The author of the publication believes that the case of the tragedy at the Dyatlov pass will never be closed. The mystery surrounding the death of nine tourists has given rise to many theories, each of which, in his opinion, is more absurd than the other. Even in this high-profile case, he sees a conspiracy theory, and also accuses Russians of an unhealthy interest in this story.
Exactly 61 years ago, a group of hikers on a hike through the Ural Mountains dropped their food, skis and an old mandolin in the valley to pick them up on their way back. In a moment of carefree fun, one of them drew a newspaper with the headlines about their trip: "According to the latest data, the snowmen live in the Northern Urals, in the region of Mount Otorten." Leaving the excess equipment, a group of tourists moved to a mountain called "Height 1079", which the locals called "The Mountain of the Dead." One photograph showed the leaden sky disappearing into a blizzard as the weather worsened.
That same night, nine experienced hikers jumped out of their tent, half dressed, and rushed down the slope, where they later died. Some of the members of the group were later found to have bone fractures, and one girl did not have a tongue. For several decades, only a few knew about this tragedy, except for the relatives and friends of the victims. The general public only found out about her in 1990, when the story of a retired official sparked curiosity in people, which soon gave rise to many conspiracy theories.
Today, the tragedy at the Dyatlov Pass, named after the leader of the group of tourists Igor Dyatlov, has become the most famous unsolved mystery in Russia, the source of a huge number of conspiracy theories. Aliens, government agents, "Arctic gnomes" - and, yes, even the terrible snowmen were blamed for their deaths. One TV show on a Russian state channel regularly invites "experts" to undergo polygraph tests to prove the truth of their incredible explanations.
A year ago, the General Prosecutor's Office announced the beginning of another investigation into the circumstances of the death of tourists in order to put an end to rumors and restore the truth. Investigators have traveled to the site of the tourists' deaths to recreate the circumstances of the incident, and are expected to announce their findings soon.
But the history of the tragedy at the Dyatlov pass showed us that this case will never be closed. Even the final conclusion of the investigation is unlikely to put an end to rumors and speculation: in Russia, conspiracy theories are an integral part of people's everyday life.
“This is our Soviet riddle, which we want to understand,” Natalya Barsegova, whose articles on this topic have been published in the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda since 2012, told me. “Everyone who undertakes to investigate this case thinks that he is he will definitely get to the bottom of the truth, but the deeper he sinks, the more this quagmire draws him in."
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Any unsolved mystery like the death of the Dyatlov group would undoubtedly inspire truth-seekers in the United States, but the Russians' obsession with this incident should not be compared to the controversy on American Internet forums devoted to Area 51 or the Chupacabra. While in America conspiracy theories often emerge on the fringes of public life - although borders were blurred during the Donald Trump era - in Russia, the spread of conspiracy theories is mainstream (57% of Russians still believe that the Apollo moon landing is it's a fake).
Moreover, in the United States, such conspiracy theories tend to arise among the people, while in Russia they are often imposed from above. In the late 1800s, the tsarist regime in Russia began spreading various conspiracy theories against Jews and Catholics in order to turn the people against the West. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion - a fake secret document that Adolf Hitler called proof that the Jews were planning to take over the world - were first published in Russia in 1903, at the height of the pogrom campaign.
During Soviet times, during the Stalinist repression, officials regularly uncovered conspiracies of capitalist spies and counter-revolutionaries, killing and imprisoning millions of people on trumped-up charges. Conspiracy theories have sometimes been directed to the outside world: when Moscow accidentally shot down a Korean airline in 1983, it claimed that the crash was part of an American conspiracy to start a war. Denunciations of neighbors, widespread surveillance, hiding the truth and deceit led to the fact that people developed real paranoia. People had to read between the lines, picking up the official party newspapers, to figure out what was really going on. That is why, according to columnist Oleg Kashin, many Russians are still convinced that “behind the black-and-white photographs” of Dyatlov's expedition there was something hidden.
This habit of coming up with its own explanations persisted after the collapse of the Soviet Union, merging with deep-seated skepticism and Kremlin propaganda. The government of Vladimir Putin, who once said that the Internet is a "CIA project", constantly convinces people that there is a Western conspiracy behind everything that happens - from the doping scandal over the Russian Olympians to the Syrian "White Helmets". Troll factories, pro-Kremlin pundits, and sensationalized sources of information are also not lagging behind: the phrase of one leading state TV channel is “Coincidence? I don't think so,”she turned into an Internet meme.
Willful misrepresentation is a natural reaction to any accusation. When a Malaysian Airlines passenger plane crashed in eastern Ukraine in 2014, hit by a Russian missile, the Russian Defense Ministry said it could very well have been a "false flag operation." When British authorities accused Russian agents of trying to poison Sergei Skripal, the Russian Foreign Ministry hinted that some British laboratory was the real culprit. Russian MPs recently said that the protests that took place in Moscow last summer were organized by Washington. Truth has become a relative concept, and conspiracies have become a full-fledged currency.
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Here's what we know about the death of the Dyatlov group. In January 1959, nine tourists - all of them students - left Yekaterinburg, which was then called Sverdlovsk, singing songs in the train carriage. They planned to ski about 320 kilometers in 16 days, climbing several peaks along the way, and then return to the beginning of the second semester. On January 28, Dyatlov's group left the abandoned village, and on February 1 they set up their last camp on the mountainside.
Later, the search parties found their tracks, which led along the frozen river, and, reaching the Mountain of the Dead, stumbled upon their rickety tent on a rather steep, windswept slope. Food and clothing were found inside the tent - it looked like the group was about to cook dinner. Nine pairs of shoes stood along one side of the tent. It seemed as if the tent had been cut open from the inside.
In the woods down the slope, investigators found two bodies lying under a cedar next to an extinct fire. Although it was freezing on the night the group of tourists disappeared, both victims were wearing only long underwear. Fragments of leather on the tree indicated that they were breaking off branches. The bodies of Dyatlov and two other tourists, who also did not have boots or jackets, were found several hundred meters further. The bodies of the others were found only when the snow began to melt two months later. Two had broken ribs and one had a skull injury.
The investigation, which was carried out in the spring of 1959, left many questions unanswered. Why did the tourists run out of the tent in frost and blizzard, although this meant almost inevitable death? What caused blunt force trauma? Why did the analysis show increased levels of radiation on the clothes of two members of the group? The investigators could not find answers to these questions. Although they were puzzled, they nevertheless concluded that the death of the members of the Dyatlov group was not violent, and that they died as a result of the effects of the elements, which they could not overcome. The case was closed, and the findings of the investigation were archived under the heading "secret", as was often the case in the Soviet Union at that time.
One local journalist was banned from writing about this incident, and for several decades the only publication dedicated to this mysterious tragedy was a novel written by one of those involved in the search work. (The ending of this novel turned out to be relatively happy: after a hurricane wind blew one girl off the slope and prevented other members of the group from coming to her aid, the leader tries to return to the tent, but dies. The rest take refuge in the hunter's hut.) But then the Soviet Union collapsed., with the result that the curtain of silence finally lifted over the traumatic past. The public learned about the scale of Stalin's repressions, as well as the existence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Many Russians who have found themselves on the brink of poverty due to the financial crisis and are shocked that everything they have been taught from schoolwas a lie, completely confused. As a result, healing, various cults and financial pyramids began to flourish in the country.
And into this fertile soil fell the seed of the mystery of the death of the Dyatlov group. In January 1990, the former head of a city near the Dyatlov Pass wrote a response to a newspaper article that a UFO had been seen in the area. In his article, he described what happened to the tourists, noting that the holes in the tent were left by fallen debris from a rocket that was being tested. Then an article was published in the same newspaper, which quoted the words of Lev Ivanov, who led the investigation into the death of tourists in 1959, who stated that the students died due to UFOs. This article also cited versions that the students could have been killed by local residents or by radiation from weapons tests. (In fact, the "fireballs" mentioned in this article were seen in the sky a few weeks after the death of the students,and the reason for their appearance was indeed rocket tests.) A few months later, Ivanov wrote his own article for another newspaper, where it was said that the students suffered from "a heat ray or some powerful energy of which we know absolutely nothing." With references to UFOs, classified documents, and hints of government efforts to hide something - as Ivanov wrote, “Khrushchev was briefed from the start of what happened,” this article became a starter kit for conspiracy theories. By the end of the 2000s, "woodpecker" infiltrated newspapers and television.about which we know absolutely nothing. " With references to UFOs, classified documents, and hints of government efforts to hide something - as Ivanov wrote, “Khrushchev was briefed from the start of what happened,” this article became a starter kit for conspiracy theories. By the end of the 2000s, "woodpecker" infiltrated newspapers and television.about which we know absolutely nothing. " With references to UFOs, classified documents, and hints of government efforts to hide something - as Ivanov wrote, “Khrushchev was briefed from the start of what happened,” this article became a starter kit for conspiracy theories. By the end of the 2000s, "woodpecker" infiltrated newspapers and television.
Since then, many theories have arisen according to which poisoned alcohol, the descendants of the ancient "Aryans" or even a completely fantastic weapon, like a "vacuum bomb", were to blame for the death of Dyatlov's group. The fact that the deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant also bore the name Dyatlov raised suspicions that there was a connection between the death of the group and the accident at this station. According to several theories, there was a KGB or CIA agent in Dyatlov's group.
Even those people who were directly associated with this tragedy believed that it was caused by some nefarious conspiracy. Yuri Yudin, who walked with the group for some time before he had to return due to illness, said before his death that his friends "saw something that they should not have seen," and that they had to fabricate evidence at gunpoint to confuse the investigation, and then they were simply left to die.
When I talked with Yuri Kuntsevich, who attended the funeral of students as a child, and who later founded the Dyatlov Group Memory Fund, I hoped for an objective assessment. Instead, he claimed that a Western agent named "Mole" had asked students to take photographs of secret missile tests. When they did, they were killed by the drunken convicts who guarded this pass. “Then the tent was moved 1.5 kilometers and put it in a completely inappropriate place. This was done by a mopping-up group [soldiers], they had several helicopters,”he told me, as if casually.
Dyatlov's sister Tatyana Perminova told me that she had heard many theories, but she can only repeat to me what her parents told her when her brother died. “They were convinced that the military was somehow involved in this story,” she said.
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So what actually happened on February 1, 1959? The theory, put forward by American researcher Donnie Eichar and several Russian researchers, is that the very strong winds blowing from the top of the mountain created a "pocket vortex street" resulting in a low frequency sound inaudible to the ear. but causing people to feel nauseous and acute psychological discomfort. Under the influence of low-frequency sound in the pitch darkness, students could be overwhelmed by fear or even real panic.
Last year, Russia's Prosecutor General's Office finally ruled out "criminal" reasons and said it was investigating three main versions: an avalanche, wind crust and a hurricane. However, this did not stop the rumor machine from gaining momentum further. For several months, new fantastic theories arose on the Internet and on television, and Kuntsevich and relatives of some members of the Dyatlov group, angry with the prosecutor general's refusal to consider the unnatural reasons for the death of students, filed a complaint with a request to start a criminal investigation.
This is the main problem with conspiracy theories in Russia and other countries: even if the true cause is discovered, not everyone will believe in it. One day, the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass may be solved, but this story will never really be left alone.
Alec Luhn