On January 12, a special investigative-operational group of employees of the TFR, police and rescuers went to the infamous Dyatlov Pass in the Northern Urals. On January 8, a group of tourists killed a 50-year-old man in a tent near the place where nine skiers from the Dyatlov group died under mysterious circumstances in February 1959. Yury Kuntsevich, head of the Dyatlov Group Memory Foundation and one of the leaders of the boy scout movement in the Urals, shared his versions of the recent incident and events half a century ago with Lenta.ru.
"Lenta.ru": Who and why went on a winter hike in the Northern Urals alone? Or is it necessary to look for his comrades next to the deceased?
A frame from the film "The Death of the Dyatlov Group" (from the series "Dark Matter")
I think it might have been some scorcher on a snowmobile. The equipment failed, and the man was trapped in the snow. A tourist who has skis and appropriate equipment will not die like that. And there are a lot of cheaters. They act alone, relying on the power of technology. Ride around the suburbs on weekends. They dream of defeating everyone.
A snowmobile expedition will start soon, the participants of which plan to reach the Arctic Ocean by passing through the Dyatlov Pass. Could it be one of the organizers?
No. This project is being carried out by an experienced tourist and a connoisseur of technology Konstantin Kuznetsov. But he will wait until March, when the snow settles. Now snowmobiles get stuck in loose snow. He knows it and wouldn't risk it.
And what are the weather conditions at the pass now?
At the top, on the pass itself, the snow is quite dense. You can go without skis. But there the wind is 30 meters per second. Very difficult conditions. You need to have special shoes, ice axes. In this case, ours would immediately go down into the forest and sit there. There is a lot of snow, no wind. A fire would be lit, the stove would be lit. Dried out. Ours do not have such a hatred to go through at all costs and conquer ...
Does the weather change quickly there?
Literally in an hour. The wind picks up and visibility is lost. Ground is coming. She cuts the face, open areas of the body freeze instantly. You need special equipment. Thoughtful. The same masks that warm the breath. Freeze mass. And the deceased person, it seems, did not have any of this.
What do you know about the group that found the frozen tourist? Do you need to worry about them?
The guys from this group told me about the upcoming expedition. They are from Perm - the Meridian club, it seems. These are serious people, not some teenagers. They have a well-coordinated team, good training. You don't have to worry about them. By the way, my group was already at the pass in early January, and everyone returned safely.
The tourists themselves could not take the body out of the pass?
They will not touch him, because everyone knows that this can only be done after the investigation team has examined the scene of the incident. Otherwise, you can screw up, as happened in the case of members of the Dyatlov expedition in 1959, when 30 search engines came to the place of their death and trampled everything there.
Are there many tourists striving for the ill-fated pass?
So many. Recently there were groups from Ufa, Chelyabinsk, three from Yekaterinburg at once. In February, students from the Ural Federal University will go there, their vacations will begin.
In other words, the path leads there wide.
Yes, thanks to Kuznetsov. From Ushma, he broke a good ski track there with snowmobiles, our tourists no longer need to plow their way in deep snow, as the Dyatlovites did in 1959. But they will go up only in clear weather.
Ski tracks for modern tourists are laid by snowmobiles. In the 1950s, things were different.
In a few weeks, the Ural Federal University will host a conference dedicated to the investigation into the death of the Dyatlov expedition in 1959. Can anything new be expected?
Participants will present who found what, dug up this year, put together some puzzles. A collection of a thousand pages with the results of a criminal investigation is being prepared for publication. objective versions. Without any mysticism. A certain conclusion from what has been read suggests itself, but this is up to the readers.
Yevgeny Buyanov's version that the Dyatlov group died under an avalanche may soon become official. At least, it was to him that the ICR handed over the materials of the criminal case.
Many have a desire to close the "case of the Dyatlov Pass" - to hush it up, put it in the archive. Evgeny Buyanova got stuck on an avalanche. He has never been there in winter, he has not seen real conditions (the slope angle, according to many experts, is insufficient for an avalanche to come down - approx. "Tapes.ru"). Now he is pulling up global geophysical processes to his version. There, solar activity already begins to take effect - as if in other years this activity did not exist. Doesn't listen to opponents at all. At the conference on February 2, Buyanov's representatives will announce his conclusions.
In your opinion, is there a real opportunity to shed light on the circumstances of that tragedy, or are there only speculations now?
We are waiting for some documents from the secret archives to be opened. And in order to claim them, you need to resume the investigation. But if the Dyatlovites were removed as unnecessary witnesses to nuclear tests, it is clear that there is no reason to tell the relevant state structures about this.
Do you still stick to this version?
The final factor that influenced the tragic fate of the Dyatlov expedition was indeed the banal cold. But before that, they were crippled. The picture of the scene of the incident was staged by specialists under the version of an avalanche - the clothes were removed and so on. However, the only surviving member of the expedition, Yuri Yudin, who, due to a cold, did not go out with the others to the active part of the route, had no doubt that this was a crime.
In 1959, an international treaty banning nuclear testing was already in force. If his violation had been made public, there would have been a huge scandal. And we saw huge fields, 200 meters in diameter, round, right in the taiga, near the pass. Significant radioactive traces were found on the clothing of the Dyatlovites. There are other arguments in favor of this version.
The department of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Sverdlovsk Region confirmed to Lente.ru that “taking into account the distance and the need to conduct search activities and inspect the scene, the return to the city of Ivdel is planned in a few days, approximately up to three days.”
The pass was named in honor of Igor Dyatlov, the leader of the expedition who planned to climb to the height of 1079 in the Subpolar Urals. On the night of February 1-2, 1959, on the nameless pass, Dyatlov and eight members of his group died under unclear circumstances. People were found frozen, with multiple bodily injuries, without outerwear and shoes. Over the years, dozens of versions of what happened have appeared, up to completely fantastic ones - for example, an attack by a Bigfoot and a meeting with aliens.
A tourist group led by Igor Dyatlov, all nine members of which died on the night of February 1-2, 1959 in the vicinity of Mount Otorten in the Northern Urals under unclear circumstances, could carry out a special task of the USSR State Security Committee. About it NSN told head of the public fund "In memory of the Dyatlov group" Yuri Kuntsevich.
According to the interlocutor of NSN, a former KGB officer contacted him and said that two members of the Dyatlov group were in the service of the committee. However, he refused to disclose his first and last name.
“He says that the Dyatlov tour group was an escort group, and there were two KGB agents in it. One of them is Zolotarev, the second is someone whose last name begins with "k" - Krivonischenko or Kolevatov, ”said Kuntsevich.
Alexander Kolevatov
Yuri Krivonischenko
According to Kuntsevich, at that time, each tourist group sought to get some kind of task, "so as not to go idly."
“And the Dyatlov group is no exception. They took the task, but where and what - one can only guess. They had 10 cameras with them, while only four films are in public access, and six more are not known where. On January 30, they went to the pass, then returned to the forest, spent the night there, and the next day, leaving food and excess equipment, they went to the pass. They had firewood for two or three hours of stove operation, but they took with them several hundred meters of film in a large cassette. Everyone had a diary, but only three of them are available,” says Kuntsevich.
Semyon Zolotarev (in the foreground)
According to Kuntsevich, while on the pass, the Dyatlov group was performing some kind of task using their cameras. Perhaps the members of the group were supposed to observe and capture on film some kind of phenomenon, the nature of which is unknown.
“Now all archives are closed, and access to them will be available only when investigative actions are resumed. Now we are trying to achieve this. If it succeeds, then all that remains is to wait - the rest will be done by specialists. But there is no reason to resume these actions, to raise materials, ”explains Kuntsevich.New data on the connection of tourists with the KGB will be included in the almanac, which the Dyatlov Group Memory Foundation will publish in early September.
The pass was named in honor of Igor Dyatlov, the leader of the expedition who planned to climb to the height of 1079 in the Subpolar Urals. On February 1, 1959, the group equipped a storehouse in the valley of the Auspiya River - a warehouse for things and parts of products that would not be needed when climbing Mount Otorten. After that, the Dyatlovites climbed the slope of Mount Holatchakhl and decided to stay there for the night, setting up a tent. Something forced everyone in the tent to leave in a hurry, cutting it from the inside. As a result, all nine people died from frostbite and mysterious injuries.
Their corpses were discovered only on March 5. The investigation into the case of the Dyatlov group lasted three months, but could not establish why the tourists left the tent. The event that prompted the Dyatlov group to leave their only shelter could be an avalanche or a pile of snow. None of these versions appeared convincing enough to the official investigation. “The cause of their death was an elemental force, which people were not able to overcome,” the decision to dismiss the criminal case says.
Among other things, among the reasons that forced the Dyatlovites to leave the tent, conspiracy theorists name the testing of secret weapons in this region, as well as attacks on a group of representatives of the local population (Mansi), poachers and foreign intelligence agents.
On the night of February 1-2, 1959, in the Northern Urals, on the pass, which later received the name of Dyatlov, a tourist group of nine people died. On the next anniversary of the tragedy in Yekaterinburg, they released volume almanac about a mysterious incident.
His circumstances were so mysterious that, even after 57 years, researchers cannot calm down, trying to understand what made the half-dressed young people cut the tent from the inside and seek shelter at the bottom of the slope. Why some of them had internal injuries incompatible with life. For what reason, the military actively joined the search, although before that they had never searched for lost students.
Rossiyskaya Gazeta asked Yuri Kuntsevich, head of the Dyatlov Group Memory Fund, about whether new facts appeared in the mysterious case.
Yuri Konstantinovich, tell us about the book - is this the result of all the investigations carried out to date? How much attention is paid to each of the many versions?
Yuri Kuntsevich: This is a two-volume almanac of about a thousand pages with a circulation of 200 copies. The first volume is the criminal case itself from cover to cover, each page is reprinted or presented in facsimile with all the notes.
After reviewing the case, the reader can turn to the second volume, which collects opinions. From the mass of all versions and assumptions, we took only those that have a real justification and are confirmed by testimonies. That is, they rejected devils, witches, aliens, Bigfoot - in general, pure fantasy. 
How many versions are left?
Yuri Kuntsevich: The book will feature a dozen versions. We have grouped them according to the main principles. For example, the largest section is man-made versions: the appearance at the pass of any technical devices that predetermined the tragedy. From the mass of all versions and assumptions, we took only those that have a real justification and are confirmed by testimonies.
Do you yourself adhere to this assumption - the testing of secret weapons and the elimination of casual witnesses of military experiments?
Yuri Kuntsevich: It's not my job to give explanations. How can one adhere to a version if each subsequent one refutes the previous one? I just grouped them and gave evidence. There are no conclusions in the book, since this is the competence of people who know much more than you and me. I would like to appeal to their memory and honesty, because more than half a hundred years have passed and all non-disclosure agreements have expired.
What's new happened over the past year in the topic of Dyatlovites? Has the official investigation resumed?
Yury Kuntsevich: Familiarization with the case has begun. This topic is dealt with by one investigator, his work is paid for by the interested public. He came to me and told me that he had testimonies from living witnesses who then, in 1959, took part in the investigation of the tragedy. They admit that they had a clear order from above to wind down the case. And he was curtailed with the wording about the elemental force, which the students were not able to overcome.
Does this investigator have the right, for example, to exhume the remains? I mean Zolotarev, a member of the group, regarding the place of burial of which there are doubts.
Yuri Kuntsevich: With additional investigation, I think so. But if such a decision is made, previously unknown documents will emerge that will have to be made public. 
How did the story ended with the discovery in Germany of allegedly resold secret documents about the involvement of one of the Dyatlovites in state secrets?
Yuri Kuntsevich: We were extremely surprised: all of a sudden, fragments of documents are sent to us from Germany. They immediately gave the papers for authentication and found out that this was a fake, however, quite skillful, and a whole group of “masters” worked on it.
We were promised correspondence from party bodies, orders from the supreme authorities for only four thousand dollars - as soon as we transfer the money, we will receive the documents. The falsifiers were let down by the fact that the forms were of the wrong period, they used the wrong order of drawing up documents, and the text was typed on a typewriter of a later manufacture.
Is it correct to assume that these papers will confirm the version of the KGB showdown and spies at the pass?
Yuri Kuntsevich: No, there was a hint of party instructions. I really looked for these documents in the party archive and noticed an unpleasant thing: it turns out that the Communist Party to this day has secrets from the people that are not disclosed to us.
Do you think that there are, in principle, documents somewhere that give a reasoned answer to the question of what actually happened at the pass in 1959?
Yuri Kuntsevich: I am convinced that such documents exist. There is even a suspicion where exactly and what exactly to look for. The problem is that we, as a public organization, may be refused for a formal reason - and they will be right. It is necessary that the request be made by an official representative of the Investigative Committee.
Yuri Konstantinovich, let's remind readers about the main versions and the main inconsistencies in them. What facts prove man-made intervention?
Yuri Kuntsevich: Bullets, remnants of rockets and even a part of the engine that we found during one of the summer expeditions, pseudometeorites, were found at the pass. All this material evidence indicates that there was a landfill near the mountain. 
Did you manage to find out what kind of rocket engine it is?
Yuri Kuntsevich: It has a number on it, by which you can find out where and when it was produced. But when and under what circumstances the projectile was launched, no one will tell you. It is only known that in 1959 such missiles were already in service.
What explains the appearance of mysterious fireballs in the mountains?
Yuri Kuntsevich: Many saw them: both Mansi, and Ivdellag workers, and tourists. But these balls can have a different nature. If you look at the geological map, you can see that at the contact of the European and Siberian plates there is a huge - up to 40 kilometers wide - quartz vein. If the plates oscillate, even by a millimeter, the formation of powerful electrical discharges is quite possible - this is called piezoelectric effects.
There is an assumption that under certain conditions - for example, at high humidity - the discharge is formed into a plasmoid ball. It has no weight, its diameter is up to two meters, the temperature is over a thousand degrees, it cannot be shot through with any weapon.
Pilot Gennady Patrushev (he participated in the search operation of the Dyatlovites) died in 1961, once again flying around the north of the Sverdlovsk region, probably meeting with one of the plasmoids. After all, before that, during interrogation at the KGB, he admitted that he had seen fireballs.
According to his widow, Patrushev wrote down all his observations in his journals, which he then ordered his wife to destroy. It is known that the mother of the pilot kept these notebooks in a woodpile in the yard. Some hope that there is still a slim chance of finding the recordings. But I think it is unlikely - at that time people were afraid of too much. It’s not just that Patrushev’s friend, state security officer Sergei Misharin, committed suicide. And very calmly: he went to the bathhouse, put on his uniform and shot himself.
It is believed that it was Patrushev who was the first to see the Dyatlovites' tent from the air.
Yury Kuntsevich: In this case, let's remember one more fact, which is recorded on the first page of the criminal case: the investigation was launched on February 6, while the relatives of the group members began sounding the alarm only on February 17. As Patrushev's wife recalls, he flew north from Sverdlovsk for a while, then returned.
I don't see how the exact dates of his flights can be established. We have official testimony from another pilot who, not on February 26, when the first bodies were found, but earlier, on the 25th, flew over that place and saw two corpses near the tent. 
Just the other day, a witness appeared who remembered the story of one of the Mansi about how the northern people “punished” those who disturbed their shrines. This circumstance again made us talk about the Mansi version of the attack on the Dyatlovites.
Yuri Kuntsevich: The book talks about this very briefly. Mansi are completely peaceful people, as much as we travel in those places, we always find contact. In the diaries of the Dyatlovites themselves, you will see the Mansi dictionary - that is, they spoke with them, communicated, took pictures in their clothes, which were made from deer skins in an absolutely amazing way.
Another version is the explanation of the death of the group by climatic causes.
Yury Kuntsevich: No one denies this either. There is information about the meteorological situation at that time and in that area - data on precipitation, wind speed, solar activity ...
But after all, these are observations in the area of the Burmantovo weather station, which is located east of Vizhay - at least 60 kilometers to the pass. In the mountains and at a much shorter distance, the weather situation can be quite different.
Yuri Kuntsevich: That's right: the weather from the European part can be transferred to the Ural Range, but not from Burmantovo. But we must take into account that there is such a document.
At the same time, some people slander Dyatlov in vain: they say that he chose the wrong place for the night, close to the top, where there are piercing winds. But he did not choose - it was a forced stop. It is written in the criminal case that Kolevatov has a subluxation, and the last pictures show how Zina is bandaging his leg. What happened afterwards is unknown.
The last out-of-focus frame with a glowing object suggests that someone grabbed the camera in a hurry and pressed the shutter before the lens was extended.
According to the tracks that the search engines found, it is clear that the Dyatlovites did not run down the slope, but calmly retreated - the distance between the steps is small, these are not jumps. On the other hand, it is possible that these are not their traces at all. You look at the photos - you can see the prints of the heels, and all the members of the group were without boots. 
Moreover, when I was there in winter, I specially walked through the fresh snow, columns of traces formed, but after two hours they were gone - the wind blew everything away. In this case, how could traces of the Dyatlovites survive for almost a month? If only the snow melted and turned into ice...
In addition, several times we conducted another experiment - we tried to move along the pass in socks. And you won’t walk two meters - in severe frost the sock sticks to the snow, and you take your bare foot out of the track, on the next step you lose the second sock.
Do you suspect that the picture that appeared before the search engines was inspired?
Yuri Kuntsevich: This version is confirmed by some other facts: for example, I can not find an explanation of how the bodies of four tourists could be at a depth of three meters under the snow in a stream. This could only happen if they were dropped from a helicopter. And where has it been seen that the commander of the military district himself took part in the search for students who were lost and frozen? And he came in person, provided planes, helicopters and soldiers.
But at that time the authorities were so powerful that there was no need to take tourists one and a half kilometers from the tent, to plant evidence, to create the appearance of unauthorized withdrawal - they would have given nine closed coffins and warned that people were frozen, it was impossible to open.
Yury Kuntsevich: The fact is that there were students on the search, as well as excellent trackers from the surrounding villages, who know how a fire should be made in the snow, how a tent is set up, how a group can go. They needed to come up with some kind of explanation.
In this case, why did the investigators, when instructed to close the case as soon as possible, not bend one of the most harmless versions, for example, about an avalanche or other snow fall on the tent?
Yuri Kuntsevich: At that time there was no such version. It was born in the head of the St. Petersburg explorer Evgeny Buyanov, who had never been to the pass in winter. In the summer, he walked with me five times, he always measured how sloping the slope was, he proved that the Dyatlovites, setting up a tent, cut the snow, depriving the crust of support, so the snow board slid down on them, pressing some to death. 
Buyanov says that similar tragedies in the 80s were repeated in the Northern Urals - only there no one had time to get out of the tent, everyone died under the snow. Is it so?
Yuri Kuntsevich: There was a case on Mount Saber - this is the Subpolar Urals. There was a fairly steep slope, the snow accumulated and drove off. Buyanov recalls another deadly tragedy on Khan Tengri, the highest peak of the Tien Shan. According to his logic, one can give examples of avalanches in the Himalayas.
But you need to understand that these are completely different mountains and completely different conditions. Kholat Syahyl is a gently sloping mountain, the total slope is no more than 15 degrees, it is not difficult to climb it, in addition, everything blows away from its top. If a layer of compacted snow is formed, then it, like anchors, is held by sharp stones on which the crust rests. This can be seen even in the pictures of search engines 50 years ago - well, where will the avalanche go if there are stones all around?
Are there any details in the tragedy of the Dyatlov group that no version explains?
Yuri Kuntsevich: Of course, there are plenty of them. For example, confusion in clothes, as if many people put on things that were not their own. Two army windings were found, which were used by the guards of the camps - the tourists did not have such. It is difficult to explain how particles of the children's skin ended up on the branches of the cedar (this, perhaps, again, only in the version with a helicopter).
Tell me, who came up with the idea to apply to the “Battle of Psychics” three years ago, and most importantly, why?
Yuri Kuntsevich: It was not our initiative - we were invited. Just thought I'd rather go than any of the other researchers who take into account only one version. Came and saw that all the psychics knew the script. And they were very fond of repeating that this is a secret that we should not even try to reveal. So for me it was just a fun adventure.
Do you think the last of the group, Yuri Yudin, who died in April 2013, could be aware of the circumstances that led to the death of his friends?
Yuri Kuntsevich: It used to happen that every year after the conference, for a month or two, he lived at the headquarters of the foundation, in the summer they went to the pass together. We spent a lot of time analyzing different versions, delving into maps, comparing facts and conjectures ... He was very worried about what had happened, all the time he was looking for answers. Yura handed over his entire archive to the foundation - it has yet to be disassembled and systematized. I'm sure he told everything he knew.
Everyone knows this story. Fifty years ago, a group of tourists, young students of UPI, consisting of seven guys and two girls, went on a hike. There was nothing remarkable about the trip. Only on the appointed day, the students did not return home. Their camp in the mountains was found empty. It was evident that the frightened people from the inside cut open the tent to jump out.
Then they found corpses - some had broken ribs, and one of the participants in the campaign did not have a lower jaw. Several people, left without clothes and shelter, fled further into the forest. For some time they tried to warm themselves by a frozen fire, and then they still froze to death. The search for the cause of the disaster, the research of both Russian and foreign groups did not give any result.
As it turned out, the old tale for a long time excited the minds of not only Russians, but also Americans. The father of "Die Hard" found the story worthy of a film adaptation, quickly sketching out the script. Well, we turned for a review to the head of the Dyatlov Group Memory Foundation, Yuri Kuntsevich, who over the years managed to study every stone on the pass and find more than 60 causes of the disaster.
As expected, Yuri and the Fonda went to cinemas on the premiere day, February 28, to deliver their verdict: non-fiction nonsense, filmed according to classic American standards, with jokes below the belt and sex, which tries to hint at all versions of the disaster at once. Why? Let's consider in detail.
The Russian-American film begins with our Innokenty Sheremet. The title video imitates the Vesti 24 channel, which tells about the secret of the pass. It also contains shots from the room with the archives of the real fund "In Memory of the Dyatlov Group", in which we talked with Kuntsevich. True, they say, the Americans were not at all interested in this. We watched and asked some very general questions.
Renny Harlin is sure that the Dyatlov campaign could look like this if it took place in our time. Kuntsevich assures that no - they say that even today's young people have a slightly higher level of development. And the one who decided to take it off has never seen a real hike in which the main goal is not to freeze, and not to have sex. Indeed, every second dialogue of the Americans rolls below the waist (and one of the expedition members gives the main character a dildo carved from wood).
Of course, not without Russian stamps. In the village of Izhai, it turns out that every second resident knows English, and the bartender in the local village club is happy to pour moonshine to students.
However, in the plot of the film there are many clues and references to existing versions of the death of the Dyatlovites, and a reference to the group. Three guys and a girl put on snowshoes (spectators at this moment, of course, are touched by the absence of hats on many participants) and set off along the route of the “same” group. After the first night they see bare footprints of people around the tents.
Yuri Kuntsevich, head of the Dyatlov Group Memory Foundation:
Indeed, there are several versions, according to which this place was a military training ground. And there were the so-called forest brothers - a fugitive military group that we inherited from the Baltic states. The prisoner version just recently came from Israel. We received a letter from a man who is already 80 years old, he says that he was the tenth in the group. He remembers how he walked and ate chocolate (indeed, chocolate was never found among the bodies, although it was known that they had it). So, the author of the letter claims that the damaging factors suffered by the prisoners fell on the group.
The American participants now and then recall facts about a group of Russian students. Much of this is true. In the evening, looking at the sunset, one of the guys says that a few days before the death of the group, yellow lights were seen in the sky. When a group gets into an emergency situation, they themselves launch a flare. There is also a grain of truth in this.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
Holly and her friend go on reconnaissance - explore the area. A simple Geiger counter shows the presence of radiation. The guy recalls that one of the members of the Dyatlov expedition also had traces of radiation on his body.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
Curiously, some plot scenes also echo reality - in addition to the campaign, American students are trying to establish personal relationships.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
Horror for Holly and the group begins that very night, on that very pass. At dawn, the expedition members hear distant explosions and a terrible noise. Undressed, they hardly run out of the tents and run down towards the forest. An avalanche descends on the camp, which is considered one of the most popular versions of the death of the Dyatlovites. For years, people have been looking for the reason that made people leave the warm tent and sleeping bags in fear before they had time to get dressed. Something scared them.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
After the avalanche, only three men remain in Holly's group, one of them is injured - a broken ankle.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
However, before a group of Americans die of cold and hunger, military men with weapons appear on the horizon and try to kill the group. Yes, the military base is also a fairly popular version of the death of students. Experts believe that it was chosen because the foreigners really wanted to focus on the Russian military. Be that as it may, the Americans, frightened by the military, decide to seek salvation in the bunker that Holly and her operator friend found the day before.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
The film resonates with reality: we do have evidence in the archives about underground bunkers in the area of the pass. They are already calling us from abroad, saying: “We are no longer yours and we can say: there are points in the mountains where we served.” Moreover, taking advantage of the fact that the Ural Mountains are quite high, tunnels were laid there with shields. Maybe for a strategic purpose. Exactly the same bunkers are found in Tomsk, in the Altai Territory. They can be used as bunkers for the production of weapons or food storage.
Well, then director Renny Harlin gives his version of the development of events, it can rather be classified as completely fantastic - scientists do not seriously consider it. Only the last minutes of the film reveal the intrigue, so it’s pointless to tell in detail, otherwise you won’t get a drop of pleasure from watching.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
So what really happened at the Dyatlov Pass?
We asked this question to our specialist, offering to choose one of the 60 versions that is closest to him. The choice of Yuri Kuntsevich fell on the man-made version, and here's why. Firstly, the people who found the expedition did not manage to blame everything on the animals. There was not a single trace around the camp. The place was calm, open, safe. Injuries also speak for the man-made version - fractures of the skull, ribs. In addition, there are eyewitness accounts. Some of those who served in the Urals at the time talk about military exercises planned for that day for pilots who were preparing to drop a nuclear projectile. When a nuclear warhead without a charge is dropped down, it flies on a parachute, and in order to see where it has fallen, a luminous projectile - a marker - lights up on it. This substance burns and thereby supports the canopy of the parachute with hot air jets. During the fall of the rocket, the plane flies to a safe distance.
Yuri Kuntsevich:
I saw a picture from the search of the group: on it there is a helicopter next to the pass, and next to it is a flag. Military red. Well, they didn’t carry such Dyatlovites with them, right?
According to Kuntsevich, it could be like this: a bomb is falling. Several people are injured, the rest are still alive. A group of military men flies to the place and reports to the center that there are civilians at the site of the missile's fall. And then - think for yourself, keeping in mind that the investigation was conducted in order to close it, and not to find the truth. There is another interesting inconsistency. The death happened on February 1-2, the criminal case was opened four days later, on the sixth. And the bodies were found only on the 28th. The first investigator Korotaev was removed from the case - the secretary of the Ivdel party made a "suggestion" to him, saying pointedly: "What do you understand about this."
Verdict
The film by Renny Harlin is frankly weak, looking at him, doubts torment: did this person shoot the second “nut”? The acting is completely unimaginative. The Russians in the film are all lovers of moonshine. True, there are no stupid mistakes in the film, but the joint Russian-American production still affects. If you are a fan of this mystery, this movie is a must see. True, you will never see real pictures from the legendary pass.
We thank KKT Cosmos for the invitation to the premiere show. Tickets can be booked by calling 253–88–27 or on the website kosmos-e.ru.
On February 8, an interesting and unusual event took place at the Novouralsk Public Library - a meeting with the chairman of the public fund "In Memory of the Dyatlov Group" Yuri Konstantinovich Kuntsevich.
Of course, the topic is already worn out and, perhaps, fed up with someone, but it was very interesting to meet live with a person who has been dealing with the secret death of the Dyatlovites for many years. I will not talk here about the death of tourists, but simply present the information that Yury Kuntsevich shared with us.
Yury Kuntsevich (right) with Novouralsk local historians and tourists
Yu. Kuntsevich relates his first memories related to the Dyatlovites to their funeral. He was 12 years old and lived near a cemetery where tourists were buried. Curiosity led him to a place of congestion of a large number of people (and hundreds of people came to the funeral), and then he even managed to see those who were buried. And the first thing he noticed was that the skin of the tourists was brick-colored. Then, of course, Yuri did not even imagine that later he would devote all his free time to the search for truth. And in general, as Yu. Kuntsevich said, for him "truth is dearer than anything."
For the first time, the Dyatlovites were talked about intensely on the 30th anniversary of their death. no, of course, not for the first time, but before that this issue had not been resolved so deeply. And then, in 1989, when there was perestroika and glasnost, they decided to hold the first conference dedicated to the mystery of the death of the Dyatlov group. It was then that the versions fell down one after another, and one another was "more beautiful".
To date, more than 20 books and a huge number of articles have been written on this topic. By the way, I really liked Anna Matveeva's book "Dyatlov Pass", in which she considers different versions from a documentary point of view, but, being a fiction writer, she still brings artistry to the text.
Naturally, Yuri Konstantinovich was asked the main question, what version does he himself adhere to. But... No response was received. It turns out that in order to achieve the goal and find out which version is the only true one, it is necessary to "dig through" many more documents. For this, by the way, the fund was created. To have access to documents. If a person acts as a private person, walks through archives and offices, then he is denied access to documents. And if there is an official organization that has a legal address, a chairman, a seal, etc., then it is easier to get information.
It cannot be said that the documents simply float into the hands of search engines. In fact, they have to be literally torn out of each archive. And if we take into account that a considerable part of the information is classified as "secret", then no one is allowed to access such documents.
Many documents are in the FSB, which, while still being the KGB, dealt with the death of a group of tourists. And here the snag is that you need to appoint an investigator who would deal with this case and provide information to the fund. They do not feel sorry, but what kind of investigator will deal with this? ..
Yuri Kuntsevich complained about another difficulty in obtaining information about the Dyatlovites. Many of the documents associated with this shady business have lost numbers. That is, there is a document, but the number in the corner is somehow strangely erased. Search engines request a document. It is in the database, but they cannot find it in the archival fund. So researchers have to collect information literally bit by bit.
For these reasons, Yuri Konstantinovich did not reveal to us the secret of which version he himself adheres to. Moreover, when he was asked questions about specific versions, he answered everything unambiguously: "Yes, this could be." It seemed to me that Yu. Kuntsevich simply did not want to reveal his version until the truth was found. Maybe it's true...
Such information seemed interesting. It is known that the bodies of the Dyatlovites were found quite far from the tent, but they all died next to the tent. The proof is the fact that one of the tourists severely sprained his leg (there is a photograph where Zina Kolmogorova is bandaging the wounded man's leg) and definitely could not go further than the tent. The tent was pitched precisely because of this accident. They wanted to leave the wounded man with someone from the group, and then go to Otorten in a reduced strength. But it didn't work out...
They also recalled at the meeting the version of missile testing. Indeed, in the late 50s of the twentieth century, rockets were tested in the USSR in large numbers, and it is quite possible that tourists ended up in the place where the rocket (or part of it) fell. As you know, in this version there is an explanation of why the Dyatlovites are so far from the tent: they were "pulled away" by the so-called mopping-up group, which came to the place where the rocket fell to collect its remains, but found dead people. But, once again, there are many versions, and none of them has been proven one hundred percent.
At the meeting, all those present were shown a documentary film about the Dyatlov group, and also talked about the last conference, where each of the speakers either presented his version or told about new documents found. And there are still oh so many of them - secret, undisclosed. Perhaps at least one of them will someday shed at least a little light on this mystery of the twentieth century.
The Dyatlov Group Memory Foundation every year leads everyone on an expedition to the famous pass. According to Yuri Konstantinovich, even children of 12 years old go on a hike, it is so safe. This year, a group of amateur tourists will go to the Dyatlov Pass led by Kuntsevich on August 1. The route is something like this: to Ivdel by train, then by bus, then on foot to the pass. It costs about 7-8 thousand rubles, of which the fund does not take a penny for itself. This amount includes travel and food for 12-14 days. And the trip itself is free, because it is really important for Yuri Kuntsevich and the rest of the fund's employees that as many people as possible know the history of the Dyatlov Group.
Interestingly, every year the fund's employees bring something unusual from the expedition. Either they found an aluminum bowler hat of tourists from the Dyatlov group, or a fragment of a rocket. The fund has accumulated a lot of items related to the Dyatlovites. You can already make a museum, but so far there is no such possibility. Y. Kuntsevich already gave half of his apartment to the public fund.
Finally, I will tell the story that Yuri Konstantinovich told us. Once an unusual boy went with them to the pass. His unusualness was that he was a Negro. Mom is Russian, dad is African. The boy is black. It was quite warm, and the boy ran around in his shorts. Moreover, apparently, African blood leaped from him, because he made himself a bow and arrows. One day, local residents saw him and from afar, from the bushes, they mistook him for a bear. What was their surprise when an almost naked Negro with a bow in his hands jumped right at them (in the Northern Urals!)!
