The story of how nine ski-hikers perished in the Ural Mountains more than half a century ago has long been the subject of fevered speculation in Russia, where films, documentaries and websites devoted to “Dyatlovmania” abound
“How long can you argue about Stalin?” Kashin says. “Dyatlov Pass is still relatively fresh.”
According to the official Soviet investigation, in February 1959 nine students
from the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk (today’s Yekaterinburg) failed to return from a ski hike in the northern Urals. The first bodies of the group, led by Igor Dyatlov, a student at the radio technology faculty, were found on February 27 – four weeks after pitching their last camp at Kholat Syakhyl, which translates from the language of the indigenous Mansi people as “Mountain of the Dead”. The hikers’ tent was discovered slashed from the inside with a knife, with most of their belongings still inside. Some bodies showed signs of hypothermia and blunt trauma, while others had broken ribs, a crushed skull and facial injuries. Some hikers were in their underwear, with burns on their hands and feet, and a strange, orange-crimson tan. The first theory, that the deaths came after an avalanche, was widely disputed. Various people in the area at the time reported seeing flashing lights in the sky, while post-mortem examinations allegedly revealed small traces of beta radiation, fueling rumors of military experiments. The mystery deepened after the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared the case classified, while the area was declared off limits. Oleg Kashin, a journalist who wrote the foreword for a new book about the incident by Alexei Rakitin "Dyatlov Pass", says the legend fills deep national yearnings for myth – and for a new perspective on Soviet history.
