Slobtsov interview 1999

Pechurkina Rimma Aleksandrovna and Slobtsov Boris Efimovich Moscow March 1999

Slobtsov about the brignt lights in the sky: I didn't see anything When we finally got together, all the search groups, in a tent brought by the army, with a stove and warm sleeping bags, when the veterans from Tagil were sitting, were from Tagil, if I remember right, Yarovoy (from "Na Smenu!") Yes, who wrote the book "The Highest Category of Difficulty". Then the Tagil publication was discussed among those present - several dozen people gathered. They said that this is what happened. I didn't see anything, no unusual things in nature. Much of what is written are fantasies and assumptions. Take Akselrod for example. We were the youngest age group, third year in UPI. Our exams were later than those of the 5-year students. We gathered in the sports club. I don’t know who left when, it wasn't us who made the decisions. But it seems to me that our group was the first to arrive in Ivdel. We got together in the afternoon, then went to collect our backpacks. On the way, Vadim Brusnitsyn and I went to the Suvorov Military School, where they gave us a couple of rocket launchers, and we were at the airfield in the morning. The group was a combined hodgepodge. I can't even understand why I became the team leader. There was Vadik Brusnitsyn, who lured me into tourism. We had two winter hiked into the Sayan Mountains, we were quite experienced at that time. But some of the hikers were from senior courses.

–  February 17 and reference to Golovanov, who said that the Urals had nothing to do with it.
–  I don't even know if you can find something in the Department of Defense. Well, it's a coincidence that there was a launch on that day. Somewhere there were launches, maybe every day. What to make out of it. Those who saw it were not affected. After reading everything you get that they saw bright glowing stars with tails.

– There is a request about Maslennikov's radiograms: explain what happened on February 1. This number was heard. But it may be not so much from a celestial phenomenon, but from a sad event.

– It is not very constructive to try to unravel this mystery by talking to people who were at the "rescue". If someone lacks facts, I think they have been repeated many times, we need to contact other services. Well, let there be someone more competent than us... Well, Krivonischenko worked a little

– Of course, we need to talk to everyone. But it is difficult to get out of this circle. The appeal to readers speaks about this. We need to collect all the evidence that we have. And when the secret "cuts through", we can write in full.

– Or at least discard some individual versions based on witness testimony. Today I read some of the articles. It was said that they ran not just wherever their eyes looked (as I think), driven by fear on one side, and the slope that directed them, where K. and D. ended up. There is such a hollow there, and if we assume that there was the same terrible wind there, as there were on some days according to registered reports - hurricane winds there. What a hurricane wind is in those places, I felt on myself. We are not professional rescuers, I later became a rescuer more or less, the head of the rescue service and saved Germans. They gave me an order. We were dressed, prepared for this task both mentally and physically

One ​​day, when we were dragging corpses to the pass where a helicopter could land (which is now called the Dyatlov Pass), the wind was so strong that no one would believe it: you take a ski pole by the lanyard, and it hangs almost horizontally. There were many of us, we were dragging on skis, adapted, with ropes - we kept falling, grabbing onto whatever we could find. I fell once and grabbed onto someone's leg, grabbed onto one of the dead.

If we assume that the weather was the same, and we found them a month later, there already, and in the dark, and without shoes, they ran wherever the wind carried you. Some people assume that they came to their senses in a few seconds, abandoned everything in the tent, and ran to the storage shed because there was a supply of food there - in my opinion, this is an absurd version. The storage shed was in the valley of the Auspiya River, and they died in the valley of the Lozva River. I think they simply missed the descent. The Ural Mountains are not very high. The main ridge goes "north-south", from it there are spurs. One of the spurs is the Dyatlov Pass. If you take a little further north from the pass, you won't understand whether you are continuing to gain altitude or should already be descending. We walked every day, we didn't want to spoil the tracks in the Lozva Valley, dogs were brought there, and all sorts of things. We decided that the base camp would remain in the place where the temporary camp was when they were found. We walked back and forth. Semyon Baskin was a famous person in the search and rescue service in the Caucasus. That's why he was sent here. They immediately said that the search should be stopped. They searched for a week - they didn't find them. That means they were buried somewhere deep under the snow.

Our authorities gave another order: search until they find them. What if they went abroad without pants, without shoes, without anything. I'm not fantasizing, that already outraged me then.

They didn't let us go from there. Among the older hikers - Karelin, Axelrod, Zhenya Maslennikov arrived, he had already graduated from the institute by that time, he was the secretary of the party committee at VIZ, several years older, but for us he was already a giant. Someone's assumptions reached our tent: what if those who were not found did something to those who were found. They took something from them and slapped them on: to Sweden, Norway... Nevertheless, in any case, the order to the service people was: until they find them, continue searching.

Our entire group had already left, they wouldn't let Vadik and me go, we were tired, we wanted to fly away. Brusnitsyn and I were ordered: to find the damn storage shed. Since it was in the diary, since such a version was among the pathfinders with a sick imagination. Maybe they left something in the storage shed, it could be assumed that the missing ones were still living somewhere.

I'll digress a bit and tell you my first reaction. How our search operations were organized: Firstly, we were dropped off by helicopter not where we were going, not to Otorten, but further south. After a while we realized it.

There was a radio operator and a hunter with us. They were locals, they were older than us. They assumed that nothing good would come of this story. We, the young ones, were absolutely sure that nothing terrible had happened. Well, someone had broken a leg, they had built a hut somewhere. That is, no traces had been found yet.

One ​​day, I don’t remember exactly... We had this regime. We would walk along the route for a day, and then for the day we would split into 2-3-4 people, in two or three groups, to find traces. And on that day, when they were found, there were three of us: a local, me and Misha Sharavin. We reached the pass and, without descending, went to the left of the pass. The weather was normal. We went for the following reason: by the time we got there, we had been told a great many stories. The main fable was about Mount Otorten (that the mountain where we found them is the Mountain of the Dead, I practically learned this from the press. Shaitan Mountain was considered Mount Otorten. And that someone really did die there at some point.

The locals said that there are deep holes on this Otorten mountain and cornices grow on them in winter. They said that the locals who died before the Dyatlov group flew off the cliff along with the cornice. At first, we didn't believe it. Not really believing it, we still decided to take a look. When we realized that it was far from the mountain, the three of us had a task: to climb the ridge and look at Otorten mountain through binoculars.

We assumed that this formation, it is towards the south, it will be visible through binoculars.

We were going diagonally from the pass, to the northwest. Until we saw... We approached, it's scary. The tent is up, the middle of it is caved in, not very good, but it is there. There is nothing around. Imagine nineteen-year-old boys. And the local hunter has fallen behind and is in no hurry to approach. We approach, it is scary to look into the tent. We start poking with sticks, looking. A lot of snow has accumulated through the open entrance and through the cut, a month has passed, although it was on a slope where there was not much snow, it was blown away. There is some kind of depression in the ridge, the wind constantly blew through this place, everything was compacted. There was a crust there, no need to wander knee-deep in snow. In the area of ​​the tent. And below - snow.

A jacket was hanging at the entrance of the tent, a windbreaker. Then it seemed to be Dyatlov's. We got into the pocket, there in a metal box from under the money, tickets. We were pumped up: we arrived in Ivdellag, there are criminals, bandits everywhere. Helicopters, planes patrolled before us, caught someone. We thought that these were those they were looking for. So we weren't particularly afraid, but we knew. The money was there. Then we dug a deep trench in the snow near the tent and made sure there was no one there. We were really happy.

We took a few things with us so that our guys wouldn't beat us up for our fantasies. We took the box while we were digging, found a flask of alcohol, took it, and a camera. To show: we found this. On our skis - and off we went!

I want to talk about the psychology of young rescuers. We sat down and poured out the alcohol. We had no weapons, no alcohol, no vodka. It was the first time I drank alcohol, undiluted. We drank to their health. We were convinced that they were sitting somewhere. Two local kaurs (ed. note - Mansi) offered to drink to their repose. We almost beat their faces in. We were convinced that they were somewhere below. A month had passed! We didn't have enough imagination for anything else.

We had no idea how much stuff was in the tent. We dug and poked around to make sure there were no people, and ran down. We were convinced that they had gone somewhere dressed and were waiting for rescuers somewhere.

Then there was another radio contact, agreed upon at the time, where I reported that the tent had been found, listed some things, and confirmed that the money was there. This is probably listed somewhere in the protocol. They told me: wait for the next contact in the morning. In the morning, everyone got up and went through the pass. I stayed with someone else to wait for the contact. The contact took place.

They said that all the groups were moving here. When we had already crossed the pass, I don't remember with whom, Doroshenko and Krivonischenko had already been found. And then the systematic work began.

– Didn't the Muscovites know more than the rest? (Bardin's letter)

– I can assume that everyone assumed then: something had happened. People couldn't just run away. The competent authorities knew about this "something". Maybe retroactively. So they could assume that people started to do more and more tourism and go to different places. That they needed to warn people that they shouldn't go to this area. I can assume that at that time there were a lot of officially open zones for various army needs. If they weren't officially closed, then no one would ever say that they shouldn't go there because something would happen there. So maybe they wanted to write so that at least they would be informed that the zone was dangerous.

Baskin and I were brought together by fate when I moved to Moscow and we started going to the mountains together. We reminisced about those events many times. I didn't see them there at all. They arrived when the planned work was already underway. 10 days alone, then others would replace them. Dubinina and I were together in the Sayan Mountains. Doroshenko was there too. I knew Dyatlov as an older comrade from the institute, but I didn't know many others.

I didn't see Zolotaryov at all. By the way, they write everywhere that Krivonischenko and Doroshenko were the first to be found. That's true. But even Doroshenko's mother couldn't recognize him. His friend recognized him first. And she told his mother. After that, his mother screamed. We were taken to the morgue for identification. I didn't recognize him. They were so distorted. They were all generally abnormal. Some color... There, when they were dragged, they were frozen. And the color in the morgue was just some kind of wild color. Black or purple

– Yudin says that they seemed tanned to him

– I think that in the Northern Urals in winter you can't get such a tan in a short time. They were distorted. Birds pecked Krivonischenko's nose. By the way, they doubted for a long time who they found the fifth: Kolevatov or Slobodin. That day Vadik and I were looking for the damn storehouse. A person changes a lot in this situation. You have to be an investigator to find out who is who.

When we found the place where Krivonischenko and Doroshenko were, we saw that some of the branches were cut off and some were broken. And there was no knife. We looked, but they couldn’t find the knife.

Then it was just fantasy. Another helicopter arrived, bringing mine detectors. Experienced people like Baskin burst out laughing: so much snow around! Nevertheless, they walked around with this mine detector for several days, looking for the knife. The knife was later, as I understand it, found with that group.

– Yudin was dancing from the stove. Firewood. How many were there?

– I told you that the tent was almost completely filled with snow. We didn't see any logs or other things. When we dug everything up and made an inventory, we found a log, or maybe there was more than one.

Since we were all busy with our own business, we didn't try to hang around investigators, prosecutors, or KGB agents. Any unfamiliar person (in uniform - crossed out) was a cause for concern and communicating with him was not a pleasure. Vadik and I were dragged to the prosecutor's office twice, our testimony was recorded. We said: we've already written it. They said: write again, again, maybe you'll remember something else. We wrote twice, then they left us alone. Neither he nor I ever signed any signatures. Nobody asked us to do this.

– You found some kind of belt near the cedar

– I don't remember at all. We were surprised that it seemed like they could have taken a branch closer for a fire. This was discussed in the evenings. It felt like they were acting by touch. I don't know how the investigators assessed this. For example, there are two trees within a visible distance. One tree is more suitable for a fire, and the other is less so. Why create additional difficulties for yourself - to climb somewhere, to break thicker branches. It could only be interpreted as a blind man walking, feeling. You need to take the branches, break them. But he simply did not come across the tree where the branches are lower and it is more convenient to break them. There was such a feeling. At what point did they lose the ability to see? Yes, the nights are dark there, but you do not have to walk a kilometer.

There was a meeting of the community in the summer. It turned out to be narrow.

The meeting was in the metallurgy museum. We watched a film and talked for a long time. Ryabov talked a lot about his participation in the story with anthrax, and the death of the Dyatlov group was much earlier. He did not even know about it. It was forgotten by many. I think that he really did not know. I was the most informed at the meeting.

– What can be crossed out and what can be allowed based on your professional knowledge

– I would cross out... Golovanov probably said it right.