“Dead men at the Dyatlov pass. One of the last secrets of the Cold War,”is the title of the book in German, which is to be published by BTB Verlag. This is the fourth publication in Germany telling about the death of Igor Dyatlov's tourist group on the night of February 1-2, 1959. The mystery of the death of nine tourists in the Northern Urals continues to attract attention not only in Russia, where two dozen books, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, and several television programs on central channels have been published on this topic.
Nearly sixty years have passed, but it is still not clear why and how young, strong and experienced tourists died. With the exception of one of them, a tourist camp instructor, a former front-line soldier, the students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute, the skiers of the tourist club at this Sverdlovsk institute, were just over 20 years old. Their winter campaign of the highest degree of complexity, according to the then accepted classification, was dedicated to the next congress of the CPSU and ended tragically on the night of February 2, not far from an unnamed pass, which later received the name of the Dyatlov Pass.
Why did people end up in the cold half-dressed?
When the group did not return, the search began. On February 25, they found an empty tent of Dyatlov's group, and in it there were many warm clothes, blankets, backpacks of tourists, their shoes, hats, tools, food, documents … But there were no people in the tent. The first bodies of the victims were found only the next day, and two of them were stripped to their underwear. But not all were found, despite the intensified searches with the help of long metal probes, with which they pierced the packed snow crust. Only in May, when intense melting began, the bodies of the four remaining tourists were found at a depth of more than two meters under a layer of snow.
From the very beginning, the investigation drew attention to many inexplicable facts. Firstly, it was not clear why the tourists suddenly left the tent, and even half dressed, even without shoes, to certain death in a frost of minus 25-29 degrees and a very strong wind. And people got out of the tent themselves: it was cut from the inside. And they walked down the slope, judging by the tracks, in an organized manner. Only then did they disperse: their bodies were found in different places.
Monument to the Dyatlov group.
Secondly, the forensic medical examination revealed multiple fractures of the ribs in three of the victims and a closed head injury in one of the tourists. The examination established many signs typical of death from hypothermia (that is, the tourists froze), but they characterized all the fractures as lifetime, and they could not determine the source of them. The medical examiner categorically denied that they could have been obtained, for example, by dropping his chest on a stone. He spoke of the impact of "great force", comparable to the impact of a car moving at high speed or the impact of a blast wave.
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Thirdly, radioactive substances were found on the clothes of the victims. However, this level of radioactive contamination (although “somewhat overestimated”, as noted by radiologists) did not cause much alarm, and the data of the radiological examination were not included in the final version of the criminal case as “not related” to it.
All these (and other) ambiguities and inconsistencies caused great controversy during the investigation. These disputes about what caused the death of tourists continue today. In total, there are more than two dozen versions: from an avalanche, ball lightning, poisoning with unknown gases to an attack by fugitive prisoners, a clash with the KGB special forces, testing new weapons, meeting with Bigfoot or aliens, all sorts of paranormal phenomena.
Versions of death: from revenge of hunters to tests of secret weapons
In 1959, during the investigation, hunters from the local Mansi ethnic group were first suspected. Allegedly, the guys from the Dyatlov group could desecrate the sacred mountain of Mansi, and they killed the tourists, driving them out into the cold. But this version quickly disappeared: those who fell under suspicion of the Mansi had an alibi, and the sacred mountain was located in a completely different place. In addition, no extraneous traces were found on the slope.
In turn, the hunters told the investigators of the prosecutor's office that they had seen strange fireballs in the sky over the pass, and described them in some detail. In mid-February and at the end of March, many people saw the same balloons over the Urals. This strange celestial phenomenon has already been explained in our time: the reason was the test launches of an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Tyuratam test site. But there were no launches on February 1-2.
Murder or natural disaster?
None of the versions have yet been 100% confirmed, none of them can explain this tragedy. Most researchers are inclined to believe that the cause of the deaths of the children was an avalanche, or rather, a giant layer of compacted snow that "slid" onto the top of the tent. Tourists could provoke this avalanche by cutting off the slope to set up a tent. Similar collapses of clipped snow slabs - well-documented - led to tragedies on other occasions later. The dense snow mass crushed the part of the tent, in which the guys were just going to bed, inflicted severe injuries on some of them. The things buried under it became inaccessible. I had to cut the side of the tent from the inside to get out of it …
Memorial plaque in memory of the Dyatlov group.
But the arguments against this version are also quite serious. Most important: why did the rescuers not find traces of this avalanche? The tent was crumpled, but covered with snow on only one side. Perhaps the ice crust melted or was blown away by the wind more than three weeks after the death of the tourists? But why was one of the ski poles left to stand on which the tent was attached? Why did the avalanche not crush the stove that was in it?..
The new German edition is a translation from Russian of a book by Alexei Rakitin, one of the most informed researchers of the tragedy at the Dyatlov Pass. He describes in detail, competently, the organization of the campaign, the search for the missing, the course of the investigation, while making brilliant excursions into the intricacies of forensic medical examination and the history of the confrontation between the USSR and the United States during the Cold War … But here is Rakitin's version explaining the death of tourists by the so-called controlled delivery”leaves a lot of questions.
According to Rakitin, some members of the group (undercover KGB officers) were supposed to transfer clothes with traces of radioactivity to some foreign agents disguised as another tourist squad, allegedly from Chelyabinsk-40 (the Mayak chemical plant was located there, which was engaged in the production of weapons-grade plutonium) … This disinformation campaign failed, and the tseerushniki killed the tourists.
From Moscow to the province
But it is not clear why it was necessary to carry out this operation so difficult, in such an inaccessible place. And the methods described by Rakitin are considered implausible by the special services. Another weakness of this hypothesis: there are too many assumptions, conjectures, speculative logical constructions in it, which are not always convincing. Here is the simplest example: proving that one (but not the only one according to Rakitin!) Of the tourists in Dyatlov's group worked for the KGB, the author writes, in particular, that the guy left Moscow for the periphery, in Sverdlovsk. Like, he was "sent": who will voluntarily leave Moscow ?!
However, it may well be that he left Moscow because more interesting, more independent work, better opportunities for growth, for defending a thesis awaited him in the provinces … In general, the explanation may not be detective at all.
Be that as it may, but the death of nine tourists in the Northern Urals continues to remain mysterious, and interest in solving this mystery does not subside.
