On January 8, 1977, terrorist attacks took place in the Soviet capital for the first time since pre-revolutionary times. With an interval of thirty-odd minutes in the very center of Moscow, three explosions were heard one after another, claiming the lives of seven people. About 40 were injured. For the first time a terrorist attack against a civilian population was carried out in Moscow.
All the police and KGB officers were raised on alarm. However, unprecedented searches have yielded no results. For almost a year, the criminals managed to remain at large until they were detained after the next failed terrorist attack.
Explosions
On January 8, 1977 at 1733 hours there was an explosion in a subway train carriage. At that moment, the train was on the stretch between Izmailovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations in an open area, due to which the number of victims was less than it could have been. The bomb that was in the duck was left in the train carriage in a bag. The explosion killed seven people.
After 32 minutes, there was a second explosion. This time an explosive device went off in the building of a grocery store on the current Bolshaya Lubyanka. By a happy coincidence, there were no deaths in the explosion.
After another five minutes, there was a third explosion. This time, a hellish car, hidden in a trash can at the entrance to a grocery store on today's Nikolskaya Street, which at that time was called October 25 Street, exploded. In this explosion, no one died either, a massive cast-iron urn withstood the explosion - and the wave went up.
Promotional video:
7 people became victims of three explosions. Another 37 people were injured of varying severity. As a result of an unprecedented terrorist attack, the entire personnel of the police and the KGB were alerted and sent in search of criminals. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev urgently returned to the city, having rest on a hunt. He took the matter under personal control and demanded that the chief of the KGB Andropov and the Minister of the Interior Shchelokov find the criminals as soon as possible.
Investigation
Investigators interviewed several hundred potential witnesses - people who could have seen the criminals while laying the infernal machines. However, the witness testimony did not give anything: the witnesses either did not see anything or provided conflicting information. Some talked about two curly-haired brunettes, others saw three, others talked about two men and a woman, the fourth talked about a lonely man who, shortly before the explosion, was in a hurry to leave the store.
It was only clear that all three explosions were the work of the same criminals. In hot pursuit, no one was detained. The criminals left, and the investigators had only to carefully study the evidence in the hope of narrowing the circle of searches.
In the body of one of the victims of the explosion, a fragment of a duckling was found, which served as a shell for an explosive device. Later, several more fragments were found at the site of the explosion. The ducklings were identified by them. It turned out that she belongs to the batch produced in Kharkov. Because of this, investigators believed for some time that Ukrainian radical nationalists could be involved in the explosions. However, at the site of one of the explosions, elements of an alarm clock produced at the Yerevan Watch Factory were found.
Also, according to the results of the examination, it was found out that the welding electrode, with which the bombs were made, had a special coating. In the Soviet Union, such electrodes were used exclusively at enterprises of the military-industrial complex. This allowed us to narrow the circle of suspects a little, since it meant that at least one of the terrorists works at some of the defense plants.
However, this evidence was too small. These things could be purchased at least in several cities of the USSR, and there were so many defense plants that it was no easier to search for suspects on such scanty evidence than to find a needle in a haystack.
However, soon sensational information came from Tambov. The local police cheerfully reported that the elusive terrorist, in search of whom all the security forces of the Soviet Union had run off their feet, was with them. They managed to detain a local resident who, out of revenge, tried to blow up the hut of the forester who was in conflict with him with an improvised explosive device. And during interrogations, he allegedly had already confessed about his involvement in the Moscow bombings.
But the investigation team, who urgently arrived from Moscow, quickly realized that the man had incriminated himself, having fallen into the harsh hands of local policemen. So ridiculous were his testimonies, in all contradicting the real details of the crime, of which he had no idea.
Several months of work by the best investigators in the country were unsuccessful. The investigators had no suspects; all they could report to Brezhnev, who kept the case under personal control, was that the traces of the criminals lead to several cities in the Soviet Union. Nobody claimed responsibility for the explosions, made no statements. The attack was inexplicable.
Information war
At first, the Soviet media did not report anything at all about a series of terrorist attacks in the capital. But it was also impossible to hide such information: there were too many witnesses - the next day, in all the queues and in the transport of the capital, they whispered about yesterday's explosions, passing on to each other the most incredible rumors about what happened.
Only on January 10, two days after the explosion, TASS gave very moderate and restrained information about the Moscow terrorist attacks. The news agency reported that on January 8, a small explosion took place in the metro carriage. All victims received assistance. About two other explosions, as well as the number of dead and injured, nothing was reported.
On the same day, the Soviet-British journalist Victor Louis published information about the terrorist attacks in one of the Western publications, suggesting that radical dissidents were the organizers. This fact caused strong rejection in the circles of Soviet dissidents. The fact is that Louis was closely associated with the KGB. Back in Stalin's times, he went through the camps, after his release he married an Englishwoman and led a very un-Soviet lifestyle: he kept salons and circles for bohemians, wrote complimentary notes about the USSR in Western publications. It was not without reason that he was suspected of working for the Soviet secret services, especially considering the fact that Louis was allowed what other citizens were forbidden: operations with antiques and jewelry, meetings with foreigners, etc. In Moscow, Louis lived in one of the Stalinist skyscrapers and, in his own words, had more foreign cars than Brezhnev.
Louis's version of the involvement of dissidents was perceived by the latter as a version of the KGB. Two days later, Academician Sakharov transmitted to the West an open appeal to the world community, in which he stated that he considered Louis's statement to be a KGB provocation, and called on the public and Western politicians to put pressure on the Soviet leadership, demanding the most transparent investigation of the terrorist attack.
Part of the dissident circles decided that the explosion was originally the work of the KGB in order to deal with all dissidents. Others believed that this was the work of some crazy people or radicals, but the KGB will now take advantage of this excuse to tighten its repression against dissidents.
However, the fears turned out to be unfounded. No general persecution of dissidents began, and the authorities no longer raised the topic of explosions in the press, since the investigation could not boast of anything.
Fluke
Ten months have passed since the series of explosions. It seemed that the criminals would never be found, that they went to the bottom and no longer show themselves.
Suddenly, the criminals again made themselves felt after almost a year. At the end of October 1977, in the waiting room of the Kursk railway station, one of the vigilant passengers discovered an orphaned travel bag. On top were a blue tracksuit jacket and hat. But under them was hidden some bizarre device with protruding wires. The vigilant citizen immediately reported the find to the police. The investigation again had a chance to catch the criminals in hot pursuit, since they could not go far.
The search for the terrorist began immediately. At the railway stations, all suspicious persons were checked by militiamen, on the outskirts of the city they inspected cars. We quickly found out that the bag in which the bomb was left was produced in Yerevan and did not go on sale in other cities. All trains en route from Moscow to the Caucasus were checked by the police.
The suspect's indications were vague. A brunette (in the Caucasus, almost everyone was suitable for these signs), a man may not have outerwear. And again, chance helped. Already at the entrance to Armenia, a suspicious man was found on one of the trains on the Moscow - Yerevan route. He was wearing sweatpants from the same suit as the jacket that had been left at the station. The man did not have outerwear and found it difficult to intelligibly explain where his jacket disappeared and what he was doing in Moscow.
A man named Hakob Stepanyan was detained. Together with him, his fellow traveler, artist Zaven Baghdasaryan, was arrested. During the search at Stepanyan's apartment, a map of the Moscow metro was found. Not the most weighty evidence, but there were also several batteries, tumblers, coils of wires, several welded cases were found. The investigation team that arrived in Yerevan brought with them a travel bag with a bomb left in it. Stepanyan's mother confirmed that her son had the same.
We did not manage to find anything incriminating in Baghdasaryan. But the investigation was quickly able to find out that a close friend of both detainees is the well-known KGB Stepan Zatikyan, who had already served time for underground political activities.
Zatikyan was one of the founders and leaders of the underground United National Party of Armenia, created in the mid-60s. The political goal of the movement was the separation of Armenia from the USSR and the creation of an independent Armenian state.
The leaders of the underground party were soon arrested and convicted of anti-Soviet agitation. Zatikyan received four years in prison. At this time, the party was headed by his relative, the famous Armenian dissident Hayrikyan (Zatikyan was married to his sister). After his release, Zatikyan withdrew from party activities, and Hayrikyan reoriented the party to more moderate methods of struggle. They intended to achieve an independence referendum.
However, Zatikyan decided instead to leave the territory of the USSR. He wrote letters to the Supreme Soviet notifying him of renouncing Soviet citizenship, persistently tried to get permission to leave the country, but every time he was refused.
Zatikyan immediately interested the investigators - a search was carried out in his place. Several soldering irons, tumblers, coils of wire, metal studs (one of these studs was found at the site of the explosion) and nuts, batteries, several schemes of an electric explosion circuit and a diagram of the Moscow metro were found. In addition, Zatikyan worked as an assembly fitter at the Armenian Electrotechnical Plant in Yerevan, which also worked for the military-industrial complex.
According to the investigators, the events developed as follows: after his imprisonment and numerous refusals to leave, Zatikyan allegedly went crazy and decided to take revenge on everyone in a row, two acquaintances whom he persuaded to start taking revenge on the Soviet imperialists for oppressing Armenia fell under his influence. Zatikyan led the group and soldered the bombs, while Stepanyan and Baghdasaryan were the performers. Perhaps there was someone else in the terrorist group, but it was not possible to establish his identity. Three were brought before the court.
Sentence
Much attention was riveted to the court, but not from the Soviet press, which, on the contrary, tried not to remember it once again (after the trial, they only reported that the organizer of the explosions in Moscow and two accomplices had been convicted and sentenced to death), but dissidents. Firstly, in January 1977, through the mouth of Victor Louis, the KGB expressed a version about the involvement of dissidents in the terrorist attack. Secondly, in response to this statement, Sakharov almost openly accused the KGB itself of organizing the attack. Thirdly, Zatikyan was a relative of Hayrikyan, well known in dissident circles. It was the combination of all these factors that aroused increased interest in the case.
One of the main arguments of the dissidents against the case was the fact that the trial was held behind closed doors (which is not quite the case, by order of Brezhnev, the trial was even filmed). According to the dissidents, the absence of a public court was an argument in favor of the falsification of the case. The behavior of the defendants at the trial did not add clarity either. There was no serious evidence against Baghdasaryan, but he pleaded guilty. Stepanyan also admitted guilt, but denied Zatikyan's involvement. And Zatikyan not only denied his participation, but also declared non-recognition of the Soviet court. Meanwhile, according to the investigation, it was he who was the main organizer and inspirer of the attacks.
As a result, a real commotion and even a small split arose in the dissident environment. Some believed in the official version, believing that some individual radicals really could fly off the coils and begin to take revenge on everyone in a row by means of unmotivated terror. Others categorically denied such a possibility and firmly believed that the attack was an insidious provocation by the KGB in order to have a reason to crack down on the dissident movement. Still others believed that the investigators had succeeded in arresting the real terrorist, but it was Stepanyan, while the rest ended up in the dock rather “for the company”.
The trial, held in January 1979, found all three guilty and sentenced to death. Despite all the doubts of the dissidents, the attacks have stopped. No new rounds of persecution of dissidents have occurred either, which simply makes senseless the version of the KGB provocation with the aim of reprising the dissident movement. In addition, months of unsuccessful searches for terrorists clearly do not fit into the version of a provocation. Now, more than forty years later, the official investigation raises doubts only among the most implacable and radical conspiracy theorists.