret defense mailboxes. Slobodin worked at the research institute. Krivonischenko at the factory where the first atomic weapon was created. Now this production association "Mayak" is located in the city of Ozersk, Chelyabinsk region.

Several search groups searched for the tourists of the Dyatlov group at various supposed points along the route. After the discovery of the first corpses of tourists, the prosecutor's office initiated a criminal case, which began to be investigated by the prosecutor of the city of Ivdel, closest to the site of the tragedy, Junior Counselor of Justice V.I. Tempalov. Then the preliminary investigation was continued and completed by the forensic prosecutor of the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region, Junior Counselor of Justice LN Ivanov.

The search engines Boris Slobtsov and Misha Sharavin, UPI students, were the first to find the Dyatlov group's tent. It turned out to be installed on the eastern slope of peak 1096. Otherwise, this peak was called – Mount Halatchakhl. Halatchahl – This is a Mansi name. Several legends are associated with this mountain. The indigenous Mansi people preferred not to go to this mountain. There was a belief that on this mountain a certain spirit killed 9 Mansi hunters, and since then everyone who climbs the mountain will be cursed by shamans. Halatchakhl in the Mansi language sounds like this - the mountain of the Dead.

How they found the tent, Boris Slobtsov told on April 15, 1959, under the protocol to prosecutor Ivanov:

“I flew to the scene by helicopter on February 23, 1959. I led the search party. The tent of the Dyatlov group was discovered by our group on the afternoon of February 26, 1959.

When they approached the tent, they found that the entrance of the tent protruded from under the snow, and the rest of the tent was under the snow. Around the tent in the snow were ski poles and spare skis - 1 pair. The snow on the tent was 15-20 cm thick, it was clear that the snow was inflated on the tent, it was hard.

Near the tent, near the entrance to the snow, an ice ax was stuck; on the tent, on the snow, lay a Chinese pocket lantern, which, as it was later established, belonged to Dyatlov. It was not clear that under the lantern there was snow about 5-10 cm thick, there was no snow above the lantern, it was a little sprinkled with snow on the sides.

Below you will often find extracts from interrogation protocols and other materials of a criminal case, often the only factual documents that shed light on the tragedy. During the investigation, search engines and other witnesses were interrogated, who informed the investigation of certain factual data. It should be noted that the lines of the protocols in this case were not always “dry” or “clerical”, sometimes even lengthy discussions about the state of tourism and the level of organization of tourist searches were found in the protocols. But sometimes some data surfaced later in the memoirs of search engines or eyewitnesses of searches.

Boris Slobtsov, who discovered the tent, later clarified the details of the find of the tent in one of the articles in the All-Russian magazine of extreme travel and adventures:

“Our path with Sharavin and the hunter Ivan lay on the pass in the valley of the Lozva River and further on to the ridge, from which we hoped to see Mount Otorten with binoculars. On the Sharavin pass, looking through the eastern slope of the ridge through binoculars, I saw something in the snow that looked like a littered tent. We decided to go up there, but without Ivan. He said that he was not feeling well and would wait for us at the pass (we realized that he had just "fell"). As we approached the tent, the slope became steeper, and the ice became denser, and we had to leave the skis and walk the last tens of meters without skis, but with sticks.

Finally, we ran into the tent, we stood, we were silent and we didn’t know what to do: the slope of the tent was torn in the center, there was snow inside, some things, skis were sticking out, an ice ax was stuck in the snow at the entrance, people were not visible, it was scary, already horror! ."

(“Rescue work in the Northern Urals, February 1959, Dyatlov Pass”, EKS magazine, No. 46, 2007).

On February 26, 1959, a tent was discovered. After the discovery of the tent, the search for tourists was organized.

The prosecutor of Ivdel was summoned to the scene. Inspection of the tent by prosecutor Tempalov is dated February 28, 1959. But the first investigative action was an examination of the first discovered corpses, which was carried out on February 27, 1959. The corpse of Yura Krivonischenko and the corpse of Yura Doroshenko (he was first mistaken for the corpse of A. Zolotarev) were found below in a hollow, between Mount Halatchakhl and a height of 880, where there was a stream bed flowing into the fourth tributary of the Lozva. Their bodies lay near a tall cedar, at a distance of about 1500 meters from the tent, on a hillock at the base of height 880, at the base of the pass, which would later be called in their memory the “Dyatlov Group Pass”. A bonfire was found next to the cedar. The corpses of two Yurs were found in their underwear without shoes.

Then, with the help of dogs, under a thin layer of snow of 10 cm on the line from the tent to the cedar, the corpses of Igor Dyatlov and Zina Kolmogorova were found. They were also without outerwear and without shoes, but still they were better dressed. Igor Dyatlov was at a distance of about 1200 meters from the tent and about 300 meters from the cedar, and Zina Kolmogorova at a distance of about 750 meters from the tent and about 750 meters from the cedar. Igor Dyatlov's hand peeked out from under the snow, leaning on a birch. He froze in such a position, as if ready to get up and go in search of comrades again.

From the protocol of inspection of the first found corpses, which became the protocol of the inspection of the scene, the active phase of the investigation of the criminal case began on the death of tourists from the Dyatlov group. After the discovery of the first corpses, and the discovery of a tent torn in several places, the corpse of Rustem Slobodin will soon be found under the snow. It was under a layer of snow of 15-20 centimeters on a slope conditionally between the corpse of Dyatlov and Kolmogorova, about 1000 meters from the tent and about 500 meters from the cedar. Slobodina also did not have better clothes, one leg was shod in felt boots. As the forensic medical examination will later show, all the tourists found died from frostbite. Rustem Slobodin's autopsy will reveal a 6 cm long crack in the skull, which he received during his lifetime. Rustem Slobodin was discovered by search engines in the classic “corpse bed”, which is observed in frozen people if the body cooled down directly on the snow. Then began a long search for the remaining tourists Nikolai Thibault-Brignolles, Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Kolevatov, Alexander Zolotarev. The snow cover of the slope, light forest zones and the forest area around the cedar were combed by search engines with dogs, probed by avalanche probes. They no longer believed in the salvation of the Dyatlovites. The search went on throughout February, March and April. And on May 5, after exhausting, long and difficult search work, when excavating snow in a ravine, they found a flooring.

Near the flooring, 6 meters from it, in the bed of a stream flowing along the bottom of the ravine, they found the last four corpses of tourists. The flooring and tourists were dug out from under a large layer of snow. In May, the fir twigs and parts of the Dyatlovites’ clothes that had just melted out from under the snow were pointed to the excavation site. On May 6, the bodies in the ravine and the flooring were examined.

The location of the discovery of the flooring and the corpses "in the ravine" can be established with authenticity based on the materials of the criminal case.

In the protocol of the inspection of the scene dated May 6, 1959, made by the prosecutor Tempalov, the location of the last corpses is described as follows:

“On the slope of the western side of height 880 from the famous cedar, 50 meters in the stream, 4 corpses were found, including three men and one woman. The body of the woman has been identified - this is Lyudmila Dubinina. It is impossible to identify the bodies of men without raising them.
All corpses are in the water. They were excavated from under the snow with a depth of 2.5 meters to 2 meters. Two men and a third lie with their heads to the north along the stream. The corpse of Dubinina was lying in the opposite direction with its head against the current of the stream.

(from the materials of the criminal case)

In the Resolution on the termination of the criminal case, issued by the forensic prosecutor Ivanov on May 28, 1959, the location of the flooring and the corpses is more precisely defined:

“75 meters from the fire, towards the valley of the fourth tributary of the Lozva, i.e. perpendicular to the path of movement of tourists from the tent, under a layer of snow 4-4.5 meters away, the bodies of Dubinina, Zolotarev, Thibault-Brignolles and Kolevatov were found.

(from the materials of the criminal case)

This perpendicular can be seen in the scheme from the criminal case.

(from the materials of the criminal case)

70 meters from the cedar. "To the river Lozva" - this means from the cedar to the north-west. The stream flows past the cedar from south to north towards Lozva. It flows into the 4th tributary of the Lozva.

Schematically, the location of the flooring and the last four corpses can be depicted as follows:

The location of the ravine on the map:

The ravine was covered with snow in February and from March to April until May 6, 1959. The ravine was also covered with snow in April 2001, when M. Sharavin was there as part of the Popov-Nazarov expedition ...

Between the tent and the cedar there was a ravine, along the bottom of which a stream flows. The ravine stretches from south to north in the direction of a stream flowing along its bottom to the 4th tributary of the Lozva. But by February 26, the ravine was already covered with snow. It is not even noticeable that until recently there was a ravine. You can only see the slope, the right eastern bank of the stream, which rose to a height of about 5-7 meters. This was shown by the search engine Yuri Koptelov.

“On the edge (further the slope was steeper) we saw paired tracks of several pairs, deep, on firn snow. They walked perpendicular to the slope of the tent in the valley of the tributary of the river. Lozva. We crossed from the left bank of the valley to the right bank and after about 1.5 km we ran into a wall, 5-7 meters high, where the stream made a turn to the left. In front of us was a height of 880, and on the right was a pass, which was later called lane. Dyatlov. We climbed the ladder (head-on) to this wall. I'm on the left, Mikhail is to the right of me. In front of us were rare low birches and firs, and then a large tree towered - a cedar.

(from the materials of the criminal case)

It seems quite reliable that Yuri Koptelov described the place of the alleged fall of the tourists Zolotarev, Dubinina and Thibaut-Brignolle. With certainty, it can be assumed that the place from which the fir and birch for flooring were cut off are those very “rare low birches and fir trees” from Koptelov’s description. And Yury Koptelov and Misha Sharavin climbed a little to the right of the wall, where the wall is not so high and flatter, which makes it more possible to climb the ladder on skis in the forehead. It's just about opposite the cedar.

The bodies of the last 4 tourists were found in a ravine under a layer of snow 2-2.5 meters thick.

Considering that the bottom of the ravine was not yet covered with snow on February 1, because It was after February 1 that witnesses noted heavy snowfalls and blizzards in the region of the Poyasovyi Kamen ridge (their testimonies are below), then a fall onto a rocky bottom from a steep 5-7 meters high seems very dangerous. But more on that below.

“January 31, 1959. Today the weather is a little worse - wind (west), snow (apparently with firs) because the sky is completely clear. We left relatively early (about 10 am). We go along the beaten Mansi ski trail. (Until now, we have been walking along the Mansi path, along which a hunter rode a reindeer not very long ago.) Yesterday we met, apparently, his overnight stay, the deer did not go further, the hunter himself did not go along the notches of the old path, we are following his trail now . Today was a surprisingly good overnight stay, warm and dry, despite the low temperature (-18° -24°). Walking today is especially difficult. The trail is not visible, we often stray from it or grope. Thus, we pass 1.5-2 km per hour. We develop new methods of more productive walking. The first one drops the backpack and walks for 5 minutes, then returns, rests for 10-15 minutes, then catches up with the rest of the group. This is how the non-stop way of laying tracks was born. It is especially difficult for the second one, who goes along the ski track, the first one, with a backpack. We are gradually separating from Auspiya, the ascent is continuous, but rather smooth. And now the spruces ran out, a rare birch forest went. We came to the edge of the forest. The wind is from the west, warm and piercing, the wind speed is similar to the air speed when the plane rises. Nast, naked places. You don’t even have to think about the device of the lobaza. About 4 hours. You have to choose accommodation. We descend to the south - to the valley of Auspiya. This is probably the snowiest place. The wind is light on snow 1.2-2 m thick. Tired, exhausted, they set about arranging an overnight stay. Firewood is scarce. Sickly raw spruce. The fire was built on logs, reluctance to dig a hole. We dine right in the tent. Warmly. It is difficult to imagine such comfort somewhere on the ridge, with a piercing howl of the wind, a hundred kilometers from settlements.

(from the materials of the criminal case)

There are no more entries in the general diary, so far no entries have been found for other numbers after January 31 in personal diaries group members. The date of the last overnight stay is determined in the Resolution known to us on the termination of the criminal case, signed by the forensic prosecutor Ivanov as follows:

“In one of the cameras, a frame (taken last) was preserved, which shows the moment of excavation of snow to set up a tent. Considering that this shot was taken with a shutter speed of 1/25 sec., at an aperture of 5.6 with a film sensitivity of 65 units. GOST, and also taking into account the density of the frame, we can assume that the tourists started setting up the tent at about 5 pm on January 1, 1959. A similar picture was taken with another camera. After this time, not a single record and not a single photograph was found ... "

(from the materials of the criminal case)

Until now, no one has seen these pictures of setting up a tent in a criminal case. And this is the biggest mystery of the case...

Stanislav Ivlev

The continuation can be found in Stanislav Ivlev's book "The campaign of the Dyatlov group. In the footsteps of the Atomic Project." The whole book, or a separate full text of the reconstruction, can be ordered on the "Planet", contributing to the release of the book.