The Mansi Trail - 1

"Science is the art of creating convenient illusions which the fool believes or argues with, but the wise man enjoys their beauty or originality, never forgetting that they are human veils and curtains hiding the bottomless darkness of the Unknown." - Carl Gustav Jung "Letters"

Looking through my archives, I find materials with unpublished information. More precisely, I voiced the information, as it came in, on 'Dyatlov' sites, where, as usual, it was read and forgotten. I would like to highlight it now, in a separate article, as answers to questions about the Mansi Vizhay residents Vladimir Androsov and Sergey Vinnichenko, who have been communicating and being friends with the local Mansi of the Bahtiyarov, Kurikov, Anyamov and other families for a long time.

There were rumors among the people that the Mansi were killed, rumors that were quickly neutralized by the spread of other rumors - about the so-called fireballs. And now many people continue to believe in mysterious fireballs, not taking into account the fact that the flights of the balls have already been identified by witnesses of those years, thanks to television and the Internet, as launches and separations of ballistic missile stages. Aleksey Rakitin explained these balls as illumination bombs of NATO starjets. What can we say if investigator Ivanov himself tried to explain the failure of the investigation by the machinations of the fireballs, and most importantly - the party leadership. Unfortunately, even now fireballs continue to fly in the heads of many comrades.

Were the local northern peoples of Mansi and Khanty involved in the death of the group, the investigation answered: 'no'. But reading the documents of the Criminal Case, you notice how frivolously and even thoughtlessly the version of Mansi involvement was worked on. As if under duress, Mansi families living near the place where the dead guys were found were checked. It is noteworthy that this was the first version that the investigation put forward. Put forward, worked on for a month and suddenly abandoned, despite many contradictions in the answers of witnesses and suspects. Whether the Mansi were actually involved in the death of the group is unknown, since there is no evidence. Just as there is no evidence for other numerous versions. But I am sure (and not only me), the Mansi knew why the Dyatlov group died. And this knowledge was dangerous for those who knew.

Mansi is one of my favorite topics.

The topic is quite complex and even difficult, the finished material lay for a long time, something kept stopping me from publishing it. And when I decided to do it, and the text was agreed upon with V. Androsov, strange events happened to me personally, which the clergy determined to be the result of the intervention of an occult force. I tried to finish the material through force, I am talking about this so that others know - it is not safe to intrude into the dark spheres of paganism. Especially when you try to draw analogies in the involvement of the Mansi in the death of Igor Dyatlov's group. In this publication I give all the pros and cons of this version. I present all the random (and maybe not random) coincidences with the facts reflected in the Criminal Case.

Reading a lot about the Mansi, you somehow get imbued with the history of this people, you feel sorry for the Mansi, they live somehow absurdly, they have been exploited for centuries, made drunk, deceived, they gradually disappear, assimilate, Mansi women are beautiful, the men are also not bad, if they have not become alcoholics. Looking at old photographs of the Mansi, you note their calm, stern and wary look, with a certain amount of sadness. It is not surprising that grievances accumulate, accumulate and then spill out and, as usual, not necessarily on the offenders.

Vizhay residents Vladimir Androsov and Sergey Vinnichenko answered my questions about their Mansi friends.

I express my deep gratitude to Vladimir Androsov for consultations and unique photographs from his personal archive, to Vladimir Askinadzi for editing the photographs, to Dmitry Levanov for the materials he provided about V. Maltsev, as well as to those readers who forced me to collect material, insisted on finishing the work and publishing it. The work also uses information from the book by V.M. Kulemzin 'On the Khanty Shamans' and other studies.

It is interesting that earlier Russian travelers called the Mansi and Khanty by one word - Ostyaks, and some of them divided these peoples into Leplin Ostyaks (Mansi) and Ob (Khanty), for example, scientists of the expedition of E. Hoffman, 1847-1850. The Mansi and Khanty were also called by a common word - Ob Ugrians. Then the name Voguls began to be applied to the Mansi. It is plausible to guess that the word Vogul passed to the Russians from the Zyryans, who call them Vogul or Logul, i.e. 'despicable, evil, hateful' (Korikov L. Sosvinsky and Lyapinsky Voguls of the Berezovsky District, 1898).

Yugry, Ostyaks, Khanty - three names for the same people. The most accurate is the last one, which contains the ancient self-designation kantakh, khante, which means both 'people' and 'person'. In Soviet times, it became the official name of the ethnic group, but in foreign scientific literature the former name - Ostyaks - is still used. The origin of the last word has different explanations, and one of them traces the term back to the self-designation as-yakh 'Ob people'. Yugra is the Komi-Zyryan and Russian name for the ancestors of the Khanty and the closely related Mansi, who were previously called Voguls. It has been known from written sources since the 11th century, but by the 17th century it had become a nationality. disappears from them, to be revived in scientific literature two centuries later. In the 19th century, it was established that the closest relatives of the Khanty and Mansi by language are the Hungarians, and the concept of 'Ugric languages ​​and peoples' arose. The Khanty and Mansi, in contrast to the Hungarians, began to be called 'Ob Ugrians'. The term 'Ugra' has some kind of attractive force for the modern Khanty and Mansi intelligentsia, it becomes a symbol of their own language and culture. (V.M. Kulemzin, N.V. Lukina) But the Voguls themselves asked to be called Mansi.

Therefore, 'Mansi, Mansi, Mansi'...

Well, and the Khanty, of course.

Mansi of the Kurikov clan

Кhanty hunter

MP: Maya Piskareva, VA: Vladimir Androsov, SV: Sergey Vinnichenko

MP: Vladimir, I have a question: could the Mansi wear soldier's foot wraps and any military uniform, some of the things that they exchanged with the military, or did they give them some clothes? What did the Mansi wear on their feet in the winter when they went hunting on skis?

VA: In winter, the Mansi wore "nyarki" on their feet, made from elk skins. Here is a photo of the nyarki, I also wore them on skis. Varvara Kuzmovna always sewed them for me. These are very light shoes, almost no weight, it's like your foot is barefoot.

Nyarki. House of Albina Aleksandrovna Bahtiyarova.

The Mansi have always loved military uniform. For example, Miron Bahtiyarov always wore a tunic. But only their own shoes. On skis, only nyarki, on reindeer - mukluks. This is the tradition and life of the Mansi.

MP: Here I found a description of Mansi footwear:
“We are walking with the Mansi hunter Ursui along the bank of the Pelym River. Ursui is short, broad-shouldered. A sparse beard, slightly slanted, dark eyes. Dressed in the taiga style: on his feet nyarki - soft shoes made of elk, footcloths of greatcoat cloth tied crosswise with rawhide belts. The quilted jacket is belted with a homemade cartridge belt made of elk skin, on the head is an old hat with a net to protect against midges. On the hip is a long knife in a wooden sheath made of dugout wood." (Magazine 'Science and Life', 1960s)

And here is a photo - Mansi on skis. What are these strings that they have wrapped around their legs at the bottom? And what is that object behind Stepan Kurikov?

Aleksey Anyamov and Stepan Kurikov

VA: Behind Kurikov there are Kroshni, the Mansi used them to store both their loot and their luggage that they carried with them into the taiga.

"For carrying heavy loads, the Ural hunters use something similar to a soldier's knapsack. This is nothing more than a frame made of flexible branches, on which birch bark is stretched; at the corners of the frame are provided with eyes for attaching straps. Everything that is needed on the road: crackers, flour, salt, etc., all this is tied with ropes to this equipment and then put on the back. Such a knapsack is called in the Urals - krishna."
Quote from the book by N. Sorokin, "Journey to the Voguls", Kazan, 1873.

Look at the nyarki, they are lined with overcoat cloth on top. The cloth is wrapped like a coat, overcoat or like bast shoes, remember, on strings, and you wind these strings (laces). And the snow does not get into the shoes. Nyarki are put on over cloth stockings, sewn from the overcoat. The stockings are tied with a string to the Mansi belt. Nyarki are worn both in winter and in summer. Dry long grass, which grows in abundance along the banks of rivers, is put inside. As it gets wet, it is replaced with new. The Mansi always used to have a bunch of this grass tied to the yurt. It is about 40 cm long. It is folded in half and - in nyarki.

MP: Women's shoes were strictly separated from men's and children's, especially shoe insoles, which were considered the most "filthy." And how wide and long could this overcoat cloth be? The fact is that under the cedar they found the following thing:

"I personally saw how under this cedar they found a dark-colored cloth belt with lanyards on the ends. I did not know who this item belonged to. The length of this item is about 80 cm, the width is about 10 cm, in appearance it looks like a belt or a strap with which the Mansi pull a load, but this item is not suitable for use as a strap, since it is not durable." oris Slobtsov's testimony

What is this? Could it have belonged to the Mansi?

VA: No. The cloth is sewn to the skin of the nyarka and is approximately 35x20.

35 cm around the perimeter of the nyarka and 20 cm high.

And the stockings on the hunters in your photo. The nyarkas in the museum are without a greatcoat rim, they are not sewn there.

MP: And how is it that they are attached to the Mansi belt with a string, if they are 20 cm high, these stockings?

VA: The stockings, I repeat, are sewn from greatcoat cloth. They are the same as women's stockings, they are put on right under the groin and then tied to the belt (belt). And they already put on nyarki, like in the photo, take a closer look.

And already on the overcoat stockings, they tie the overcoat top of the nyarki with a rope. And the nyarki won't fall off, and the snow won't get in.

Our Mansi always braided ropes like a pigtail, from fabric, so it is more becomes strong. And rawhide belts were probably worn earlier. When there was little material and it was valued. I think it was rawhide, it rubbed the shins a little and had the property of stretching in dampness, and, on the contrary, compressing the shins in heat. A rope, I think, is the best.

MP: Vladimir, what are we talking about here, what are these rather wide woolen strips? This is a quote from the book by N. Sorokin, "Journey to the Voguls", 1873.

"On the legs below the knee, rather wide woolen strips are noticeable, with which they tightly wrap the trousers, and thus do not allow them to roll up during movements."

VA: I told you and you can see in the photo, strips of overcoat cloth sewn to the nyarks, tied with laces, that's all. He expressed it in his own way, as best he could. So that the snow does not get into the nyarks, and the nyarks do not come off the legs. He is not a great researcher, this is his only publication about the Mansi people. Maybe at home near the yurts, they walked like that, put on nyarkas over trousers and that's it, there's nowhere else to go, and if they went hunting or to the taiga, then they only dressed like that, trousers-stockings-nyarkas.

MP: I'm looking for a trace of that very mysterious 'belt with lanyards' near the cedar that Boris Slobtsov spoke about, that's why I'm asking in such detail.

A witness in the Dyatlov group case (Case file 263). He hunted with the Mansi Anyamovs in the places where the group died. Shaman. Of princely descent. 1768 - a grant of landownership charters to princes Sheshkin and Taishin. Aleksander Stesin writes in his work 'Forest People' that 'in his youth Sheshkin served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops, then sat for murder. It seems that he really does remember a lot, but most of what he tells strangers with such gusto is fiction. The truth cannot be told to strangers, and none of our own remained long ago.'

Other ethnographers say that K. Sheshkin served seven years for murder, allegedly three people attacked him in the taiga, he killed one in self-defense, for which he was imprisoned. Who the attackers were and why they attacked the Mansi is unknown. A strange story. Maybe his shamanic affairs, or drunken Mansi fought among themselves. They also say that Sheshkin beat his wife.

VA: You asked me about K. Sheshkin. I dug up some things about him. His brother, Pyotr Efimovich, lived in Lombovozh on the Northern Sosva. His house was a real ethnographic museum. Various sabres, idols, objects of traditional Mansi life, etc. When he died, the key to the house was with relatives there in Lombovozh. However, the direct heir was Konstantin Sheshkin, who lived in the village of Burmantovo (24 km from us along the river). And when the ethnographic group that arrived found out about this, they went to Burmantovo. There they met Konstantin, apparently "knocked him down" properly, and he agreed to transfer all the items stored in his brother's house to the Museum of the History of Culture of the Peoples of Siberia.

"At the village council, they duly executed the deed of sale, and a couple of days later the door of Sheshkin's house opened before us. And among many other cult things, which we will talk about later, we saw a red rider on a white horse. A toy that had lived an unusual life, as an image of the omnipresent God of the Mansi." (Mir-susne-hum).

"Two years ago, having decided to show this work to scientists, Roman Anyamov took his precious notebook with a collection of katpos to Tyumen. The scientists were interested. The notebook was taken to 'look at', after which it was placed in a museum. Meanwhile, the collector was hoping for something completely different: 'I thought that now we would work together, study katpos. No one knows them better than me, now the Mansi write everything in Russian... Well, okay, they didn't want to collect them together, yeah, well then at least give me back the signs, rewrite them for yourself and give them back...' The signs were not returned. Having arrived in Treskolye, Uncle Roma began to restore his collection from memory." (A. Stesin, "Forest People")

Mir-susne-hum - this character of the Mansi pantheon was borrowed by the ancestors of the Mansi and Khanty from Iranian mythology - stable, centuries-old contacts of the Ugrians with Iran (during their residence in the steppes of Southern Siberia) did not pass without a trace. The Ugrians borrowed not only the image of Mithra, but also the ideology, which was transformed in the religious consciousness of the Mansi and Khanty.

Mir-Susne-Khum (A Man Looking at the World) and His Braids, Ten Braids. And 9 Coins Tied in a Scarf. Photo from a modern Mansi sanctuary on Lozva.

In the 3rd-7th centuries in Iran, during the reign of the Sassanid dynasty, large silver dishes with images of the king hunting lions, tigers, rams, gazelles, bears, etc. were issued for the coronation of the shahanshah - "the king of kings". Most of the surviving dishes were found in the 19th century in the Urals (at the sites of Mansi sanctuaries). In the summer of 2001, a silver Sassanid dish depicting King Yazdegerd I and two zebu bulls was discovered among the Syny Khanty.

At the end of the 19th century, N.L. Gondatti wrote that, according to Mansi beliefs, "Mir-susne-hum always has a bottle of vodka in his right hand and a snuffbox in his left."

Mir-susne-hum played the role of the giver of the shamanic gift and was simultaneously the main figure that the shaman called upon during the shamanic ritual. The central place was given to Mir-susne-hum at the Mansi bear festival, which demonstrated his superiority over the main deity of the Ural pantheon - the Bear. (I.N. Gemuev, A.V. Baulo Mansi sanctuaries of the upper reaches of the Northern Sosva. Novosibirsk, 1999.)

And after the baptism in the 18th century, the Mansi pantheon was replenished with Christ, who was identified with the hero Mir-Susne-Hum, 'the man who looks at the world', and the Virgin Mary, who was considered one of the wives of the supreme god Numi-Torum. On Easter ('Paskin Day') each icon here is treated to bread and vodka. (A. Stesin, "Forest People")

Let's remember this guy Mir-Susne-Hum. In the future, he will appear more than once in my story and, perhaps, played a major role in the death of the group. But more on that later, in the second part of the article.

The Mansi were pagans and remain so to this day.

"Stepan Nikolaevich Anyamov is the only Orthodox Mansi in Ushma. At home, the order is exemplary for an ensign-fisherman-Old Believer. Everything in one person. There is a guitar on the wall, a corner for prayers is fenced off - there, among the decorous icons, lamps smoke." (I. Abramov, Life and Death of the Lozva Mansi, 2010)

This cross belongs to Prokopiy Timofeevich Bahtiyarov, the great-grandfather of Miron and Pyotr Bahtiyarov. It is located in one of the Mansi sanctuaries on Lozva.

MP: Vladimir, what can you say about the number 9 in Mansi mythology? Here is an excerpt from Evgeniy Buyanov's message about A. Slepuhin's lecture, which he once attended:

'When I asked if the number "9" has any meaning (there is a legend about how a shaman suggested to his neighbor "to slip a stake of stripped larch under the "9th rib-log of the house" of the offender... after which the neighbor's "offender" died...), Aleksey said that the numbers 4 and 7 have a "positive meaning" for the Mansi, but the number 9 has a negative one. This is connected with the legends about "9 Mansi who drowned in the "flood", "9 dead Red Army soldiers", and now about "9 dead hikers"....'

VA: The number 9 does not mean anything to the Mansi. I have read so much literature, but this number is not mentioned anywhere. But 7, yes, it is a sacred number, it occurs constantly.

MP: I also searched in the literature about the number 9 in Mansi mythology, but I didn't find anything. If you don't count everyday episodes of life: E. Romadeeva mentions that the Mansi remembered a dead woman in a special way on the 9th day, and a dead man on the 11th. K.F. Karjalainen (1927) said that the clothes of a shaman (a skin for shamanic rituals) of the Khanty sometimes have 9 multi-colored pieces of fabric on the lining, which symbolize the 9 animals that the Khanty hunted. This skin also served as a sacrificial blanket. I also came across a mention of the number 9 in an article about the erotic cults of the Mansi, and it symbolizes the number 9 as the copulation of a man and a woman (five souls of a man and four souls of a woman).

The number 9 is found among the Nenets (Samoyeds), in the description of the drum and the ritual costume of the shaman. Their drum had an oval shape, wider at the top, with four resonators, called the horns and ears of the shaman's mother-beast, who was represented in the form of a creature similar to a mammoth. On the inner side of the rim, under the 'ears' and 'horns', three times 9 hollow rattles made of tin were fixed. They were hung freely on wire brackets so that they could move freely along it and ring. The drum was covered with a twisted bowstring of a crossbow over the rim. Three times 9 bells or jingles were strung on the ropes that were used to attach the cross-shaped handle to the frame.

In performing rituals, he should be assisted by 'seven innocent girls and nine innocent boys'...

The number 9 as the number of strings is found among the Mansi and Khanty in a musical instrument: Tor, torop-yukh has a bird-like appearance and is called 'swan', 'goose', 'crane' in Russian. This is an arched harp with a body and neck made of solid wood, with a bird's head, and sometimes a horse's head, carved at the end of the neck. From 9 to 13 strings are stretched in the corner space between the body and the neck.

That is, the number 9 does not carry any negative emanations among the Khanty and Mansi. BUT all the Internet links about the number 9 lead to publications about Igor Dyatlov's group. So, as I understand it, all the terrible stories about the number 9 among the Mansi are inventions of modern 'researchers' and journalists?

VA: So it turns out that's true!

MP: Tell us about the Bahtiyarovs, please, what kind of yurt was that all the hikers passed through when they went to the Prayer Stone?

VA: Other Bahtiyarovs lived there, not those who lived on Pelym and near Suevat-Paul. There were many of them there. And on the Kul River, and the Anchug River, and on Malaya Toshemka and on the Vap-sos River. There is now one Prokopiy Bahtiyarov with his son Sergei living in Kimyng-chupa - pavyl on Vap-sos and that's it.

MP: Where did all the Bahtiyarovs go? There were a lot of them.

VA: Where? Gone to the next world.

Tynshchan (tynzyan), reindeer harness, rope for tying cargo on a sled, made of horsehair, very durable and does not rot.

VA: You see, even the Mansi sometimes change the name. Ostroumov N.G. in the book "Voguls-Mansi. 1904" calls it Tunchang. The Mansi told me "tynsyak". In the dictionary of V.N. Chernetsov it sounds like this: tynzyan. This is a type of lasso for catching reindeer. But it turns out very interestingly, it is difficult to miss. After a couple of throws, you will definitely catch the deer by the horns.

Tynzan (or mauta) is a belt lasso no more than 30 meters long. Each herder weaves the tynzyan himself, cutting thin strips out of deer skin in a circle. Throwing the tynzyan for distance is the first exam for a young reindeer herder, throwing for accuracy is already an exam for a certificate of maturity

The section of the tynzyan is arbitrary. At the front end of the tynzyan there is a knuckle - sarmik with two holes - small and large, through which the tynzyan is pushed, thus forming a loop. The tynzyan must be made of leather (the use of artificial tynzyan is prohibited).

SV: Yes, it is a harness! Take a closer look, it looks like there is a harness, long rawhide straps, like traces.

VA: Yes, reindeer harness. And the rope is made of horsehair, it was once knitted by Aleksandra Vasilievna, it is intended for tying up the load on the sled. This tynzyan belongs to Aleksandra Vasilievna Anyamova. And on the tynzyan there is a single object made of bone, on it is the family tamga of the Tasmanov family. But not the Bahtiyarovs. Why the Tasmanovs, it is none of my business. And how did it end up with them? Maybe it was given to them as a gift. Previously, the owner put his tamga on almost all household items. Tynzyans are all made the same way and you can’t tell at a glance whose is lying in front of you. And that’s why they put a tamga. In the photo, there is also a tamga on Sun-kvaly-luvyt, there is also the owner’s tamga. (Dictionary: Sun-narta, kvali-harness, luvyt-bones.)

"In honor of these gods, religious egt holidays are celebrated; the shaman is the main character. This holiday consists of the following. At the call of the shaman, the Ostyaks, belonging to his jurisdiction, gather near the sacred hut with a supply of food and reindeer; the shaman carries out the revered idol in his arms and presents it to the assembled people, then the feast begins with the reindeer killed in place. In this case, first a rope is wound around the neck of one reindeer, and the Ostyaks pull both ends in opposite directions until the poor animal falls without breathing, then the shaman with a cry rushes at the reindeer and pierces it with a knife. This is the beginning of the general slaughter of the reindeer, which fall after having previously endured various torments. The Ostyaks eat the blood and meat of the killed reindeer"
M. Kovalsky, from the Report of the expedition of E. Hoffman 'The Northern Urals and the Coastal Ridge of Pai Khoi', Volume 1, 1853.

Asking about the harness and lasso, I thought about the wide wound on Zina Kolmogorova's lower back, whether it could have been inflicted by a Mansi lasso. As I found out, it could not have been inflicted by a tynzyan, it is thin, the width of the lasso is not sufficient to cause such an injury. But it could have been inflicted by a harness. The harness is wider.

MP: What are these crossbars that the Dyatlov group are sitting on?

2nd Northern. Dubinina, Zolotaryov, Kolmogorova. Most likely, they clean skis with knives. 01/28/1959

VA: This is a hanger for drying hay in a rainy summer.

As A. Rakitin noted, the children are next to crosses. And this is symbolic, it means death on the cross.

Sergey Vinnichenko: - Maya, in your material about Gudkov, the children in the photo are small, they look like Miron. Who took the photo, whose children are these?

MP: Photo from 1956, taken by MSU students when they were going to Otorten, passed by Chistop, photographed a Mansi settlement. The Bahtiyarovs lived there. Was Bahtiyarov Nikolay? This name is mentioned in the diary of B. Gudkov, that in the area of ​​that hut their group met Mansi Nikolay.

Varvara Kuzmovna Bahtiyarova with children Miron and Albina, 1956

SV: Bahtiyarov Nikolay is from Tahtinsky, Anchugovsky, but the Bahtiyarovs themselves did not recognize him, he was an outsider, they say he was Ignatov, but called himself Bahtiyarov, they called him an impostor.

So there is only one supposed yurt on Malaya Toshemka. The children in the photo are about 4 years old, so at the end of the 90s they were 35 years old. I wonder who they are? Either they died young, or it is Misha, but he is considered to be from 'Sotovsky'... Again, Mishka is younger! Logically, then it turns out that it is Miron himself? But he himself was the first to build there. Miron was born on Mal. Toshemka in 1946.

I discussed this photo with Miron's daughter, Tamara Mironovna.

I mistook Miron for Prokop because of their childhood resemblance, Prokop is Miron's son, early, when they were still a boy, they were left without parents.

I initially thought the photo was from the Ushminsky region. But after an explanation, and near Chistop there was only one Mansi village - but this is a completely different route, in no way coinciding with Dyatlov's. And according to the assurances, the year the Moscow student hikers passed through, and Miron's year of birth, everything matches. So, in the photo, Miron and his sister Albina.

VA: Bahtiyarov Aleksander Prokopyevich and his brother Timofey lived between the Sev. Toshemka and Vizhay rivers. Along the Vap-sos river. Their children are my friends. Varvara Kuzmovna Bahtiyarova killed eight bears herself. In 1961, Varvara Kuzmovna's husband, Aleksandr Prokopyevich Bahtiyarov, committed suicide for a banal reason: they didn't pour him any mash, and he decided to make things worse for everyone by hanging himself.

This is what happened: the reindeer were sick in the Urals, and Miron, his sister Albina, Varvara Kuzmovna, and his sister Galina's ex-fiancé, Sergei Savelyevich Bahtiyarov (his parents lived on the Anchuga River), went to visit the reindeer for about two weeks. In the Urals (i.e. in the mountains, on the ridge, while they were walking. The locals call the ridge and the surrounding mountains "Ural") they baked bread, but it just didn't work out, everything was going badly. When they were going to the Urals, they made a fire, and then a frog jumped into the fire and burned up. All this indicated that some kind of misfortune would happen. Then brother Pyotr came to the Urals to the place where the Bahtiyarovs were grazing reindeer and said that their father had hanged himself. Before the day when their father hanged himself, the children were playing, pouring water over themselves, fooling around. Someone in the taiga was yelling in a man's voice five times, which meant that a man would die, and if the voice yelled four times, it meant that a woman would die. The one yelling was 'Is', the spirit. After the death of her husband and father, they could not live on Khovr-yankylm, and Varvara Kuzmovna Bahtiyarova with her sons Miron and Pyotr, and her daughter Albina moved to live on the Malaya Toshemka River (Pupy-unly-ya), which translates as 'by the river where the gods sit'. 'Pupas' in translation means idols (gods), 'unly' (sat). According to Mansi customs, it was not allowed to live on the Malaya Toshemka River, but in spite of everything, Pyotr cut down a yurt on the bank of the Malaya Toshemka, this is at the crossroads of many 'salin-lekh' (deer roads), among magnificent tall pines.

Aleksander Prokopyevich Bahtiyarov

Bahtiyarov Miron Aleksandrovich met his wife Liza in the Urals, on Tump-Kapai, Liza and her grandfather were herding reindeer near the pastures of our reindeer herders. She was born in Suevat-paula, her father died in 1987. Her mother died early, and she was raised by her grandmother Agapya. Liza was considered a rich bride, Miron married Liza in 1970 and they began to live on Malaya Toshemka. They built their own yurt not far from Pyotr's yurt. Pyotr, I don't know why, but he called this yurt 'a filthy yurt'.

It was hard for Varvara Kuzmovna to feed the family alone. Her mother wouldn't let her daughter Albina go to the boarding school on Polunochnoye, repeating that there was no father to help feed the family. But despite her mother's prohibitions, Albina studied in the boarding school in the settlement of Polunochnoye for four years, from 1965 to 1968, finished four grades and went back to live on Malaya Toshemka to her mother and brothers. She never studied again.

Anyamov Andrey Alekseevich. Lived in Suyvat-pavyl.
Participant in the search for Dyatlov's group.

VA: Anyamov Andrey Alekseevich, he has eyebrows that you can't mistake, no one else among the Mansi, I have never seen such eyebrows. Thick, black.

Sergey Vinnichenko answers: Kolya Pelikov from Keraskolya did not speak Russian until adulthood, did not go to school, he was raised and brought up by his grandfather, the shaman of the clan. And I remember their appearance in Vizhay very well, then we met on the Ushma-Vizhay road. Nikolay's grandfather, who never mastered Russian until his last days, walked, and died on the way not far from the container workshop in the forest. ('I know this for certain from Nikolay Timofeevich's grandson,' added V. Androsov.) I went fishing with Nikolay, and he fitted me with my first kitty skis.

VA: In the photo, Nikolay Pelikov is inside the pen (pussas-tivrt), for deer. The only one who wore braids in the late 70s. He came to Vizhay from the taiga with his grandfather, he had never seen a car or a train before.

SV: There was Nikolay Bahtiyarov. There was also Nikolay Pakin. There were many Nikolayevs among the Mansi in 1956.

Nikolay Yakimovich Bahtiyarov. Witness in the Dyatlov group case.

VA: I would like to tell you about an incident that happened in this region in 1960. One old Mansi, his name was Nikolay Nikolaevich Bahtiyarov, he had no children, he lived alone in the upper reaches of the Anchug River, a tributary of the Vizhay River, together with Nikolay Yakimovich, the father of Darya Nikolaevna Bahtiyarova, went hunting in the Malaya Toshemka area, the places here are excellent, cedar forest, pine forest, there was always a lot of game and animals and stopped in the yurt of Pyotr Bahtiyarov, complaining that he could not kill a sable and that he had a good dog, but he could not kill it. Pyotr would go hunting with his dog, kill a sable, Miron would go hunting and also return with a sable. But whenever Nikolay Nikolaevich went, he always returned empty-handed. The dog was very good, it took sable, bear, and elk. Then Nikolay Nikolaevich decided to spend the night at Chistop, climbed the mountain, made a fire, drank tea and fell asleep, and he dreamed of seven menkvs with bows and arrows aimed at him. He woke up in the morning, cooked porridge, appeased the spirits, read a prayer (poik) addressed to the spirits. And after this prayer and appeasement of the spirits, Nikolay Nikolaevich began to hunt well and did not return to the yurt empty handed. That's how he appeased the spirits on Chistop!

Mansi yurt and two Mansi women with hikers, 1959.
Vizhay-Krasnovishersk route.

MP: Vladimir, where did you get such a rarity? July 1959! Half a year has passed since the death of the Dyatlov group, and new students are walking through the Bahtiyarovs' yurt. Whose photo was found there?

VA: The Kurikovs'. There is an inscription on the back of the photo. Group leader Yuri Zablatskiy. Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. 12.07.1959.

This is one of the Bahtiyarovs. The route ran along the Vizhay River. Perhaps this is Yalpyn-ya-pavyl, in the upper reaches of the Vizhay River. The students were on a hike, took a photo and then sent this photo to the Mansi. They rarely write now, but they used to write and send photos, and that's good.

MP: Vladimir, what stories did you have about Chistop? Is it true that there was some kind of anomaly there, and even the soldiers went crazy. Or is that just a fabrication? Did the Mansi tell anything strange about Chistop?

VA: Maya, the soldiers didn't go crazy, only one soldier got lost.

MP: And in 1959, were there any military structures or military posts on Chistop?

VA: There were no military structures there in those years (1959). I walked the entire ridge in 1971 and there was nothing there either. The military appeared on Chistop in the mid-70s. And the Mansi communicated with the military, because in winter they sometimes grazed reindeer along Chistop. They said that when there were air defense systems there, the reindeer sometimes went up there.

For many kilometers between Bolshaya and Malaya Toshemka there was a solid pine forest, a pure pine forest, without any other plantings. This place is located southwest of the southern end of the Sisup (Chistop) ridge. According to legend, after the flood, a small unflooded piece of land remained on the mountain, Sisup is translated as 'a child's cry'. The main peak of Mount Sisup received a curious Mansi name Nyavrn - lyunchi - syakhl - ala. Ala - peak, Syakhl - hill, mountain, Lyunchi - roared, Nyavrn - child. That is, 'The peak of the mountain where the child cried'. Around the Sisup ridge, at different times, many Mansi women and children were lost, and they were never found. Apparently, there is some kind of geopathogenic zone here. The southern part of the Sisup ridge ends with the Verblyuzhya hill. And below is the 'Ostraya' hill, the Mansi name is Luv-Syakvur (Horse tit). This is a bad place, so the Mansi think, Sisup-ovyl-menkv-oyka (the Old Man-devil of the end of Sisup) lives there. In the yurt on Malaya Toshemka, children were not allowed to sing songs in the evenings, laugh loudly, play, but during the day they were allowed to shout, sing, and laugh.

In the mythology of the Mansi people there is a mythical forest spirit, Menkv, he is three meters or more tall, covered in hair, that they live like people, have wives and children, sleep on bear skins. They have enormous physical strength, when he walks through the taiga, the noise of his steps can be heard from afar, trees creak and break, the wind howls.

The Menkvs, according to the Mansi, lived on the southern side of Chisip (Sisup), at the mouth of the Targur-sos River (pine forest), a right tributary of the Bolshaya Toshemka River, in the vicinity of the village of Turgur-sos, and only women and children really disappeared there. Varvara Kuzmovna told about this. Toshemka is translated as 'the river where the Gods sit'.

MP: Some menkvy, 'uchchi', are considered cannibals by the Mansi. Children and women among the Mansi disappeared, of course, they did not report them to the police, they disappeared and disappeared. Maybe the yeti stole them? If the police had started looking, they would have found at least something. But that's all there are legends about - children disappearing... And then they came up with a legend again. There was as much unflooded space left as for a child's cry. There are too many floods in the Mansi legends.

VA: These are not legends, but reality. At the beginning of the twentieth century and at the end of the nineteenth, the Mansi lived there, and their children, girls, and women were constantly disappearing. It's true. The Mansi themselves told me this. What kind of police force in the nineteenth century? The village of Burmantovo was discovered by chance only in 1907. Old Believers from Pechora built it.

MP: Please look, is this Keraskolye? How far is it from the Second North?

VA: Yes, it is Treskolye. Or Keras-kolyn-ya-pavyl, as the Mansi call it.

Sergey Vinnichenko: - Keraskolye is not visible from the bank of Lozva, but there is about 300 meters to the water on the opposite side, a little lower.

MP: How far is Keraskolye from the Second Northern?

SV: Straight ahead - nonsense, on the road there is a crossing, the road through the Second Northern to Ushma, within 1000 meters. From the Second Northern, from Keraskolye the trail is straight 1000 m approximately, and below Fedchik there is a hayfield, 2-3 km above the Second, closer along the road, but there is also a trail. I mainly went there by car, and in a snowstorm in the winter. And I carried timber from Keraskolye. (I haven't searched along the river in those parts, I have other lands, and I've been hunting for cones on Auspiya). The Second North - the Mansi used to live there, they have a cemetery there.

MP: I'm interested in the cemetery near the Second North. Is it far from the village? When did it appear, new, or was it in the old days, in the 50s?

SV: I am a person of a later generation, I have no passion for burials, I spoke on the phone today with a friend from Ushma, he told me that the cemetery was a long time ago, even before the formation of Keraskolye. The Mansi lived there at first, and they have a cemetery there. Pashin V.I. lived on the Second North, I'll talk to him. He knows about that region and Ushma like no one else. Pashin Vladimir Ivanovich, yes, that same descendant of the forester Ivan Pashin, and former chief of Ushma.

Alexandra Vasilievna with Liza and Mishka Pelikov with Sveta, Liza's daughter, are currently living and dying on Treskolye. Kolya Anyamov's house is more or less residential, but he only visits it, and lives in Ushma, a new Mansi settlement has become there. Albina's house is falling apart, she lives permanently on Ushma. Alexandra Vasilievna has two houses, but they don't live in one, she's up to something with it, her own.

Miron, like Albina, didn't live long on Malaya Toshemka, they were forced out of there by other Bahtiyarovs. They grazed reindeer on Mount Tumpyang, there through the Malaya Trail. A deer trail went through Lokhyn-ya to Keraskolye.

According to Albinka, her maiden name was Bahtiyarova, they were driven out of there, Miron with the children. There, on their former camp, there were only old allotment clearings. Miron moved to the edge of the swamp, near the Manensky lake, now it is called the Mironovsky swamp, but the forestry came and stuck a quarter post right on the hut. They marked out the clearing. And Miron, he did not live long after that, had to move to Treskolye. And the Anyamovs themselves are refugees from the Soviets, from Tapsuy, Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug. They came here to save the deer, negotiated with the Bahtiyarovs (Aleksandra Vasilievna Anyamova lived with them, was the wife of Pavel Kirillovich Bahtiyarov, who lived on Pelym and died of tuberculosis), hid the deer behind the Prayer Stone. And then they began to populate Keraskolye (in Russian Treskolie).

The Bakhtiyarovs were not fierce, but businesslike. Miron also had deer, and conditions were necessary to graze them, you had to stand and fight for territory, that's how they survived.

Albina is a good person, she knows and can do a lot of things, for example, she can definitely make a towel, but they, the Mansi, all have their own quirks and jokes.

Osi - a towel, carved by men with a knife from frozen pine wood. In the 70s, almost all Mansi had such towels in their yurts.

           «rukotery are prepared in this way: in winter, during severe frosts, when young pines, firs and cedars have extremely hard wood, ¹⁾ The Voguls cut branches and, before the sticks have had time to thaw, plane them with a sharp, wide knife; the wood is very easily split into very thin strips, which are then boiled for some time and replace our towels. If it happens that a dirty Vogul wants to wash himself, he splashes water on his face and hands several times and wipes himself with a wooden rukoter; if it is necessary to wipe the cauldron in which the mash is being cooked, then a rukoter is used here too, and generally speaking, these soft shavings are extremely necessary in the household life of the described foreigners."
From the Report of N. Sorokin, "Journey to the Voguls", 1873.

VA: Mansi, they had toothbrushes even in the 60s. In the old Suevat-pavyl, in 1963, in the yurt of Gavriil Nikolaevich Kurikov, there were two toothbrushes on the shelf. And Vasily Nikolaevich Kurikov had a mirror, a washbasin, posters about the 1905 revolution hanging on the walls, a first aid kit and a toothbrush. Wow!!!

MP: But N. Sorokin reports that in 1872 the Mansi, or as he calls them, the Voguls, chewed larch resin (sulfur) instead of toothpaste, they respected this tree very much, he writes.

Chuval, Mansi stove, is made of clay and thin rods.

The main advantage of chuval is the presence of a pipe that removes smoke from the living space. Actually, chuval consists of one wide pipe. For it, they used a hollow tree and placed rods coated with clay in a circle. At the bottom of the pipe there is a mouth, where they make a fire and hang a cauldron on the crossbar. There is a riddle about chuval: "Inside the rotten tree the red fox runs."

"The chuval is somewhat reminiscent of a fireplace. Imagine a rifle barrel without a bolt. The barrel-pipe is made of vine rods and coated with clay. Firewood is placed vertically in the widened, half-open part of the barrel. Warmth and light! A cauldron with food or tea is hung here." (M. Vladimirov, "To the Country of Yugoria")

"The interior of the yurt is hollow; smoky walls, wide bunks or benches all around, and finally in the corner - chuval. This is a smoking hearth in which a fire is constantly kept burning in the summer to keep out mosquitoes, and in the winter to keep out the cold. The chuval consists of a tall chimney woven from wooden rods and coated with clay. The diameter of the chimney is the same everywhere, the top goes out onto the roof and forms the chimney itself, the lower part with a large hole cut out for the passage of firewood makes up the chuval. "
From the Report of N. Sorokin, "Journey to the Voguls", 1873.

With such a design of the stove, the heat could not be maintained in the yurt if the fire were not constantly maintained. Before going to bed, the hut was heated up, people went to bed, covering themselves with skins, the fire gradually died down, smoke and heat went out through the open chimney upwards, and during the night the yurt cooled down completely. The Dyatlov group used the same stove heating system. The Dyatlov group did not have assigned duty officers to watch the stove all night and keep the tent warm. Everyone got up together, and the duty officers prepared breakfast while the others woke up and did not want to get out of their heated camp bed. Compared to V. Karelin's group, the latter had night watchmen assigned, the stove was lit all night, the watchmen watched the drying of clothes, the fire, wrote diaries, mended clothes...

MP: And why do the Mansi call it Keras-kol?

VA: Because downstream from the camp there is a cave in the rock, called "whale's mouth". That's why they called it Keras-kolyn-ya pavyl (village by the rock along the river). The rock is very close to the settlement, well, a little more than a kilometer. There are no legends about it, an ordinary rock. Keraskolye appeared in 1961.

Here it is, the Whale's Mouth!

MP: Did the Dyatlov group go through the Whale's Mouth? Somehow it is not on the negatives of their field films.

VA: The rock is on the route, yes, Dyatlov's group passed it, but in the evening, when it was already dark. This rock is in the following sequence: 41st - Ushma - Whale's Mouth - Second North.

And in 1965 there was a hunting territory of Grigory Kurikov, they decided to settle in a new place and build their yurt. The yurt was built on the site where the Mansi hunter from Suevat-pavyl, Nikolay Stepanovich Kurikov, son of Stepan Kurikov, used to hunt; there was already a hunting hut there, these were his hunting grounds and they called this settlement Keras-kolyn-ya-pavyl (Treskolye).

Keras-kolyn-ya-pavyl. Yurt of Nikolay Vasilyevich Anyamov.

In the 70s, Anyamov Nikolay Vasilyevich, a good hunter, a seasoned man, knew all the taiga better than anyone else, and why? Yes, he was born in the upper reaches of Lozva in 1928 in Aktyl-tollikh-pavyl, then moved to live in the upper reaches of Vizhay (Yalping-ya-pavyl), Suy-vat-pavyl, "10", 2nd Severny and only in the early 60s settled in a new place and the village was named Keras-kolyn-ya pavyl (Treskolye). He lived in all corners of our region and knew all the places, paths, manes, swamps, rivers, etc. well. And he told me that in the upper reaches of the Lozva, in the same places where the hikers died, he saw a large hairy monster, taller than any bear, he was very scared and warned all the Mansi not to go in that direction. Most likely it was a Yeti. Nikolay Vasilyevich killed more than forty bears in his life and would be able to distinguish a bear from some previously invisible "monster". These are guys, the naked truth, what happened, happened. I was in the taiga with him many times and I could learn a lot from him, but the Mansi, as a rule, do not talk about their "exploits" - they need to pour them some wine, and then you can hear a lot, this is also, unfortunately, a fact.

Nikolay Stepanovich Kurikov, while hunting, somewhere in 1961-1962, mistook his friend, Anyamov Prokopiy Vasilyevich, brother of Nikolay Vasilyevich Anyamov (he was carrying skis on his shoulder), for an elk and accidentally killed him. He killed him and then hid in this very hut. And Nikolay Vasilyevich Anyamov persuaded Nikolay Stepanovich Kurikov to surrender to the authorities and defended him himself, proving that the shot was accidental, not intentional. Nikolay Kurikov was the son of Stepan Nikolaevich Kurikov's first wife.

Kurikov Stepan Nikolaevich and his son, Kurikov Nikolay Stepanovich.
Suyvat-pavyl.

MP: There was also information from V. Korotaev, an investigator of the prosecutor's office, that Stepan Kurikov himself brought his son Nikolay to the police, handed him over to the authorities. What is his fate, did he survive in prison?

VA: He was given a suspended sentence, one year with a permanent record in the police. Stepan Kurikov's grandson followed in his father's footsteps, also killed a policeman in Vizhay. He was also given a suspended sentence of one year, like his father.

MP: How is that possible? Stepan Kurikov, a top worker, a deputy, a favorite of the authorities, a part-time shaman, and his son and grandson are murderers.

VA: Yes, that's it.

MP: What always surprises me. These supposed hunting accidents. When the sharp-sighted Mansi mistake their fellow tribesmen for an elk. Or a bear. Or some other animal. Isn't this settling of scores with offenders under the guise of 'mistaken, mistook for an elk'... In the spirit of the Mansi, they deal with offenders secretly, from behind the bushes. I recall many cases of such Mansi hunting 'mistakes', and recently I witnessed two people meet on the Internet and make claims against each other about the fact that their ancestors were killed as a result of such 'mistakes' - they allegedly mistook each other for elk.

Albina Bakhtiyarova and Vladimir Androsov at the site of the village. Second Northern.
July, 2013

A typical Mansi grave. The Mansi, as a rule, do not bury the dead in the ground, but put them in this coffin-like structure. This is a structure of three or four logs. An upside-down sled is placed on top, which indicates that the deceased owned reindeer, and his sled is left to him for the afterlife.

Sometimes there may be empty bottles of vodka and alcohol on the grave. The more bottles there are, the more respected and loved the deceased was, the more relatives and friends remember him. Bottles and memorial utensils are not taken from the cemetery.

"The funeral was usually held in the summer. According to the Mansi, the deceased are awake at night and sleep during the day. When people came to the cemetery, they took out the lid of the hole and knocked it on the corner of the grave (this meant: 'wake up, hear, loved ones have arrived')." (Z.P. Sokolova, on the funeral rites of the Mansi, 1980)

Grave of Nikolay Vasilyevich Anyamov. A hole is made in the log from the head side, through which they push treats into the deceased and talk to him.

Bread covered with a mug and everything stays like that until the next wake.

(Note: this is different from the Russian custom of openly leaving funeral food on graves, for everyone who passes by the grave and wants to remember the deceased, for the birds, etc. The Mansi directly leave food only for the deceased! And no pampering in the form of hospitality here.)

After visiting the cemetery and having a wake at the grave, the window in the grave is tightly closed with such a wooden beam.

The path to the cemetery, and after leaving the cemetery, a stick is placed across it. Now you can safely go home. None of the dead will haunt you. After all the funeral chores, each of the relatives, leaving the cemetery, called their soul with them: "Iskhorem yuva". According to the beliefs of the Mansi and Khanty, each living person had their own invisible double, called 'is, iskhor'. It is believed that the soul of a deceased person is able to independently move after living people, if it is not hindered,

"We are heading back to the village. A stick is lying across the path at the exit from the cemetery. The Mansi woman accompanying us picked it up, waited until we all passed, and put the stick down again: 'Lie here, and do not go with us,' she said to the deceased in the direction of the cemetery, blocking their entrance to the world of the living." (E.A. Lysenko. Treskolie//Ural Pathfinder, 1/2005)

When you leave the cemetery, you should also leave notch.

MP: Sergey, can you tell me what this construction means? Was it built by the Mansi, or did someone decide to stylize the construction as Mansi? Why are there elk antlers, why was the khoreya left? What are these short birch poles?

(Note: I would also like to point out that this photograph will be featured further in the second part of the work, since it shows one of the pieces of evidence that a sacrifice took place in this place.)

SV: So these are elk antlers, a camp, a place where an elk was shot, they could have gotten it before the snow, the ferret looks like it's set, leaning against its back, the antlers are heavy and you can't just carry them away. The antlers processed as a trophy had to be taken away, they can't be left on the ground, mice and squirrels will tear them to pieces in no time. In fact, according to Mansi traditions, it was not customary to leave elk bones, even bare bones, to throw them on the bare ground, it is a sacred animal for them, even the remains of the bones were piled on platforms - like storage sheds, stumps and trees. In the old days, the Mansi would chase elk for weeks, tracks were rare at one time, and they took everything out accordingly on reindeer. When cutting, trees are cut down in any case, as a material at hand, birch is like the basis of mountains and swamps. Birch does not last long in the air in the bark, three years - and it's dust, but the material for products is strong, sleds were made of birch. These poles could be used for drying meat, or rather, so it was. I am familiar with this process. A purely taiga principle and how to set firewood, does not get damp from the ground, does not get covered with snow, and in general, you never know who, for what it can be useful, the law of survival is rationality. The aborigines have many of the basics of life on automatism.

In winter, by November, the elks' antlers begin to fall off themselves, accordingly, the prey is early, but not spring-summer, I understand this, the bone has slightly faded in the sun, but not much. The birches are fairly freshly cut, but before the snow, winter is in its initial phase. Mansi leaves little, he just puts it down, he is the master of the taiga. It is obvious and clear that they are not abandoned, but put down, and if you did not put it, then do not touch it, such was the law of the taiga. There is a lot of stuff lying around in the taiga, you can’t carry everything home on yourself, like an ant. Although you can leave it as a thank you for good luck, but it is not necessary. Whoever has something lying around is not the master. In the summer, reindeer are herded in the mountains, in the winter they are driven, driven to the dwelling, then unnecessary cargo can be caught, the shepherds have enough deer antlers. Why burden yourself with unnecessary things, and if they are needed as a trophy, they can take them. There could be a tamga on the chorea, identifying the owner, and that he did not just put it there. Choreas, they are easily renewed. There is no alternative, they don't sacrifice an elk, if a deer.

Yes, this is some kind of swamp, it's either the end of October - beginning of November by the time of snowfall and quick twilight, or a winter with little snow and a windy February. A characteristically familiar thing can be seen in the outlines of the area. Khorey, if it is him, could play any role, in place of a staff. That they hunted an elk here is a fact, but how and with whom they took it out, that's the question, they could have been drunk, and loaded, and with someone else, all sorts of things happen. But what was the photographer doing there at that time, that's the question, where and how he moved. And the antlers are cut off in this way, the brains are taken out and the head is boiled, eaten as a delicacy, only men eat it, it is sacred, women were not supposed to eat it.

I also chopped off the antlers. You can't argue with them. I am familiar with this hunting practice, the poles are usually birch, for practicality's sake. When cutting up the carcass, the meat is laid out on them, or dried later. They were gathered in a pile as a visual landmark, so that it would be visible to those who would come, who would be sent for them. I talked to one Mansi: elk antlers are not connected with rituals in any way. And I have never heard of them, otherwise I would have known.

MP: This structure was photographed in late February - early March 1959 by searchers on Kholat Syakhl, when they were looking for the missing Dyatlov group. Then it quickly disappeared somehow, none of the former student searchers living today remember it or have ever seen it. I think that it was quickly dismantled by order of the authorities, so as not to attract the attention of civilians and not to cause them unnecessary thoughts about the Mansi.

SV: I see, but the soil is very bare, weathered, the photo is old, the background angle is unclear, considering that even in the foothills the snow was piling up to three meters, huts were being blown under the ridge, I think you can judge the state of the winds, and in a serious wind not only at night, but also during the day, when the wind is stifling and blinding the eyes, visibility is limited, without known landmarks it's a disaster, poorly dressed and at a slight atmospheric temperature (and in the wind it will increase several times and blow to the bone) it is very easy to die. It is quite far from there to the Mansi dwelling, the one who hunted, considered it impractical for himself to take the antlers, until a convenient occasion and left them, they could have just left them in the end. There is no deliberate subtext in this design. The places there are good for hunting, people still hunt there. And moose roll over the mountains from Europe to Asia and back. And if the animal walks, then it is possible to live, the animal, it senses a dangerous anomaly well.

I was exaggerating about the anomaly because after the Dyatlov group there was a stir and all sorts of mysticism was attributed to this place. The Sambindalovs, Kurikovs, Anyamovs, Pelikovs, Bakhtiyarovs drove their reindeer into one herd in the spring, agreed and appointed shepherds, because this is a more profitable practice of reindeer herding - the larger the herd, the easier it is to graze, the herd was driven up to a thousand heads.

Such a herd could be managed by one experienced person for a short time, but with thirty reindeer, for example, it will sometimes be more difficult to manage, it is more restless and dexterous, easily gets lost and you need to run after it much more. When the reindeer are herded, the shepherds try to kill the savages for meat, and they often circle nearby. Well, and the elk is beaten accordingly.

VA: A khorey is a wooden stick 3 m high and 3-5 cm in diameter. I already wrote to you about the elk antlers, it is a sacred place, it is hard to say who exactly. But most likely some old Mansi. Not public, not for everyone, but personal, during the period when they graze reindeer in the Urals. Old Mansi always prayed separately, in cases of need. You see the place on the ridge, it was a Mansi reindeer herder who arranged it for himself. The Urals, the place is blown by the winds and it is not permanent, it is visited during the period when the reindeer are in the Urals. There are no logs, or they are not visible and the fire pit is not visible, but it is possible that the old Mansi simply did not light it, there is little firewood and it had to be brought. Or he could have made a small fire from dry birch branches. In short, this is my opinion. Ah, ask the young Mansi, they didn't know this and are unlikely to understand the purpose of this figure made of birch stakes and antlers. They don't delve into their parents' lifestyle now and are not interested in the past AT ALL. I have met many times with indifferent and ignorant Mansi, they have become Russified.

MP: Here is a photo of a real chum, as the Mansi put it. Compare it to this Mansi construction with elk antlers, it's funny to call it a chum.

This is how they put a chum. First the stakes, then the interior decoration, the stove, mats, skins, clothes, dishes, etc. And then they cover the tent with skins from the outside and inside.

MP: Photo of a certain ski track on the Dyatlov group's film, from that very last expedition.

What do you think, is this a ski track from Mansi skis, or a ski track from narrow skis, which many people have used?

VA: The thing is that Mansi skis do not leave a hump between the skis, because they are wide. And here between two skis a hump is clearly visible. Mansi skis leave a wide track, without a hump, a flat area. This was passed by a group on narrow skis, without any doubt. Of course, we can assume that the Mansi passed first, and then the hikers along their ski track. But this is already guesswork. As for the ski track, the skiers, Russians, possibly in pairs, with backpacks were walking east from the Urals, most likely tired, the ski track is uneven. The group has not passed yet, there are no traces of ski poles, they were walking along the old Mansi road, about 5 years ago the Mansi drank tea in this place, perhaps there was some shelter nearby, it is not visible under the snow. They were walking along an old ski track covered in snow, because they didn't sink into the snow very much. Why were they walking without poles? Either they had lost their poles, or something, some factor made them move faster.

SV: What can I say about the ski track, the ski track is quite fresh, frosty, and by the solstice it is clearly several hours old, morning at most, but at -30 it can keep a fairly fresh look for up to one and a half, at most two days, there is little snow in the forest, the move is sloppy, with side-sliding drifts, a channel-like edge is noticeable, but there is no clear bottom rolling in the track. And the Mansiysk kisovye are a smooth edge with double rolling, already a clear ski track with a smooth and even bottom rolling - more than one person, the ski track is smooth and even. It looks more like someone is walking ahead, trampling a track along an old ski track, as is customary among hikers, the first one goes light. This is definitely a ski track from narrow skis, it is clear that the passage is repeated, and the ski track is broken, after skis 15-16 cm wide, 2 people passed, the track is smooth and sliding and on deeper snow. Even the track of those running away on wide Mansiysk kisovs would be different.

MP: Sergey, you said that you are pine cone hunting on Auspiya. Tell me, how do you get cedar cones? Do you beat them with a so-called hammer - a cleaver? Is it possible to break a cedar branch of 8-10 cm if one, two or three people pull themselves up on it? Or stand on top of it?

SV: Cedar is the most fragile coniferous tree, branches break easily, lose elasticity in the cold, become more brittle, fragile, hanging and swinging weight is elementary, tops break easily, lower branches are usually dry, on a cedar almost any branch can easily break.

The cone is obtained in different ways, depending on how and if you can't wait until the season. It falls, and is collected from the ground.

Those who climb cedars know the risk of this event, but these are mainly children, they take early milky cones to eat, do not store for a long time and do not prepare for future use, mass collection is stopped. Great injury due to breakage of tops and branches, they fly all the way to the ground. In childhood I passed the stage. With a splitter they beat impatient or limited by the time, but they want a nut, the end of August. In September it falls off itself, and this is the moment of the main harvest of the ripe harvest, and they do not beat with a splitter or climb. It is easy to break a branch, cedars have very fragile ones, unlike other trees. I understood what you are talking about, I saw a cedar in the photo, no doubt, they broke themselves, easily.

A log is the tree trunk itself, and a branch is a branch, the lower ones are dry, they are broken off for fires. And from a more powerful cedar, branches break, and foothill and swamp cedars are weaker than pine ones. If you pull the end of a branch, you get a lever and it will break thicker, you just don't need to associate cedar with other species, cedar is a weak tree when exposed to force.

Circular cutting of bark on a tree. This is how the Mansi prepare dry firewood for themselves in the taiga at their camps.

The Mansi cut the tree into a circle and it dries out, and when firewood is needed, here it is. Near the yurts, hunting huts, easy and accessible. And always dry firewood.

MP: Vladimir, how many foresters were there in the Vizhaysky forestry? I only know Pashin, Kuznetsov, Mokhov, and Rempel himself. Who else could have worked there in 1959? Did the Mansi work as foresters? For example, Grigory Kurikov, he is always wearing a forester's cap in the photo. It is strange that forester Rempel had never been to the Kholat-Syakhl area, which he reported in the interrogation protocol.

VA: Grigoriy Kurikov worked as a forester for 18 years, mainly, many Mansi worked as foresters. We respected foresters. All foresters had a common "plot". This was the Vizhayskoye forestry, the largest in the Ivdelsky district. No one divided the forestry into patrols. This is the taiga, not the city. Fomin Ivan Ivanovich, Burmantov Gerasim Tihonovich, his brother Evsey worked as foresters. Fomin was called to the front, but on the way the train was bombed and he was discharged, his jaw was broken. His wife Natalia is the sister of Burmantov Gerasim Tikhonovich.

During the war, Pavel Terentievich Mokhov and Burmantov Gerasim Tikhonovich were not taken to the front, they washed gold for the state.

They washed especially hard on the river Darievka. The stream Len-log flows into Dar'evka, Novosiletsky Mihail Lukich had a haymaking there, and we helped him somehow to clean up hay. There were only continuous pits there.

Rempel was a forester, a German, and he had nothing to do there on Kholat Syakhyl. They didn't cut down trees there and there was no need to allocate plots, so he had never been there.

MP: Newcomers come to the topic and the first thing they do is to suspect the forester Rempel of his involvement in the death of the group. I myself did not escape this. Therefore, I would like to provide once again information about him, sent to me by his granddaughter Maria.

Before the war, his whole family lived in a village in the Arkadak district of the Saratov region, worked as a teacher, a salesman in a store. In 1937, he was imprisoned, and until the end of the war he sat in camps in Vizhay, worked at the 2nd Severny and Vizhay. His wife and children were deported to Siberia at the beginning of the war. In 1946, Rempel brought them to Vizhay. They lived in Vizhay until 1965. In 1965-1966, they began to move to Murom near Moscow. There, Rempel bought a house. In 1969, I.D. Rempel and his entire large family moved to Tsimlyansk in the Rostov region. At that time, many Germans from Vizhay and Ivdel moved to Tsimlyansk. I.D. Rempel died in 1981 and was buried in Tsimlyansk.

Forester I. D. Rempel and his wife (forestry woman). From the archive of Maria Metzler-Shubina.

M. Metzler: 'Grandfather and grandmother in the hayfield. Grandfather loved to joke and tease! A very good photo!'

The fact that the forester had a stern character is also mentioned in the field diary of V. Yakimenko's group for 1963. When a group of former UPI students went on a hike with the goal of installing a memorial plaque at the site of the Dyatlov group's death. Yuri Yudin also took part in that hike. Here is an entry from the diary of that group:

«07/23/63. ... It's great to fly in a helicopter! For some reason the pilot dropped us off near several abandoned camps, and we heard all sorts of scary stories about prisoner escapes from the soldiers. We finally arrived in Vizhay and settled on an island in the middle of the Vizhay River. It started to rain. We pitched a tent and made a fire...
We cooked some delicious cabbage soup with sour cream, ate in the tent because it was raining heavily, and ran out of there as if we were coming from a bathhouse. The 'firemen' came to visit and tempted us to go and sleep with the forester. But the 'forester's wife' greeted us at the door with abuse: 'So tell me, whose are you? And why, why are you coming here?' And only thanks to Yudin's humble speeches did the 'forester' woman move away and even offered Ninka and me to sleep on a bed with a feather bed. To her great surprise and incomprehension, we refused.
T. Yakimenko. "

VA: - Rempel, as a forester familiar with the quarters, advised us to go along the quarter clearings. Apparently, he did not know about the Mansi reindeer trail, or did not attach any importance to it, but it should be noted that in the old maps, almost all Mansi trails were marked. He had a forest management map with quarters in the forestry department and he showed hikers how he thought it was best to get to Otorten.

I have lost the maps from the 50s, if you are going to use them, you need to get these maps from the Ivdel forestry. Settlers from Pechora crossed the Ural Mountains and founded our village in the late 30s. They crossed the ridge, people of the same surnames - Pashins, Sobyanins, Kuznetsovs, Chagins, these are old-timers of our region. The Sobyanins lived earlier, Nyrovsky district, Ust-Uninsky s / s. village Shaitanovka, in this village Ivan Foteevich Pashin also lived. They say about the mayor of Moscow Sobyanin that he is from Nyaksimvol, his ancestors came from Pechora.

MP: Village Shaitanovka is a place quite well known in local history. In the second half of the 16th century, Trifon Vyatsky, a monk of the Pyskorsky monastery, built his monastery here. The place was known as 'scary' for the local Voguls. They considered the rock to be the abode of evil spirits and avoided it. But Trifon lived on the mountain for a long time, and nothing happened to him. The Voguls asked: 'Why don't evil spirits touch you?' 'I believe in the god Jesus Christ, and he is stronger than all spirits. And he gives me special strength,' replied Tryphon. After Tryphon, the place of his monastery remained sacred for the Mansi for a long time, but pagan rituals were performed there, since Christianity did not take root. A little over a hundred years later, the Russian settlement of Shaitanovka arose near Tryphon's monastery.

The Turkic peoples who came to these lands - the Tatars - did not recognize the religion of the Mansi, and their sanctuaries were considered to be the dwelling place of sorcerers-shaitans. (In the Turkic languages, the word 'shaitan' means 'evil spirit, devil, devil, sorcerer'). Therefore, those places where, in the opinion of the Tatars, evil spirits could dwell, they called: Shaitan-mountain, Shaitan-river or swamp. The Mansi adopted the word 'shaitan' into their language in the meaning of 'sacred, sorcerer, shaman'. (R. Kashin, "Ural Stalker" №9, 2002)

VA: Vanya Bely - that's what they called the forester Pashin in Vizhay, he was all gray, he went gray early. I went to Ivan Foteevich for cow's milk, and when we met he always told me about hunting, the animals he got, sables, and of course my eyes were completely open, such stories, taiga, smoke from a fire, sables in the taiga, etc., what else does a kid need, he simply fascinated me with the taiga. He told me that they simply caught up with an elk on the crust and cut its throat, saving cartridges. On that side of the ridge (western) there is much more snow than on the eastern slope. Once my friend and I were hunting on the Niols River, it flows into the Vishera River, we woke up at night, the snow was knee-deep and we had to give up hunting and go to our upper reaches of B. Toshemka, we crossed the ridge, and on our side there was only one centimeter of snow, such a difference in the snow cover. Once he told how he and Sarapion Demidovich Sobyanin were hunting in Matveevskaya Parma, the dogs got a sable, "we, dude, got it, we're sitting, drinking tea by the fire, happy, and the dog, dude, runs back and forth along the tree trunk, we stood up, dude, and got another sable, we're sitting and drinking tea, and the dog, dude, runs again, we stood up and got another sable, and so it was, dude." The thing is that in February there is a rut for sables, two males were running after a female and both of them went into a hollow tree after the female. When the dogs picked up the scent and brought the hunters, they had no idea that there were three sables there. I had never seen one like that in a sable hunt, one in a hollow is normal.

His friend and messenger, as Ivan Foteevich said, was Sarapion Demidovich Sobyanin. They lived on Pechera, but constantly hunted on the eastern slope of the ridge, as Ivan Foteevich said, there were a lot of martens there, and the sable was mainly on the eastern slope. And in February, on skis, pulling sleds, they crossed the ridge and hunted in the "Matveevskaya" parma. This is a place from the Aktyl River to the Auspiya River. There were a couple of huts. The sleds were long, narrow, just the width of the ski tracks. It is very convenient to drag food than to carry it on your shoulders in the "kroshnya".

The settlers were led across the Urals at different times. Sarapion Demidovich Sobyanin and Pashin Ivan Foteevich. They carried children on their shoulders in knapsacks, pives, drove cattle in front of them, carried belongings, various things, it got to the point that many had to cross the Urals several times, they could not carry everything at once, but there was goods. In the new place, everything will be useful. They even dragged emery wheels, white sand color, about 10 cm thick and 50 cm in diameter. It weighed about 25-30 kg. The circles were in special troughs, water was poured into the bottom, the circle was rotated by hand and it was good for sharpening both a knife and an axe, it was fine-grained, I have never met such anywhere else, only in Vizhay, in particular at Evsey Petrovich, as he was called (Bes Petrovich).

Many have already forgotten our old-timers, Burmantov Gerasim Tikhonovich, Afanasyevs, also came from that side of the Urals before the war. Pashin Ivan Foteevich, had three sisters: Pashina Tatyana Foteevna, Agafya Foteevna, Matryona Foteevna, the mother of my friend, Plotnikov Leonid Vasilyevich. They all came from beyond the Urals. My grandmother, Matryona Ivanovna, often met with Matryona Foteevna, conversations, discussions, 100 grams at the table, a normal phenomenon.

Many of the "Dyatlov experts" claim that it was not Ivan Pashin who first found the two dead, but allegedly other searchers. But sitting on a bench near the house of Yegor Chagin, Ivan Foteevich told me that he was the first to find the tent of the dead, it was covered with snow, of course, the snow blows away from the top, but if you put some kind of obstacle, the same tent, then the snow will accumulate first on the side where the prevailing winds blow, and then roll over to the other side of the tent. And thus a large snowdrift will form. Which is what happened. Pashin Ivan found it only because, as he said, there was a small red flag on the tent. This fact, in my opinion, is not mentioned anywhere. They just don't know or it is advantageous for someone to belittle the dignity of Pashin I.F.

Well, of course, like an old man, that he understands that he knows about these places. Fool, he knows everything, but keeps quiet, no one asks him and he will not trust this secret to everyone. Along this very place, along this very reindeer road (salin-lekh), he brought many from Pechora to live in our region on the eastern slope of the Urals.

So, the first dead, a girl and a guy by the cedar, were also found by Ivani Foteevich, as he told me, one of them was holding a piece of birch bark, and the other matches, they were squatting, half-naked, in this position and froze. Who was holding the matches and who the birch bark, I just forgot, but I think it doesn't matter, logically the matches should be lit by a man, I think that's how it was, a man with matches, a girl with birch bark. "Dyatlov scholars" have distorted everything, there was no place for Pashin I.F. in this story. They found everything, both the tent and the first victims, but not Ivan Foteevich, they took all the laurels for themselves. I believe the stories of Pashin I.F. and only he and only he could find the first missing.

Back in the early 60s, he told me about the search. He had walked across the ridge many times along this very deer trail, and all the residents of Burmantovo had also come along this same trail at one time, and they knew that the saddle itself had to be crossed very carefully, without looking around. This place is anomalous, you and I have not yet learned to wander in the past, as well as in the future, we cannot look in and see the death of hikers and what they died from, we can only guess based on the facts known to us. Pashin and Sarapion, friends, liaisons, and for many years they hunted together in our taiga. Both Pashin and Sarapion Sobyanin knew this trail well.

But that time Sarapion was leading the "women" to Pechora. In 1960, residents of the village of Vizhay and 1st Severny, in the old-fashioned way, about 9 people, mostly women with a ten-year-old boy, went to the other side of the ridge, to their native land, many had relatives there, visiting them was a usual thing, they went to the Auspiya River by motorboat, and there along the path, Sobyanin Sarapion Demidovich led them. When approaching the place where the hikers died, some kind of colored fog fell on them, thick as jelly ... what color exactly? He said that grayish ...

Everyone was scared, frightened, but grandfather Sarapion said: "Women, all gather in a circle, cover yourself with clothes and do not look around, sit quietly, without unnecessary movements," he himself sat separately and covered his head with a cloak. For him, this was not a surprise, he had already encountered this and knew what to do. The boy stuck his hand out from under his coat, his hand disappeared, he got scared and started crying loudly, his mother could hardly calm him down, it was so scary. This fog was like alive, it felt like someone was controlling it.

But that was not all, suddenly the rocky debris began to shake finely, like an earthquake, everyone froze in place, even the boy stopped crying from fear. But Sarapion Demidovich began to calm the women: "Women, calm down, it will pass now," since he had encountered this phenomenon more than once. In 15-20 minutes the earthquake stopped, the fog cleared and the sun came out. The women quickly gathered their belongings, the child in their arms, and ran without looking back from this place towards Pechora. But not everyone made the return journey. The boy and his mother had to go by train to Ivdel, and then by car to Vizhay. His mother was afraid for him, what if something like that happened again on the road through the ridge? And she went by train, and the boy didn't want to experience such fears anymore.

There was a hunter from the village of Burmantovo, Loginov Ilyich, he hunted there constantly in the 70s from the "gospromkhoz", and earlier in these very places Pashin I.F. and his friend Sarapion Sobyanin hunted and nicknamed his residence in this way - 'Base of Ilyich'. There was a good house, a bathhouse, a house for "visitors", a large clearing. And on the other side of Lozva in the 19th century lived the Mansi Ukladovs, the settlement was called Sadnak-pavyl (settlement at the seven larches), our locals when they passed by, always said, passed by or were at the "semilivyanichny". And so he took the hikers to the base, drank tea with them and went back to Vizhay. Approaching the Auspiya River, he saw two people who jumped out of the path that goes to the pass, eyes like saucers, horror on their faces. "Stop, stop," they shouted. He stopped, they quickly jumped into the car, "drive, drive." When they drove a little and felt safe, they began to tell the following. When they climbed the pass, and this was in the summer at the end of June, during the same period, also in June, and the "women" walked across the ridge, the ground suddenly shook under them, the feeling is not pleasant, fear, horror, young, what can you expect from them, but anyone in their place could have been scared. They were seized by panic and, abandoning their belongings, they ran down the path to the road. When they were driving along the road to Vizhay, they could not calm down, interrupting each other, telling about this incomprehensible phenomenon. The mountains seem old, there have never been any earthquakes, and suddenly? There is something to think about. And is everything so smooth in the "Danish kingdom".

It is possible to assume that the hikers who died also experienced this phenomenon and in a panic, undressed, right, when the rockfall starts shaking under your feet, they rushed in different directions as fast as they could. Panic has ruined many. I always say, if you suddenly get lost and don't know which way to go, sit down and sit in one place for a day, two, three, they will look for you and find you, but if you rush with crazy eyes, that's it, you are finished, you are lost only from your own FEAR, the person drives himself into a corner and dies, precisely from fear. You went for berries, mushrooms, even for an hour or two, but you should always have matches, a bandage, a compass in your encephalitis kit, jacket. This is a guarantee that you will get back to the car or the road, the river, the place where you started your movement. I went into the forest, from the road, looked at the compass in which direction I was thinking of moving, and naturally I returned back also by the compass. Everyone, both women and men, regardless of age, should learn to use a compass. There is nothing complicated, you need to value your life and appreciate it.

MP: Vladimir, interesting stories. I also remembered the story of V.N. Gamatina, the widow of the pilot Patrushev, about the legend that circulated among the Mansi about Mount Kholat-Syakhyl: '... this mountain, on which, according to legend, God lives, is passed down from generation to generation, from old people to children, so you can count on the fact that this was not only during the Soviet era, but also existed far before the revolution - a legend that supposedly God lives there, who, when angry, makes some sounds and smokes a pipe..'

The sounds could well be the so-called mountain shaking, which was mentioned by Judge G. Novokreshchenov when he put forward his version of the group's death, and the smoke from the pipe could be that same unknown fog.

It is interesting that in the 19th century there were stories about a fog suddenly descending from the mountains (K. Nosilov, "Among the Voguls"):

"He lived here too. It was a hot summer. July came, when suddenly he began to notice that sad deer appeared in his herd. They sluggishly moved from place to place, almost refused to eat moss, and when the herd lay down to rest, they no longer got up - but remained either already dead in place, or expired before the eyes of the surprised owner. This continued for several days, until a fog appeared, which began to descend from the top of the mountain into the valley like a tablecloth. This fog was not at all like ordinary fog, it was suffocating, as if from the earth"; the deer walked against it with force, sniffed, and then, as if stupefied, lay down and died in dozens. But he tried to quickly break the herd into pieces, scatter it in different directions, migrated over the ridge and only in this way could he save the herd, while the others had lost every single deer, and they came to him on foot, hungry, so that he could help. This does not happen often, but almost every ten years. "

Regarding the sounds, there are testimonies from modern hikers who have visited Kholat Syakhl: 'The places around the pass are eerie. The wind howls in the stone remnants, and the gloomy dome of Solat-Syakhl - the Mountain of the Dead - rises nearby. This Mansi name was given long before the tragic night in 1959... The famous expert on Ural toponymy A. Matveyev, who climbed the mountain many times, wrote: '... I must admit that there is no more severe and gloomy mountain in this part of the Northern Urals...' The rocks on the Dyatlov Pass, like parts of an ominous musical instrument, create strange sound effects - the noise of a car engine, the roar of a waterfall, and finally, an incomprehensible vibrating sound that sows anxiety. (N. Rundkvist, "One hundred days in Urals", expedition 1991) Mount Kholat Syakhl, according to some sources, also means 'thunder' - this could be the sounds and shaking of the mountain, and 'cloud' - and this is that very mysterious fog when 'god smokes a pipe'. One thing is clear: the Mansi are familiar with this phenomenon on Kholat-Syakhl. That's why they didn't really like going there. And even now, except for curious hikers and keen 'Dyatlov researchers', few people would want to drag themselves through the taiga to those parts.

And these are the Mansi making 'the lightest boat in the world'.

VA: Mansi, they are installing spacers over the fire. It is easier to increase the width of the boat, it will be more stable. And the shape will last a long time. They will remove the spacers, the "limiters" on the bow and stern will also be removed, and forward along Lake Turvat. The Mansi used to have boats made of boiled birch bark, stitched and covered with resin at the seams. I saw such a boat at the camp of Dmitry Sambindalov. It is on the Malaya Sosva below the source, which comes from Lake Turvat. The boat was lying on its side near the deer fence. I picked her up like a feather.

Mansi carries a dead bear cub in a boat.

The origin of some surnames is interesting: Anyamovs comes from the word 'anyam' - beautiful, elegant; Pakin - the one who has cones, Sambindalov - from 'sampintal' (blind), Tasmanov - arrogant. Each clan has its own katpos (family sign). Katpos are placed on the borders of hunting grounds, on houses - in general, 'they mark everything that's theirs'.

Bakhtiyarov Aleksey plays the sankvyltap. The local Casanova. He was married several times, and each time unsuccessfully. Either his wife died, or he had to get divorced.

The sankvyltap is a five-string gusli with a resonator box, which is hollowed out from the trunk of a cedar tree. The strings are made from reindeer intestines. While playing, the musician winds a string around his finger, to which a doll called 'yikvne-hum' ('dancing man') is tied.

The Mansi divide trees into two types, deciduous and coniferous. Deciduous trees are Russian because they 'grow and multiply quickly', and coniferous trees (cedars) are Mansi because they 'grow slowly, like heroes'.

"When enemies killed our heroes, the heroes became guardian spirits..." - says one of the Mansi songs-legends. (A. Stesin, "Forest People")

"The singing of the Voguls is more of a recitative with a lowering and raising of the voice in some places. The content of the songs is left to the discretion of the singer. When starting to sing, the Vogul does not yet know what he will sing about and usually reduces it to some incident from his hunt. This does not mean that special incidents that are out of the ordinary are sung about. Not at all. It is sung that, well, I went and killed a bear or an elk. As an example, I present two recorded songs dictated to me by the Vogul Ivan Platonov: 1) ".. I am walking through a green forest. The dog is running ahead. But a big bear is climbing onto the path and I need to kill him. My gun is good, I hit him and oh, how the blood flowed" ... 2) ".. I am walking through a green forest. The dog is running ahead. There is a stream where a big elk comes to drink. I sat down and waited for the animal. It became dark. I can not see anything. But then the earth cracked and he comes. I fired and hit" .. Such are the songs of the Voguls in general. I tried to write down these two, taking care to convey them word for word and not paying attention to the meaning."
From the book by N. Sorokin "Journey to the Voguls", 1873.

Here is how one of the participants of the expedition of E. Hoffman, 1848-1850, describes the Khanty-Mansiysk corps de ballet (corps de ballet):

"As a token of celebration on the occasion of our unification, a feast was given to all of them, that is, a bottle of vodka was donated, which soon enlivened their camp unusually. In gratitude for the treat, they came to our fire in the evening and increased us with their dance. Two people stood opposite each other and made the strangest grimaces and movements, then began to circle around each other, giving out unbearable distortions with their whole body and its extremities, and all this with such a sense of their dignity, which showed that this was not done for fun. Sometimes they squatted so deftly, roared like bears and did other things that were understandable without a pantomime libretto, that without a doubt, no one else but the bear was their model and teacher of dancing."

"We could not interpret some of the gestures, although they obviously had their meaning, because both the Voguls and the Ostyaks made them, only the latter, by means of vekryvayus and special jumps, express more participation in the dance: but that they essentially did not go far from the Voguls is evident from the fact that they always interfered in the dance when one of the dancers did not satisfy the demands of their taste. This offended the artistic pride of the Ostyaks and in the middle of the dances an argument arose, which threatened to turn into a general fight at last, if our miners had not calmed the artists with brevi mano, driving the entire corps de ballet from the stage. However, this only changed the arena, because once excited art could not be so easily suppressed, and our companions began dancing again in their own camp. There a small, puny Ostyak, whom nature, in exchange for the lack of an olfactory organ, had awarded a head much larger than the other clear bodies, decided to teach our translator, a stocky Vogul. This air of importance offended the Vogul, first of all, the consciousness of personal superiority in dancing, and secondly, the national feeling; the poor braggart flew into the fire, and before his apathetic comrades pulled him out, he had terribly burned his face and hands. "

The name Sui-vat-pavyl means 'settlement near the hill'. Some ethnographers give other names, for example, 'Settlement of the Northern Winds' or 'Settlement near the swamp' - probably these different names come from the differences in the Mansi dialects. Once this settlement, consisting of the ancestral villages of the Kurikovs, Sambindalovs, Anyamovs and neighboring Bakhtiyarovs, was very developed, inhabited, and was located fifty kilometers from Kholat-Syakhyl.

Yakov Kuzmich Sambindalov could shaman and did so. He will be mentioned below in the book by Viktor Maltsev. Grigory Kurikov also practiced shamanism, like his brother, Stepan Kurikov.

Suy-vat-pavyl. Grigory Nikolaevich Kurikov and Yakov Kuzmich Sambindalov, brother of Varvara Kuzmovna Bakhtiyarova.

"Stepan and Grigory Kurikov, two brothers, were the first to master Suy-vat-pavyl in the early 40s. In 1942, the Mansi, Stepan Nikolaevich Kurikov, was elected foreman of the hunting brigade. At the end of the hunting season, the brigade was awarded the Red Banner of the Executive Committee. Until the end of the war, the banner remained with Stepan Kurikov's brigade. He personally fulfilled his obligations to extract furs by 200%.

He was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." Awarded by the order of the Minister of Procurement with the badge "Excellent Hunter". Repeatedly nominated as a candidate for deputy of the Ivdel City Council for the Burmantovsky electoral district.

In Sui-vat-pavyl, Stepan Nikolaevich is a respected person. In 1950 he was elected as a deputy of the City Council. For example, during the hunting season before February 1, he obtained and handed over to the state: 200 squirrel skins, 11 sables, killed three bears in the fall and was nominated for a bonus. He completed the task by 113%.

His brother Kurikov Grigory Nikolaevich, born in 1907, a hunter, was nominated by the meeting of citizens of the village of Burmantovo, a candidate for the Ivdel City Council in 1959. " (From the local press, 1959)

"Melancholy is melancholy, but there is a lot of funny stuff. For example, the deputy chairman of the advanced Lenin collective farm is a shaman, a real one, a militant one, a practitioner! It is he who carries out the 'connection with the masses' and, having read the appropriate spells over them, mobilizes them to carry out the next event, like concluding a social agreement on overfulfilling the fur procurement plan." (from a letter from the exiled Ariadna Efron to Boris Pasternak, Turukhansk region, 1955)

«from the book by the Finnish writer Marianne Flinkinberg-Glushkoff and Nikolay Garnn «the land of Ugrovi», published in 1992 in Helsinki. One can only regret that this unique material about the sacred life of the peoples of the Urals is inaccessible to the interested Russian reader. We publish excerpts from this book, translated from Finnish by Anastasia Khorosheva, below. «...Shamanism among the Mansi people is not the main form of religiosity, as among the Nenets, Mansi shamanism has its own, inherent only to it, features. Our guide Viktor Maltsev ten years ago gained experience of acquaintance with the magical power of the Mansi shaman. He met the shaman in a Mansi village located on the Lozva River. The shaman was very old, with a special stern look, which everyone from his circle was afraid of. His clothes did not differ from the other villagers. The shaman was dressed in a regular Mansi men's windproof anorak, but was belted with an interesting, curious belt: small bags, teeth and claws of various animals were attached to it. The shaman sat Victor at the table. There were three shot glasses on the table, although they were sitting at the table together. The shaman looked out the window onto the street, and, as if addressing a third person, muttered strange words. They were not in the Mansi language, from which Victor decided that the shaman was reciting a spell. The next day, while exploring the village, Victor felt a sharp pain in his legs, so severe that walking along the Ural foothills became unbearable."

"that his walking along the Ural foothills became unbearably painful, and then, already at home, he felt paralyzed for several months. Several years later, having arrived in this village, Victor encountered the surprised looks of its residents. They believed that he was no longer alive. They claimed that the shaman, who had already died by this time, tried to prolong his life by taking Victor's soul under his control. They say that the shaman had already captured the souls of about 40 people, causing their death. Together with the villagers, they decided that Victor managed to stay on his feet because he wore a cross around his neck."
Excerpts from the book by S. Mihalevich

I immediately remembered Yuri Yudin, how suddenly during a hike his leg hurt and he had to return home, since he could not go further. Alexander Velm explains this fact by the fact that the shaman saw a sick hiker in the group and separated him from the healthy ones, the sick were not needed for sacrifice. Therefore, the shaman sent him home, making it so that Yuri Yudin's leg hurt.

VA: About the shaman - this is a collective story, the author could have exaggerated, telling about Victor. And what about Yudin's leg, don't pay attention, he just rubbed it or caught a cold, overexerted himself, it happens, or maybe my intuition was right, I think it was, and the leg was just a saying, he felt that this was not his route, but he didn't want to admit it, so he said about the leg.

I knew Viktor Maltsev well, we met on Vizhay in the early 70s, he came to see me many times, we went to different places together. He's already died. But I must admit, I have his letters. He gave me his diary-book of 60 pages, written in small, cramped handwriting, I can't find it, I have to dig through everything. A. Slepuhin was already interested in these letters and the diary. The thing is that V. Maltsev found a common language with the Mansi with the help of vodka, mostly, and then at the second, third meeting they believed him, he easily gained their trust. I read the letter from Roman Anyamov to him: "you milked me dry", etc. I have it.

MP: Why did Victor leave you his notes and letters? Was he afraid that they would get lost somewhere else?

VA: I still don't understand myself. Why did he trust me. He knew from the Mansi that they were my friends, etc. He left a whole story, written in small handwriting. Now I'll write down a little from his letter for you. 'I walked without a gun, with one Finnish knife. There was a lot of luggage, during the hike I "dropped" 16 kg of my weight (this is not scary, in the previous winter I gained a lot of weight). I didn't just walk hundreds of kilometers, I saw a lot. I copied a whole platoon of idols. And a couple of buckets of sweat is a good price for that.' And his map is drawn, where he walked along the ridge. Started from Pechera with Ust-Ulsa and finished the hike in Yany-pavyl. Marked all the Mansi sites, etc. Now I'm looking at it. My wife says, well, I didn't find the manuscript, so it's God's will, but I'll try to find it with God's help. And the incident with Dyatlov's group didn't matter to him, everyone knew about it, but we locals think that it's an ordinary incident, that's all, and Viktor Maltsev studied the Mansi. Here's another letter: "And I also received one ridiculous letter in the spring from N., full of absurd statements and outright suspicion of divulging their religious secrets.' .... 'And how you said something offensive to me, concluding with the words "you are using me and throwing me away like a squeezed lemon. And if you lose me, you will lose everything, access to such secrets and mysteries that others have never dreamed of"...'

MP: Did you know Vladimir Hoffman? Did he disappear without a trace near Hoy-Ekva in the late 80s? Here is what some Orenburg travelers write about him: 'Hoffman was a man who served several years in a colony in Ushma and intended to settle in these parts after his release. They say that before he disappeared, he walked alone through the taiga for several years, hunted fur animals, dug pits and looked for gold. Hoffman seriously believed that the Golden Woman existed in reality and was a multi-ton ingot of pure gold.'

VA: Vladimir Hoffman was my good friend and he did not die near Hoy-Ekva, he had never been there and did not even hunt nearby. We had to hunt together, I knew him very well. We drank a lot of vodka and took sables. And I suspect who killed him. His body was never found!

MP: What kind of mountain is Hoi-Ekva?

VA: B. Munkácsi wrote about her in 1888-1889. The main saint. The goddess of the forest, the Forest Deity. A. Reguli also designated this massif as Khoi-Ekva. Our Mansi say it the way I told you the translation: both 'Stop, woman!' and 'Woman-Queen' (Patron Saint). Everyone defines it in their own way. There is no consensus. Some say that this is the Nenets name for Khoi, etc. The Slinkins and Matveyevs tell whoever they turn to. One says one thing, another says another. Everyone writes what they like. But Munkácsi researched these names when the old people were still alive, so I think his translation is the most correct and accurate. And as for Ekva, I will remain silent. I have never been to the top of the mountain, there was no need to climb there. I know the foothills, I have walked there. There is a lot of Golden Root growing there.

SV: - Take a history textbook and look at the map of trade routes, 14th century, and you will understand that the main route of Ancient Rus' through this region is Pechora-Lozva. Vizhay was founded by settlers from the Komi, they drove cattle from there, and dragged grain crops and belongings. Between Pechora and Lozva at the source there was a portage (figuratively a road), it goes to Nyaksimvol. It is worth reading a book published in the fifties (55-59) by the Ural publication 'Sledopyt', called "Winter in the Urals", to have a somewhat detailed and objective idea of ​​​​tourism in those years, and about the possible twists and turns in the hikes. For example, in the winter, if it began to snow for weeks, they did not stick their noses out of the tents, burned the butts of guns and spare skis. As far as I remember, the last route in the book is dated 1959, not referring to Dyatlov's expedition.

I will say as a person who has lived in the forest for a significant part of his life and somehow wintered in it from "A" to "Z." I can quite competently assure you that if someone had walked in the snow in that place and even before the group, even on skis, there would have been tracks and it would be impossible to cover up the extra ones. The group of track experimenters did not take into account the nuances. In winter, with a good wind and loose snow, tracks in open places are covered literally instantly within half an hour, they may become invisible, but they do not disappear! They may not be observed throughout the winter and in the future, but at the moment when the snow begins to weather, and snow does not necessarily have to melt, it evaporates without hiding due to the wind, weathers, and is blown away, of course, and then the tracks float to the surface and remain for a very long time, disappearing with the last snow, only with experience and observation can people know this. And from the nature of the tracks it is clear, understandable that no one was chasing people. That's why the investigation didn't bother much.

The most that happened was a brawl within the group itself. No one doubted before and no one doubts now, in the death and tragedy of those people, as natural and logical in combination with a natural phenomenon. Of course, knowledge - meanings regarding the behavior of the participants of the hike themselves are left out of the equation, but these are already details. If we talk about the brawl, then two days before the death, the group celebrated a birthday, and if there was alcohol, then who knows? And the group, as it turned out, was dissimilar.

The fact that the version of the murder of the Mansi was being worked on only says that the investigation was conducted impartially. In your St. Petersburg, someone outlined the tragedy of the avalanche and there are videos on the Internet. The Mansi are not aggressors by nature, but an emotional, wayward people. According to their faith, they are not allowed to kill animals, but they came up with an excuse that it is not they who do it, but a Russian gun. By nature, they are somewhat cowardly people - in terms of fistfights, they can be aggressive when drunk, there is a surge of emotions, but this depends on the personality, on the character, and the cowardice of the Mansi is due to natural caution, self-preservation. The Mansi are not capable of killing nine people, in an open place and thus, practically with their hands, and if this happened, then there were already legends among the people. The Mansi are capable of killing only on the sly and necessarily with the use of a 'weapon', according to the version with the Mansi in this situation they could only shoot (and bury), but this did not happen. The Mansi always made contact with strangers, they are friendly people, sociable and respect the right person, and there is no blood background in connection with the Dyatlov group!!! A hiker is not a hunter, and the Mansi often only conflict with hunters, and then only on private occasions.

MP: But for ritual ceremonies and sacrifices the Mansi used only a bow and arrow. A lasso. A knife. And no firearms. And the crossbows they used on elk and to protect their secret sanctuaries were so powerful that the arrows they fired pierced the chests of elk and deer. I won't even mention people.

VA: Do you know how the Mansi live in the outback?

"Lozva is a small settlement consisting of two or three residential buildings with some buildings. Of which the largest were the barn and the 'store' with all sorts of food and things needed by the workers who are driven here in large numbers in the winter to transport and load iron ore onto barges. In summer, sleep reigns here, the store manager and the company accountant remain. And not a large number of servants. Only a small smoke from the chimney testifies to the presence of human life here. But from time to time, the Voguls come here for vodka. And then again life boils and makes noise here, but an ugly life, forcing the observer to turn away. Soon after my arrival, as expected, the Voguls appeared in boats. They brought fish and reindeer skins here in order to, having first converted them into money, indulge in their favorite pleasure - drunkenness. These transactions are carried out so quickly that you almost never see the arriving Voguls sober. It is difficult to convey the feeling of disgust caused in me by the invasion here of a bunch of people from a tribe I had never seen before, which I considered tropical savages. Their entire appearance and clothing, first of all, testified to filth, surpassing all fear. The noise, the dancing, especially the roar of old and drunk women, dressed in carelessly put-on shirts, disgusting almost to a T, faces, red, festering, bloodshot eyes, open mouths with threads of saliva flowing down - this was a sight that was hard for me, an unaccustomed person, to bear..."

MP: Who are you quoting?

VA: Fedorov E.S., 1884. But you won't find this work anywhere. It's not on the Internet, I photographed it in the Fedorov Museum. Do you think it's in the past? No, and this happens in our time.

(Note: Evgraf Stepanovich Fedorov was born in Orenburg in 1853, died in Petrograd in 1919. Shortly before his death, Fedorov was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He conducted the first deep and thorough geological studies of the Northern Urals. He explored the Northern Urals for about 250 km in the basins of the Lozva, Vishera and Pechora rivers. He presented his observations in 'Geological Research in the Northern Urals', published in 1889, 1890 and 1897. For decades, this work contained the best summary material on the geology of the region. The scientist compiled a geological map of the Lozva River basin, the upper part of the Vishera and adjacent parts of the Northern Urals at a scale of 5 miles per inch. Fedorov expressed his thoughts on the Quaternary glaciation in the Urals and, in particular, noted that the southernmost point of distribution of glacial boulders on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals is the area where the Auspiya River flows into the Lozva. Fedorov also drew the attention of the local mining administration to deposits of other minerals, such as iron ore, gold, and brown coal. The result of the research of E.S. Fedorov and his assistant, the young geologist V.V. Nikitin, was a monograph entitled 'Bogoslovsky Mining District. Description of its Topography, Mineralogy, Geology, and Ore Deposits' (1901). A unique map of the district, consisting of 197 sheets, was also compiled.)

Here is what a member of E. Hoffman's expedition writes about the Voguls, 1850:

«The Vogul, living alone, in his solitary absences for trade, has become secretive, stubborn and distrustful of strangers: but whoever makes him want to serve him and treats him fairly and humanely, he will serve with complete devotion. He is not afraid of work, but does not seek it, if he can do without it. He is primarily a hunter, and winter is the time of his work and profit. At this time he becomes active and mobile. During the day, he tirelessly pursues with his dog some large animal until he overcomes it, then separates from it only such a part that he could feed on the following day, hides the rest and moves on. After some time, he returns home, transports the acquired prey on reindeer or, if there are none, on fat sleds, hands it over to his family so that they can prepare the meat for summer consumption, and the skin for barter, and sets off to hunt again. On the contrary, he likes to spend the summer in idleness; if the supplies he has made are not enough, then he goes with his wife and children to some river, where he has already brought a boat for such an occasion, and lives there on fish, birds, or whatever chance sends him. Here he considers his stomach the most reliable storehouse for supplies, and does not leave the camp until he has destroyed all the prey. He is stingy with words in general, but he is especially reluctant to talk about his catch, and not so much from superstition, which is not alien to even enlightened hunters, as from fear of being subjected to some bait, which he does not feel sufficiently strong to resist. Rarely does he express his pleasant mood or joy; and if sometimes vodka or tobacco move him to dance, then with a serious look he makes the most awkward grimaces, probably in imitation of a bear and other animals. One circumstance struck me about the Voguls: they never brought me absurd complaints about imaginary injustices that I had to help. Looking at Vogul's face, marked by a stubborn expression on his compressed lips and a gloomy look in his deep-set eyes, I was more likely to consider him capable of a fight than of complaining, and I had no doubt that if he missed the chance to stand up for himself personally, he would courageously harbor a grudge and not complain. "

How to raise captured foxes for sale:

"I saw for the first time the rearing of foxes - namely, three cubs, taken young from a burrow. Their red fur was more or less spotted with black. They were tied in front of the tent to a pole dug into the ground. Their collars were made of soft reindeer skin, so as not to tear their fur. Since they would have chewed through a rope, their tether consisted of a special kind of chain. Two long bones from a reindeer leg were tied together with a belt so that they formed a movable link. One of them was connected to the collar, the other was attached to the pole. These little foxes were usually fed with the remains of deer meat, but from time to time they were given mice or birds, which were killed specially for this purpose. According to the owners, the hair and feathers which the foxes swallowed were useful to them, but in general they were fed moderately and the closer the fatal January approached, the less food they got. The anxiety caused to them by hunger, according to the owners, contributed to the growth of wool. I was assured that wool is also why, if the foxes' legs are broken a few days before death, but this barbaric remedy is not used everywhere."

MP: Get the Mansi drunk and tell him to kill him. Will he kill him?

VA: No, that shouldn't happen, he just has a drinking binge on his mind.

MP: Lozva or the settlement of Lozvinsky?

VA: The settlement of Lozva still exists about 28 km north of Ivdel, on the road to Vizhay and Burmantovo. And the Lozvinskaya pier was there too. From our road, to the right, as you drive 1.5 km from Polunochnoye. That's the settlement of Lozva, it's the only one.

MP: Ah, that's where, according to V. Korotayev, the investigators and party leaders got drunk during the investigation. Of course, the Polunochnoye police station is nearby, L. Chudinov is the chief. He also interrogated witnesses. What is noteworthy is that all interrogations of L. Chudinov, which are in the case, contain oddities and contradictions. Maybe the village of Lozva is to blame?

Vasily Sambindalov with his wife Anna. Kholat-Syakhl.

VA: Vasily Sambindalov had a lot of deer, 300-400 heads. He hanged himself in the detention center of Sverdlovsk. He could not stand these cramped cells, confinement. The Mansi are freedom-loving people and for them prison is the end of life. Especially since he killed a man.

MP: How did it happen that he killed? After all, judging by the stories, the Mansi are a good-natured people.

VA: I know of several cases when the Mansi violated the friendship and killed. Yes, the Mansi are not an evil people, simple, good-natured, open. Anything can happen in life. But in relation to friends, they are loyal people.

***

Traveler and researcher of the Mansi way of life K.D. Nosilov speaks of this people as follows: "A strange people, a strange life, strange beliefs."

And a modern researcher admits: "To be honest, we can say with confidence that the world of the Mansi is at the same time a real cauldron of passions and a tangle of connections."

***

Why did the investigation somehow too quickly abandon the version of the local population's involvement in the death of the Dyatlov group? Several interrogation protocols in which the Mansi unanimously tell the investigation: we know nothing, we saw nothing, we were not there, we did not participate, we were not members, and in general, we have nothing to do with it. And this is said by hunters, from whose watchful eye no one and nothing can escape in the taiga, people who, at the very time when the students died, were near the scene of the tragedy. The investigation, in all likelihood, on orders from above, did not particularly focus on this issue, and the Kurikovs themselves and the other Mansi families subsequently unanimously renounced their words fellow tribesman: they don’t know anything about some Ostyaks. The Mansi even renounced their faith, denied that they continue to believe in spirits and perform cults!

It seems strange that people who grew up and live in the taiga, who know it well, who can see traces of animals and people that a city investigator would pass by and not notice, this time did not see or hear anything. I don’t believe it. The Mansi always keep an eye on strangers in the taiga who find themselves on their ancestral territory. And the rumor that several groups of hikers ended up in the taiga at once spread through all the nearby Mansi camps. All travelers of previous years were surprised at how news spread among the Mansi. In the travel reports and memories of hikers known to us, such seemingly random encounters with the Mansi were described. This suggests that the Mansi were watching the strangers. And the Dyatlovites were generally walking along a fresh Mansi ski track leading to pass. But in the diaries of the Dyatlov group there is no mention of a meeting with the Mansi, which is very, very strange. Was there such a meeting, did they talk about it in their diaries, there is a dictionary of Mansi words, but there are no records of a meeting with the Mansi. But according to the recollections of witnesses, the Mansi somewhere warned the group not to go to those places. Somewhere they should have met the Mansi in the Mansi region! I fully admit that the pages about the meeting with the Mansi were removed from the notebooks. After all, the guys could have simply described in the diaries both the warnings and the threats of the Mansi, and some kind of disturbing aftertaste left after the meeting. But the meeting might not have happened, if we follow the version of a ritual murder. The group was led, but no contact was made with it. And the group itself went where it was forbidden to go, went through places where no strangers had ever gone before. In fairness, it should be noted that maybe the Mansi did tell something investigation, because their fragmentary stories have reached our days: 'the spirits killed', 'the Ostyaks killed', 'it wasn't us who killed', 'we told them not to go there'. But such stories were not included in the Criminal Case.

Who among the locals was sure that the Dyatlov group was killed by the Khanty or Mansi? The first secretary of the Ivdel city party committee I.S.Prodanov, the pilot Karpushin, the police of the surrounding towns... A special place is occupied by the first secretary of the Ivdel city CPSU committee I.S.PRODANOV, a Bulgarian by nationality. He, the owner of the region, guessed what was going on, so he immediately pointed to the Mansi. But apparently, later, he received an order not to develop this version. Switch to the version "The girl left the tent to go to the toilet, got scared of something, ran downstairs and got lost. Hearing her scream, they ran out to look for her and also got lost", in short, "everyone froze". And when the "balls", that is, rockets, were flying apart, what Mansi are there? They were immediately forgotten, and now the investigation had to bring to the criminal case the evidence of searchers and the military about the flying balls, well, all this is top-top secret.

And you can't prove that the Mansi were involved. Maybe they weren't involved, I don't argue. However, there is nothing better than the spy version so far. And another important fact: the search for Dyatlov's group was led by Major General M.N. Shishkarev, the head of the Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs, which tacitly suggests that the criminal version was seriously considered. Murder.

M.N. Shishkarev

Note: Shishkarev Mikhail Nikolaevich, (born 1900, Moscow - died 1963, Sverdlovsk, major general, honored worker of the NKVD, order bearer, in state security since 1922.)

How did state security general M.N. Shishkarev suddenly become the head of the police department - UMVD for the Sverdlovsk region, if there were always hostile relations between the police and the KGB, and the appointment to the post of head of the police department was still considered a demotion for a state security general, explained Alexey Rakitin in his book 'Dyatlov Pass. Death on the Trail' this phenomenon is exemplified by the biography of another person - Lieutenant General Ivan Tkachenko, the USSR Government Commissioner for Control of the Special Facility Regime, namely Plant No. 817, Chelyabinsk-44, 'Mayak', where expedition participant G. Krivonischenko worked.

Journalist G. Grigoriev wrote in the first days of March 1959: "The city is filled with rumors about the death of students. The wives of officers who were there, on the search, came to the head of the commission. They begged the leaders to have their husbands write letters and send them by helicopter to make sure that their husbands were alive. Wherever you stop - in a canteen, in a hotel, on the street, in a store - you can hear people talking about it everywhere. Right now I hear a loud voice in the corridor: - Someone killed them. Maybe the Mansi on the Molebnaya Mountain? They found the Belgians in Antarctica, but they can't find them here."

Reading literature about the Mansi, I noticed that among the northern peoples almost every mountain is considered sacred, almost every mountain is associated with the legend of the flood, almost every mountain is forbidden to the Mansi, no matter what the mountain, 'don't go there'.

"In the distance, the silhouette of the forested dome of Mount Manya-Tump was visible. The old Mansi nodded in her direction and said:

- Long, long ago, you couldn't go to Gora Khodi... I became wary.

- Why?

- Whoever goes, will be sick for a long time and die...

- What happened there?

- Old people say - there was Pupi, Sorni Ekva, Zolotoy Baba...

The old man fell silent. It seemed to me - a mysterious silence had fallen in the taiga. The crackling of branches in the fire for some reason increased. I glanced sideways at the black silhouette of Mount Manya-Tump. A slight chill involuntarily ran through my body.

The old Mansi continued:

- Gora Khodi was terribly close. The old woman screamed loudly...

- How screamed?

- I don't know. People say - a terrible voice...

- Do they go to the mountain now?

- Those who are young went. They said, there is nothing at all...

- Let's go there, Pyotr Efimovich!

- No, don't go there. It would be a sin. I don't want to die...

I understood that it would be difficult to persuade the old man. Age-old superstition prevents him from overcoming his fear." (M. Zaplatin, 'On the Vanished Deity of the Voguls')

"- Where will you go next? - To Chistop.

- To Chistopka? Oh, don't go! Oh, what a bad mountain!" (M.Vladimirov, To the country of Yugra.)

«A mountain chain in general, without indicating either its size or its extent, is designated by the word urr (*); if its parts (spurs) have proper names, then these names then end in the word urr; for example, Khombu-urr, Gaget-urr, etc. A separate ridge or spur of the main range is called ner, and this word is always combined with the proper name of this ridge, for example, Oshe-ner, Kvot-ner, Pas-ner, etc. If its summit is inaccessible, at least according to the Ostyaks, then the word "yalping" (inaccessible) is added to the word "ner" and the names Nyays-yalping-ner and others come out. However, the Ostyak often omits the word yalping for the sake of brevity, using it only when he wants to describe such inaccessible mountains in more detail. Although in the Urals there are very rarely such peaks whose summits cannot be climbed, the Ostyak very often uses the word "yalping" even for such mountains that do not at all deserve this name. The superstition that the ascent to the summit of some of these yalping-ners must end in some accident contributes to exaggerating the difficulties of the ascent. »

Interesting fact: I found another case in the stories of 'how people fell from the mountain'. In the memoirs of the participants of the expedition of E. Hoffman, 1848. That is, people fell, according to the Mansi, from the mountains even when there were no tests of secret weapons and rockets did not fly over the slope.

«a long mountain with a jagged ridge and two peaks sticking out higher than the others; it is completely bare and covered with stone fragments. Snow patches lie on it only at a great distance from each other and at very different heights, and some even on the lower half. The Zyryans and Ostyaks have a belief that this mountain should not be climbed: if someone dares to do so, such a storm will arise that the daredevil will just fly into the abyss. In their opinion, in all the surrounding areas, winds constantly blow, which I, from my own experience, cannot refute. It must have been from these incessant winds that it received the name Tell Pos: in the Zyryan language it means Stormy Nest, according to my translator's interpretation: the Ostyak name means Likeness of a Woman. The origin of this name is explained in Strazhevsky's diary. "

The Mansi had many mountains where people died or fell.

"That day we had to make a very difficult journey through the forest. The road first runs along the left bank of the Vanger, between the river and the foot of high slopes consisting of slate and quartzite. Between these mountains, consisting of dark slates, a mountain stands out sharply, one third of the height of which is white. This mountain is called Khaseyem-Khama-pay, which means the rock where people died - the name given to the mountain after an ulcer that killed an entire Ostyak family who roamed at its foot."

"between the banks of the Vanger and a high ridge of mountains, between which one of the highest hills bears the name: Hasem-Gama-Pae, which, according to our translator, should mean: The rock where people died. It received this name because many Ostyaks once died of smallpox here."

The Mansi even commit suicide by falling from a mountain. I read about this before in various sources, but it's a pity that I didn't save the quotes, so far I've only found one, from the book by the Khanty writer Yuvan Shestalov 'The Secret of Sorni Nai':

"And yet one day the goddess was stolen. Semka, a Vogul from the neighboring yurts, once in winter, putting on homemade skis, said that he was going beaver hunting. Semka made his way through the windfalls for a long time and came to the shaman's dwelling in Yamnel-paul. He waited for the old man to come out and kidnapped Baba. A couple of days later, the shaman, not himself, showed up at night in Orontur-paul. He woke up the local Voguls, they put on their skis and went looking for the missing person.

They followed the tracks straight to Semka's yurt. Semka was not there. In the spring, when the snow melted, the body of the unfortunate man was found at the foot of the hill. It was obvious that Semka had been starving for a long time before he died. The Voguls guessed that some force had been leading him in circles through the forests. Even dying of hunger, he could not find his way home. He died a strange death. Something made the guy climb a high hill and throw himself down."

Isn't this what the Mansi meant when they spread rumors that hikers fell from the mountain? That is, the hikers died themselves, through their own fault. Or maybe the spirits punished me for doing something that was against the spirits.

Yes, every place is a monument to the dead, every mountain is forbidden to climb.

"Behind these mountains is a small chain of Morrai-Ura mountains, through which a passage can be made by way of communication between Europe and Asia. Beyond Morrai rises the Gos-Oiki mountain chain, ending in front of the southern spur of Ne-Pubi with a peak, in front of which lies a lake, the length and width of a rifle shot or so, and beyond this lake immediately rises the high cliff of Ne-Pubi. The ascent to it is associated with great difficulties, judging by the steepness of its slopes and by the unanimous opinion of those visiting this region: they all consider the ascent to be simply impossible. According to the Ostyaks, God himself forbade climbing it. In their language, Ne-Pubi means: a woman's dummy (Ne-woman, Pubi-statue, doll), and among them there is a legend about this mountain that it is the wife of a pious husband, whom God turned into stone for disobedience to her husband. Alexey expressed the following opinion about it, perhaps in justification of his laziness to climb it: "You go to a large stone church, and therefore we can probably climb this mountain, but we and everyone who goes to a small village church will certainly be punished for just one attempt to do so."»

“Our guide designated this stream with a long name, Mudaen-Es-Iozhem-Ioganna, which literally means: "Stream of Mudaen traps". Mudaen was the name of an Ostyak who set traps for animals in this place. But since I never heard this stream called by that name later, I think that our guide named it that way because of a circumstance known to him, just as he had always called the stream we had just crossed "The Stream of the Drowned Deer."

I would like to add information to the version of 'debunking' the myths about the death of the nine Mansi, about floods and other rumors, where they came from and how they gave the names to the area.

In 1847, 1848, 1850, scientists from the Imperial Geographical Society explored the Northern Urals: mining engineer, colonel and professor of mineralogy and geology at St. Petersburg University Ernst Hoffmann, master, astronomer Marian Kowalski and mining engineer Major Nikifor Strazhevsky, naturalist and amateur artist Fyodor Brant, known for his journey across Siberia in the expedition of A. Middendorf in 1842-1845; topographers V.G. Bragin and D.F. Yuryev; paramedic from Cherdyn Chigirinsky... Thanks to them, a significant northern part of Russia was studied, a map was compiled covering the territory from the city of Cherdyn in the south to the coast of Baydaratskaya Bay and Pay-Hoy in the north.

The detachment visited a number of high mountains (Landhusep (Otorten), Yalpingner (Prayer Stone), Isherim), determining their heights and coordinates (A detailed 'Diary of Strazhevsky' about the route of his detachment along the Urals is attached to the second volume of the expedition's works).

Due to the anthrax epizootic, a trip to the Northern Urals in 1849 turned out to be impossible, and it was only possible to carry it out in 1850.

(By the way, an anthrax epidemic broke out in the very center of Sverdlovsk in 1979, according to the fault of the local administration and security agencies. But the Soviet government tried to hide this fact, did not bother to protect people. There were victims among the civilian population. Elena Kolevatova wrote to me about this case in a letter, she was among those who fell ill, but recovered.)

The results of the expedition are presented in the two-volume work of Hoffman and Kovalsky, as well as in the work of the topographer Yuryev.

“The thermometer showed +2 all the time, the deer began to fall heavily during the bad weather. The major ordered to drive the herd from place to place, so that healthy ones would not get infected near the fallen deer. But this did not help, near the deer lying everywhere, missing and even already dressed, calves lie or run, looking for mothers. Or the latter near their calves and soon the infected themselves immediately fall. Just drive the herd, which has lain in one place for about an hour, to another place, 5-6 deer will not get up. The first days of death, our guides, Ostyaks and Samoyeds, not only removed the skins, but greedily ate the meat. Foreseeing the strong infectiousness of this, we forbade them not only to eat meat, but also to cut up dead deer, but they could not refrain from it. They continued their conversation stealthily or at night, reasoning, "Where has it been heard that a man would die from a deer disease?" Even when two Samoyeds became seriously ill, this could not restrain them. However, one cannot be surprised at their ignorance, for such an ulcer is only encountered for the first time among them, and they are accustomed to act in this way in ordinary cases of minor death of deer from pain in the hooves and other non-malignant diseases. It is disgusting and at the same time pitiful to look at the greed with which they, moving from one dead deer to another, eat the parts that are tasty to their taste. And their women sit for whole days behind the butchered deer, like animals, doing their usual work, pulling out sinews for thread with their teeth, and without any disgust, not caring when the deer died.... The superstitious Ostyaks and Samoyeds reasoned in their own way that 'this is probably such a lost place, here in this very place there must have been a tent. The old men said that if the tent was put back in the old place, then disaster would be inevitable. This is true.' In disgust at further disaster, they said that 'It is absolutely necessary to slaughter a healthy white deer as a sacrifice to God. Then fumigate the herd with its wool.

We were just waiting for the weather to calm down a bit, so that we could move from this truly lost place. It rained heavily during the night. In the morning the shepherds told us that 'there are few living deer left, if you don't believe me, see for yourself'. And indeed, there was a terrible death of deer during the night. The Ostyaks themselves in the tents also died almost half, or were severely ill. The epidemic was moving quite quickly from the south to the north, towards us, and it is remarkable that as we approached the North, it acted much weaker and slower, as can be seen from the following information.... Riding closer and closer to the aforementioned tents, the Ostyaks began to discern that the herd that had delighted them from afar was a motionless field of deer corpses. All hope disappeared, they guessed that the plague was raging here too, and probably to a strong degree, that the Ostyaks had already stopped even skinning. ....Across the area, strewn everywhere with dead deer, more than two thousand, they said that the air was heavy, that it was unbearable to walk against the wind. The Ostyaks did not even know how many people were still alive to the south of them in the Urals, because without reindeer they had no communication with each other. Mortality was high among them, if not half, then at least a third of them died from the ulcer.

A sign of infection among people was a sore on the face, soon the face began to swell. Whoever was destined to become a victim of the ulcer, the head swelled to such an extent that the place of the eyes, nose, etc. was not visible. With the spread of the tumor lower to the throat and chest, the person immediately died of severe suffocation. The Ostyaks themselves contributed to the spread of infection among people with their ignorant, wild and selfless life, eating dead reindeer. Old men, accompanied by small children, armed with their primitive flintlocks, walked around the area and shot sick deer, skinned dead and killed animals, despite the insignificant value of these skins at that time. Small children had to drag these skins to the tents, where they were hung in the sun. The tents were surrounded by a whole town of stands with drying skins. All these skins will be tanned and then dispersed to different corners of our North. What is surprising after this in the private horse deaths all over the Pechora right up to the Pechora-Kama portage. Two or three years before that, such an epidemic raged in the mountains of the upper Patek that the herds grazing here died to the last head. "

The deer death occurred in the upper reaches of the Pechora, Lozva, Vishera. On the Podcherema River, which is 120-150 km above Lozva. And this is also the Northern Urals.

The epidemic went from south to north. Yes, in the life of the Mansi, there were many epidemics in the Urals. It spreads quickly, you can read about it in the diary of Nikifor Strazhevsky. And on Kholat-Syakhl, among other places, many deer died. The place where the deer died, that's what this name most likely means, including, of course, the reindeer herders themselves. And after the death of the group, they began to talk about the curse of the place, as the place where the Mansi died, inventing a myth about the number 9, which in fact does not carry any sacred meaning in the mythology of the Mansi, neither negative nor positive. Both the Khanty and the Mansi have different meanings for the word death for humans and the rest of the world - animals and plants. Khals 'to die, to perish' - about the animal and plant world; ampal khals 'the dog died', torn khals 'the grass withered, died'. The Khanty do not use the word khals in relation to humans. The Synsky Khanty, speaking about deceased enemies, strangers, non-relatives, used the word: Khala (khola) 'dead man', 'deceased'.

March 11, 1959 Aleksey Chernyshev's testimony, interrogated by investigator Ivanov

"Question: Was it possible, in these specific conditions, for someone to approach the tent without leaving traces, in particular, do the Mansi leave traces?

Answer: If the Mansi had approached there on their skis, there would have been no traces. Their skis do not leave traces. The slope above the tent is bare.

Question: Do you admit the idea of ​​the Mansi attacking the group?

Answer: I do not admit this idea. Over many years, I do not know of a single case of Mansi attacking people. Due to the nature of my work, I had to meet with the Mansi all the time in a variety of conditions, I had to talk with them about hunting and life. They always willingly answer, they are a hospitable people. They cooperate with us, help to detain escaped prisoners. They do not show hostility towards us. I do not know what religious holidays the Mansi celebrate and when, but in the area I have not heard of any sacred places near Mount 1079. "

I also asked a question about the version of the Mansi involvement to the former searcher-student S.A. Tipikin: "Have you talked about the version of the murder of the group by the local population - the Mansi people or some Ostyaks?"

Answer S.A. Tipikina: "Before the start of the search expedition, the UPI trade union committee held a briefing for the participants (led by Maslennikov). It was immediately said that little was known about the Otorten area, none of the Sverdlovsk hikers had been there. Then the conversation turned to remote forest tracts and swamps, where even animals die, about the Mansi and their religious rituals, about the dangers from prisoners. We were warned that these were most likely myths, but we should be attentive and careful."

Vadim Chernobrov quoted a participant in the search for V. Karelin in one of his publications ("Phantom" 8, 2003, "Ancient Gods Demand Victims"): "In the first days of the investigation, Ivanov said only one thing: 'The students did not die a natural death, it was murder.' We kept telling him about 'fireballs'. But he was adamant. And so he tried to get this idea into the protocols. And he achieved this.

About 10 days after the start of the investigation, Ivanov was recalled to Sverdlovsk, and then sent to Moscow for several days. And when he returned, we did not recognize him. This was a completely different investigator, who no longer said anything about the murder or the 'balls'. And he often began to advise us one thing: 'Keep your tongues to yourself...' V. Karelin was referring to the protocol of his interrogation from April 15, 1959, where he voiced the idea suggested to him by the investigator: '... in principle, only an armed group of at least 10 people could have frightened Dyatlov's group, although no evidence of the presence of strangers was found at the scene of the incident.'

"Crime lovers repeat the opinion recorded in the protocol of Vladislav Karelin, a participant in the search for the missing group, that only an armed group of at least ten people could have frightened Dyatlov's group so much, to the point of panic. We met with Vladislav Georgievich more than once. He recalls that this entry appeared as a result of persistent leading questions from investigator L. Ivanov, who at the beginning of the investigation was developing a version of revenge on hikers by local Mansi for invading their sacred places. The version was soon discarded as absurd, but the phrase remained..." (R. Pechurkina, "The Secret of the Mountain Pass")

I would like to object to the respected Rimma Pechurkina. Not lovers of crime, but people who consider the death of the Dyatlov group as a crime, as a murder.

In contrast to the 'space', 'rocket' and other versions popular among the technical intelligentsia, navigator G.A. Karpushin, who is participating in the search for the missing group, has his own version of the death of the Dyatlov group.

"I have flown in those places before," he told the correspondent of 'AiF-Ural', "my version was formed on this basis. The fact is that I have repeatedly heard from local hunters about the existence of idols in these places.

I heard that in the forest, in hidden places, there were wooden figures to which the Voguls (Mansi) worshiped, made offerings in the form of furs, money, smeared their lips with bear fat. The destruction of these temples entailed death. I still remember the incident that occurred in the area of ​​​​Mount Narodnaya - geographically it is close to those places. There, geologists were developing rock crystal. They were helped in this by workers - unescorted prisoners. Once four of these prisoners plundered one of these idols. They were all shot by the Voguls.

And in the area of ​​the Dyatlov Pass there is a small mountain - the volcano Hoy-Ekva. There in August 1949, while surveying the area from the air, we noticed a simply huge number of Mansi on reindeer sleds, who had come here from the surrounding villages. Remembering the stories I heard earlier, I assume that this is where the pagan temple is located.

Apparently, the Mansi, seeing that the hikers had climbed close enough to the sacred places, decided to scare them. After the students left the tent in panic, the rest was done by the cold and the fractures the boys sustained while running down the mountain in panic...” (Aleksander Arkhipov, "AiF-Ural" 2,3, 2004)

In Maslennikov's recently published notebook there is a mysterious entry:

"February 6-7, upper reaches of the Lozva, traces of narrow skis. Snowstorm February 12-15."

But this is a brick in the so-called version of the opening of the case on 'February 6', 'the day when nothing happened', as A. Rakitin said. Evidence of which is also the interrogation protocol of the head of the Vizhaysky communications center V. Popov.

The tracks of narrow skis - these are 'white people' who passed by, not Mansi and not local Russians, but city people, strangers.

From somewhere Maslennikov learned the exact date and noted in his notebook the testimony of an unknown person, in all likelihood, the Mansi Aleksey Alekseevich Anyamov, who saw these tracks. And maybe even the shaman K. Sheshkin himself. The Mansi walked in that area from the end of January to the end of February. They saw the tracks on February 6. They saw them and did not follow the tracks, do you know who passed by in that remote uninhabited place? Surprising lack of curiosity on the part of the Mansi. Vladimir Korotayev mentioned that the Mansi said during interrogations: "WE DIDN'T KILL." The Mansi knew that a murder had been committed and probably had their own thoughts about who killed. But they told the investigation that they were in the area of ​​the tragedy on February 6-7 and noticed traces of 'narrow skis'. It is not even the fact that traces of narrow skis were preserved that is important, but the fact that the Mansi were in the area of ​​the tragedy on February 6.

'Shamanism is harder than chopping wood,' one shaman told a young ethnographer. It is not a gift, but a heavy burden. The shamanic ritual itself resembles a hysterical fit. And based on the Christian worldview, shamanism is a person's obsession, an illness, a connection with demonic forces. And it is scary to imagine what demons can inspire. Speaking about the shamans of the Mansi and Khanty, it is necessary to note that shamans are divided into several types and are named according to their 'specialization'. For example, nayt is a sorcerer, tarten-hoy is a sage, a fortune teller, sem-voyan-kho is a contemplator... Shamanism among the Mansi and Khanty retained the features of family shamanism. We know this from the shamans of the Kurikov clan. Little is known about the shamans of the Anyamov clan, but there was nepotism there too. The Sheshkins and Sambindalovs too. The Bakhtiyarovs, I think, did not avoid shamans in their clan, but nothing is known about them at all. Also, each head of the family performed the duties of a kind of family shaman when performing home cults. In a word, everyone could shaman. They differed only in specialization and personal shamanic 'power'. Z.P. Sokolova gives information about three groups of Mansi shamans: potrtan-pupy or valtakhten-pupy - shamanizing with a musical instrument; koipynnyayt - shamanizing with a tambourine; penge-hum - fortune tellers with an axe.

The Mansi and Khanty believe that every object, plant, tree has a certain spirit. The fly agaric mushroom therefore helps the shaman to enter with the spirits, has an intoxicating effect, because the intoxicating spirit itself sits in the fly agaric. The shaman - pankal-hu (pankal means fly agaric) soaked the fly agaric in warm water and drank the infusion, which has a soporific and intoxicating effect. Those present gathered and listened to what the shaman said in a dream, it was believed that in this way he prophesied.

The main forest spirit is called Vont-lung and influences the results of the trade. If you had a dream in the forest, then it was believed that Vont-lung was thinking in you. In the habitat of the forest spirit, near the most visible tree, because the spirit lives in it, hunters must put several coins or a handkerchief. (I remember a cedar tree, near which coins and handkerchiefs were found). The spirits of harmless animals, fish and birds are considered neutral to humans, so they are often not personified. But the Anyamov family, for example, has its own patron spirit that lives in the pike. The spirit of the pike is translated as Sart-khuring-aki. The Khanty do not consider the pike to be a fish, because they believe that another spirit, the main water spirit, Ves, enters it. 'They used to sacrifice a rooster to him. And when there was no rooster, they said that a Russian baby should be stolen and sacrificed. - Uncle Roma looked at us expectantly. - Well, that was a long time ago, they don't do that now.' (A. Stesin, "Forest People")

The forest also had such a spirit - a child who died early, sometimes it took the form of a bear cub. The spirit appeared to those who were soon to die. People were very afraid to see it.

Many spirits in the forest live in a cedar, the top of which diverges into seven branches. Or in some other tree that differs from the others in some unusual way. If you harm such a tree, the spirit can take revenge on the offender. Such a tree must be appeased, gifts must be given to it.

If a caught lizard left its tail in a person's hands, it was believed that the lizard's spirit had transmitted some disease to the person. In this case, they resorted to a certain shaman. If the shaman could not drive out this disease, then the person had to go to the cemetery and lie down among the graves of relatives, pretending to be dead. Then the evil spirit would leave the person, considering everyone dead

Somewhere in the sky lived the main god of all spirits - Torum. He was presented in the form of an ancient gray-haired old man. Torum created the earth, nature, people and all living things. Having created man and nature, he himself withdrew from observation and instructed numerous spirits to watch over his creations, to the emergence of which he had nothing to do. There is a document from the Tobolsk consistory for 1778, when a Khanty was brought to court for neglecting icons. In his defense, the Khanty replied that a raven had flown to him and said that the one God was unable to give him prey, and that different spirits had to be worshiped.

The Khanty had an interesting belief. It was believed that the elk was very curious about musical sounds, and would come close to the source of the sound, so they hunted elk with a tambourine. And at the sacred cedar, every novice fisherman left a sacred hammer he had made, the end of the hammer being made in the form of an elk's head. It was believed that the spirit hammered the stakes of the locks placed on the river at night. The elk skin was placed at an inclined tree as a sacrifice to the forest spirit.

The Khanty called the constellation Ursa Major Elk. According to legend, Torum created an eight-legged elk, and the hunters could not catch up with it. Then Torum's son cut off four legs of the elk so that people could catch up with the elk.

If same-sex twins were born, one of them had to die, because at birth they were given one 'lil' - soul. If opposite-sex twins were born, they could live with one soul for two.

Some Khanty had a custom of making cuts in the clothes of the deceased, namely at the ends of the sleeves and trousers, showing the deceased that the soul-lil had come and would not return, do not bother us either, you died and well, do not come back. The attitude towards the dead was twofold: they were feared, but they were also cared for and respected. A dead person who had not yet been buried was considered dangerous. The dead person's hands and feet were tied so that he could not walk. And they were untied just before the burial. The Khanty sometimes wrapped the dead in reindeer or elk skins.

'A shaman needs a magic drum. Ordinary speech does not reach the ears of the gods.' How a shaman's drum is made. The future shaman asked one of the oldest men to make a drum (if those around him recognized his right to be a shaman. And it was also believed that otherworldly spirits themselves choose who will be a shaman and indicate this to people. In a dream, a deceased shaman appeared to the candidate and ordered 'Start shamanizing!' And along with the shaman, a cloud of different spirits appeared and forced the chosen one to shamanize. Well, and the transfer of the shamanic gift by inheritance in one family). The appointed one had to go alone into the forest, find the right tree - cedar, spruce or larch, whose upper branches would resemble deer antlers in shape. At his height, he had to cut a branch for the drum frame. It was desirable to take a branch from the eastern side, but it is also possible from the southern and northern. In no case from the western one. Because evil spirits live in the west. This tree, after its branch was taken, was considered sacred, it had to continue to grow. If the branch cracked, the future shaman was told that it was too early for him to practice shamanism, and that he had to wait another year before making a drum.

Shaman's drum, brought by one of the expeditions of the scientist Z.P. Sokolova.

The same master also made a beater for the tambourine, which was made of birch in the form of a slightly curved blade, and was 30 cm long. The skin for the tambourine was elk or dog. Shamanic mittens were sometimes made from bear paws with claws.

'A shaman needs a magic drum. Ordinary speech does not reach the ears of the gods. When the drum was made, a three-day celebration of its 'revival' took place. At the celebration, anyone could take the drum and play it, this was welcomed. Sometimes the celebration was not held and the new drum was given to the shaman on the day of his first kamlaniye. Kamlaniye is the shaman's frantic dancing and singing to the drum, the clatter of all the shaman's iron pendants. It is believed that communication with the spirits goes in two ways: either the spirits enter the shaman's body or his drum, or the shaman's soul is carried away on a journey to the spirits, and then to Torum himself. If the drum broke down, a new one was made. The shaman took the old drum into the forest and hung it on a tree of his choice. All the pendants were removed from the drum and transferred to the new drum. When the shaman died, his drum was also hung on a tree of his choice in the forest. And under the influence of the wind, it could make certain sounds for a long time. In general, the drum was not considered a sacred object, it was easily sold to strangers. Shamans also played the dombra. To establish contact with the spirit, the shaman ate a dried fly agaric and began to beat the heated drum. If during the shaman's shamanic ritual the pendants fell off the clothes, it was believed that someone present would die. Also, a dog barking during the shamanic ritual was considered a bad sign. The dog is a special animal among the Ostyaks, secrets were not told in front of it, it was believed that it understood everything. The snake, the shaman's assistant spirit, had a special meaning in the shamanic ritual. Some shamans had the upper part of their clothes (skin or cloak) hung with many bundles of different sizes, which symbolized snakes.

If the shaman was not thanked for his services with gifts, it was believed that his shamanic power would disappear. Some Khanty gave the shaman several coins, according to the number of spirits under his control. If the shaman deceived people, he himself would soon fall ill, the Khanty believed. Great shamans sometimes did not take gifts, but sucked warm blood during sacrifices. Sometimes the shamans themselves determined the payment due to them. They asked to make a blood sacrifice (as researchers say, to slaughter a deer or a horse. But I doubt that the matter was limited to animals. I came across a mention that once a child was appointed as a victim). When the shaman had a premonition of his death, he went to die secretly in the forest. The rest were buried in an ordinary cemetery. Although in the case of shaman burials, the rites and methods of burial at all times were different, both among the Mansi and the Khanty.

Long hair (braids) was considered one of the signs of beauty for both women and men. And they decorated them with braids. It is no coincidence that almost all Khanty and Mansi deities have braids. Hair was not only a symbol of beauty, but also the center of a person's spiritual strength; in the Ugric culture, there are a number of prohibitions associated with hair. Now the Mansi do not wear braids. But there are descriptions of braids. Braid decoration 'siv-syokh', a strip of dark fabric about 9 cm wide, the length varies, with pendants and garters sewn on the ends. This decoration is female, but shamans often used elements of women's clothing in their cults. I did not find an image of it. But I left it as a note to compare with the same belt with lanyards (lanyards-tassels or woven decorations), which B. Slobtsov saw near the cedar. I also came across a reference in literature that in one of the shaman's chests, among various shaman's things, there was a checkered handkerchief and again a cloth belt 81 cm long with a lanyard at the end. When they opened the lanyard, they found river pebbles in it. Shamans used such pebbles in shamanic rituals if they found them in the entrails of an elk they had hunted.

Excerpts from the memoirs of Viktor Maltsev

"Excerpts from a letter dated September 6, 1978, in which Viktor Maltsev describes a sacrificial ritual of the Lozvin Mansi that he managed to observe: "... several birches were cut down. They were used to make a crossbar and put it behind the sleds. All the branches and leaves were preserved on the birches. The area here is treeless and they went for these birches the day before. The Mansi consider cedar to be sacred, it is used in such cases. But in the mountains, where cedar is not found, a young clean birch is also suitable for this purpose. Gods taken from chests and suitcases were seated and hung on the sleds and crossbar. One of them is attached to the trunk."

"... Here they prayed. I saw how they nodded their heads, froze ... and then turned over their right shoulders. They prayed for the first time. They brought an axe. Nikolay handed the reins of his deer to another Mansi, and the axe was handed to him... Silence... A swing, and the body of the unfortunate animal falls silently. A couple of minutes later the second one was killed. They fiddled with them for a long time. The informant said,"

"that they try to make sure the deer falls only on its right side. After the axe blow, a "shohr" - a narrow knife - was thrust into the heart of each deer, and the wound site was cut crosswise. The blood from the wounds was smeared on the notches on the birches on which the gods hung (the gods themselves are not soiled). The deer are lying down. I see one of them kicking its leg. The worshipers again lined up in the same order. Everything was repeated - nods, bows, freezes and a turn over the right shoulder. The worshipers approached the gods and sprinkled them with vodka. The gods were put away in boxes and suitcases, covered with cloth. After that, the feast began. They came to "wake me up." I happily "woke up" and took direct part in the general drunken brawl. The skins were removed, the carcasses were chopped up and torn into pieces. The Mansi were all covered in blood, greedily eating raw meat, which they immediately sliced ​​with knives and simply tore with their hands. Drunk, they were impudent and intrusive. It all ended late in the evening. The next day it all happened again. The Pelikoffs brought the sacrifices. They killed five deer."

I don't think I need to remind anyone that all the Dyatlov group's injuries were on the right side.

VA: It's all true about the spine and the sacrifice. Viktor writes correctly, they get drunk and everyone loses their human appearance. Timofey Nikolaevich, Nikolay Pelikov's syl, himself gorged himself on vodka at the bear festival and died. He is Nikolay Pelikov's father, they named him after his grandfather. And the grandfather froze near the container shop and was found only in the spring of the following year, he loved his grandson Nikolay very much, and he got married, and the grandfather immediately got bored and left specifically to freeze.

Shchokhran-oyka knife. The blade is made from one half of scissors.

The Khanty and Mansi had a ban on leaving body prints in the snow, stabbing their own shadows with sharp objects, since the shadow and the print are parts of the appearance, the body. It is known that any part is connected to the whole, therefore, if the print melts in the spring, then the body itself will get sick or disappear completely. The investigation 'did not find' traces of strangers on the slope. The Mansi know how not to leave their traces. Skis and objects leave traces, but not the Mansi.

It is noteworthy that some Khanty used to be very negative about photography. It was believed that the soul of the person himself passes into the photograph.

About traces of blood. Where could it go? One chronicle source reports that the Obdorsk prince Gyndin ordered his brother to deal with the enemy: 'Where you see the Lyapin prince Semyon, lift him up on spears, and do not let his blood fall on the floor, put him to death there.' Why the Ostyaks demanded that blood not be spilled, I still have not found out. I admit that they burned bloody clothes in the fire. Bloody snow could also be melted. And during the sacrifices, not a single drop of blood was allowed to spill on the ground! The blood was sucked out of the sacrificial animal while it was still flowing from the body of the half-dead animal, and bowls were put out to collect the blood.

The Ostyaks were accustomed to respecting other people's property; therefore, theft and fraud are extremely rare among them. (Dunin-Gorkavich A.A.) Voronezh historian D. Baranov also noted this feature of the Ostyaks and Voguls, led by spiritual leaders - shamans, namely, 'they did not take anything, because they did not use anything that came from the civilization of the Russians, the refusal of their "fruits". There is another version of why not a single thing was taken from the tent: the mountain was considered a refuge for spirits, what was on the mountain, namely the tent and the things in it, belonged to the spirits. No one from the Mansi would dare to take anything from them.

'... Merecheniya'. Have you heard of such a phenomenon? An ancient way of shamans to influence the mass consciousness. During 'mirecene' people lose control over their actions, are prone to collective suicide, do not feel pain, are able to read other people's thoughts, predict the future and, most importantly, can cause natural disasters - storms, hurricanes, thunderstorms, the appearance of giant ball lightning in winter. (A. Petrushin, 'Kazym Madonna')

I must note that, despite numerous ethnographic expeditions and studies, little is known about the cult holidays of the Mansi, and many cults, especially those that used human sacrifices, are completely unknown. The Mansi tried not to tell even their friends about them. It is their secret. And sometimes we hear vague and fragmentary stories about this or that fact.

"Excerpts from a letter from Viktor Maltsev sent in mid-August 1991: .. I really took possession of the sacred objects. A year before that, the reindeer herders told me about them: they were prepared for burning, so that they would not fall into the hands of the "Russians", "representatives", since the owner of the things was shot by them before the war, no one is allowed to use the things, according to custom, many are not even allowed to touch them. Hatred for the "representatives" has never died and will not die for a long time. I became the heir not as a "Russian representative", but simply as a person accepted by them as one of their own.

P.S. Menkv, by the way, is also a secret: Legends are not subject to disclosure to "non-humans" in order to avoid revenge from the forest spirits."

'In the culture of every people there are concepts of both beauty and sexual modesty. In the Khanty environment, it was considered necessary to conceal any physiological act. Women usually carefully concealed the onset of pregnancy, and often even the husband did not know about the woman's condition until she had to "tekhalna omsas" ("sit in the nest") - go into the house for the woman in labor. There were also special women's and men's toilets. Early travelers were perplexed by the fact that Ostyak women could freely breastfeed in the presence of men, while the woman's face and head were constantly covered. G. Startsev noted that a woman who does not cover her face shows an unfriendly attitude towards a man, harbors hostility towards him, from which he is threatened with death. A man purified himself only after drinking beaver stream or biting a bear's tooth. The tradition of "avoidance" was so strong that it led to funny incidents. One such incident is described by Z. P. Sokolova: an old woman of 60-70 years old, having met her son-in-law and not having a headscarf with her, covered her head and face with the hem of her dress, although she had no underwear on.

A man cannot show his genital organ to the Sun and Fire - female deities. A man does not bathe, does not go to the bathhouse or to the toilet with his father-in-law and his wife's older brothers. The male genital organ is called "Mun", it corresponds to the active principle, for which the Khanty use the colloquial term "sokha" ("partridge"), associating the movements of the male genital organ with the rapid takeoff of a bird; The female genitals are associated with a receptacle, a limited space that carries a threat, and are called "potlam hot" - "black house", associated with the "black" house (chum), used for shamanic rites. The Khanty call sexual intercourse "nun lelyakhl" - "the female genital organ eats, walks"; coitus is called similarly by the Mansi: "tai khatey" - "they eat each other". The association of copulation with food intake is most likely due to the fact that both acts are aimed at the continuation of life: without food, a person dies, without "feeding" the female genital organ, reproduction of the race does not occur. Another similarity is that just as the food eaten becomes part of the person himself, so in sexual intercourse a woman becomes part of a man. During copulation, the number of souls becomes equal to nine (five male souls plus four female souls); nine is a number that signifies completeness, when the masculine and feminine principles are interpreted as complementary rather than conflicting. In general, the courtship ritual was quite developed, and the matchmaking itself among the Mansi was called "ne hai talanekhtsum" - "I will run around the girl".

A canopy with a high semantic status was stretched for each married couple at night. The canopy ("ho-shap") contributed to the creation of an individual world of the married couple; brought to the wedding, it accompanied the man and woman throughout their lives. At night, it separated the world of the spouses from the world of the large family. M. Shatilov mentions a case when the newlyweds were divorced on the grounds that the husband violated marital fidelity or, as the Ostyaks said, "violated someone else's canopy".

However, there are also moments when the violation of established sexual norms becomes an obligatory component of the general ritual. This is most clearly demonstrated in traditional bear dances. During the festival, the rules of sexual modesty are abolished - not only is the act of copulation between deities or forest spirits simulated, but the sexual abilities of those present are also freely discussed. An obligatory ritual before the start of the dance was considered to be sprinkling water or throwing snow on all the participants. The staff ("suv"), traditionally present among the attributes of the deities coming to the dance, is constantly transformed into a phallus during the acting out of scenes. Inversion of sexuality is also traditional for this festival - men play female roles, and dressing men in women's clothing is widespread. (E.V. Perevalova. Erotica in the Culture of the Khanty.)

I will note that the sacred rite of eating bear meat at the festival is strictly observed so that the killed bear is reborn again. There is another reason for the spread and preservation of the ritual of the bear festival in our days: the variety of food - because the usual everyday fish and poultry are replaced for the duration of the festival with rare delicacy bear meat.

Capercaillie - the guardian of sleep in the beliefs of the Khanty and Mansi.

Having said about the investigation of the Dyatlov group tragedy that it is almost hopeless to find and prove the cause of the group's death, I personally proceed from my feelings and impressions. In the narrow circle of 'criminologists' that has formed, we continue to assert that a murder took place in the group. But who killed - here our opinions differ. The most difficult thing in this dark case is that all the ends have been cleaned up, the tracks have been trampled, the investigation did not intend to particularly find out the causes of the group's death, taking the path of least resistance, even hiding and falsifying evidence, this must be honestly admitted. And they were under pressure from higher authorities. In general, it is not worth relying entirely on the Criminal Case known to us, no matter how much they try to convince us otherwise. This criminal case should be taken into account as a surviving document of the era, hiding traces of evidence and facts carefully hidden by the investigator, but now and then suddenly emerging.

I am not so self-confident as to insist on the version of a ritual murder. It could have been non-ritual. The Mansi could have not been killed. But I would also like to note that the statement 'they could not have killed the Mansi' has no basis. Police investigator G. Lesnykh said it well: there is no such evidence for the investigation 'this person could not have killed!' (Prosecutor's cases. Part one. Interview with police investigator Georgy Lesnykh). Students who passed through the Mansi yurts were almost always greeted and seen off kindly. What can students know about the Mansi if they are only passers-by? What can the Ivdel guard know about the Mansi, if their relations with the Mansi are limited to catching escaped prisoners, whom the Mansi often mercilessly froze so that the prisoners would not escape. Or they would kill them right away. The Mansi do not reveal their secrets to strangers. They would rather unanimously deny that they know anything. Or pretend not to see or hear anything.

'It seems that hospitality is inherent in all the inhabitants of these places, both Russians and Mansi. As one of my acquaintances, who happened to live with the Evens, said, in the north, man is more a brother to man than a wolf; a guest is always sincerely welcome. Which in no way cancels out the extreme wariness and constant reticence, a clear division into friends and foes: they treat you with whatever God sent, give you the last of their possessions, but at the same time are ready to grab a gun at any moment.' (A. Stesin, "Forest People")

In the meantime, I continue to consider the question 'Could they have killed the Mansi?'

They could! And I can show this with facts, using the materials of the criminal case and ethnographic research. There are many of these facts, much more than the missile version, avalanche, cleanup, involvement of the military, elk, deer, yeti and other alien intelligence. I will even say that there are no facts at all for all the above-listed versions. But there are facts for the version of the Mansi involvement. You just need to be able to see them.

To be continued.