The deceased hikers were suspected of fleeing to America

Vladimir Askinadzi is the only surviving member of the hikers' May search. Photo: Natalia Varsegova

Vladimir Mihaylovich Askinadzi, a resident of Sevastopol, is 88 years old. He is the only surviving direct participant in the May search for the Dyatlov group. The search for the missing hikers continued several months, starting in February 1959. It was Askinadzi who found the body of Lyudmila Dubinina, next to which there were three more corpses. We met with Vladimir Mihaylovich to learn first-hand the details of the discovery of the last four and to discuss previously unknown photographs of the den and the excavation site of the corpses recently found in a private archive.

To recapitulate: in the winter of 1959, nine hikers disappeared in the mountains of the Northern Urals: a fifth-year student of the Ural Polytechnic Institute (UPI), the leader of the group Igor Dyatlov, as well as Yuri Krivonischenko, Yuri Doroshenko, Rustem Slobodin, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Lyudmila Dubinina, Aleksander Kolevatov, Nikolay Thibeaux-Brignolle and Semyon Zolotarev. Before their death, as the investigation will establish, they ran out of the tent in a panic, barely clad and shoeless, went down the slope, made a fire in the forest... and died.

The frozen and mutilated bodies of all nine were found within a radius of one and a half kilometers from the tent. The last frame of the hikers' film shows unexplained glows. The investigation has not yet established what caused the tragedy, explaining it with a vague formulation: the hikers died from "an overwhelming force that they were unable to survive".

"This is a mistake!"

Volodya Askinadzi, a fifth-year student at the Physics and Technology Department of UPI, learned about the disappearance of the Dyatlov group in February upon returning from the winter hike "Denezhkin Kamen - Konzhakovsky" in the Northern Urals. He came to the hikert club to report on the successful completion of the route, and then he got the alarming news: the hikers from the Dyatlov group did not report back on time. Askinadzi was not closely acquainted with any of them, he only knew Igor and Zina a little.

- They said that the deadlines had passed and, most likely, the group had run out of food, - recalls Vladimir Mihaylovich. - But there was no particular worry, because everyone was confident in Igor, he, they say, will always find a way out. No food? You can cook porridge from birch bark. Is someone injured? They will bring it in their arms. No strength to walk? They will crawl. Another week passed, the hikers' relatives raised the alarm, and then the leaders of the sports club began to stir. They recruited the first search teams, dropped them off at different points along the planned route of the Dyatlov group. And then the first news arrived - a tent and two dead people, Krivonischenko and Doroshenko, had been found.

The Dyatlov group's fire under the cedar. In the photo there is a rotten birch. Photo from the personal archive of Vladimir Askinadzi

But even after such finds, Askinadzi and his fellow hikers believed that the rest of the hikers were alive. After all, there had never been a mass death on a hiking trip before! Then the first students sent on the search began to return, including Mikhail Sharavin. He told how he and Boris Slobtsov found the Dyatlov group's tent, how they pulled a flask of alcohol out of it and then drank it, how the bodies of Dyatlov, Kolmogorova, and Slobodin were found.

- The tent and the Dyatlov group's things were brought to Sverdlovsk, thrown onto a ski base, where everything was dumped in a heap, - continues Askinadzi. - Yuri Yudin (the tenth member of Dyatlov's group, who dropped out of the route due to illness, - Ed.) and I were hired to sort out the "goods". That's when I met Yura. We spent about an hour and a half sorting out the things. It was a pile of dirty, wet, crumpled clothes and other items. Yura Yudin pulled them out one by one - "these are Zina's", "these are Lyuda's..." and laid them out separately.

Removing bodies from the stream. On the left are investigator Lev Ivanov and medical examiner Boris Vozrozhdenny. Photo from the personal archive of Vladimir Askinadzi

- How did he determine who owned what? It is unlikely that he studied the backpacks of his comrades during the hike, - we doubted,

- In my opinion, he laid them out at random, - Vladimir Mihaylovich answers. - We worked in silence, I did not ask Yuri about anything, and he did not say anything. Did he look depressed or sick? No, he looked quite healthy.

Order from the Party Bureau

In April, everyone involved in the search agreed that it was pointless to continue the work until the snow melted. It would be good to wait until the beginning of June. However, the party officials had their own plans. Askinadzi was summoned to one of the meetings of the institute's party bureau and told - we have chosen you to lead a new search group.

- I was indignant, saying that it was inappropriate, - Vladimir Mihaylovich said. - The snow will melt and then... Moreover, the session is coming up: term papers, tests, exams. I was quickly shut me up: "You are going there to look for traces of the hikers absconding to America." What America?! Amundsen prepared for such a trip for years, do you think students left through the North Pole without skis?! But there was no point in explaining. Look for traces and that's it.

Searchers Vladimir Askinadzi and Boris Suvorov injured a partridge with a ski pole. Photo from the personal archive of Vladimir Askinadzi<

Four students volunteered to go on a search under Askinadzi's leadership. On April 27, they left for Ivdel.

- In Ivdel, the head of the training department of the military department of the UPI, Colonel Georgy Semenovich Ortyukov, "stuck" to us. In April and May, he headed the group's search headquarters, - recalls Vladimir Mihaylovich. - We were given boxes of food from the warehouse - butter, smoked sausage, canned goods. We flew to the pass by helicopter. Upon arrival, we met with the head of the previous shift of searchers, Yuri Blinov, I rushed with questions - what's the news? It turned out that they spent almost the entire shift in a tent due to the incessant rains. They rarely went out to search.

Vladimir Askinadzi pretends to warm his hands over Otorten. Photo from the personal archive of Vladimir Askinadzi

So did they die or escape?

According to Askinadzi, the sixth shift, which lasted from April 27 to May 13, included the chief of search headquarters Georgiy Ortyukov, radio operator Egor Nevolin, senior sapper group member Nikolay Kuzminov and six soldiers, five students, a dog handler with a dog, and the Mansi brothers Stepan and Grigoriy Kurikov. In the morning, everyone except the two camp duty officers walked around certain areas with probes, and in the afternoon, the students were sent to look for those very same traces of the escape to America.

- Was there really any hope that any of the guys had survived?

- No, everyone was sure that the group had perished completely. But the party bureau's assignment could not be cancelled, so every morning the colonel sent us to look for traces.

- And how did you look for them?

- We walked around the area in radial routes, looking for barely noticeable ski tracks or shoe prints covered in snow, but nothing came up.

An amazing situation! On March 10, when only the first five bodies were found, the then head of the search, Evgeny Maslennikov, reported to the city committee that the entire group had perished. On March 17, the regional CPSU committee reported to the very top in Moscow that the hikers had become victims of a powerful hurricane. And at the end of April - beginning of May, local officials absolutely absurdly suspected that someone could have escaped to America. Isn't that stupid?! However, this fact refutes the version that the regional party leadership knew about the death of the hikers even before their bodies were found.

The first find of the sixth shift was torn pants. They were found in the snow near the cedar, where the fire and the bodies of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko were found.

- We immediately realized that these were the pants of the Dyatlov group, - says Vladimir Mihaylovich. - The Mansi could not have lost them, the searchers would have picked them up. So, they were left over from the missing group.

- By the way, did you study the fire under the cedar?

- Of course. It was a bad fire. The Dyatlov group tried to make a fire from rotten damp birch, which smokes but does not warm. If they had had dead wood, they would have had a chance to survive.

Mysterious tree tops

Firs and spruces with freshly cut tops were found by searchers next to the cedar back in March, and they haunted many: who cut them and why? By May, the melted snow revealed the solution. The Mansi noticed traces of needles from these trees in the direction of the ravine. They reported this to Ortyukov, who ordered that the snow be carefully dug in this direction.

- The snow was wet and heavy, - recalls Vladimir Mihaylovich. - We cut out blocks with shovels, and then threw them out of the pit with frozen hands. A flooring of spruce branches appeared under the snow. It was clear that these were the same cut off tops with a diameter of 3-4 cm. On top in the corners - scraps of clothing. We carefully cleaned the find with a broom, took a photo. Ortyukov strictly ordered not to touch anything.

Three more appeared from under the snow

The searchers left for lunch thinking: what kind of flooring was this? What was it needed for? Why not near the fire, but in the ravine? After eating, Askinadzi could not stand it, took a probe (as the group leader, he had a special emergency mountaineering one with a hook instead of a tip, the others had ordinary reinforcement) and went to the flooring.

- I started poking the probe into its walls: moss, more moss, more moss and suddenly something soft - I turn the hook in the snowdrift and pull out a piece of skin with flesh, the size of a fingernail, - Vladimir Mikhailovich describes the sequence of actions. - I inserted the probe into this hole and ran after the people. Together we raked the snow right along the probe. Legs appeared, then a back, neck, head. A woman's body was revealed to us, lying face down in a stream on a stone ledge. The scalp was almost washed away, only part of the hair on the back of the head remained. Next to it, along the stream, three more heads were visible under the snow. We dragged the body into a small dug hole ("refrigerator") and began to dig around the remaining corpses, but not completely. The May sun was warm and the frozen bodies could quickly thaw. How to transport them later? On the colonel's orders, we made a canopy of tarpaulin over them. It became clear that we had found the last four. Ortyukov sent a radiogram to headquarters.

- Did you notice any peculiarities then?

- I remember well that one of the men had two watches on his hand. The woman (Lyuda Dubinina, Ed.) had no eyes, as did another man (Semyon Zolotarev, - Ed.).

Vladimir could not sleep at night, his brain seemed to be torn apart. Firstly, he imagined how everyone would torment him with questions about the terrible discovery. Secondly, he kept imagining corpses, and they would haunt him for a long time.

The next day, Ivdel prosecutor Vasily Tempalov (he opened the criminal case at the end of February), prosecutor-criminalist of the regional prosecutor's office Lev Ivanov (the main investigator on the case since the beginning of March), and forensic expert Boris Vozrozhdenny arrived at the pass. The removal of corpses began.

- And then I was surprised that we did not dig up these three, but pulled them out from under a meter-thick snowdrift. Ivanov said so - it was enough to pull them out, - recalls Askinadzi. - Even then, it seemed to me that something was wrong. The bodies were supposed to be dug up, described, photographed. And the investigators simply stood on the hill and watched as the soldiers pulled out the dead. It didn't look like investigative actions, just like the fact that Ivanov interrogated me without a protocol. He asked how the flooring was found, Lyuda. I answered in detail, but he didn't write anything down. He didn't take any receipts from me either.

The Colonel at the Limit

The students wrapped the bodies in white liners from their sleeping bags and lifted them to the helipad, but the pilots flatly refused to transport the corpses to Ivdel without special containers. And then Colonel Ortyukov's nerves gave out, he got drunk and had a row with the crew, ordering them to take the dead away. They wouldn't listen.

"A little more and he would have pulled his pistol out of his holster," recalls Askinadzi. "I started to slowly take the colonel aside - like, everyone needs to breathe a sigh of relief and calm down. But he continued to make a fuss, insisting that Vozrozhdenniy conduct an autopsy right on the pass, the forensic expert shrugged his shoulders - how in such conditions? The next day, the pilots flew in with rubber bags, in which we placed the bodies, Vozrozhdenniy flew away with them. Ivanov stayed for two more nights, but showed no interest in us. In the end, he promised to tell us about the causes of the tragedy, how the investigation would end, but we never saw him again.

Vladimir as an avid hiker was especially worried about the question of where to set up a tent on a bare, windy slope. It is impossible to sleep in such conditions. Even in a strong snowstorm, you can go down, where the wind will die down and it will be more comfortable. This thought has not left him to this day.

- During the search, we had two versions of the death of the Dyatlov group - an avalanche and a rocket, - says Askinadzi. - The first was supported by the master of sports in tourism Moisey Akselrod, he also participated in the search. However, when I approached him at some meeting and asked him point-blank where he saw signs of an avalanche on the pass, he mumbled something in response and walked away. The missile version was actively discussed, I don't know who threw it in, but it was the most advantageous version, everything could be hidden under it at that time.

New photos

Vladimir Mikhailovich was very interested in the two recently discovered photographs from the May search. One shows the excavation site of the Dyatlov group in the ravine and the deck. It was most likely taken by investigator Lev Ivanov. The second shows a detailed image of the same deck that was discovered in the ravine under a layer of snow. Cut branches and scraps of clothing along the edges - a sweater, parts of a windbreaker, scraps of pants.

- Yes, that is exactly how we saw this deck, the only thing is that I don’t remember the light scraps of clothing on it, then it seemed that all the things were dark, - Vladimir Askinadzi reasons. - But the excavation site seemed strange to me at first. I remember that the excavations were located next to each other, and in this photo they seem to be far away, but after comparing with other photographs, I realized that these are the same excavations. The den was found in the far one, and corpses in the near one. (see  photo)

Aleksander Alekseenkov, a researcher into the mystery of the pass, confirms that the new photo is the same angle as the previously available similar photo of the excavation area.

"We have repeatedly compared search photos with the real area, so I can confidently say, despite all doubts, that the excavation site matches many details," says Alekseenkov. "For example, next to the "refrigerator" for Lyuda (it was dug to preserve the body raised from the stream – in the photo on the right), you can see a large triple tree. This is an old birch – there is nothing like it in the area, either higher or lower. The new photo of the deck is more interesting. The quality of the previously available photos of the deck did not allow us to see the ends of the fir trees in the deck. The new photo clearly shows a cut and broken end, which is logical if we assume that the Dyatlov group used a knife to cut off the tops of small firs and spruces.

What's wrong with these photos?

It is known that both photographs were found by searchers Vladislav Karelin in the archive of the chairman of the regional tourism federation, Evgeny Maslennikov, who led the search for hikers in February-March 1959. After Maslennikov's death, his widow gave her husband's archive to a family friend, Vladislav Georgievich.

- But how did Maslennikov get these May photographs? - asks the researcher of the tragedy Galina Sazonova and reasons in search of an answer:

On March 10, Maslennikov is present at a meeting in Ivdel, having returned from the pass. On the same day, he was questioned as a witness by investigator Ivanov. In April, another person, Colonel Ortyukov, led the search; Evgeny Polikarpovich has nothing to do with them. However, why on May 15 did they take a non-disclosure agreement from Maslennikov regarding the case of the group's death. Why, if he saw only what happened in the first 9 days of the search, as did several hiking search groups, but they do not take signatures from them. Does this mean Maslennikov knew much more? From whom - from Ivanov? This means he also received the photos from the May search from him. But why?

And here, involuntarily, I recall the letters of Kirill Bardin, that same master of sports who flew to the pass from Moscow by order of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He wrote to his friend Zhenya Maslennikov: "We need to write a letter to Khrushchev in connection with the winter epic. After all, there is no guarantee that such cases will not be repeated somewhere and with someone else. Ask that those at the top think through the possibility of preventing such things."

- If they had stuck to the official version of death from a hurricane and cold, what would the "top" have to do with it, capable of preventing something? - Galina Sazonova doubts.

Bardin then writes: "It is impossible to write such a letter from any organization. But a personal letter from two masters can have a big effect. At least, the question will be put in the right direction. After all, something has to be done."

From the authors

Perhaps Lev Ivanov specifically handed over some of the materials, including photographs, to Evgeniy Maslennikov so that he would have at least some clue to establish the real reasons for the death of the group. The investigators themselves were not allowed to solve the case. And we will return to this issue later.