We have at our disposal the results of the investigation.
The 60th anniversary of the death of the Dyatlov group caused a new powerful surge of public interest in the topic. New versions appear almost every day. The authorities are also making their contribution to the excitement: the prosecutor's office announced a large-scale audit of the circumstances of the death of tourists. However, in 2015, employees of the Investigative Committee were doing the same - looking for answers to key questions related to the tragedy. We learned previously unpublished details of this study.
The reason why the Investigative Committee of Russia decided then, four years ago, to recall the events of 1959, is similar to that of the current prosecutor's check: appeals from relatives of the deceased tourists, the press and members of the public.
Their traditional addressees are the leadership of law enforcement agencies, but the Presidential Administration is already quite familiar with this topic. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am asking you to initiate the investigation of this criminal case again,” reads, for example, a message addressed to the head of state, sent last year by a certain citizen Kovalenko. "All caring people in Russia … want to know the truth." In response to one of these impulses, the head of the TFR ordered an audit of the case of the death of the Dyatlov group.
Investigator-criminologist Vladimir Solovyov, an authoritative and experienced specialist, was entrusted to study the issue; Vladimir Nikolayevich is known “in the world” primarily as an investigator in the case of the death of the royal family.
Soloviev recruited Sergei Shkryabach, an honorary employee of the TFR, who until 2010 held the post of deputy head of the Main Department of Criminalistics of the Investigative Committee. Unfortunately, a month ago Sergey Yakovlevich passed away. At the time of the inspection, the general was retired, but continued to take an active part in the life of the department.
An important detail: Shkryabach was not only a high-class criminologist, but also an avid climber - a member of more than 25 ascents and 20 expeditions in the Pamir Mountains, Tien Shan, Caucasus, Altai, Eastern Sayans, Kamchatka and the Arctic. In general, the choice of a partner was far from random.
The result of the check was the "Conclusion on the criminal case on the death of 9 tourists in February 1959 in the Ivdel district of the Sverdlovsk region", signed by Shkryabach and dated July 5, 2015.
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This document is remarkable in two respects. Firstly, this is, in fact, the first since 1959 attempt to answer the questions left after the closure of the case, undertaken by an official law enforcement agency.
Secondly, the attempt was very successful: Solovyov and Shkryabach managed to develop a harmonious and consistent - and in the main outline, perhaps, the only possible - version of what happened on the night of February 1 to February 2, 1959 on Mount Holatchakhl.
Holatchahl and negligence
Recall that Igor Dyatlov and his comrades - students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnic Institute and an instructor of the tourist base Semyon Zolotarev, only 9 people - went on their last tour, dedicated to the beginning of the XXI Congress of the CPSU, at the end of January 1959. On January 23, we left Sverdlovsk, on the 28th, we began independent skiing.
The hike was supposed to end on February 12th. A week after the group did not get in touch at the appointed time, the search work began.
On February 25, on the eastern slope of Mount Kholatchakhl, a snow-covered tent of the group was discovered: only the corner of the roof protruded outward, propped up by the rest of the front pillar.
The entrance was closed, and the roof slope facing the slope was cut and torn in two places. The tent contained almost all the equipment, personal belongings of the group members, their outerwear and shoes. Below the tent were footprints without shoes and separate footprints of boots, 8-9 pairs, which led down towards the forest.
Dyatlov's group tent, partially freed from snow.
The last diary entry of the group - the battle sheet "Evening Otorten" - was dated February 1.
On February 26, the bodies of four Dyatlovites were found. The first to find Yuri Doroshenko and Georgy Krivonischenko - one and a half kilometers from the tent, at the beginning of the forest, near a cedar. The corpses were stripped down to their underwear, next to them were the remains of a fire.
The corpse of the leader of the group Igor Dyatlov was found 300 meters from the fire pit towards the tent, another 300 meters up the slope - the corpse of Zinaida Kolmogorova. A week later, on March 5, Rustem Slobodin was found at that distance - his body was between the bodies of Dyatlov and Kolmogorova.
Judging by the position of the bodies and the posture in which they froze, death found these three as they tried to return to the tent. They were dressed in sweaters and ski suits, no outerwear. Slobodin was shod in one felt boot; Dyatlov and Kolmogorova had only socks on their feet.
According to the conclusion of the forensic medical examination, the death of all five - Doroshenko, Krivonischenko, Dyatlov, Slobodin and Kolmogorova - occurred as a result of freezing.
Two months later, on May 4, 1959, the bodies of the other four participants in the campaign were found - Lyudmila Dubinina, Alexander Kolevatov, Nikolai Thibault-Brignolle and Semyon Zolotarev, located about 70 meters from the cedar, in the hollow of the stream, under a layer of snow several meters.
They were generally dressed better than the first five: only Dubinina had no outerwear, for two, Zolotarev and Thibault-Brignolet, there were both jackets and warm shoes. But only one of these four, Kolevatov, did not have serious bodily injuries during his lifetime - the expert considered the only cause of his death “exposure to low temperature”.
In addition to signs of freezing, three were found to have terrible injuries. Death Dubinina, according to the forensic physician, "occurred as a result of extensive hemorrhage in the right ventricle of the heart, multiple bilateral fracture of the ribs, profuse internal hemorrhage in the chest cavity."
Zolotarev was diagnosed with "multiple fracture of the right ribs with internal bleeding into the pleural cavity", Thibault-Brignol - "depressed fracture of the right temporo-parietal region in an area of 9x7 centimeters."
These are the facts. The 1959 investigation, led by the criminal prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor's office, Lev Ivanov, failed to give them an explanation.
The decision to close the criminal case is one big list of mysteries. It is stated, for example, that "the tent was suddenly abandoned by all the tourists at the same time" - through the cuts made from the inside. But there is not even an assumption about what caused the urgent evacuation and why such a path was chosen for it. More or less confidently it is said only about the absence of a criminal trace: "Neither in the tent, nor near it were there any signs of a struggle or the presence of other people."
There are no attempts to explain the further course of events. Well, the final of the document can generally be called mystical: "It should be considered that the cause of the death of tourists was a spontaneous force, which the tourists were not able to overcome."
In this context, the concept of "elemental force" is tantamount to impure force. By the way, many people perceived it this way. The name of the mountain is very organically intertwined with this esotericism: Kholatchakhl is translated from Mansi as “mountain of the dead”. True, this is a modern translation. Until 1959, it was believed that it was just a "dead mountain", that is, a peak not covered with forest.
However, the TFR experts saw in the case not mysticism, but negligence. First of all, the investigation itself. “The investigation was carried out at a low (unfortunately, even at an amateurish) level,” says the conclusion on the case. - Accurate measurements and binding to certain landmarks of the found objects and corpses are absent in the protocols …
The circumstances of the events have not been fully clarified. The state and features of the area have not been studied. Information about the state of the weather and seismic activity was not requested.
The analysis of the level of extremeness of the situation, readiness and psychology of behavior of the group members with the involvement of high-class specialists was not carried out …"
White death
The level of training of tourists was also rated very low in the TFR: “Most of the members of the group were participants in 4–6 trips during 3–4 years of study at the institute. None of them took part in winter hikes of the 3rd category of difficulty. Dyatlov I. A. participated in only one of these trips …
Dyatlov's group during the hike.
In fact, he "stewed in his own juice" - out of 9 campaigns in which he participated, he led six himself. It seems that for the leadership of the campaign of this complexity, the level of experience of I. A. did not match."
In a word, "the preparation of the group members for participation in a difficult winter hike in mountain conditions was clearly insufficient": the Dyatlovites had neither the skills of action in such an environment, nor the appropriate equipment.
At the same time, forensic scientists refer to the Dyatlovites themselves: “The entry in the group's diary dated 1959-31-01 speaks about the negative results of this preparation that at the first attempt to overcome a simple pass in the area of altitude 880, they, without the necessary equipment and experience, bumped into strong wind on the icy slope, retreated and descended into the valley of the Auspiya River. It is hard to imagine how they intended to overcome 5 passes and climb 2 peaks in the future."
Another omission is the lack of a full-fledged map of the area: "Considering that their route was a first ascent, the group went almost at random."
Conclusion: “A route of such duration (21 days), length (about 300 km) and complexity, this group could overcome without incident only with sufficiently favorable weather conditions and luck.
Although the decision to admit the group to the campaign, taking into account the formal "experience" of its participants, was recognized as justified, the campaign itself, taking into account their actual readiness and lack of communication, was a dangerous and rather adventurous event.
Any significant mistake under extreme conditions and the lack of the necessary knowledge of how to act when they arise, inevitably lead to tragic consequences in such campaigns, which happened."
The fatal miscalculation of the Dyatlovites was the choice of the place for their last overnight stay. The place was really bad, but not at all because of the shamanic curses.
Analysis of the data of the meteorological stations closest to the place of events allows us to assert that on the night of February 1 to February 2, 1959, a cyclone front passed in the area of the tragedy - in the direction from northwest to southeast. The passage of the front lasted at least 10 hours and was accompanied by heavy snowfall, increased wind to hurricane (20-30 meters per second) and a drop in temperature to minus 40 degrees.
“If we take into account that the storm lasted the whole day of 1959-01-02 and by its end only intensified, as evidenced by the latest photographs of the group members, the establishment of a camp on the mountainside was a fatal mistake, and tragedy was inevitable,” the forensic experts are sure.
In their opinion, the tourists were driven out of the tent by an avalanche - in its compact, Ural version. Not a rush, sweeping away everything in its path - in this case, the Dyatlovites simply could not get out - but a relatively unhurried slide in a limited area. In short, a snowy landslide.
They provoked it partly by themselves, cutting off the slope during the installation of the tent: the last photo taken by the Dyatlovites shows how they together dig a hole in the snow under the "foundation".
One of the last shots taken by the Dyatlovites: setting up a tent.
Despite the diminutiveness of the avalanche, the danger was no joke at all. Specialists of the TFR dispel the "misconception about snow as a light substance": the greater its mass and moisture content, the greater its density. “Getting into even a small avalanche with a volume of several cubic meters is fatal,” the conclusion on the case says. “There are enough examples when a layer of snow about 20 cm (!) 3 by 3 meters thick that melted down killed people.”
Three factors
The answer to the question of why the 1959 investigation passed this obvious version is literally on the surface. “This version was initially ruled out based on an erroneous assessment of the situation,” the forensic experts say. "Most of the participants in the rescue work and representatives of the prosecutor's office observed the scene in good weather after 26 days, after a significant change in the snow cover."
For almost a month, the wind almost erased the traces of the avalanche: judging by the columns of traces left by tourists, such relief formations remain after blowing off a less dense layer around the seal - at the time of leaving the tent, the snow was at least 40 centimeters higher than when it was found.
According to ICR specialists, a landslide with a mass of at least several tons descended on the tent. The events of the fateful night developed in their view as follows: “The storm continued, and after a while the mass of snow on the slope became critical …
The initially sliding mass of snow was held back for a short time by the tension of the sinking tent. The first clear signs of an avalanche at night in the dark most likely triggered panic.
The rapidly increasing pressure of the snow made it impossible not only to take outer clothing, but also to leave the tent in an organized manner. Apparently, this process took several seconds.
The last of those who left the tent were making their way through the ever-increasing mass of snow, which forced the tourists to instinctively rush down the slope in the direction of the supposed forest … improving the weather.
In such frost and wind, half-dressed and barefooted tourists could hold out no more than 2-3 hours. They managed to get to the edge of the forest and even kindle a small fire. But then the Dyatlovites made another mistake - they split up.
Igor Dyatlov.
The worst dressed Doroshenko and Krivonischenko remained by the fire, but it seemed they were unable to support it and quickly froze. Dyatlov, Kolmogorova and Slobodin made a desperate attempt to break through the hurricane wind to a littered tent, where clothes, food and equipment were left, but they overestimated their strength. The third group descended a little lower, to a tributary of the Lozva River, apparently in search of a more reliable refuge. However, tourists were not lucky here either.
The practice of hiking knows "a significant number of facts of the death of climbers and tourists as a result of falling into voids hidden under the snow," the conclusion on the case says. According to criminologists, Dubinin, Kolevatov, Zolotarev and Thibault-Brignoles were above the snow grotto washed out at the source of the stream: “Apparently, the snow-ice isthmus fell under their weight, and they were covered with a crumbling layer of frozen snow at least 5 meters high”. Accordingly, the probable causes of death of the four were a "cocktail" of three factors: injuries sustained during the fall and collapse of the snow-ice arch, suffocation and freezing.
Weapon Trials and Arctida Dwarfs
That, in fact, is all. “Based on the above, the circumstances of the death of tourists have no hidden background, and all the questions and doubts that have arisen are the consequences of unprofessionalism and incomplete work on the case,” the forensic experts summarize.
The unprofessional approach "led to the emergence in the case of information about fireballs, radiological studies of the clothes of the victims, which, naturally, did not give anything for the investigation." However, the TFR experts also did not consider their conclusions to be the ultimate truth: the document states the need to conduct more detailed research with the involvement of experts.
This is exactly what their fellow prosecutors are doing now. It is noteworthy, however, that they "dig" in exactly the same direction. “Crime is completely ruled out,” emphasizes the official representative of the Prosecutor General's Office Alexander Kurennoy. "There is not a single proof, even indirect, that would speak in favor of this version."
The prosecutors also don’t believe in the goblin, aliens, dwarfs of Arctida and the testing of top-secret weapons: the fantastic scenarios for the death of the group were rejected, as they say, from the doorway. Prosecutors counted 75 versions of the tragedy, of which they chose the three most likely. “All of them are somehow connected with natural phenomena,” explains Kurennoy. - It could be an avalanche, it could be a so-called snow board. Or a hurricane."
It is not clear, however, why these versions are separated. The descent of a snow board is a kind of avalanche, while the wind is the most important factor in its formation, and often the trigger. Well, experts know better.
However, another, more fundamental question arises: was it worth it to resume the investigation at all? After all, if there is confidence that no one killed the tourists, then the case of the Dyatlov group is of purely historical interest. The guardians of the law clearly have something to do beyond the secrets of the past. In addition, the death of Dyatlovites is far from the most mysterious emergency in the history of mountain tourism. A lot of cases when people disappeared without a trace at all.
A typical example: the disappearance of Klochkov's group - four men and two women who traveled in the high-mountainous Pamirs in the summer of 1989. The search lasted for a month, but ended completely in vain. To this day, nothing is known about the fate of the climbers. Most likely, they were hit by an avalanche, but this is just a guess, the scope for imagination is very wide. Much broader than in the case of the Dyatlov group. Nothing prevents, for example, assuming that Pyotr Klochkov and his comrades were kidnapped by aliens.
Nevertheless, the answer to the above question is still in the affirmative: yes, it's worth it, in the case of the Dyatlov group it is necessary to put an end to it. The reason is that myth-making, exploiting the theme of tragedy, is acquiring less and less harmless forms.
A rather popular version, for example, is today, according to which the death of the Dyatlovites was a ritual murder committed by the local Mansi under the leadership of shamans. They say that the aggressive forest tribe brutally dealt with the aliens who invaded the forbidden sacred territory. And the tribune for the blood libel singers is provided not by some marginal nationalist sites, but by federal TV channels in their prime time.
The dead have no shame
But, perhaps, the main victim of the conspiracy theology of "woodpeckers" should be considered one of the Dyatlovites themselves - Semyon Zolotarev. More precisely, not Semyon himself, the dead, as you know, do not have shame, but his relatives.
One can imagine with what feelings they listen today to the nonsense that is pouring from screens today under the guise of "historical research." Here is a relatively fresh statement of another "woodpecker", sounded in the studio of one of the country's leading TV channels: “My opinion is that Zolotarev was taken prisoner during the war. He was quickly "processed" … And that's it, then he became a traitor … As a traitor he worked for foreign intelligence."
At the same time, no - absolutely no! - there are no grounds for such fabrications. All these "researchers" rely on: a) 37-year-old Semyon was much older than the rest of the Dyatlovites; b) unlike them, he had no relation to the Ural Polytechnic; c) was at war. By the way, he not only was, but fought heroically, as evidenced by the Order of the Red Star, the medal "For Courage" and other military awards. But for conspiracy theorists, Zolotarev's military past is only evidence. The logic is "iron": since I was at the front, it means that I betrayed my homeland.
Semyon Zolotarev.
According to this, if I may say so, version, the overseas owners instructed Zolotarev to photograph the "fireballs" that appeared in the Ural sky - the result of bold experiments by Soviet scientists to create "plasmoids". It was for this purpose that Zolotarev asked for a campaign. But there he was exposed and, in order to avoid publicity, killed witnesses of his espionage activities. And in order not to look, he threw someone similar to him on the scene.
A variant of nonsense: Zolotarev was not an agent of foreign intelligence, but of the KGB. And he did not sniff out, but, on the contrary, defended state secrets. That is why he eliminated the Dyatlovites who witnessed something terribly secret. Well, they buried, again, someone else.
In the end, Zolotarev's relatives, supported by the capital's press, insisted on the exhumation of his remains, resting at the Ivanovo cemetery in Yekaterinburg. The exhumation took place in April last year. The first studies were conducted by Sergey Nikitin, an expert from the Bureau of Forensic Medicine of the Moscow Department of Health, one of the most authoritative Russian specialists in personal identification. Using the method of photomixing, Sergei Alekseevich made a categorical conclusion: the remains belong to Semyon Zolotarev.
However, then two genetic examinations were carried out, during which the DNA of a person buried at the Ivanovskoye cemetery was compared with the gene code of Semyon Zolotarev's closest relatives - the children of his own sister. The first such study refuted the result obtained by Nikitin, excluding maternal kinship, and the second, on the contrary, confirmed (blood relatives). Now, as far as we know, another genetic study is being prepared, designed to give a final answer about the identity of the remains.
Goldmine
Sergei Nikitin remains fully confident in his conclusion a year ago. “The remains really belong to Semyon Zolotarev,” Sergey Alekseevich told the MK columnist. “The injuries found exactly correspond to the description of the injuries, which was made in 1959 by the forensic expert Boris Vozrozhdenny.”
Nikitin explains the discrepancy in the results of geneticists by the fact that "the first genetic examination was carried out by an amateur, and the second by a professional." And for the future, he advises customers "to trust old experts and not waste money."
The expert considers the certificate drawn up in the TFR to be a "full-fledged and serious" document and agrees with its authors in almost everything. The only amendment he proposed concerns the mechanism of injuries found at Dubinina, Zolotarev and Thibault-Brignoles: “After thoroughly reading all the documents, I think that the following mechanism of the incident is most likely: they fell into the stream, most likely, not at the same time.
The first to fall was Dubinina (multiple bilateral fractures of the ribs), Zolotarev fell on her (multiple fractures of the ribs on the right side), Kolevatov fell on him (without injuries), fell next to him and hit his head on a Thibault-Brignoles stone (depressed fracture of the skull). Damage at Zolotarev, which I saw personally, and damage to the rest of the listed tourists, described by Boris Vozrozhdenny, correspond to these conditions in the mechanism of their formation.
The version defended by some researchers, according to which the injuries were received by the Dyatlovites at the time of the descent of the snow board, in the tent itself, Nikitin considers improbable - both in terms of the formation of injuries and taking into account their consequences. The injured - at least Dubinina and Thibault-Brignoles - could not have climbed down the mountain on their own. In addition, the injuries received did not leave them much time to live. According to Nikitin, they could live for half an hour, at most an hour.
For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that the position of the supporters of the “avalanche” version of injury also looks quite reasoned. However, this is already, in fact, disputes between like-minded people. Both those and others agree on the main thing: the trigger mechanism of the tragedy was a snowfall. Well, as for the details, let's hope that the prosecutor's office will clarify them.
There are good chances that the final picture will turn out to be quite voluminous and clear. However, the likelihood that the results of the check will satisfy the “caring people of Russia” is practically zero. Neither the numerous tribe of "woodpeckers" are interested in closing the topic, for many of whom myth-making has already become a way of earning money, nor the regional elite: "the unsolved mystery of the Dyatlov Pass" attracts tourists no worse than the Loch Ness monster. Not a federal telepropaganda machine.
For the latter, the Dyatlov theme is a gold mine, Klondike, "Viagra" for TV ratings and a means of entertainment for idle minds. No, theoretically it is possible, of course, to engage the audience in unraveling the mysteries associated, say, with the murder of Nemtsov or the terrorist attack in Beslan, recall the story of the "Ryazan sugar", which is also very mysterious and interesting. But as one high-ranking character of the Strugatsky brothers argued: “The people do not need unhealthy sensations. The people need healthy sensations. " Let us be healthy and unharmed.