Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Dubinina (Lyuda)

Music Sergey Nikitin, "Ya Sprosil U Yasenya" (Никитин Сергей «Я спросил у ясеня»). Colorization by Steve Halliday.

Lyuda Dubinina was laid to rest a day shy of her 21st birthday, May 12, 1959. In her last diary entries, she expressed anger and upset for no good reason. Did she have a premonition of the coming tragedy, or was she simply a tormented soul burning with anxiety? Her injuries were the most horrific. She was found in a kneeling position as if praying for mercy. The demons that took her life retreated into the dead of night. No one knows what happened on the slopes of 1079, aka Kholat Syakhl (The Dead Mountain).

Born on May 12, 1938 on Kegostrov near Arkhangelsk, USSR. Kegostrov is both a village and an island. In general, the island is called Kego. Translated from Karelian "keg" means "collapsing". It is eroded by the Northern Dvina, so it collapses. In the old days it was possible to shout from coast to coast, from Arkhangelsk to an island. There used to be a pine forest too. When Lyuda lived there, there was a busy airport and a logging factory. Lyuda's father, Aleksander Nikolaevich, was the director. The logs were brought with barges on water and then processed. The airport lasted until 1963, and the sawmill went bankrupt in the nineties. There was nowhere to work - people began to leave Kegostrov. A steamer steers there twice a day in summer, and in winter you can cross the ice. So the locals go to work in Arkhangelsk - two kilometers in the cold, there and back. Kegostrov is not connected by bridges to the mainland. The houses on Kegostrov are wooden, it is more expensive to make them with rectangular concrete slabs. On Kegostrov there is a village of the same name, and several villages - Odino, Gnevashevo, and others, with a population of a couple of dozen inhabitants each. Collective farms once flourished here. Lyuda's mother, Iya Vladimirovna worked in the same village of Kegostrov as the head of the kindergarten. From the island, the Dubinin family moved to Arkhangelsk. Lyuda finished seventh grade in the city, and then studied at the Krasnogorsk school №39 of the Kazan Railway. Lyuda's father was transferred to the post of director of the Krasnogorsk sawmill. Krasnogorsk village lies 41 kilometers from the city of Zvenigovo, now it is in the Republic of Mariyskoy El. Kazan is close. During the Great Patriotic War, a hospital for war invalids was opened in the village, where soldiers wounded at the front were treated. In 44, a telegram came from Stalin to the village: "To the head of the evacuation hospital of the Mariyskoy ASSR, major of the medical service, Comrade Vintskovskiy, deputy chief of political affairs, major to Comrade Rudakov, the secretary of the party bureau, comrade Kondakov. Transfer the personnel of the evacuation hospital of the Mariyskoy ASSR, which collected 100,000 rubles for the combat aircraft Evaco Hospital of the Mariyskoy ASSR and 2000 rubles for the construction of the tank convoy Mariyskoy Bogatyr, Greetings and thanks to the Red Army. I. Stalin. March 30, 1944."

In the late forties, a children’s tuberculosis sanatorium opened in Krasnogorsk. Here in the village, in the year 1952, Lyuda was was admitted in the Komsomol. She becomes a counselor in the fifth grade and a member of the student committee. She was good in sports. In 1953, she took part in short-distance running competitions in Kazan. In the same year, the Krasnogorsk Timber Mill was transformed into a house building plant. Lyuda’s father is being transferred to Sverdlovsk as deputy manager of the trust Sverdlesdrev MLP. The family, Dubinin's spouses and children, Lyuda and her younger brother Igor, moved to Sverdlovsk. In Sverdlovsk Lyuda goes to school №13, the so-called “trinashka”, in the ninth grade. A year later, she passes the standards for the first degree TRP badge. In 1955 Lyuda is seventeen. She is graduating from high school and taking exams at UPI, faculty of Civil Engineering, specialty urban construction and economy. Yeltsin graduated from this faculty same year. Three years later, in 1958, Kolya Thibault will graduate from the Civil Engineering department. The personal file number 557396 of the student Lyudmila Aleksandrovna Dubinina was issued on July 6. It was raining outside the window. Warm summer. Almost like in India. Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi are visiting Sverdlovsk. They are marveling the walking excavator manufactured by Uralmash. The Sverdlovsk television studio began broadcasting this autumn. There were about two hundred televisions sets in the city. And two cinemas were opened - Ural and Zarya. Progress is coming faster in life.

Hiking experience

The youngest of the Dyatlov group. She was a 4th year student in UPI university as an Engineering and Economics Major, from the first days of her studies, took an active part in the activities of the institute's sports club, loved to sing and to take pictures. She was a good photographer. Lyuda had considerable mountaineering experience. During a hike through the Eastern Sayan mountains in 1957, she was accidentally shot in the leg by a hunter who accompanied the students, and she bravely suffered through both - being wounded and having to go back, a painful and lengthy ordeal. In February 1958, Lyuda had category II of difficulty for hiking in the Northern Ural.

Galina Kiryanovna Batalova remembers: 'I went with Lyuda Dubinina on a hike of second category of difficulty (according to the qualifications of that time) in the Southern Ural in the summer of 1958. For me it was the first hike, and for Lyuda it was the first ski trek she was leading by herself. I have very fond memories of this expedition. After this trek I couldn't imagine my life without hiking. Lyuda proved herself to be a wise, firm, thoughtful and fair leader. She was always attentive to us, the beginners, and helped us in everything. We made friends with her and after that we often met. She was so excited that she was approved to go with Dyatlov and was kind of inspired, anxious, training, getting ready. She was a strong person, both physically and spiritually.”

A week before she went on her last trip, the Dubinin family moved to a new, two-bedroom apartment. Before that they lived in a communal house on 120 Mamina-Siberyaka St. Lyuda's friends didn't visit in the old housing, and there was no time to settle in the new one.

She was 20 years old when she died. She was laid to rest on may 11, 1959, one day shy of her 21st birthday. Funerals May 1959 →

Lyudmila Dubinina diary

Interview with Igor Dubinin

Conversation between "Center of civil investigation of the tragedy of Dyatlov group" and Igor Alexandrovich Dubinin regarding Dyatlov case 07 Aug 2008, Berezovskiy, Sverdlovsk region
Read the interview →

Dubinina's premonition

"The diary notes of Lyudmila Dubinina and the peculiarities of her behavior shortly before and after the visit of Dyatlov group to the village of Vizhay can hardly be explained only rationally, consistent with the beginnings of common sense, without attracting the irrational component of human existence, bringing something ominously mystical to the tragic death of the Dyatlov group." Aleks Kandr Read the article →

We also have the opinion on the subject from Sabine Lechtenfeld, forensic psychologist from Hannover, Germany Keep reading →