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Did these attackers know their victims? If not, why were the killings so cruel? What was the point?
Did these attackers know their victims ?
Not so much. The attackers and the hickers had seen each other (i.e. had come into physical contact) only in Vizhay, for a few hours on 25 January (arrival:14.00) and 26 January (departure:13.10).
To go into detail it is also possible that the hickers met (in the so called hotel) only one person: the sponsor (commander, client...) of the extermination who paid contract killers and these attacked on the slope of the Kholat Syakhl at about 8 p.m. on 1 February 1959 (unless it was the morning of 2 February ??).
Why were the killings so cruel ?
I am preparing posts to introduce the idea that in Vizhay, on 25 January, the hickers met (clashed with) a kind of small mafia.
I intend to intervene in more detail in :
Victims and Case Files > Victims > Lyudmila Dubinina > Possible sexual assault?
Victims and Case Files > Victims > Lyudmila Dubinina > Lyudmila Dubinina's premonition of her tragic death
In the meantime (perhaps for a long time) I leave you some preliminary notes.
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Why were the killings so cruel? ---> Because in human societies a group that wants to conquer or keep the power had, and still has, often recourse to acts of a terrifying violence to impose itself.
Thus in history the tortures of the cruxifiction and the wheel were organised by the official powers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel°°°°°°
Kolgomorova : We arrived in Vizhay. First we stopped at the same club where we were 2 years ago. Then we were taken to the hotel".The history of the USSR shows that in 1957-58, in the Ivdellag and Vizhay region, all the conditions for the establishment of a small local mafia were present.
In particular, the dismantling of Gulag - poorly organised, but ordered by Krushchev - had freed criminals and gangsters (and kept morally blameless citizens in prison or under house arrest).[/b]
Like the "big" mafia in Sicily or Chicago,
the small Vizhay mafia was a clandestine and fearsome association of unscrupulous individuals. (And some of them, who had long remained powerful and cruel guardians of the Gulag camps, had become perverted).
Its members, united by common concerns and interests, supported each other by all sorts of means.
In the case of the small Vizhay mafia the common points could be: hatred of communism, of the Russian nation, of the central government of the Kremlin.........
By the period photos we have:
https://dyatlovpass.com/vizhaywe will probably not learn much, as those who had a responsibility in the DPI certainly avoided being photographed.
°°°°°°
The members of the Dyatlov group were not interested in politics and were therefore totally unaware of the situation in Vizhay.
Igor Dyatlov has a travel certificate and a trade union voucher, in which he addressed the leaders of Soviet, party and public organizations, "to render all possible assistance" in providing the Dyatlov group of hikers campaign XXI Congress of the CPSU, the opening of which was scheduled for January 28, 1959.However, they could be seen as propagandists controlled by the Kremlin, via the UPI, and therefore as
enemies of those who organised the attack on the Kholat Syakhl slope.The mafias, political entities competing with the state for the monopoly of the legitimate exercise of violence, demonstrate their power through intimidation and, if necessary, terrorism.
The mafias use systemic violence to achieve social cohesion. Systemic violence, employed by a small number of leading criminals, provides panopticon control of populations.
Indeed, thanks to the violence that breaks down solidarity and isolates individuals who have become their own censors, the mafia is at the centre of society.
When a citizen does not respect the rules of the mafia,
he must be murdered in order to make mafia justice more powerful than the laws of the legal state.What was the point ?
The aim of the attackers was to show to everyone the extent of their power and the terrible fate that was promised to those who taunted them (even unconsciously) or who did not respect their laws.
But the attackers were fooled by the Kremlin, which succeeded in imposing the idea that it was not a homicide.
Whether it was in 1959 or in 2020, the aim of the Soviet or Russian authorities, was and still is, to hide the incompetence of various administrative structures (PCSU, Sport Club, Route Commission...) and
the inefficiency of the KGB, which had a share of responsibility in sending in fact 9 exemplary citizens to their deaths.
However, the KGB reacted quickly by opening an investigation on 6 February 1959. I do not know what were the consequences of this late awareness.
disovow232 (KGB/Radiation/Military involvement --> Something from a KGB officer) alludes to it but is not very clear....
Afterwards, the usual propaganda technique used to cover up this affair, which is admittedly of little importance, consists of launching, through the intermediary of people who are often sincere,
a certain number of more or less plausible lures: Teleportation, UFO, Infrasound, Yeti...etc.