The event, called the Petrozavodsk Phenomenon, entered the annals of history as the "contact" of Soviet people with UFOs. Among the witnesses were astronomers, dispatchers and meteorologists. It was impossible not to believe them. Believe - too.
This happened at the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the countries of the socialist camp and the NATO countries reached their climax. Western submariners now and then met unidentified underwater objects in the fjords of Norway, and pilots saw glowing balls in the sky. The USSR was also unsettled: American spy planes regularly violated the country's air borders. Perhaps that is why the appearance of a strange luminous object in the night sky of Petrozavodsk on September 20, 1977 made so much noise.
"Medusa" over the city
On the night of September 19-20, 1977, at about four o'clock in the morning Moscow time, a few residents of Petrozavodsk, who found themselves on the street at night, saw a bright object in the sky in the north, from which strange streaks of light went to the sides, which made it clearly resemble sea jellyfish.
This "jellyfish" slowly sailed over Petrozavodsk, then allegedly hovered over houses, scattering around either sparks, or stars, or luminous drops, and then turned into a shining hemisphere and moved away towards Lake Onega. After that, a glowing window of bright red color was formed in the sky among the clouds.
All this lasted about only 10-12 minutes, but the witnesses who saw the UFO were amazed and alarmed. Many claimed that at the sight of the object they were seized with a feeling of fear.
Residents of the Union learned about the incident from the newspapers: the Moscow Socialist Industry published a note about the strange phenomenon three days later - on September 23.
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Scientific progress marched across the expanses of the USSR, science fiction writers were racing to write stories about contacts with aliens, and this could not but affect the ideas of Soviet people about the world around them. In general, there was something to worry about.
Scientists have confirmed: something was …
However, the UFO over the city was noticed not only by the late inhabitants. Already on September 24, the Leninskaya Pravda newspaper published a commentary by the director of the Petrozavodsk observatory of hydrometeorology Yuri Gromov, who admitted that the phenomenon did exist, but its nature was unknown to scientists, and the observatory did not register any unusual phenomena in the sky over the night of September 19-20. Karelia.
On October 8, 1977, a note appeared in the Krasnoye Znamya newspaper, signed by three aerological scientists Solovyova, Egorychev, Abramenko and meteorologist Babenina of the Sortavala meteorological station, in which it was said that scientists observed over Sortavala (193 kilometers west of Petrozavodsk) a UFO in the form stars that rose into the sky in the northeast and flew to the southwest. As it approached the observers, the UFO grew in size, and the bright glow around it formed a huge ellipse.
Scientists even said that they observed yellow side lights, which at some point clearly flashed, and then immediately went out. The object then froze over the city, emitted a bright, neon beam, and then began to fade, the glow around it faded, and the UFO slowly moved north. In addition, before the appearance of the object in the line of sight, witnesses observed a faint glow of the sky in the northwest, and after the disappearance of the UFO - in the northeast.
Eyewitnesses and witnesses
In addition to scientists, the UFO was seen by the ambulance driver V. A. Belyaev and doctor V. I. Menkov, who at that time went on a call to Anokhin Street, house 37-6, they generally assured that a mysterious beam shone directly on the ambulance. Observed by the facility and a team of port workers working the night shift.
I saw an incomprehensible object in the sky, an employee of the Institute of Lake Science of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR Novozhilov, who was forced to spend the night on the highway near the village of Kurkiyiki, where he was waiting for the morning bus to Priozersk. The scientist first mistook the object for a bright meteor, but then realized his mistake. According to his testimony, the object resembled an octahedral airship and even had luminous semblances of windows. According to the scientist, the UFO moved at an altitude of about half a kilometer and was up to 15 meters in diameter. From fear, the scientist bent to the ground.
But his story does not end there. After the "airship" hovered over the highway, a small, bright spherical body separated from it, which landed behind the forest.
At this time, two more people came to the bus stop, together with Novozhilov, they climbed the hill and saw the glow behind the forest from it.
Even more interesting information appeared in the magazine "Aviation and Cosmonautics" in 1978 (No. 8). The article pointed out that major computer failures occurred in the computing centers of Karelia that night.
There were no military comments during the Soviet era and could not be. But scientists knew that on that night a satellite was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome at 4:01 Moscow time. The administration of the cosmodrome declined to comment, as all the details were classified.
In the local press, however, calming information appeared that the unusual phenomena were caused by a stage of a space rocket that burned up in the atmosphere.
However, there were so many reports from eyewitnesses of the appearance of UFOs that a meeting was even convened at the Institute of Space Research in Moscow, after which scientists headed by astrophysicist Lev Gindilis took up the investigation of the incident.
Scientists collected evidence from witnesses, went to the scene, met with eyewitnesses, made inquiries to international organizations. They found out that the unidentified object was observed not only in the USSR, it was also noticed by air traffic controllers in Finland. He was seen by workers of the Pulkovo Observatory and geophysics near the village of Lehta.
Since the investigation was not obstructed from above, Gindilis concluded that Yuri Andropov, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR, was interested in the appearance of a UFO.
Scientists considered different versions of the event, among which was the passage of a single object and the phenomena associated with the launch of the satellite, but settled on the conclusion that several UFOs appeared over Karelia that night, which could not be explained either by the operation of the cosmodrome or by the fall of steps from the rocket. carrier. The testimonies of witnesses were very different from each other, they claimed that they saw objects in different parts of the sky and at different heights. For example, an employee of Petrozavodsk University A. G. Mezentsev, armed with a theodolite, generally believed that the object was at an altitude of six to eleven kilometers.
Is the satellite to blame?
Scientists have not been able to explain the nature of the phenomenon. The appearance of a UFO over Petrozavodsk was nicknamed the Petrozavodsk phenomenon. The main result of the work of the Gindilis group was the organization in 1979 of the first in the Soviet Union section "Close search for extraterrestrial civilizations using radio electronics" at the Moscow Scientific and Technical Society of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Communications, which was quickly liquidated by order of the "top".
Instead, Centers for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena were established in Gorky, Kiev and Leningrad. In 1983, another center was opened in Tomsk on the basis of the Polytechnic Institute, and a year later such a center appeared under the committee of the All-Union Council of Scientific and Technical Societies.
Until now, the official version of the incident is called the optical phenomena in the upper layers of the atmosphere associated with the launch of the Kosmos-955 electronic reconnaissance satellite from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, which caused UFOs throughout Karelia. However, not everyone believes in the veracity of this version …
The mystery of window panes
In No. 8 of the journal "Aviation and Cosmonautics" Oz 1978, an article by Professor M. Dmitriev was published. According to it, in different districts of the city of Petrozavodsk, from October 1977 to the beginning of 1978, through holes with a diameter of 50-70 millimeters appeared in the windows of some houses. Some of them were irregular in shape, others were almost perfectly round. The reasons for their appearance have not been established.
Maya Novik