On May 18, 1973, one of the passengers of the Tu-104 airliner flying to Chita hijacked the plane and demanded a change in its route. Tengiz Rzayev threatened to blow up the plane if the pilots did not obey his demands.
The policeman on board tried to neutralize him, but it turned out that Tengiz Rzayev was not joking. The explosion of the Tu-104 was the largest terrorist attack in the entire Soviet history. 81 people died. Nevertheless, he remained practically unnoticed, as the Soviet authorities tried to keep everything secret. To this day, few know about him.
Air piracy epidemic
As you know, the USSR was a country from which it was impossible to leave just like that. Any trip abroad required an exit visa, and emigration was significantly hampered. Starting from the 60s, the number of people wishing to leave the country began to increase every year. Legal paths for most of them were as difficult as possible. There was even a special category of "restricted to travel abroad", i.e. persons who were not allowed abroad even on tourist trips for fear that they might refuse to return to the USSR.
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Many wanted to leave, but only a few of them grew into an obsessive desire, for which they were ready to do anything. The most important way of "transfer" abroad for them was air piracy. It was not difficult to do this, since the security policy on Soviet airlines was in its infancy, the passengers were not even inspected at first, and they could safely carry anything, even explosives. The only thing left to do was to find such a flight, the route of which would pass in the immediate vicinity of the borders, and to require the pilots to change course.
The first such attempt was made back in 1954, when a man and a woman with pistols tried to capture an old Li-2 flying from Tallinn to Leningrad, but they failed, because the aircraft crew resisted and neutralized them. In this case, the ship's mechanic was killed.
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The next attempt was made in 1958, when a passenger named Chechet tried to hijack an Il-14 plane flying on the route Moscow - Leningrad - Tallinn. But this time, too, the air pirate was not the best prepared and could not get into the cockpit.
Literally a month later, two men tried to seize An-2 at the Yakut airport in order to fly to the United States, but they also did not succeed. In the 60s, seizures began to decline, but did happen from time to time, albeit unsuccessfully for the pirates. Everything changed in 1970, when two Lithuanians - Brazinskas' father and son - captured an An-24 flying on the Batumi - Sukhumi route.
They shot and killed a flight attendant, wounded several crew members, but still got their way. The plane landed in Turkey, which refused to extradite the criminals to the USSR, condemning them according to its own laws and granting amnesty several years later. This was the first successful case of the hijacking of a Soviet aircraft, and it again caused a real wave of air terrorism. In the 70s alone, about 30 attempts to hijack aircraft were made in the USSR.
Surprisingly, in the USSR, it never occurred to anyone in the USSR to tighten security rules and start conducting a pre-flight inspection. Instead, an armed plainclothes police officer accompanied each flight near the border. Prior to that, all safety was reduced to the fact that the aircraft commander was given a service pistol stored in the cockpit.
"Rehearsal" in Leningrad
Just three weeks before the terrorist attack, the attempted hijacking took place in Leningrad, and only by a happy coincidence of circumstances it was possible to do without significant casualties. On April 23, 1973, a certain Ivan Bidyuk, 47 years old, carried a bomb on board a Tu-104 aircraft. The plane was supposed to fly from Leningrad to Moscow, but a few minutes after takeoff, Bidyuk, through a flight attendant, handed a note to the aircraft commander with an urgent demand to change the route and fly to Stockholm. In addition, he said that he had an explosive device with a capacity of more than two kilograms in TNT equivalent and that it was equipped with a reverse action fuse. That is, as soon as he removes his finger from the button, the explosive device will go off. Therefore, shooting at him is pointless.
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The flight attendant Gryaznov, armed with a pistol, came out to deal with Bidyuk. But he became convinced that Bidyuk was telling the truth and it was pointless to shoot him. Bidyuk, with a bomb in his hands, was clearly nervous and tried to break into the cockpit. The flight mechanic at that time tried to distract him, and the pilots really turned the plane around and went to land in Leningrad.
To prevent Bidyuk from suspecting something was wrong, they did not release the landing gear until the last moment, and he realized that the plane had returned to Leningrad and they were already waiting for him on the ground only when the plane was only a few meters above the ground. He immediately detonated an explosive device, but, fortunately, the pilots managed to keep control of the plane, which landed a few seconds later. The landing was relatively soft given the explosion and the collapsed front landing gear. None of the passengers were injured, as a result of the explosion, the terrorist himself, who was holding the bomb in his hands, and the flight mechanic were killed.
Catastrophe near Chita
On the evening of May 17, the Tu-104 aircraft took off on the Moscow - Chita route. The 104th belonged to the first generation of jet aircraft, by the beginning of the 70s it was already considered outdated and was actively replaced by newer series. The flight range did not allow the plane to reach Chita without transfers, so the route involved three intermediate landings: one in Chelyabinsk, another in Novosibirsk and the third in Irkutsk.
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It was in Irkutsk that the crew was changed on May 18. There, two key participants in the Chita drama got on board: Tengiz Rzayev, who was carrying an explosive device, and a junior militia lieutenant Vladimir Yozhikov, who was accompanying the flight. He had a service weapon with him, but according to safety rules, he was in civilian clothes.
Relatively little is known about Rzayev. He was born in 1941 and was a native of Kirovabad (now Ganja), which was the third most populous city in the Azerbaijan SSR. It is known that he had a dream to enter MGIMO and become a diplomat. But all his attempts to enter MGIMO were unsuccessful, largely because Rzayev did not speak foreign languages. Nonetheless, he saw his failures as a conspiracy of the system against him.
In the end, Rzayev came up with a plan to flee to China. For some reason, he believed that Mao Zedong would certainly appreciate his talents. True, China at that time was in extremely hostile relations with the USSR, and just four years before that there was a conflict on Damansky Island, so it is not entirely clear what its confidence was based on.
Nevertheless, he began preparations for his escape. In the army, he trained as a sapper and knew a thing or two about explosives. At that time he was working on the construction of roads and little by little he carried the explosives home.
The day before the flight, he arrived in Irkutsk and bought a ticket for a flight to Chita. On the night of May 18, the plane took off from Irkutsk, there were 72 passengers and nine crew members on board. Some time after takeoff, Rzayev conveyed to the pilots through the flight attendant that he was demanding a change in course. This became known through the negotiations of the pilots with the dispatcher. They said that an unknown man in the cabin demanded a change of course, but he did not say exactly where to fly, promising to go into the cockpit and personally voice the demands. Almost immediately, a danger signal was received from the plane, and after a few seconds, communication with it was interrupted, and the plane disappeared from the radar. About two and a half minutes passed between the capture of the plane and its disappearance.
Investigation
The wreckage of the plane was discovered a few hours later - about 100 kilometers from Chita. Helicopters took part in the search operation, since the wreckage was scattered over a ten-kilometer territory. We immediately managed to find several witnesses from among the foresters, who reported that they saw the fall of debris.
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Investigators had to independently restore the picture of what happened on board the plane. The nature of the damage to the aircraft indicated that it literally fell apart at an altitude of 6500 meters as a result of the explosion. This meant that one of the passengers carried a bomb on board the plane, the power of which was about six kilograms in TNT equivalent.
After the discovery of all the bodies of the victims, an examination was carried out. One of the victims was found to have a bullet wound, as well as some damage characteristic of the explosion. He was identified as Tengiz Rzayev. A more detailed study of his personality revealed that he had sufficient knowledge in explosives, since he served as a sapper, and also had access to explosives while working on road works. In addition, Rzayev's acquaintances reported that he mentioned a desire to go to China. This means that he was the most likely terrorist.
During the search work, Vladimir Yozhikov's service weapon was found, in which two cartridges were missing, while Rzayev had only one wound. Probably one of the shots was unsuccessful.
The bullet entered Rzayev from the back. This makes it possible to more or less accurately establish the picture of what happened in the Tu-104 cabin. Most likely, events developed approximately like this.
Rzayev called the stewardess to him and ordered to convey to the crew the requirements to change the course, saying that he would now personally go into the cabin and report the details of the route. The pilots managed to inform the dispatcher about this. About a minute after that, he headed into the cockpit. Most likely, the crew blocked it, and Rzayev tried to break down the door. Policeman Yozhikov started shooting at that moment. The crew managed to transmit a distress signal to the dispatcher, and after a few seconds the policeman shot Rzayev, but he, dying, managed to activate the explosive device.
Effects
The explosion of the Tu-104 was the largest in terms of the number of victims of a terrorist attack in Soviet history - 81 people died. It led to a major overhaul of security systems at Soviet airports. Passengers and their luggage began to be inspected before boarding. The practice of escorting flights by plainclothes police officers, which was considered ineffective and potentially dangerous, was abolished.
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Indirectly, the disaster contributed to the creation a year later of a special KGB unit "Alpha", one of the main tasks of which was the fight against air piracy and the release of hostages from captured aircraft. Nevertheless, this did not stop the hijackers who wanted to flee the USSR, who attempted to hijack aircraft until the collapse of the country in 1991.
Evgeny Antonyuk. Historian