The mysterious incident at the Dyatlov Pass has fed various crazy theories for many years. Family members and some experts are suspicious of the official investigation, which ended 61 years after the events, the author writes.
“While we sit and sing songs. Those guys are playing the guitar, Rustic is playing along with the mandolin. Takes it straight for the soul. This is the last place of civilization. The round letters of Lyudmila Dubinina's diary describe the evening of January 27, 1959. “In general, it seems, the last time we heard so many new good songs,” she writes prophetically on one of the last pages. Four days earlier, Dubinina, a young, serious girl with long braids, and a group of nine students and alumni of the Ural Polytechnic Institute set off on a trip to ski in one of the regions of the Urals, a mountain range considered to be the natural border between Europe and Asia. They wanted to reach Mount Holatchakhl, known among the local Mansi population as the Dead Peak or Mountain of the Dead.
They moved out of Sverdlovsk. Passed on two trains, a truck, a bus and a sleigh. During the trip, Yuri Yudin, who, like Dubinnina, was a student of the Faculty of Economics, fell ill and decided to return. The others divided his provisions among themselves and continued the journey, which was to last three weeks. All of them were experienced climbers, especially the twenty-three-year-old Igor Dyatlov, who had just graduated from the radio engineering department. He led the group. After the hike, the students were to receive a third-class certificate, testifying to the highest level of skill in mountaineering in the USSR at that time. On the night of December 1–2, the group set up camp 10 km from the destination. They did not return home.
Upon returning to the base, Dyatlov promised to send a telegram to the sports club of Sverdlovsk, which he was a member of. When the appointed date passed and it became impossible to think that the group was simply delayed in the campaign, it was decided to start a search operation. Rescuers followed the group's route and found a tent. Inside were the things of tourists, the diaries of Dubinina and Zinaida Kolmogorova, a twenty-two-year-old student of the radio engineering faculty, Rustem Slobodin's mandolin (Rustik), shoes and a plate of food. In addition, on the slope of the tent there was a huge cut with a knife made from the inside, as if someone was in such a hurry to get out of there that he could not waste time unbuttoning, as Mikhail Sharavin, who was part of the search team, later said.
Half a kilometer from the tent down the slope, two bodies were found - Yuri Doroshenko, 21, and Yuri Krivonischenko, 23. They were in their underwear. A little further, the body of Igor Dyatlov was found. He was dressed, but without shoes, lying face down in the snow and hugging the trunk of a birch. Kolmogorov was found next to him. Her body lay in such a position, as if, according to Sharavin, the girl was unsuccessfully trying to get back to the tent. A few days later, Rustic was found, he was dressed the warmest of all. His watch stopped at 8:45.
The rest were found only three months later in the hollow. The neck of Alexander Kolevatov, who studied nuclear physics and even visited a secret institute in Moscow, was folded, and a large wound was found behind the ear. Nicholas Thibault-Brignoles, Kolka, the son of a French communist repressed by Stalin, had a fractured skull. Autopsy of Semyon Zolotarev, a 38-year-old sports instructor who went through World War II, revealed multiple rib fractures. In addition, he had an open wound on the right side of his skull. Lyudmila Dubinina had no language and, like the veteran Zolotarev, her eye sockets were empty. Traces of radiation were found on the bodies of all nine members of the group.
What happened to the tourists is the greatest mystery of modern Russia. It is known as the secret of the Dyatlov Pass, by the name of the head of the group. This story is popular among climbers, fans of riddles and conspiracy theories. The Soviet investigation lasted only a few months. In June 1959, it was concluded that the group had died due to "a spontaneous force that the tourists were unable to overcome," and access to the site was closed for three years. The abstract conclusion did not satisfy the families, but in those days of fear and repression, as Igor Dyatlov's younger sister Tatyana Perminova explained, citizens had little room for maneuver.
Yuri Yudin, the only survivor of that expedition who returned halfway due to illness, always said that he was living with an injury. Yudin said that if he had the opportunity to ask God something, he would ask what happened to his friends. Yudin died in 2015 without knowing the truth.
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Last year, 60 years after the tragedy, prosecutors took the unprecedented step to dust the archives and reopen the case. It seemed that the solution to the mystery was close. The press secretary of the Prosecutor General's Office, Alexander Kurennoy, explained that the goal was to put an end to the legends, and, in addition, to make sure of the safety of the scene, which became a place of pilgrimage for climbers and mystery lovers. However, Kurennoy hinted that only hypotheses related to weather events, from the "snowboard" to the hurricane, would be tested. A few days later, the conclusion was published and the case was closed: an avalanche killed the tourists.
This conclusion, however, was again disliked by the remaining family members, who sent a complaint to the General Prosecutor's Office. Tatyana Perminova is now 74, she lives in Pervouralsk. The woman says that her family always thought that the military were somehow involved in the death of her brother Igor Dyatlov, who dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Also, most of the real experts in this matter and enthusiasts are wary of the official conclusion. Discussion of the possible and craziest theories has become popular again.
Now Sverdlovsk, which a group of tourists left on the night train, has changed its Soviet name and became Yekaterinburg. There is the headquarters of the regional fund "In memory of the Dyatlov group". Its director, Sergei Fadeev, flatly rejects the idea that an avalanche killed the tourists. “We spent years researching the case file. This conclusion is illogical. They are trying to cover up violations in the case and previous investigation. They are trying to hide what really happened,”Fadeev said. His hair and beard are very thick and he stands surrounded by books, documents and objects from that era. Portraits of dead tourists hang on the walls of the main hall.
The legend was largely fueled by the secrecy that surrounded this tragedy for decades. After the Soviet authorities ended the case with a strange lengthy conclusion, the topic was no longer brought up. In 1990, when there was little time left before the fall of the USSR, the chief investigator in this case, Lev Ivanov, opened Pandora's box. He spoke about the tragedy for the first time and told the local newspaper that the autopsy results surprised him. There were some strange moments in what happened. Among them are reports of "fireballs" in the sky that night. Ivanov apologized to the families and explained that his superiors had ordered him to classify the finds and forget about everything. He said that he had done everything possible, but at that time there were "irresistible forces" in the country.
That publication in the newspaper caused the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass to arise. Various legends have appeared: starting with the one where the tourists were attacked by escaped prisoners or Mansi, and ending with the one where the group was killed by the KGB officers. There are legends claiming that tourists were victims of a secret military experiment, aliens, or that they killed each other themselves. There were also speculations about the shock wave of a low-flying aircraft. The tragedy has served as a source of inspiration for TV series, films (for example, "Devil's Pass", 2013) and various books.
The avalanche was among the most popular "real" reasons, but it does not satisfy Nikolai Varsegov, who for many years has been investigating this case together with his wife, journalist Natalia Ko. Together they published several articles and the book "Who is hiding the truth about the death of the Dyatlov group." “The prosecutor’s office believes that the students, having heard the noise of the avalanche, for some reason ran in the opposite direction. If they heard it at night, they should have run to the right, to the foot of the mountain, and not to the left,”Vasegov says. He explained that the climbers set up an experiment and camped in an area with a low incline.
The archives of the case became available for study only in the nineties of the last century, when the USSR collapsed. The problem is that they are incomplete. According to Fadeev, this was the reason for the appearance of legends. The historian does not adhere to any one theory: “There is evidence of balls of light or flying vehicles, so maybe there was a rocket launched from the Kapustin Yar test site. Another likely version is an airplane or helicopter. The KGB and prosecutors stopped the investigation. And those who came after spread stories about the yeti and aliens to hide the truth. Something happened there that could harm the USSR, so everything was classified,”Fadeev insists, rummaging in his backpack. Fadeev and his associates are making the last preparations before their own campaign. They leave in a few hours to investigate the incident area,as they do every year.
Today, at the site of the tragedy, there is a small granite monument with the names of tourists and the date of death. "In memory of those who left and did not return, we named this pass after the Dyatlov group."
