Factual Information > Materials of 1959

Maslennikov notebooks

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mk:
I've been going over and over the radiograms, and today I began reading Maslennikov's notebooks & testimony.  I can't make up my mind about him.

The clearest thing I can say is that information we have from/about him feels--uneven. 

According to his testimony, he seemed almost reluctant to get involved at the beginning.  Ufimtsev comes to him concerned about university students who were on a difficult trek and have been missing a week.  Maslennikov goes home and does nothing because it's Friday and the work week is over.  Saturday about noon he goes to a meeting with other guys and they spend all day talking it over.  Sunday they take a day of rest because talking is hard work.  Monday at noon he finally gets around to checking whether there's been any word from the missing hikers. 

Noon!  If there were hikers missing for a week from your sports club, wouldn't you be really concerned and want to know first thing?  Okay, it's the Soviet Union in the 1950s: maybe the phone is in a different part of the building and you can't get away to call until noon.  Was he truly unconcerned, or was he waiting for his cue to play his role?  Or was he just really scared and one of those guys who tends to hope unpleasant things will go away on their own?

It was he who suggested that students ought to be sent as search teams.  He suggests that they might be more motivated to find their comrades. Is that genius psychology (but why would other search teams be lax about finding lost people?) or thrifty use of available resources, or a way of making sure that the people who found the bodies weren't professionals and would be too emotionally involved to notice inconsistencies?  Or was he just playing his role as instructed?

Once he gets involved, however, he seems to give it his all. Organizing, directing, searching, managing.  But the radiograms just don't feel... right. Sometimes they are plain, informative, proper, and impersonal.  And then there are those times he goes all out with something akin to passion.  It is so--strange, unexpected, almost inappropriate--that he jumps in with that early explanation about the hurricane blowing them out of the tent (sheet 146).  It's like he is very eager to get it off his chest.  Sulman coolly replies, "How could a hurricane blow the hikers down the hill and not move the tent?" After which, Maslennikov mutters something about there being heavy stuff in the tent.

(Why am I reminded of the kid who broke the vase eagerly suggesting that a strong wind through the open window blew the vase off the table?)

By radiogram sheet 167 he is talking at length about the mystery of why they left the tent and speculating about a meteorological rocket.

My suspicious nature wonders whether he was given a job to do, a role to play.  After all, it was he who had advised Dyatlov about the hike and route and other hikers.  He was a young guy in his mid-30s at the time.  Was it put to him that he might easily be made into a scapegoat unless he cooperated like a good citizen?  Go when you are told to go; look where you are told to look; find what you are told to find.

Or maybe he is just deeply stressed and exhausted, as anyone would be under such circumstances.  Finding frozen bodies of kids you know, trying to make sense of the crazy scenes, organizing men and supplies and locations and helicopters.

His notebooks are fascinating.  Almost I am convinced that he is genuine: a man who is truly struggling to make sense of it all.  And then I wonder whether he is struggling to make sense of more than we know.  He seems to have given up on his hurricane idea toward the end of the notebooks.  It is curious that he insisted on that idea in the first place.

KFinn:
I personally think that Maslennikov was just afraid of being censured or brought up on charges if the hikers had died and it was shown that the UPI club and trade union had been complacent in following protocols (such as not ensuring Dyatlov had filed the route copies with all parties before being issued equipment, etc.)  When he realized that something bad was unfolding, I think he genuinely felt bad for the hikers, as he had known most of them, hence why he delved into the search. 

Missi:
I haven't read the radiograms in their entirety. But after reading this thread, I thought maybe my thoughts concerning some points could be helpful...


--- Quote from: mk on January 11, 2021, 09:44:16 PM ---According to his testimony, he seemed almost reluctant to get involved at the beginning.  Ufimtsev comes to him concerned about university students who were on a difficult trek and have been missing a week.  Maslennikov goes home and does nothing because it's Friday and the work week is over.  Saturday about noon he goes to a meeting with other guys and they spend all day talking it over.  Sunday they take a day of rest because talking is hard work.  Monday at noon he finally gets around to checking whether there's been any word from the missing hikers. 

Noon!  If there were hikers missing for a week from your sports club, wouldn't you be really concerned and want to know first thing?  Okay, it's the Soviet Union in the 1950s: maybe the phone is in a different part of the building and you can't get away to call until noon.  Was he truly unconcerned, or was he waiting for his cue to play his role?  Or was he just really scared and one of those guys who tends to hope unpleasant things will go away on their own?
--- End quote ---

Of course this might be wrong, but as I understand decisionmaking in the USSR, it's pretty much asking for permission all of the time. Being informed on Friday he might be torn between his desire to get to action and maybe safe the students he know and the question whether their disappearance was important enough to disturb the weekend of his superior. This might also explain the talking on Saturday maybe with the decision that it was probably just a delay of the group and that waiting for just another two days might solve the entire problem or at least it wasn't weekend so the disturbing of superiors wasn't all that bad an issue.
I'm pretty sure the fact that the papers the group had filed were not complete also added to his reluctance to involve superiors into the problem.

Proposing to involve the students in the search for the group could also be a result of his involvement and his attempt to have as few officials as possible involved in the whole ordeal. Also his feeling guilty (not in a moral sense but in a sense of he neglected his duties and might be held accountable) could be the reason for trying to find explanations very quickly.

As to the older posts, I don't know whether the questions raised are still open or answered elsewhere. I just can't keep from adding my thoughts...

The planning of a monument
In my opinion it's not necessary to find all of the bodies before planning such a thing. They already found four victims. This is about half the group! As much as he might have hoped to find the other five students alive, there were already (at least one) voices suggesting, noone made it alive. (As in "better drink to their souls".)
Whatever course might be found for their deaths, in whatever one can find about their lives they seem to have been good communist students, interested in sports and not bad in their field of sport either. So having a monument for those fine communist individuals or rather those fine parts of the communist body sounds absolutely legit to me.

The questions of Naufragia

--- Quote from: Naufragia on January 26, 2020, 08:17:44 PM ---Below is the text of Scans 73-77 in black, with questions and a few comments in blue. Any illumination welcomed!

Scan 73
Two entries on the group's movements - went to post offices in Ivdel and Vizhay on 25 January, went to Vizhay office of Ivdel Forced labor camp, Ministry of Internal Affairs on 26 January.
Question: Why note these in particular? To fix movements with witnesses?
--- End quote ---
It might be possible he simply wanted to research who got the letters or postcards and have further texts as to what the group was doing and how they were feeling.


--- Quote ---Scan 74
Topos Y. Krivonischenko:
Question: Why did Maslennikov mention these?  What could be learned from them?
--- End quote ---
There was still the issue of the missing files. He might have wanted to get a hold of those topos for adding to the files of the university's hiking club or maybe just for being clearer as to where the students were going exactly rather as to reconstruct via diary entries and photos.


--- Quote ---Scan 77
Conversation in Serov - gratitude.
Question: This does not appear to match any of the recorded diary entries, unless there is a translation issue?
--- End quote ---
As far as I recollect, it does. The city of Serov was, where the group tried to pass the time at the train station and wasn't allowed to, resulting in them going to a nearby school where they had a conversation with the local students which showed gratitude and affection, which in turn made them (at least the one who wrote the entry, I believe it was Lyudmila) being grateful for the warm welcome.


--- Quote ---%u041C%u0430%u043D%u0441%u0438: Auspi - Ya (creek)
Note: Maslennikov seeming to note that "Auspiya" is Mansi for "Auspi Creek".
Nyer - bare peak
Note: The spelling suggests this is from Slobodin's diary, as Kolmogorova uses "nyor".
Oyka - man
Question: Could be from either Slobodin's or Kolmogorova's diary, but why did Maslennikov record these Mansi words in particular?
Ekva - woman
Kolmogorova - 30/I tonight we'll set up a labaz
Question: Maslennikov perhaps attempting to fix dates and actions, as well as changes of plan?
--- End quote ---
This might be part of his research as to how probable it is that the Mansi were involved. I guess he knew of the problems concerning sacred grounds, traditional rules and indigenous peoples. I remember having seen one of the mountain tops in the area being something called as "no women" in the Mansi language.

I hope, I didn't forget anything...

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