The death of the Dyatlov group: chronicle, versions. Autopsy results: fatal injuries received from exposure to an air blast wave. And now the versions

The secret of the Dyatlov pass

In 2017 former governorSverdlovsk Region Senator Eduard Rossel said that the tragedy at the Dyatlov Pass in the Urals in 1959 refers tostrictly classifiedinformation federal level.

February 2, 2019 At the annual conference dedicated to the death of the Dyatlov group, researcher Oleg Arkhipov presented to the public an archival document, which, in his opinion, may indicate a falsification of the criminal case on the fact of the tragedy. This was reported on February 2 by Interfax.

Arkhipov presented a note from the then prosecutor of the city of Ivdel, Vasily Tempalov, addressed to the investigator Korotaev. In it, he reports that he intends to go to Sverdlovsk to investigate the causes of the death of the Dyatlov group. At the same time, the letter is dated February 15, 1959, and the tragedy became known later.

“This suggests that the bodies were found in advance, even before the official searches. That this criminal case be carried out in order to “legalize” the bodies found,” said Arkhipov.

The story of the tragic death of students at the Dyatlov Pass
Vladimir Garmatyuk, 2018.

Many people in Russia, in the USSR and far abroad heard about the tragic death on February 2, 1959 of nine students-tourists of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI) in the northern Urals.

In the picture, the students of the deceased group of tourists (from left to right) bottom row: Slobodin R.S. , Kolmogorova Z.A., I.A. Dyatlov I.A., Dubinina L.A. Doroshenko Yu.A. Top row: Thibaut-Brignolles N.V., Kolevatov A.S., Krivonischenko G.A., Zolotarev A.I.

The event attracted wide public attention due to the fact that the investigation conducted in 1959 by the Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office did not give a clear answer about the causes of death of young people.

In the decision to terminate the criminal case by the prosecutor L.N. Ivanov literally said the following: “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 what causes the death of tourists there was an elemental force, to overcome which the tourists were not able to.

The uncertainty of the conclusion of the investigation about the "elemental force" gave rise to a lot of fiction, mysticism and fears. Many different versions have been put forward from a UFO attack, Bigfoot to American spies. Over time, additional information appeared in various media sources, which was not attached to the criminal case, and therefore no real reasons were named.

It remains only to complete the missing "links in the chain" of interconnected events in order to tell about the tragedy that has occurred ... Let's leave the details that have already been told and highlight the main thing that was missed.

Start
So, a group of UPI students in the amount of ten people (one fell ill on the way and returned back) January 26, 1959 left the city of Ivdel, Sverdlovsk region. Passing the villages of Vizhay and Severny, then they went skiing on their own for a two-week trek to Mount Otorten (1234 m) in the northern Urals.

Along the way, some students kept their diaries. Their observations are interesting. An entry from the diary of the group leader, fifth-year student Igor Dyatlov:
01/28/59… After talking, we crawl into the tent together. Hanging stove blazes with heat and divides the tent into two compartments.

01/30/59 “Today is the third cold night on the bank of the Auspiya river. We start to get involved. The oven is a big deal. Some (Thibault and Krivonischenko) they are thinking of constructing a steam heating system in a tent. Canopy - hanging sheets are quite justified. Weather: temperature in the morning - 17 ° C, in the afternoon -13 ° C, in the evening - 26 ° C.

The deer path ended, the thorny path began, then it ended. It was very difficult to cross the virgin soil, the snow was up to 120 cm deep. The forest is gradually thinning, the height is felt, the birches and pines are dwarfed and ugly. It’s impossible to walk along the river - it didn’t freeze, but under the snow there is water and ice, right there on the ski track, we go again along the coast. The day is drawing to a close, and we must look for a place to camp. Here is an overnight stay. The wind is strong from the west, knocking snow off the cedar and pine trees, giving the impression of a snowfall.”

During the hike, the guys took pictures of themselves and their pictures have been preserved. In the photo, the students of the deceased ski group on the way of their route.

01/31/59 “We have reached 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, bare places. You don’t even have to think about the device of the lobaza. About 4 hours. You have to choose accommodation. We go down to the south - to the valley of the river. Auspii. This is probably the snowiest place. Light wind 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. Warm. It is hard to imagine such comfort somewhere on the ridge, with a piercing howl of the wind, a hundred kilometers from settlements.

Today was a surprisingly good overnight stay, warm and dry, despite the low temperature (-18° -24°). Walking today is especially difficult. The trace is not visible, we often stray from it or go gropingly. Thus, we pass 1.5-2 km per hour.I am at a wonderful age: the dope has already weathered, and insanity is still far away ... Dyatlov.

On February 1, 1959, at about 17:00 in the evening, the students set up their tent for the last time on the gentle slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (1079 m) below 300 meters from its top. The guys took pictures of the place where and how they pitched the tent. The evening was cold and windy. The picture shows how skiers on the slope dig deep snow to the ground, being in hoods, and how a strong wind blows snow into the hole.

1.02.59 Combat sheet No. 1 "Evening Otorten" - written by students before going to bed: “Is it possible to heat nine tourists with one stove and one blanket? A team of radio engineers composed of Comrade. Doroshenko and Kolmogorova set a new world record in the competition oven assembly– 1 hour 02 min. 27.4

Setting up the tent, the guys did not expect the avalanche to come down from the top. The hill was not so steep, and by the beginning of February the crust was strong, which kept a person without skis. In the diary entries, it is highlighted that they had a collapsible stove, and they stoked it in a tent. The oven was very hot! When the tent was dug deep into the snow on the mountainside under the “cornice of crust” and the furnace was flooded, the snow around them melted. In the cold, the melted snow froze, turning into a hard edge of ice. After dinner, taking off their shoes and warm outerwear, the guys went to bed. But in the early morning of February 2, something happened that soon determined their fate ...

Let's get a little off topic
In 1957, in the Arkhangelsk region, just at the latitude of the northern Urals, the (at that time secret) Plesetsk cosmodrome was opened. In February 1959, it was renamed the 3rd Training Artillery Range. From 1957 to 1993, 1372 ballistic missile launches were carried out from here. (This information is from Wikipedia).

Spent stages of ballistic missiles with the remnants of liquid fuel fell, burning over the deserted regions of the northern Urals. Therefore, many residents of those places often noticed burning fires (balls) in the night sky.

The falling, burning stage of the rocket above the mountainside, where the students spent the night, was photographed at night (or early in the morning) (with a diaphragm delay) by the instructor of the group Alexander Zolotarev. This was his last picture.

On the left of the picture, traces from the falling rocket stage are visible, and in the center of the frame there is a light spot from the camera's diaphragm. Witnesses of the event were other people who were at that time far from the group, who spoke about this during the investigation.

It is also necessary to pay attention to the fact that February 2, 1959 was a Monday- the beginning of the working week (for the military too). On the night (early morning) of February 2, there was an explosion in the air near Mount Holatchakhl.

Whether it was a rocket stage with incompletely burned fuel remaining in it, or it was a rocket that deviated from the given flight trajectory, which was automatically blown up, or the falling rocket (stage) was shot down by another rocket, as a training target - it no longer matters that specifically was the source of the explosion.

From the blast wave, the snow on the side of the mountain shuddered and moved down in places. On top of the snow was a heavy layer of snow crust (sometimes called "board").

Nast is thick and hard rather than a board, but an icy, multi-layered “plywood sheet”. So strong that people ran on it without shoes without falling through. This can be seen from the footprints going down the mountain from the tent. A photo of footprints from the mountain and an abandoned tent (below) was taken later around February 26-27, 1959 by members of the search party.

The guys in the tent slept with their heads to the top of the mountain. The night before, the heat from the stove had melted the edges of the snow around the tent, turning it into solid ice, which hung over them like an "ice ledge" from the side of the mountain. After the explosion, this ice, pressed down from above by a heavy load of crust and snow, fell on the tent and on the heads of the people sleeping in it. Subsequently, a forensic medical examination found broken ribs in two and cracks (6 cm long) in the skull in two more.

One of the tent poles (farthest in the picture) was broken. If the rack broke, then the effort was quite enough to break the bones of the unexpecting, relaxed lying people.

The students in the darkness of the tent, of course, could not appreciate the real danger that had arisen. They considered the ice and crust with snow that fell on them to be a general avalanche. Being in a state of shock under the fear of being buried alive under the snow, in a panic, they instantly cut the tent from the inside and, being without shoes (in just socks), and without warm outerwear, jumped out and rushed to run from the snow avalanche down the mountainside.

No other danger would have forced the guys to do this. On the contrary, they would hide in a tent from another external threat. The picture of the tent shows that the entrance to it is littered, and there is snow in the middle.

Having gone down a run for 1.5 km down to the forest, the guys only there were able to soberly assess the situation and the real threat of death - from hypothermia. They had 1-2 hours to live without shoes and outerwear in the cold and in the wind. The air temperature in the early morning of February 2 was about -28°C.

The students kindled a fire under the cedar tree and tried to keep warm. Having figured out that there was no avalanche, the three ran back up the mountain to the tent for warm clothes and shoes, they no longer had enough to wear. On the way up the mountain from fatal hypothermia, all three fell and froze there.

Subsequently, two were found frozen under a cedar near an extinct fire. Four more (three of them with fractures received earlier in the tent), who felt worse from injuries than others, tried to wait for those who had left for clothes, hiding from the cold wind in a ravine. They also froze. This ravine was then covered with snow, and the guys were found later than the others on May 4, 1959.

Radiation was found on the clothes of people covered with snow.

In the USSR, according to the chronology of tests of thermonuclear bombs, in the period from September 30, 1958 to October 25, 1958, 19 explosions were carried out in the atmosphere at the Dry Nose test site of Novaya Zemlya Island in the Arctic Ocean (opposite the Ural Mountains). This radiation fell with snow on the ground in the winter of 1958-1959 (including in the northern Urals). In the picture below, the location of the discovery of four bodies covered with snow in a ravine.

Returning to the materials of the criminal case.
Witness Krivonischenko A.K. showed during the investigation : “After the burial of my son on March 9, 1959, students, participants in the search for nine tourists, were at my apartment for dinner. Among them were those tourists who in late January - early February were hiking in the north, somewhat south of Mount Otorten. Apparently, there were at least two such groups, at least the participants of two groups said that they observed on February 1, 1959 in the evening a light phenomenon that struck them to the north of the location of these groups: an extremely bright glow of some kind of rocket or projectile.

The glow was constantly strong that one of the groups, being already in the tent and preparing to sleep, were alarmed by this glow, went out of the tent and observed this phenomenon. After a while they heard sound effect similar to strong thunder from afar.

Testimony of investigator L.N. Ivanov, who finished the case: "... a similar ball was seen on the night of the death of the guys, that is, from the first to the second of February, students-tourists of the geofaculty of the pedagogical institute."

Here, for example, is what the father of Lyudmila Dubinina, in those years a responsible worker of the Sverdlovsk Economic Council, said during interrogation in March 1959: “... I heard the conversations of students of the Ural Polytechnic University (UPI) that the flight of undressed people from the tent was caused by an explosion and large radiation ..., Projectile Light February 2nd around 7am seen in the city of Serov... I wonder why the tourist routes from the city of Ivdel were not closed...

An excerpt from the protocol of interrogation of Slobodin Vladimir Mikhailovich - Rustem Slobodin's father: "From him (Chairman of the Ivdel City Council A. I. Delyagin) I first heard that at about the time when a catastrophe happened to the group, some residents (local hunters) observed the appearance of a fireball in the sky E.P. Maslennikov told me that the fireball was observed by other tourists - students.

Scheme of the location of the tent on the mountainside and the discovered bodies of tourists.

The individual features of the damage to the bodies of some of the victims do not change the overall picture of what happened. The damage only served as false conjectures.

For example, the frozen foam from the mouth of one is due to vomiting, which was caused by inhalation of vapors (or carbon monoxide residues from rocket fuel) dispersed in the air above the mountain. Also from this and an unusually red-orange color of the skin, on the surfaces of corpses exposed to the sun. Damage on an already dead body (nose, eyes and tongue) in others was made by mice or birds of prey.

The investigators did not dare to name the real reason for the death of students on the night of February 2, 1959 - from a test of missiles, from an explosion in the air that served to move the crust and snow on Mount Kholatchakhl.

The investigator of the Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office V. Korotaev, who first began to conduct the case (later during the years of glasnost), said: “... the first secretary of the (Sverdlovsk) city committee of the party, Prodanov, 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. At my request, the secretary then called Andrei Kirilenko (first secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional party committee). And he heard the same thing: stop the case!

Literally a day later, investigator Lev Ivanov took it into his own hands, who quickly turned it off ... ". - With the above wording about "irresistible elemental force."

All secrets (military or otherwise), one way or another, harm people. Secrets are called secrets, what to say openly about them to the people is a shame because of their immoral nature. As the wise Chinese thinker Lao Tzu noted: "Even the best weapons do not bode well."

“Winter 1959. A group of Sverdlovsk skiing students is sent to the Northern Urals - on a hike to Mount Otorten. Young, cheerful, carefree, they did not know that they would never return. After several months of searching, the guys were found dead. Their death was terrible and cruel. Until now, the circumstances of this mysterious and mystical tragedy are a mystery.

Modern photos of the Dyatlov Pass area

Why was the death of the Dyatlovites hidden from journalists? How to explain that they were buried hastily, trying not to attract attention? There are many versions - no one knows the truth ... "This is a quote from the cover of Anna Matveeva's book" Dyatlov Pass ". The mystery of the death of 9 tourists from the Ural Polytechnic University (UPI) has been haunting people's minds for more than half a century. Many publications in the media, films and books are devoted to her - for example, the story by Y. Yarovoy "The highest category of difficulty", the book by O. Arkhipov "Death under the heading secret", the above-mentioned novel by A. Matveeva and others. In them, the tragedy is also associated with accidents missiles, and with UFOs, and with natural anomalies, and with crime, and with secret tests of new weapons, after which they carried out a “cleansing” of unwanted witnesses ...

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On the cover of A. Matveyeva's novel it says: "A story that is unlikely to ever be fully explained." E. Buyanov and his comrades, a St. Petersburg resident, a longtime author of VV, tried to find explanations.

The history and results of their 6-year investigation with the involvement of specialists and the study of all available evidence and documents (including a once-secret criminal case) are set out in a large book by E. Buyanov and B. Slobtsov "The Mystery of the Death of the Dyatlov Group", which was published in Yekaterinburg in August 2011 (We send it across Russia to subscribers for 360 rubles, to everyone else for 390 rubles). The editors asked Evgeny to summarize the conclusions reached by the authors.

February 1, 1959 the group of Igor Dyatlov (UPI students I. Dyatlov, L. Dubinina, Z. Kolmogorova, Yu.Doroshenko, N.Thibault-Brignoles, engineers graduates of UPI A.Kolevatov, G.Krivonischenko, R.Slobodin and instructor of the Kourovskaya camp site S.Zolotarev) built a storehouse in the taiga wilderness near the Auspiya River, left some food and things in it, and then went to Mount Otorten (1189 m).

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The skiers came out of the forest to a pass open to the wind in the direction of the Lozva River near the mountain 1096 (on the maps of those years 1079, now Kholatchakhl is “mountain of the dead”). There they camped for the night on the slope of a mountain spur, leveling the area for a long tent made from two tent houses. To set up the tent, they dug up a snow slope with a steepness of 20–23 ° and a thickness of up to 2 m and put it on inverted skis.

Backpacks, quilted jackets and two blankets were laid at the bottom. We also covered ourselves with blankets at night (there were no sleeping bags). On the night of February 1-2, all members of the group died. When the tourists did not return at the appointed time (February 15), their parents sounded the alarm, and the UPI began organizing searches. On February 20, rescuers were gathered, and from February 22, they were sent to the campaign area.

Detachments of B. Slobtsov, O. Grebennik, captain Chernyshov, M. Akselrod, a detachment of Mansi hunters came out, prepared a group of V. Karelin. As early as February 17 at 6:57 a.m., members of the latter saw a UFO in their campaign - the flight of a “star with a tail” with the light of the “full moon”. At the call of the attendants, everyone left the tent to look at the "star".

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Others saw her flight - the meteorologist Tokareva near the city of Ivdel described it in detail. Thus was born the legend of the "fireballs" and their connection with the tragedy. For more than 2 months, until the beginning of May, the Dyatlovites were searched for by search teams, planes and helicopters on a vast area of ​​more than 300 sq. km, and then at the accident site. 11 rescuers of the Slobtsov detachment landed on February 23 from a helicopter east of Mount Otorten.

They found in the taiga near the river Auspiya a barely visible remnant of a ski track and went along it to a pass near mountain 1096 between the sources of Lozva and Auspiya. On February 26, from the pass, Sharavin saw through binoculars a black spot - a protrusion of the corner of the tent above its well-established rack. Slobtsov and Sharavin examined the fallen tent, swept up in snow.

The outer slope of the tent was severely torn, there was no one inside. Later they found out: three cuts in the roof were made with a knife from the inside, and pieces of fabric were torn off. One jacket was pressed by force from the inside into the gap in the tent and into the snowy slope. 15 m below, 8 pairs of tracks went down to the forest. They were visible for 60 m, then covered with snow.

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In the tent, and then in the storehouse, they found food, things, shoes, equipment and documents of the Dyatlov group. On the evening of February 26, Slobtsov, to whose camp the radio operator geologist E. Nevolin came with a walkie-talkie, reported the finds to the search headquarters. On the afternoon of February 27, helicopters landed on the pass near Mount 1096 the main forces of rescuers and the prosecutor of the city of Ivdel Tempalov.

On the morning of February 27, Sharavin and Koptelov in the forest, 1.5 km from the tent, found near a large cedar near the remains of a fire frozen Doroshenko and Krivonischenko. The dead, stripped to their underwear, had burns on their arms and legs. On the same day, under a layer of snow (10-50 cm) on the tent-cedar line, the bodies of Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, and later (March 5) Slobodin were found.

They also died from freezing in ski suits and sweaters - "what they slept in." All five were without shoes, in socks. Only on the leg of Slobodin was one felt boot. (Later, doctors found a hidden crack in the crown of the skull 1 x 60 mm in Slobodin.) The investigation was collecting evidence. From March 3 to March 8, tourist masters from Moscow Bardin, Baskin and Shuleshko worked at the scene of the tragedy.

Further searches went on for a long time without success. On the night of March 31 at 04:00, more than 30 searchers from the camp on Auspiya observed the flight of a “fireball” in the southeastern part of the sky for 20 minutes, which was reported to the headquarters. The phenomenon has given rise to many rumors. The investigation collected a number of testimonies about the flight of the "fireball" on February 17, which supplemented the description of Karelin's group.

Four more dead were found on May 5 under a 3-meter layer of snow in the bed of a stream on a deck of fir trunks, 70 m from the cedar. Both they and in the forest found some items and scraps of clothing. Doctors stated that three of the dead had severe intravital injuries - blood in the wall of the heart and fractures of 10 ribs in Dubinina (6 on the left and 4 double on the right) and 5 double fractures of the ribs in Zolotarev.

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Thibaut-Brignolles was found to have a temporal fracture and a 17-centimeter fracture at the base of the skull. The mystery was the absence of external injuries of the body above the injuries, their causes. All four died from freezing and injuries. The investigation revealed a strange fact: three items of clothing had traces of weak beta radiation. But no traces of radiation and poisoning were found in the tissues of the dead.

Why did they cut and tear the tent, why did the group urgently leave for the forest? How did these injuries originate inside? Where do the radiation spots come from? Both investigators and researchers could not answer all these questions for many years. The official investigation was closed on May 28, 1959 with a fuzzy conclusion about the impact of "irresistible force of nature", and the case was classified.

This gave rise to rumors about the connection of the tragedy with "fireballs" and with the testing of missiles, radiation or other weapons. And even with the murder of tourists to preserve state secrets. Over the years, such hypotheses have turned into beliefs in some people. However, no hypotheses gave a clear picture of what happened, led to contradictions that prevented the elements of the tragedy from being connected together.

We conducted an investigation with the help of specialists from different fields of knowledge: tourists, geographers, meteorologists, physicists, rocket scientists, doctors ... The search broke up into “lines” to answer individual questions, and these answers made it possible to build the whole picture of the accident. What, for example, were the "fireballs"? According to ufologist M. Gershtein (“It's just a rocket!”) And according to witnesses, they chose the right path of search.

The historian of rocket technology A. Zheleznyakov helped to reveal the secret, who said that on February 17, 1959, at 6.46 Sverdlovsk time, a R-7 combat missile was launched from Baikonur (Tyuratam) to the Kura training ground in Kamchatka. This time exactly coincided with the observations of Tokareva and Karelin's group. To enter the line-of-sight zone from the northern Urals (at a distance of 1700 km), calculations gave a rocket altitude of about 220 km.

The P-7 passed this height on the active site, and the apogee was more than 1000 km. We checked Strauch's story about the flight of the "fireball" 20 years after the tragedy of February 16, 1979 at 20.15 in the northwestern part of the sky. It turned out to be an emergency launch from the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 15.00 GMT (20.00 Sverdlovsk time) of a Soyuz-U rocket with a Zenit-2M photo reconnaissance vehicle (the Plesetsk cosmodrome had not yet been built in 1959).

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They did not immediately understand what happened on March 31, 1959 - there were no launches that day. But an accurate check revealed a launch from Baikonur on March 30 at 22.56 GMT (or at 3.56 March 31 Sverdlovsk). This is the time of flight at 4.00 "fireball" over the camp on Auspiya. The launch was accompanied by an accident and the fall of the rocket in the Ust-Nera region (Yakutia).

This is how the mystery of the "fireballs" was solved. Moonless nights and clear mountain air increased visibility. We were surprised to understand that people had seen the flight of R-7 missiles both earlier and later in the dark from a distance of more than 2000 km. But about the "fireballs" on the night of the accident on February 1-2, 1959, no data was found.

There were no launches these days, and there are no traces of a rocket fall at the site of the tragedy. When checking the testimonies of witnesses, it turned out that they were all based on the same observations on February 17 or March 31. And the fact that “someone saw something” on February 1–2 is just a rumor. It was found out that part of the rumors about "fireballs" arose due to the observation by tourists of the Shumkov group from Chistop Mountain of a brief flight of a signal rocket on the night of March 5-6 - after the death of the Dyatlov group. With "radiation" also figured out.

It turned out that most of the decays were on the dirtiest parts of the clothes - most likely from radioactive fallout that fell on the soil (carried by northwest winds from Novaya Zemlya). And in the washed areas, the radiation was 10-15 times less. Both "fireballs", and radiation, and the "technical" versions of the accident based on them, we rejected as unreliable.

The investigation and the search engines did not find any traces and a criminal offense. After studying all the materials of the criminal case and analyzing the evidence at the scene of the tragedy, the lawyer G. Petrov and I came to the same conclusion. The presence of things and traces was explained by their abandonment either by members of the Dyatlov group or by search engines. There were no traces of the presence of unauthorized persons.

All criminal versions were not confirmed by any facts and were also discarded. An analysis of the toponymy of the names showed that all the sinister names near Mount 1096 arose after the tragedy. And the mountain with the "calm" names "Auspi-Tump" ("the bald mountain of Auspii") and "Khola-Chakhl" ("the middle mountain of the origins of the Lozva") became the "mountain of the dead" Holatchakhl.

The translation of the name of Mount Otorten as "do not go there" is also incorrect. The name "Otorten" comes from the "mountain blowing with the wind" - the mountain "Vot-Tarkhan-Syakhil" (Ot-Tarkhan), located a few kilometers away. And the Mansi name is Otorten "Lunt-Khusap-Syahyl" - "mountain of the lake of the goose nest", since there is a lake near the mountain.

Now, dozens of groups of tourists calmly pass along the paths through the Dyatlov Pass past the Holatchakhl and Otorten mountains and to the “stone blockheads” of the remnants on the Malpupuner plateau. And the whole mysticism of names is a set of inventions. Therefore, the conclusion is substantiated that the tragedy occurred due to a natural disaster or the mistakes of the group. Experienced tourists did not find the latter when analyzing the situation.

Although some suspicions arose, they were not found to be directly related to the accident. We studied the statistics of various factors leading to accidents in ski tourism for 30–35 years. The two main causes that killed up to 90% of ski tourists were avalanches (in 63–80% of cases) and freezing from cold and wind (12–26%).

The rest of the "statistical" accident factors were excluded - the Dyatlovites obviously died not from falls on the slopes (up to 7%) and not from diseases (up to 3-4%). The version of the avalanche was checked by doctors in terms of the possibility of such injuries; the possibility of avalanche formation on such a slope (in the conditions of the winter of 1959) and known similar accidents with other tourist groups was found out from the avalanches.

M. Kornev, a forensic doctor, professor of the Military Medical Academy, helped in the analysis of injuries. It turned out that explosions or falls on the slope could not cause such injuries. They were explained only by the distributed compression of bodies by a large mass moving at low speed against a rigid obstacle (compression), while clothing protected from external damage.

Such loads could have occurred during an avalanche that pressed tourists to the floor of the tent. It became clear that the residual weight of the snow with broken ribs caused bleeding in the wall of Dubinina's heart - before being removed from the rubble, her heart experienced great stress. We found similar cases from the practice of Kornev, and in similar accidents with tourists.

The possibility of an avalanche was checked by avalanche scientists. Associate Professor of Moscow State University N.Volodicheva pointed to a layered avalanche from a snow board (slab) as the most probable for a slope of small steepness in the conditions of the Northern Urals and the winter of 1959. After a thorough analysis of photos and documents, we found traces of an avalanche at the accident site.

The condition of the tent and the snow on it pointed to an avalanche - the crushed tent was not covered with snow from the inside, it was not torn to shreds by a hurricane. The jacket, pressed into the gap in the tent and into the snow of the slope, clearly indicated the struggle inside the tent in cramped conditions. The tourists obviously made incisions and tears in the tent in order to get out and extract the wounded.

One of the ski racks of the tent was out of place - it was lifted and stuck in the snow after it was knocked down by a collapse. And the post at the entrance of the tent withstood the wind on loose guy wires only because it was held by the fabric of the tent, tightly pressed by the snow. Under the lantern, lying on top of the tent, there was a layer of snow, that is, it was already on the tent at the time of its cutting.

A rear pole broken in two places, a gap in the roof and torn guy wires of the tent also indicated the impact of a snow avalanche. There were also indirect factors indicating an increase in the danger of avalanches on the night of the tragedy and the possibility of an avalanche: the avalanche danger of the area, the steepness of the slope of 20 °, a sharp change in weather conditions (pressure surges and increased frost from -4 to -28 ° C).

When searching for analogue accidents, three similar cases were found with death due to avalanches of 5 and 13 people in the south of the Polar Urals and 5 people in the Khibiny. We also found analogue accidents on similar slopes with a smaller number of deaths, accidents with the death of tourists from the cold, as well as several tragedies that have other similarities with the tragedy of the Dyatlovites.

The study of photographs from the sites of tragedies and the analysis of accidents with avalanches on gentle slopes made it possible to see the main causes of the avalanche: the presence of a heavy layer of “snow board” on a soft substrate and cutting the retaining shaft of this layer to a depth of 1 m (when leveling the place for the tent, deepening it in snow slope).

A piece of dense "snow board" came off, moved out and crushed part of the tent. The strongest blow fell where the edge of the snow slab had reached the support earlier, and the tourists lying there were severely injured. A small wasp - displacement along the snow slope - occurred without snow concentration in the alluvial fan.

This drift was partly blown away, and partly it condensed and settled. Therefore, none of the search engines noticed the remnants of the removal of a small avalanche. They didn’t find it for one more reason: the master’s tourists and climbers arrived at the accident site when the tent had already been dug out, and both the wind and people swept away the avalanche. Now we have found a photo of the search work in March, which shows both the excavation site of the tent and the trail of an avalanche-wasp covered in snow.

An analysis of weather data on the night of the tragedy by engineer Moshiashvili from the St. Petersburg State Hydrometeorological University revealed the second main cause of the accident. It turned out that a cyclone front from the Arctic passed that night, causing a drop in temperature to -28 ° C and a sharp increase in wind. On the group that left the crushed tent, with the wounded in their arms, the cyclone fell in the dark with frost and gale-force wind.

Tourists were pressed by the danger of rapid death from cold and wind and the danger of a second avalanche. Uncertainty crushed from the incomprehensible reasons for the avalanche and the danger of injury. The loss of capacity by the wounded threatened with a quick death of both them and the entire group near the tent from the wind and cold. The Dyatlovites got some of the things through the gaps in the tent and dressed the wounded.

But it turned out to be very difficult and long to get the rest of the things crushed down by snow, blankets and the fabric of the tent with bare hands, to put on frozen shoes. In the most difficult conditions at night, under the terrible pressure of wind and cold, they decided to lower the wounded down and then return to the tent for things. The group could not fulfill the second part of this plan - without warm clothes, there were not enough thermal reserves of the body.

They could not climb back without shoes up the slope towards the hurricane, and a small fire, made with great difficulty, could not warm anyone. The snow gap (niche, cave) with a flooring in the bed of the stream, where the wounded were sheltered from the wind, did not save either (later, from the melting snow, the dead slid down into the stream, where they were found). Without an ax they could not get enough firewood.

Cold, hurricane, darkness, loss of clothes and equipment - all these factors caused a disaster. The reasons for the retreat of the group into the forest are clear: it is the shock of injuries and fright, the need for urgent protection of the wounded from cold and wind. The skiers realized the dangers of the open area where they were due to the force of the wind and avalanches.

Photo active tours in Russia
Retreat to the forest in that situation was necessary, but it was not prepared. The pressure of the elements turned out to be very powerful, and the group was weakened by injuries and loss of equipment. A desperate struggle in the forest for life, attempts to keep warm and attempts to return to the tent led to death from freezing. Despite self-sacrifice, the tourists could not overcome the cold.

They died in the fight against him, rescuing wounded comrades. The disaster of the Dyatlov group is an accident. The situation is humanly and technically clear: all the actions of tourists took place under terrible and unexpected blows of the elements. Correct knowledge of the causes of this and other similar accidents will help to avoid at least part of them in the future.

Now all unreliable "versions" of the tragedy, not supported by facts, have failed. Therefore, it is necessary to stop speculation about its connection with all sorts of "entities" ("infrasound", "ball lightning", "cold plasma", "UFO", "special forces", etc.), the existence of which is not confirmed by anything.

False "versions" only describe the phenomena, trying to explain the events with them, but the connection of these phenomena with the tragedy has not been proven. Such are the unreliable works of Rakitin, Yaroslavtsev, Kizilov. A set of false hypotheses are the books by A. Gushchin "Murder at the Mountain of the Dead" and "The price of a state secret is nine lives" and the mystical novel by A. Kiryanova "Hunting Sorni-Nay".

Films and publications on this topic are characterized by an enumeration of different “versions” of the tragedy, which does not give specific answers to its causes. The avalanche version allows you to explain and describe in detail all the episodes of the death of the Dyatlov group.

February 1, 2019. /TASS/. The Prosecutor General's Office of Russia intends to establish the true cause of the death of Igor Dyatlov's tourist group in February 1959 in the Northern Urals in the vicinity of Mount Otorten. According to the official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation Alexander Kurennoy on the Internet channel of the Prosecutor General's Office "Efir", three versions are most likely, the crime is completely excluded.

He explained that in September last year, the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region again began checking the causes of the death of a group of students in the mountains. "The prosecutor's office took up this case simply because relatives, and the press, and social activists, and there are a large number of them, turn to prosecutors with a request to establish the truth," Kurennoy said, emphasizing that the criminal case was classified until the 70s.

“According to the decision to terminate the criminal case of May 28, 1959, the official cause of death is a natural force that the tourist group could not overcome. , which are put forward today by both experts and simply interested people, reaches 75. And even the most odious ones are contained there - such as alien intervention or otherworldly ".

The prosecutor's office intends to establish the true cause of death of tourists. "Out of 75 versions, we intend to check the three most probable ones with the involvement of experts. All of them are somehow connected with natural phenomena," Kurennoy said. "Crime [the criminal version of the causes of death] is completely excluded, there is not a single evidence, even indirect, that would speak in favor of this version," the representative of the Prosecutor General's Office noted.

He named the three most likely versions. "It could be an avalanche, it could be a so-called snowboard or a hurricane," he said, recalling that the locals know that the winds in this area are very strong.

According to him, according to the current legislation, only prosecutors can conduct a new check - the deadlines for checks by investigators have long expired, but the statute of limitations does not apply to prosecutor's checks. In addition, added Kurennoy, "a legislative novel has come into force, which gives the prosecutor's office the authority to appoint special examinations as part of verification activities." "This is exactly what our colleagues from the Sverdlovsk region are doing now in order to finally establish the truth," said Kurennoy. Experts in the field of geodesy and meteorology, as well as employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, were involved in the verification.

Nine examinations
In addition, the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region will conduct nine examinations to establish the circumstances and causes of the death of the Dyatlov group, said Andrey Kuryakov, head of the group to verify the causes of the death of the tourist group of the prosecutor's office of the Sverdlovsk region.

"The prosecutor's office will appoint and conduct nine different examinations, after which we will be able to tell in more detail and in more detail," he said.

"The most important examination will be situational, which will tell you how it is possible and even possible to leave the tent by cutting it with a knife, all at the same time or in turn, is it possible to go down the mountain, is it possible to climb back into the tent, and so on. Answers to these questions can be obtained after a trip to the pass in the winter," Kuryakov said. During the expedition, prosecutors together with experts will determine the place where the tent was located, assess the situation there and take measurements.

A forensic medical examination will also be carried out, since, as Kuryakov noted, there are innuendos in those examinations that were carried out earlier in the criminal case, and a repeated examination will be able to close a number of blank spots. In addition, they will conduct a psychological examination, collecting data on each of the expedition members. During it, the behavioral reactions of the group members will be studied - in a normal hike and in extreme situations. "We are collecting a psychological portrait of each of them, relying on information from the media, private researchers, since there are many links to interviews of people who knew the dead guys, and when we collect this, we will be able to ask questions to a psychologist," the representative of the prosecutor's office explained.

“If we don’t answer [to what happened on the mountain pass in the winter of 1959], it will remain not a dot that we want to put, but an ellipsis. which are not supported by any evidence or which contradict them, and leave one version, which is not contradicted by any evidence. We are following this path," Kuryakov said.

Weekly tour, one-day hiking trips and excursions combined with comfort (trekking) in the mountain resort of Khadzhokh (Adygea, Krasnodar Territory). Tourists live at the camp site and visit numerous natural monuments. Rufabgo Waterfalls, Lago-Naki Plateau, Meshoko Gorge, Big Azish Cave, Belaya River Canyon, Guam Gorge.

The death of the Dyatlov tourist group is an event that supposedly happened on the night of February 1-2, 1959 in the Northern Urals, when a group of tourists led by Igor Dyatlov died under unclear circumstances. Despite the fact that the death of individual tourists and entire tourist groups is not a unique phenomenon, and at least 111 people died only in ski trips from 1975 to 2004, the death of the Dyatlov tourist group continues to attract the attention of researchers, journalists, politicians, up to the coverage of events by more than 50 years ago on the central channels of Russia.

Group members:

Igor Alekseevich Dyatlov (born January 13, 1936), 5th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering.

Zinaida Alekseevna Kolmogorova (born January 12, 1937), 5th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering.

Rustem Vladimirovich Slobodin (born January 11, 1936), graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics (1958), engineer of plant No. 817 in Chelyabinsk-40.

Yuri Nikolayevich Doroshenko (born January 29, 1938), 4th year student of the Faculty of Radio Engineering.

Georgy (Yuri) Alekseevich Krivonischenko (born February 7, 1935), graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering (1957), engineer of plant No. 817 in Chelyabinsk-40.

Nikolai Vladimirovich Thibaut-Brignolles (born June 5, 1935), graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering (1958), engineer.

Lyudmila Alexandrovna Dubinina (born May 12, 1938), 4th year student of the Faculty of Civil Engineering.

Semyon (Alexander) Alekseevich Zolotarev (born February 2, 1921), instructor of the Kourovskaya camp site, graduate of the Institute of Physical Culture of the Byelorussian SSR (1950).

Alexander Sergeevich Kolevatov (born November 16, 1934), 4th year student of the Faculty of Physics and Technology.

Yuri Efimovich Yudin (born July 19, 1937), 4th year student of the Faculty of Engineering and Economics. Yuri Yudin dropped out of the group due to sciatica when entering the active part of the route (the part overcome exclusively by one's own strength), due to which the only one from the whole group survived. He was the first to identify the personal belongings of the dead, and he also identified the bodies of Slobodin and Dyatlov. In the future, he did not take an active part in the investigation of the tragedy. In the 1990s, he was deputy head of Solikamsk for economics and forecasting, chairman of the Polyus city tourist club. He died on April 27, 2013 and, according to his last will, was buried on May 4 in Yekaterinburg at the Mikhailovsky cemetery, along with seven other participants in the campaign.

hike

The last campaign of the group was timed to coincide with the XXI Congress of the CPSU. 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 Otorten and Oiko-Chakur mountains in the North Urals. The hike belonged to the 3rd (highest) category of difficulty (according to the classification of sports hikes in force at that time, adopted in 1949). On January 23, the group left by train from Sverdlovsk to Serov, where they arrived on the morning of January 24. In the evening of the same day, the group left by train for Ivdel and arrived in the city around midnight (on the night of January 24-25). On the morning of 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 left on a hitchhike (an open-body truck) 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, due to pain in his leg (sciatic nerve inflamed), could not continue the hike - he was blown out while traveling on a hitchhike. Nevertheless, Yudin went with a group to the 2nd Northern 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 serious incidents. On January 28, tourists, having left the 2nd Northern, advanced on skis along the Lozva River and spent the night on its banks. On January 29, a transition was made from the parking lot on the banks of the Lozva to the parking lot on its tributary Auspiya along the Mansi trail. On January 30, the group continued to move along the Auspiya along the Mansi sledge and reindeer trail. On January 31, the Dyatlovites approached Mount Holatchakhl and tried to climb the slope, but because of the strong wind they were forced to return back to Auspiya and spend the night there. On February 1, the group, having equipped a storehouse in the Auspiya valley (a warehouse of some things and products that are unnecessary when climbing Otorten), again climbed the slope of Mount Holatchakhl (Kholat-Syakhl, translated from Mansi - “Dead Mountain”) or peaks “1079” ( on later maps, its height is given as 1096.7 m), where it stopped for the night not far from the nameless pass (later called the Dyatlov Pass). On February 12, the group was supposed to reach the end point of the route - the village of Vizhay, send a telegram to the institute's sports club, and return to Sverdlovsk on February 15. The first to express concern was Yuri Blinov, the head of the UPI tourist group, which drove up with the Dyatlov group from Sverdlovsk to the village of Vizhay and left from there to the west - to the Prayer Stone ridge and Mount Isherim (1331). Also, Sasha Kolevatov's sister Rimma, Dubinina and Slobodin's parents began to worry about the fate of their relatives. The head of the UPI sports club, Lev Semenovich Gordo, and the department of physical education of the UPI, A. M. Vishnevsky, were waiting for the group to return for another day or two, since earlier there had been delays on the route for various reasons. On February 16-17, they contacted Vizhay, trying to establish whether the group was returning from the campaign. The answer was no.

On February 26, descending along the supposed traces of tourists leaving the tent, one and a half kilometers down from it, in a place where the forest had already begun, near a large cedar, Koptelov (a search engine from Slobtsov’s group) and Sharavin found the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko. They lay at some distance from each other next to the remains of a small fire that had sunk into the snow. Rescuers were struck by the fact that both bodies were stripped down to their underwear. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. 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's - a burn of the left leg 31 × 10 cm and a burn of the left foot 10 × 4 cm. On the cedar itself, at a height of 4-5 meters, branches were broken off, part of them lay around the bodies. According to the observations of the searcher S. N. Sogrin, in the area of ​​​​the cedar “there were not two people, but more, since a titanic work was done to procure firewood, spruce branches. This is evidenced by a large number of cuts on tree trunks, broken branches and Christmas trees. But at the same time, the cut tops of fir trees and the 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, Mansi hunters found the body of Igor Dyatlov. 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. There was an icy growth on his face, which meant that before he died, he breathed into the snow. In the evening of the same day, about 330 meters from Dyatlov, up the slope, under a layer of dense snow of 10 cm, with the help of a search dog, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was discovered. She was warmly dressed, but without shoes. His face showed signs of nosebleeds. On March 2, the camp of the tourist group was found in the forest, which was located 300 meters from the base camp of the search engines and 100 meters from the coast of Auspiya. 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). 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. On February 28 (or March 5), the search was officially headed by the Extraordinary Commission of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, headed by Deputy Chairman of the Regional Executive Committee V. A. Pavlov and Head of the Department of the Regional Committee of the CPSU F. T. Yermash. It was decided to search until all the tourists were found, despite the fact that the head of the search at the pass, E.P. Maslennikov, expressed an opinion agreed with the search engines on stopping these works until April in order to wait for the snow to shrink. 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 mountainside with the help of probes. The pass between peaks 1079 and 880 and the ridge towards Lozva, the 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 studied. During this time, the composition of the search groups changed several times, but the results were zero. Since the end of April, searchers have concentrated their efforts on exploring the ravine, located below the cedar, and where the thickness of the snow cover reached 3 meters. In the first days of May, the snow began to melt intensively and made it possible to find objects that indicated the rescuers in the right direction to search. So, plucked coniferous branches and scraps of clothes were exposed, which clearly led into the hollow of the stream, which flowed about 70 m from the cedar and was heavily covered with snow. An excavation carried out in a hollow 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. On May 4, 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, below and slightly away from the flooring, with further clearing of the hollow, the remaining tourists were found. 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 - trousers, sweaters - were found on the corpses, as well as a few meters from them. All clothes had traces of even cuts, as they had already been removed from the corpses of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko. The dead Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev were found well-dressed, Dubinina was worse dressed - her faux-fur jacket and cap ended up on Zolotarev, Dubinina's unbuttoned 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. 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. After that, the bodies were sent for forensic examination to Ivdel, and the search was curtailed.

Rakitin's version - controlled supply:

The tourist group included secret KGB officers: Semyon Zolotarev, Alexander Kolevatov and Yuri Krivonischenko, who, under the cover of the campaign, were supposed to meet foreign intelligence agents disguised as another tourist group on the route and conduct a "controlled delivery" of radioactive clothing (transfer fake samples of radioactive materials in the form of clothing containing radioactive dust). However, the spies revealed the group's connection with the KGB (perhaps when they tried 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 kill them. 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 explains the severe bodily injuries, torn out tongue and missing eyeballs. 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.

The Dyatlov Pass Incident

The terrible mystery of the death of the Dyatlov group

The tragic story of a tourist group of students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute in February 1959 in the Northern Urals, called the Dyatlov group, is one of the most mysterious tragedies in history. The case was partially declassified only in 1989. According to the researchers, some of the materials from the case have been seized and are still classified. Due to the huge number of strange and inexplicable circumstances back in 1959, investigators were unable to solve this mystery. Until now, for many years, volunteer volunteers have been trying to investigate and somehow explain the incredibly strange and terrible history of the group. However, there is still no completely harmonious version that would explain all the mysteries of this case.

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1. Dyatlov group.

On January 23, 1959, a group of 9 skiers from the tourist club went on a ski trip in the north of the Sverdlovsk region.

The group was headed by an experienced tourist Igor Dyatlov.

The task of the hike is to pass through the forests and mountains of the Northern Urals on a ski hike of the 3rd (highest) category of difficulty.

On February 1, 1959, the group stopped for the night on the slope of Mount Kholatchakhl (translated from Mansi - Mountain of the Dead), not far from the nameless pass (later called the Dyatlov Pass).

Nothing foreshadowed trouble.

These photographs of the group were later found in the cameras of the participants in the campaign and developed by the investigation.

The group sets up a tent on the mountainside, the time is about 17:00.

These are the most recent photographs that have been found.

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. But neither on the appointed days, nor later, the group did not appear at the end point of the route. It was decided to start searching.

2. Start of search and rescue operations.

Search and rescue operations began on February 22, a detachment was sent along the route. Around for hundreds of kilometers there is not a single settlement, completely deserted places.

On February 26, a tent covered with snow was found on the slope of Mount Holatchakhl. The wall of the tent facing down the slope was cut.

The tent was later dug up and examined. The entrance to the tent was opened, but the slope of the tent, facing the slope, was torn in several places. A fur coat stuck out in one of the holes.

Moreover, as the examination showed, the tent was cut from the inside. Here is the cut diagram

At the entrance inside the tent lay a stove, buckets, a little further cameras. In the far corner of the tent - a bag with maps and documents, Dyatlov's camera, Kolmogorova's diary, a bank of money. To the right of the entrance lay the products. To the right, next to the entrance, lay two pairs of boots. The remaining six pairs of shoes lay against the wall opposite. Backpacks are spread out at the bottom, they are wearing padded jackets and blankets. Part of the blankets are not spread out, warm clothes are on top of the blankets. An ice ax was found near the entrance, and a flashlight was thrown on the slope of the tent. The tent was completely empty, there were no people in it.

Traces around the tent indicated that the entire Dyatlov group suddenly left the tent for some unknown reason, and presumably not through the exit, but through the cuts. Moreover, people ran out of the tent in 30-degree frost even without shoes and partially dressed. The group ran about 20 meters away from the entrance to the tent. Then the Dyatlovites in a tight group, almost a line, in socks through the snow and frost went down the slope. The tracks indicate that they walked side by side without losing sight of each other. Moreover, they did not run away, namely, with the usual step, they retreated down the slope.

These protruding hills of snow are their traces, as it happens when a strong snowstorm passes over the area.

After about 500 meters down the slope, the tracks were lost under a layer of snow.

The next day, February 27, one and a half kilometers from the tent and 280 m down the slope, near the cedar, the bodies of Yuri Doroshenko and Yuri Krivonischenko were found. At the same time, it was recorded: Doroshenko had a burnt foot and hair on his right temple, Krivonischenko had a burn on his left leg and a burn on his left foot. Near the corpses, a fire was found, which had sunk into the snow.

Rescuers were struck by the fact that both bodies were stripped down to their underwear. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. 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. There were numerous injuries on the hands (bruises and abrasions), the internal organs were full of blood, Krivonischenko was missing the tip of his nose.

On the cedar itself, at a height of up to 5 meters, branches were broken off (some of them lay around the bodies). Moreover, branches up to 5 cm thick, at a height, were first filed with a knife, and then broken off with force, as if hanging on them with their whole body. There were traces of blood on the bark.

Nearby, cuts with a knife with broken young firs and cuts on birch trees were found. Cut tops of firs and a knife were not found. At the same time, there were no assumptions that they were used for a firebox. Firstly, they do not burn well, and secondly, there was a relatively large amount of dry material around.

Almost simultaneously with them, 300 meters from the cedar up the slope in the direction of the tent, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found.

He was slightly covered with snow, reclining on his back, with his head towards the tent, his arm around the trunk of a birch. Dyatlov was wearing ski trousers, underpants, a sweater, a cowboy shirt, and a fur sleeveless jacket. On the right leg - a woolen sock, on the left - a cotton sock. The clock on my hand showed 5 hours and 31 minutes. There was an icy growth on his face, which meant that before he died, he breathed into the snow.

Numerous abrasions, scratches, deposits were revealed on the body; a superficial wound from the second to the fifth fingers was recorded on the palm of the left hand; internal organs are filled with blood.

Approximately 330 meters from Dyatlov, up the slope under a layer of dense snow 10 cm, the body of Zina Kolmogorova was found.

She was warmly dressed, but without shoes. His face showed signs of nosebleeds. There are numerous abrasions on the hands and palms; a wound with a scalped skin flap on the right hand; encircling the right side, passing to the back of the skin; swelling of the meninges.

A few days later, on March 5, 180 meters from the place where Dyatlov's body was found and 150 meters from the location of Kolmogorova's body, the body of Rustem Slobodin was found under a layer of snow of 15-20 cm. He was also quite warmly dressed, while on his right leg he had a felt boot worn over 4 pairs of socks (the second felt boot was found in the tent). On the left hand of Slobodin, a watch was found that showed 8 hours 45 minutes. There was an ice build-up on his face and there were signs of nosebleeds.

A characteristic feature of the last three found tourists was skin color: according to the recollections of rescuers - orange-red, in the documents of the forensic medical examination - reddish-crimson.

4. New terrible finds.

The search for the remaining tourists took place in several stages from February to May. And only after the snow began to melt, objects began to be found that indicated the rescuers in the right direction to search. The exposed branches and scraps of clothes led to the hollow of the stream about 70 m from the cedar, which was heavily covered with snow.

The excavation made it possible to find at a depth of more than 2.5 m a flooring of 14 trunks of small firs and one birch up to 2 m long. On the flooring lay a spruce branch and several items of clothing. According to the position of these objects on the flooring, four spots were exposed, made as "seats" for four people.

The bodies were found under a four-meter layer of snow, in the bed of a stream that had already begun to melt, below and slightly away from the flooring. First they found Lyudmila Dubinina - she froze, kneeling, facing the slope at the waterfall of the stream.

The other three were found a little lower. Kolevatov and Zolotarev lay in an embrace "chest to back" at the edge of the stream, apparently warming each other to the end. Thibaut-Brignolles was the lowest, in the water of the stream.

Krivonischenko and Doroshenko's clothes - trousers, sweaters - were found on the corpses, as well as a few meters from them. All clothes had traces of even cuts, as they had already been removed from the corpses of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko. The dead Thibault-Brignolles and Zolotarev were found well-dressed, Dubinina was worse dressed - her faux-fur jacket and cap ended up on Zolotarev, Dubinina's unbuttoned leg was wrapped in Krivonischenko's woolen trousers. Krivonischenko's knife was found near the corpses, with which young firs were cut near the fires. Two watches were found on Thibault-Brignolle's hand - one showed 8 hours 14 minutes, the second - 8 hours 39 minutes.

At the same time, all the bodies had terrible injuries received in their lifetime. Dubinina and Zolotarev had fractures of 12 ribs, Dubinina - both on the right and on the left side, Zolotarev - only on the right.

Later, the examination determined that such injuries can only be received from a strong blow, like hitting a car moving at high speed or falling from a great height. It is impossible to inflict such injuries with a stone in a person’s hand.

In addition, Dubinina and Zolotarev do not have eyeballs - they are squeezed out or removed. And Dubinina's tongue and part of her upper lip were torn out. Thibaut-Brignolles has a depressed fracture of the temporal bone.

Very strange, but during the examination it was found that the clothes (sweater, trousers) contain applied radioactive substances with beta radiation.

5. Inexplicable.

Here is a schematic picture of all the discovered bodies. Most of the group's bodies were found in the head-to-tent position, and all were located in a straight line from the cut side of the tent, for over 1.5 kilometers. Kolmogorova, Slobodin and Dyatlov did not die while leaving the tent, but on the contrary, on the way back to the tent.

The whole picture of the tragedy points to numerous mysteries and oddities in the behavior of the Dyatlovites, most of which are practically inexplicable.
- Why didn't they run away from the tent, but retreated in a line, with the usual step?
“Why did they need to kindle a fire near a tall cedar in a windswept area?”
– Why did they break the branches of the cedar at a height of up to 5 meters, when there were many small trees around for a fire?
“How could they have sustained such terrible injuries on level ground?”
– Why didn’t those who reached the stream and built sun loungers there survive, because even in the cold it was possible to hold out until the morning?
- And finally, the most important thing - what made the group leave the tent at the same time and in such a hurry with practically no clothes, no shoes and no equipment?

There are still a lot of questions, but no answers.

6. Mount Holatchakhl - the mountain of the dead.

Initially, the local population of the northern Urals, the Mansi, was suspected of the murder. Mansi Anyamov, Sanbindalov, Kurikov and their relatives fell under suspicion. But none of them took the blame.
They were more afraid of themselves. Mansi said that they saw strange "fireballs" over the place of death of tourists. They not only described this phenomenon, but also drew it. In the future, the drawings from the case disappeared or are still classified. "Fireballs" during the search period were observed by the rescuers themselves, as well as other residents of the Northern Urals. As a result, the suspicion with Mansi was removed.

On the film of the dead tourists, the very last frame was discovered, which is still controversial. Some argue that this shot was taken when the film was removed from the camera. Others claim that this shot was taken by someone from the Dyatlov group from the tent when the danger began to approach.

The Mansi legends say that during the global flood on Mount Kholat-Syakhyl, 9 hunters disappeared earlier - they “died of hunger”, “boiled in boiling water”, “disappeared in a terrible radiance”. Hence the name of this mountain - Kholatchakhl, in translation - the Mountain of the Dead. The mountain is not a sacred place for the Mansi, rather the opposite - they always bypassed this peak.

Be that as it may, but the mystery of the death of the Dyatlov group has not been solved so far.

7. Versions.

There are 9 main versions of the death of the Dyatlov group:
- avalanche
- the destruction of the group by the military or special services
- impact of sound
- attack by escaped prisoners
- death at the hands of the Mansi
- a quarrel between tourists
- a version about the impact of some test weapon
– version of “controlled delivery”
- paranormal versions

I will not describe them in detail, all these versions can be easily found on the Internet. I can only say that none of these versions still can not fully explain all the circumstances of the death of the Dyatlov group.

8. Memory of the dead.

After the tragedy, the pass was named the Dyatlov Pass. A memorial was erected there in memory of the dead tourists.

Igor Dyatlov, Zina Kolmogorova, Semyon Zolotarev.

In preparing the article, materials were used from several sources, forums and investigative reports:
– http://pereval1959.forum24.ru
– http://aenforum.org/index.php?showtopic=1338&st=0
– http://www.murders.ru/Dyatloff_group_1.html
– http://perdyat.livejournal.com/4768.html
– http://pereval1959.forum24.ru/?1-9-0-00000028-000-0-0-1283515314 (case)
- wikipedia stuff

Materials dedicated to the death of the Dyatlov tourist group on the night of February 2, 1959 in the Northern Urals are collected in our magazine by tag.

Publications on the death of the Dyatlov tourist group:
- a detailed overview publication on the death of the Dyatlov group.
- 30 chapters of the most interesting investigation into the mystery of the death of the Dyatlov group: the version of the "controlled delivery".
- The Sobesednik publication, together with colleagues from Komsomolskaya Pravda and Channel One, took part in an expedition to the Northern Urals.
- Why is it easier to believe in the incredible, what kind of secret document the participants in the conflict are waiting for from Bastrykin and when they come face to face - in the material "URA.Ru".
- a version of the death of students on the night of February 2, 1959 from a rocket test, from an explosion in the air, which caused the ice and snow to move on Mount Kholatchakhl.
- feature film directed by Renny Harlin "The Mystery of the Dyatlov Pass" ( The Dyatlov Pass Incident), released in 2013, shows a group of American students trying to solve the mystery of the death of the Dyatlov tourist group in Russia in the Northern Urals in 1959.
- fragments of the rocket fell near the group, and in order to avoid the discovery of any evidence proving the involvement of the government and the military in this case, the Dyatlovites were maimed and killed.
- a film that considers and argues the version of the involvement of the government and the military in the death of the Dyatlov tourist group.

Electronic media "Interesting world". 07/30/2012

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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 hike. 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 fall 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 out 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. Initially, it was 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. Igor Dyatlov's precise engineering calculation 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 uninhabited 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 should have turned 24 years old on 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 campaign. 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. Military and civil aviation was involved from the 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. Halatchakhl – 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 hit the tent, we stand, we are silent and we don’t know what to do: the slope of the tent in the center is torn, there is snow inside, some things, skis stick out, an ice ax is stuck in the snow at the entrance, people are not visible, it’s 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 inspection 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 10 cm along 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 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 fir trees, 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. Warm. 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 dates after January 31 in the personal diaries of the 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 criminal 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 at a shutter speed of 1/25 sec., with an aperture of 5.6 and 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.

Group members

Initially, the group consisted of ten people:

Yuri Yudin dropped out of the group due to an illness that caused severe pain in his leg before entering the active part of the route, due to which he was the only one from the whole group to survive. He was the first to identify the personal belongings of the dead, he also identified the bodies of Slobodin and Dyatlov. In the future, he did not take an active part in the investigation of the tragedy. In the 1990s, he was deputy head of Solikamsk for economics and forecasting, chairman of the Polyus city tourist club. He died on April 27, 2013, and, according to his last will, was buried on May 4 in Yekaterinburg at the Mikhailovsky cemetery, along with seven other participants in the campaign.

hike

There is an opinion that the last campaign of the group was timed to coincide with the 21st Congress of the CPSU (the materials of the criminal case do not confirm this). For 16 or 18 days, the participants of the trip had to ski at least 300 km in the north of the Sverdlovsk region and climb two peaks of the Northern Urals: Otorten and Oika-Chakur. The hike belonged to the 3rd (highest) category of difficulty according to the classification of sports hikes used in the late fifties.

Transportation

ski trip

Waiting for the group to return

Looking for a group

February

The search work began with the clarification of the route along which the Dyatlov group set off. It turned out that Dyatlov did not hand over the route book to the UPI sports club, and no one knows for sure which route the tourists chose. Thanks to Rimma Kolevatova, the sister of the missing Alexander Kolevatov, the route was restored and handed over to rescuers on February 19. On the same day, the use of aviation for the search for the missing group was agreed, and on the morning of February 20, the chairman of the UPI sports club, Lev Gordo, flew to Ivdel with an experienced tourist, a member of the UPI tourist section bureau, Yuri Blinov. The next day they conducted aerial reconnaissance of the search area.

On February 22, the tourist section of the UPI formed 3 groups of searchers from students and employees of the UPI who had tourist and mountaineering experience - the groups of Boris Slobtsov, Moses Axelrod and Oleg Grebennik, who were transferred to Ivdel the next day. Another group, under the leadership of Vladislav Karelin, was decided to be transferred to the search area directly from the campaign. On the spot, the military joined the search - a group of Captain A. A. Chernyshev and a group of operational workers with search dogs led by senior lieutenant Moiseev, cadets of the SevUralLag sergeant school led by senior lieutenant Potapov and a group of sappers with mine detectors led by Lieutenant Colonel Shestopalov. Local residents also joined the search engines - representatives of the Mansi Kurikov family (Stepan and Nikolai) and the Anyamovs from the village of Suevatpaul (“Mansi Suevata”), hunters the Bakhtiyarov brothers, hunters from the Komi ASSR, radio operators with walkie-talkies for communication (Egor Nevolin from the exploration party, B . Yaburov). The head of the search at this stage was the master of sports of the USSR for tourism Evgeny Polikarpovich Maslennikov (secretary of the party committee of VIZ, was the “issuer” of the route commission for the Dyatlov group) - he was responsible for the operational management of the search teams on the spot. The head of the military department of the UPI, Colonel Georgy Semenovich Ortyukov, became the chief of staff, whose functions included coordinating the actions of civil and military search teams, managing aviation flights in the search area, interacting with regional and local authorities, and the leadership of the UPI.

The area from Mount Otorten to Oika-Chakur (70 km in a straight line between them) was identified as the most promising for searches, as the most remote, difficult and potentially more dangerous for tourists. The search groups decided to land in the region of Mount Otorten (the northern groups of Slobtsov and Axelrod), in the region of Oika-Chakura (the southern group of Grebennik) and at two intermediate points between these mountains. At one of the points, on the watershed in the upper reaches of the Vishera and Purma rivers (about halfway from Otorten to Oika-Chakur), Chernyshev's group landed. It was decided to send the Karelin group to the Sampalchakhl mountain region - to the headwaters of the Niols River, 50 km south of Otorten, between the groups of Chernyshev and Grebennik. All search teams were tasked to find the traces of the missing group - ski tracks and traces of parking lots - go along them to the accident site and help the Dyatlov group. The group of Slobtsov was abandoned first (February 23), then Grebennik (February 24), Axelrod (February 25), Chernyshev (February 25-26). Another group, which included Mansi and radio geologist Yegor Nevolin, began moving from the lower reaches of the Auspiya to its upper reaches.

The place of lodging for the night is located on the North-Eastern slope of height 1079 at the headwaters of the Auspiya River. The lodging place is located 300 m from the top of mountain 1079 under a mountain slope of 30°. The overnight place is a platform leveled from snow, at the bottom of which 8 pairs of skis are laid. The tent was stretched out on ski poles, fixed with ropes, 9 backpacks with various personal belongings of the group members were spread out at the bottom of the tent, quilted jackets, windbreakers were laid on top, 9 pairs of boots were found in the heads, men's trousers were also found, also three pairs of felt boots, warm fur jackets were also found, socks, a hat, ski caps, dishes, buckets, a stove, axes, a saw, blankets, products: crackers in two bags, condensed milk, sugar, concentrates, notebooks, a route plan and many other small things and documents, and a camera and accessories for camera.

This protocol was drawn up after the tent was excavated from the snow, and things were partially dismantled. A more accurate idea of ​​the state of the tent at the time of discovery can be obtained from the protocols of interrogation of members of the Slobtsov search group.

Subsequently, with the participation of experienced tourists, it was found that the tent was set up in accordance with all tourist and mountaineering rules.

In the evening of the same day, a group of Mansi hunters joined Slobtsov's group, moving on deer upstream of the Auspiya together with the radio operator E. Nevolin, who transmitted a radiogram to the headquarters about the discovery of the tent. From that moment on, all groups that were involved in rescue work began to gather in the search area. In addition, the prosecutor of the Ivdelsky district, Vasily Ivanovich Tempalov, and a young correspondent for the Sverdlovsk newspaper “Na Smena!” joined the search engines. Yuri Yarovoy.

The next day, February 26 or 27, search engines from the Slobtsov group, whose task was to choose a place for the camp, discovered the bodies of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko (the latter was first mistakenly identified as Zolotarev). The place of discovery was on the right side of the channel of the fourth tributary of the Lozva, about 1.5 km to the northeast of the tent, under a large cedar near the edge of the forest. The bodies lay next to each other near the remains of a small fire, which had sunk into the snow. Rescuers were struck by the fact that both bodies were stripped down to their underwear. Doroshenko was lying on his stomach. Under his body, 3-4 knots of cedar of the same thickness were found. Krivonischenko was lying on his back. Around the bodies were scattered small items and scraps of clothing, some of which were burned. On the cedar itself, at a height of up to 4-5 meters, branches were broken off, some of them lay around the bodies. According to the observations of the searcher S. N. Sogrin, in the area of ​​​​the cedar “there were not two people, but more, since a titanic work was done to procure firewood, spruce branches. This is evidenced by a large number of cuts on tree trunks, broken branches and Christmas trees.

Almost simultaneously with this, 300 meters from the cedar up the slope in the direction of the tent, Mansi hunters found the body of Igor Dyatlov. 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. Woolen sock on the right leg, cotton sock on the left. On the face of Dyatlov there was an icy growth, which meant that before his death he breathed into the snow.

In the evening of the same day, about 330 meters up the slope from Dyatlov, under a layer of dense snow of 10 cm, with the help of a search dog, the body of Zinaida Kolmogorova was discovered. She was warmly dressed, but without shoes. There were signs of a nosebleed on his face.

March

A few days later, on March 5, 180 meters from the place where Dyatlov's body was found and 150 meters from the location of Kolmogorova's body, the body of Rustem Slobodin was found under a layer of snow of 15-20 cm using iron probes. He was also quite warmly dressed, he had 4 pairs of socks on his feet, on his right leg there was a felt boot on top of them (the second felt boot was found in the tent). There was an icy growth on Slobodin's face and signs of nosebleeds.

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

On February 28, an emergency commission of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU was created, headed by the deputy chairman of the regional executive committee, V.A. Pavlov, and the head of the department of the regional committee of the CPSU, F.T. Yermash. In early March, members of the commission arrived in Ivdel to officially lead the search. On March 8, the head of the search at the pass, E.P. Maslennikov, made a report to the commission on the progress and results of the search. He expressed the unanimous opinion of the search party that the search should be stopped until April in order to wait for the snow to shrink. Despite this, the commission decided to continue the search until all the tourists were found, organizing a change in the composition of the search party.

April

The search for the rest of the tourists were carried out on a vast territory. First of all, they searched for bodies on the slope from the tent to the cedar with the help of probes. The pass between peaks 1079 and 880, the ridge towards Lozva, the spur of peak 1079, the continuation of the valley of the fourth tributary of Lozva and the valley of Lozva at 4-5 km from the mouth of the tributary were also explored. During this time, the composition of the search groups changed several times, but the searches were inconclusive. By the end of April, the search engines concentrated their efforts on exploring the vicinity of the cedar, where the thickness of the snow cover in the hollows reached 3 meters or more.

May

In the first days of May, the snow began to melt intensively and made it possible to find objects that indicated the rescuers in the right direction to search. So, plucked coniferous branches and scraps of clothing were exposed, which clearly led into the hollow of the stream. An excavation carried out in a hollow made it possible to find at a depth of more than 2.5 m a flooring with an area of ​​about 3 m² of 14 peaks of small firs and one birch. Several pieces of clothing lay on the floor. According to the position of these objects on the flooring, four spots were exposed, made as "seats" for four people.

With further search in a hollow, about six meters from the flooring downstream of the stream, under a layer of snow from two to two and a half meters, the bodies of the remaining tourists were found. First they found Lyudmila Dubinina, in a kneeling position with her chest resting on a ledge that forms a waterfall of a stream, with her head against the current. Almost immediately after that, the bodies of three men were found next to her head. Thibaut-Brignolles lay separately, and Kolevatov and Zolotarev - as if hugging "chest to back". At the time of the discovery protocol, all the corpses were in the water and were characterized as decomposed. The text of the protocol noted the need to remove them from the stream, since the bodies may further decompose even more and may be carried away by the fast current of the stream.

Concerning a place of these finds in materials of criminal case there are divergences. The protocol drawn up on the spot indicates the location "from the famous cedar, 50 meters in the first stream." And the previously sent radiogram indicates the southwestern position of the excavation site relative to the cedar, that is, close to the direction of the abandoned tent. However, the decision to dismiss the case indicates the place “75 meters from the fire, towards the valley of the fourth tributary of the Lozva, that is, perpendicular to the path of tourists from the tent.”

On the corpses, as well as a few meters from them, clothes of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko were found - trousers, sweaters. All clothes had traces of even cuts, tk. filmed already from the corpses of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko. 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 at the fire.

The bodies found were sent to Ivdel for a forensic examination, and the search was curtailed.

Funeral organization

According to the testimony of Alexander Kolevatov's sister, Rimma, party workers of the Sverdlovsk regional committee of the CPSU and employees of the UPI offered to bury the dead in Ivdel, in a mass grave with the establishment of a monument. At the same time, conversations were held with each parent separately; requests to resolve the issue in a coordinated manner were refused. The persistent position of the parents and the support of the secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU Kuroyedov made it possible to organize a funeral in Sverdlovsk.

The first funeral took place on March 9, 1959 with a large crowd of people - on that day they buried Kolmogorova, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko. Dyatlov and Slobodin were buried on March 10. The bodies of four tourists (Kolmogorov, Doroshenko, Dyatlov, Slobodin) were buried in Sverdlovsk at the Mikhailovsky cemetery. Krivonischenko was buried by his parents at the Ivanovsky 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 zinc coffins.

official investigation

The official investigation was launched after the initiation of a criminal case by the prosecutor of the city of Ivdel, Vasily Ivanovich Tempalov, upon the discovery of corpses on February 26, 1959, and was conducted for three months. Tempalov, on the other hand, began an investigation into the causes of the death of tourists - he inspected the tent, the places where the bodies of 5 tourists were found, and also interrogated a number of witnesses. Since March 1959, the investigation was entrusted to the forensic prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office, Lev Nikitich Ivanov.

The investigation initially considered the version of the attack and murder of tourists by representatives of the indigenous people of the northern Urals Mansi. Mansi from the Anyamov, Bakhtiyarov and Kurikov families fell under suspicion. During interrogations, they testified that they were not in the area of ​​​​Mount Otorten in early February, they did not see students from the Dyatlov tourist group, and the sacred prayer mountain for them is located elsewhere. It soon became clear that the cuts found on one of the slopes of the tent were made not from the outside, but from the inside.

The nature and form of all these injuries indicate that they were formed from the contact of the fabric of the inner side 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 three significant incisions - approximately 89, 31 and 42 cm long. Two large pieces of fabric were torn out and were missing. The cuts were made with a knife from the inside, and the blade did not immediately cut through the fabric - the one who cut the tarpaulin had to repeat his attempts over and over again.

At the same time, the results of the autopsy of the bodies discovered in February-March 1959 did not reveal fatal injuries in them and determined the cause of death as freezing. Therefore, suspicions with Mansi were removed.

According to V. I. Korotaev, who worked in the Ivdel prosecutor’s office in 1959, the Mansi, in turn, said that they had seen a strange “fireball” at night. They not only described this phenomenon, but also drew it. Along with this, "fireballs" were seen on February 17 and March 31 by many residents of the Middle and Northern Urals, including tourists and search engines near the Dyatlov Pass.

Meanwhile, the government commission demanded certain results, which were not - the search for the remaining 4 tourists was seriously delayed, and no main version was formed. 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 test. In May 1959, being at the site of the discovery of the remaining bodies, he, together with E.P. Maslennikov, once again examined the forest near the scene. They “found that some of the young fir trees at the edge of the forest had a burned mark, but these marks were not concentric or otherwise. There was also no epicenter.” At the same time, the snow was not melted, the trees were not damaged.

Having in his hands the acts of a forensic medical examination of the bodies of tourists found in the stream, according to which the presence of bone fractures caused by “impact of great force” was stated, Ivanov suggested that they had undergone some kind of energy impact and sent their clothes and samples of internal organs to the Sverdlovsk City SES for physical and technical (radiological) expertise. According to its results, the chief radiologist of the city of Sverdlovsk Levashov came to the following conclusions:

1. The studied solid biosubstrates contain radioactive substances within the limits of the natural content determined by Potassium-40.
2. Individual clothing samples examined contain slightly overestimated amounts of radioactive substances or a radioactive substance that is a beta emitter.
3. Detected radioactive substances or a radioactive substance when washing clothing samples tend to be washed away, that is, they are not caused by a neutron flux and induced radioactivity, but by radioactive contamination with beta particles.

“In one of the cameras, a photo frame (taken last) was preserved, which depicts the moment of excavation of snow to set up a tent. Given that this shot was taken with a shutter speed of 1/25 sec. with an aperture of 5.6, with a film sensitivity of 65 GOST units, and also taking into account the frame density, we can assume that the installation of the tent began at about 5 pm on February 1, 1959. A similar picture was taken by another device.

After that time, not a single record and not a single photograph was found.”

The investigation found that the tent was abandoned suddenly and simultaneously by all the tourists, but at the same time, the retreat from the tent took place in an organized, dense group, there was no disorderly and “panic” flight from the tent:

“The location and presence of items in the tent (almost all shoes, all outerwear, personal belongings and diaries) testified that the tent was left suddenly and simultaneously by all 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, for up to 500 meters, traces of people walking from the tent into the valley and into the forest were preserved in the snow. The tracks are well preserved and there were 8-9 pairs. Examination of the tracks showed that some of them were left with an almost bare foot (for example, in one cotton sock), others had a typical display of a felt boot, a foot shod in a soft sock, etc. The tracks of the tracks were located close to one another, converged and again diverged not far from each other. Closer to the border of the forest, the tracks disappeared - they 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.

This is confirmed by the testimony of investigator V.I. Tempalov, who worked at the site of the tragedy in the early days:

“Below the tent, 50-60 [m] away, on a 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 footprints were visible only on the 50-meter section, there were none further, since the lower from the mountain, the more snow.

The reason for the abandonment of the tent could not be determined by the head of the search, E.P. Maslennikov. In a radiogram dated March 2, 1959, he stated:

“... the main mystery of the tragedy remains 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 likelihood of one clothed person walking outside, which gave some reason to everyone else to hastily abandon the tent.

The ruling notes that the tourists made a number of fatal mistakes:

“... knowing about 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 02/01/59 only at 15:00.

Subsequently, on the ski trail of tourists, preserved at 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 the peaks “1079” and “880”, they went to the eastern slope peaks „1079“. This was Dyatlov's second mistake.

Having used the rest of the daylight hours to climb to the peak of "1079" in conditions of strong wind, which is common in this area, and a low temperature of about 25-30 ° C, 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, without losing height, go to Mount Otorten, to which there were about 10 km in a straight line.

Based on the facts set forth in the decision, 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 the death of tourists was an elemental force, which the tourists were not able to overcome ".

Thus, there were no perpetrators of the tragedy. Meanwhile, the bureau of the Sverdlovsk city committee of the CPSU, in the party order, for shortcomings in the organization of tourist work and weak control, punished: director of the UPI N.S. Siunov, secretary of the party bureau F.P. Union of Voluntary Sports Societies V. F. Kurochkin and Inspector of the Union V. M. Ufimtsev. The chairman of the board of the UPI sports club, L. S. Gordo, was dismissed from work.

Ivanov reported on the results of the investigation to the second secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU A.F. Eshtokin. According to Ivanov, Eshtokin gave a categorical instruction: “to classify absolutely everything, seal it up, hand it over to the special unit and forget about it.” Even earlier, the first secretary of the regional committee, A.P. Kirilenko, insisted on maintaining secrecy during the investigation. The case was sent to Moscow for verification by the Prosecutor's Office of the RSFSR and returned to Sverdlovsk on July 11, 1959. Deputy Prosecutor of the RSFSR Urakov did not provide any new information and did not give a written instruction to classify the case. Officially, the case was not classified as classified, but by order of the prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region N. Klinov, the case was kept in a secret archive for some time (case sheets 370-377, containing the results of the radiological examination, were handed over to a special sector). Later, the case was transferred to the state archive of the Sverdlovsk region, where it is currently located.

The widespread opinion that a non-disclosure subscription was taken from all participants in the search for the Dyatlov group for 25 years has not been documented. The materials of the criminal case contain only two signatures (Yu.E. Yarovoy and E.P. Maslennikov) on non-disclosure of the materials of the preliminary investigation in accordance with Article 96 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1926, the validity of which ceased with the termination of the criminal case.

Autopsy results

The forensic medical examination of all the dead was carried out by the forensic expert of the regional Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination Boris Alekseevich Vozrozhdenny. Ivan Ivanovich Laptev, a forensic expert from the city of Severouralsk, also participated in the study of the first four bodies on March 4, 1959, and on May 9, 1959, forensic expert Henrietta Eliseevna Churkina took part in the study of the last four bodies. The research results are summarized in the following table:

For the first five bodies examined, the forensic medical reports indicated the time of death within 6-8 hours from the last meal and the absence of signs of alcohol consumption.

In addition, on May 28, 1959, forensic expert B. A. Vozrozhdenny was interrogated, during which he answered questions about the possible circumstances of serious injuries found on three of the bodies found in the stream, and about the possible life expectancy after receiving such injuries. From the transcript of the interrogation follows:

• All injuries are characterized by the Renaissance as life-time and are caused by the impact of a great force, obviously exceeding that which occurs when falling from a height of one's own height. As examples of such a force, Vozrozhdenny cites the impact of a car moving at high speed with a blow and throwing of the body and the impact of an air blast wave.
• Thibaut-Brignolles' craniocerebral injury could not have been caused by a blow to the head with a stone, since there was no damage to the soft tissues.
• After being injured, Thibaut-Brignoles was unconscious and unable to move independently, but could live up to 2-3 hours.
• Dubinina could live 10-20 minutes after being injured, while remaining conscious. Zolotarev could live longer.

It should be noted that during the interrogation, B. A. Vozrozhdenny did not have the data of histological studies, which were completed only on May 29, 1959 and could give him additional data to answer the questions posed by the investigation.

Publication of the case

25 years after the termination 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”.

Currently, the case is stored in the archives of the Sverdlovsk Region, and it is possible to get acquainted with it in the "limited access" mode only with the permission of the Prosecutor's Office of the Sverdlovsk Region. The full case file has never been published. However, copies of the case materials can be found on a number of Internet resources. A small number of researchers got acquainted with the original materials, including the tenth participant in the campaign, Yuri Yudin.

Criticism of the criminal case and the work of the investigation

After the appearance of the case materials in public sources, the quality of the work of the investigation was repeatedly criticized. So, the investigator Valery Kudryavtsev criticizes the insufficient attention of the investigation to the details of the state of the tent and things of the Dyatlov group (under the conditions of the intervention of the search engines) and to the traces of the group on the slope, and conspiracy theorist A.I. .

Forensic expert V. I. Lysy, a candidate of medical sciences and a specialist in the field of research on corpses subjected to freezing, considers B. A. Vozrozhdenny’s conclusions about the lifetime of Slobodin and Thibault-Brignolles craniocerebral injuries to be erroneous. In his opinion, the injuries of the skulls discovered by the Renaissance are posthumous, and the tourists "died from hypothermia and did not receive any fatal intravital injuries." He also believes that such diagnostic errors in Soviet forensic practice before 1972 were systematic.

The case itself, stored in the archive, is also criticized. Many amateur researchers express doubts about the completeness and reliability of the documents contained in it. The inconsistency of the date on the cover with the date of the decision to open a criminal case and the absence of a criminal case number are often mentioned. The extreme expression of this point of view is the opinion that there is (or previously existed) another case about the death of the Dyatlov group, which allegedly contains true information about the circumstances of the incident. Although on this moment there is no objective evidence of this, the “other case” hypothesis is supported by some experienced lawyers.

Versions of the death of the group

There are about twenty versions of the death of the group, which can be divided into three main categories:

natural

Strong wind

This version was expressed during the investigation by local residents, it was also considered by search engine tourists. It was assumed that one of the Dyatlovites left the tent and was blown away by the wind, the rest rushed to his aid, cutting the tent for a speedy exit, and were also carried away by the wind down the slope. Soon the version was rejected, since the search engines themselves experienced the effects of strong winds in the vicinity of the scene and made sure that with any wind it was possible to stay on the slope and return to the tent.

Avalanche

The version first put forward in 1991 by M. A. Axelrod, a participant in the search and supported by geologists I. B. Popov and N. N. Nazarov, and later by masters of sports in tourism E. V. Buyanov and B. E. Slobtsov (also a participant in the search ). The essence of the version is that an avalanche descended on the tent, crushing it with a significant load of snow, which caused the urgent evacuation of tourists from the tent. It was also suggested that the serious injuries received by some of the tourists were caused by the avalanche.

Following his predecessors, E. V. Buyanov believes that one of the reasons for the avalanche was cutting the slope at the place where the tent was set up. Buyanov notes that the site of the accident of the Dyatlov group belongs to the "continental hinterland with avalanches from recrystallized snow." Referring to the opinions of several experts, he claims that in the area of ​​​​the tent of the Dyatlov group, a relatively small but dangerous collapse of a layer of compacted snow, the so-called "snow board", could have taken place. The injuries of some tourists in his version are explained by squeezing the victims between the dense snow mass of the collapse and the hard bottom of the tent.

Opponents of the avalanche version point out that the traces of the avalanche were not found by the participants in the search, which included experienced climbers. They note that the ski poles buried in the snow to fasten the tent remained in place and question the possibility of making the cuts discovered by the investigation from the inside of the fallen tent. The "avalanche" origin of severe injuries of three people is rejected in the absence of traces of the impact of the avalanche on other members of the group and fragile objects in the tent, as well as the possibility of independent descent of the injured or transportation by their surviving comrades from the tent to the place where the bodies were found. Finally, the departure of the group from the avalanche danger zone straight down, and not across the slope, seems to be a gross mistake that experienced tourists could not make.

Other versions

There are also a number of versions explaining what happened by a collision with wild animals (for example, a connecting rod bear, elk, wolves [ ]), poisoning tourists with sulfur-containing volcanic gases, exposure to rare and little-studied natural phenomena (winter thunderstorms, ball lightning, infrasound). There is a tendency to consider some of these versions as "anomalous" and put them in the same category as .

Criminal and technogenic-criminal

Common to this category of versions is the presence of human malicious intent, which is expressed in the murder of the Dyatlov tourist group and / or concealment of information about the impact of some man-made factor on it.

Criminal versions

In addition to extremely dubious assumptions about the accidental poisoning of a tourist group (poor-quality alcohol or some kind of psychotropic drug), the subcategory of criminal versions includes:

Attack by escaped prisoners

This possibility was not mentioned in the decision to terminate the criminal case. The former investigator of the Ivdel prosecutor's office, V.I. Korotaev, claims that there were no escapes during the incident.

Death at the hands of Mansi

Experienced tourists reject this version both in Yarovoy's book and in reality. An expert on survival in extreme conditions, VG Volovich, also spoke out against the version of the internal conflict.

Attack of poachers - employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs

According to this version, the Dyatlovites encountered law enforcement officers engaged in poaching. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (most likely, Ivdellag), out of hooligan motives, attacked the tourist group, which led to the death of tourists from injuries and hypothermia. The fact of the attack was subsequently successfully covered up.

Opponents of this version point out that the surroundings of Mount Kholatchakhl are difficult to access, unsuitable for winter hunting, and therefore not of interest to poachers. In addition, the possibility of successfully concealing a skirmish with tourists in the context of the ongoing investigation into their deaths is called into question.

"Controlled Delivery"

There is a conspiracy version of Alexei Rakitin, according to which several members of the Dyatlov group were undercover KGB officers. At the meeting, they were supposed to convey important disinformation regarding Soviet nuclear technology to foreign agents disguised as another tourist group. But they revealed this plan or accidentally unmasked themselves and killed all members of the Dyatlov group.

Former Soviet intelligence officer Mikhail Lyubimov was skeptical about this version, calling it a "detective novel." He noted that Western intelligence services in the fifties were really interested in the secrets of the Ural industry and carried out agents, but called the methods of work of the special services described by Rakitin implausible.

Technogenic criminal

According to some versions, the Dyatlov group was hit by some kind of weapon being tested: ammunition or a new type of rocket. It is believed that this provoked the hasty abandonment of the tent, and possibly directly contributed to the death of people. The following are mentioned as possible damaging factors: components of rocket fuel, a sodium cloud from a specially equipped rocket, the impact of a nuclear or volumetric explosion.

Yekaterinburg journalist A.I. Gushchin published a version that the group was the victim of a bomb test, most likely a neutron one, after which, in order to preserve state secrets, the death of tourists was staged in extreme natural conditions.

There are versions explaining the incident as an avalanche provoked by a man-made factor (for example, an explosion). It was in this direction that the “avalanche” version was developed by its founder M. A. Axelrod.

A common drawback of all such versions is that it is pointless to test new weapons systems outside a specially equipped test site, which allows evaluating their effectiveness in comparison with analogues, identifying advantages and disadvantages. During the incident, the USSR maintained a moratorium on nuclear tests, violations of which were not recorded by Western observers. According to E. V. Buyanov, referring to the data received from A. B. Zheleznyakov, an accidental hit of a rocket in the area of ​​Mount Kholatchakhl is excluded. All types of missiles of the corresponding period, including those that were tested, either do not fit in terms of range, taking into account possible launch points, or were not launched in the period February 1-2, 1959.

Mystical and fantastic

This category includes versions that use factors to explain the incident, the existence of which is not recognized by the scientific community: paranormal phenomena, alien contacts, curses, attack by Bigfoot, evil spirits, etc.

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 death of the Dyatlovites occurred in the last period of the existence of the old system of supporting amateur tourism, which had the organizational form of commissions under the Sports Committees and the Unions of Sports Societies and Organizations (SSSOO) 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 resolution of the Secretariat of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of March 17, 1961, which abolished the Federation and the tourism sections under the voluntary councils of the Union of Sports Societies and Organizations. 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.

By the Decree of the Presidium of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions of July 20, 1962 “On the further development of tourism”, sports tourism was again officially recognized, its structures were transferred to the jurisdiction of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (trade unions), tourism councils were created, commissions under the SSSOO were abolished, organizational work to support tourism was in much revised and reformed. The creation of tourist clubs on a territorial basis began, but work in organizations did not weaken, but intensified thanks to the broad information support that appeared due to the exchange of experience of amateur organizations. This made it possible to overcome the crisis and ensure the functioning of the sports tourism system for several decades.