Hijacking in the USSR was an extraordinary event, especially since the terrorists turned out to be a large family Ovechkin family, which organized musical group with a fabulous name "Seven Simeons". A jazz band of seven brothers, their mother and younger siblings planned to fly to London and make money there, but as a result, half of them died, the rest went to prison, and people on that flight were injured. Who they really were - victims of totalitarianism, dreaming of freedom, or brutal killers, ready to go to their goal over corpses?

There were 11 children in the Ovechkin family; their father died 4 years before the incident. Seven brothers with early age were interested in music. In 1983, they turned to a teacher at the Irkutsk School of Arts for help in creating a family jazz ensemble.

The group “Seven Simeons” quickly gained popularity both in Irkutsk and throughout the Union - after participating in the Jazz-85 festival, they became frequent guests on television programs and even the subjects of a documentary film. In 1987, the jazz band was invited to tour to Japan. Having been abroad, the mother of the family, Ninel Ovechkina, realized that outside the USSR their ensemble would have achieved much great success And material well-being. Thus, the plan to escape from the country matured.

On March 8, 1988, all family members, except for the older sister Lyudmila, who did not know about their plans, boarded the TU-154 plane on the Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad flight. The Ovechkins were allegedly flying on tour, so they had with them musical instruments. “Simeonov” was known and was not carefully inspected. The children, ranging in age from 9 to 32 years old, and their mother carried on board two sawed-off shotguns, one hundred rounds of ammunition and homemade explosives hidden in tool cases.

When the Ovechkins put forward their demands, the crew resorted to a trick - they were told about the necessary refueling in Finland. In fact, the plane was landed at a military airfield near the Soviet-Finnish border. A capture group was already waiting for them there. During the assault, a flight attendant and 3 passengers were shot, and 36 more were injured. Four older brothers committed suicide, having first killed their mother at her request. The plane was blown up and burned to the ground.

The surviving members of the Ovechkin family were tried. The elder brother Igor received 8 years in prison, older sister Olga – 6, minor children were in orphanage, and then Lyudmila took them under her care. After serving half of their sentence, Igor and Olga were released.

In 1999, the film “Mom” was released, in which the facts of the Ovechkins’ biography are interpreted very freely. Igor Ovechkin was outraged by this interpretation: “And we will sue Evstigneev. Nobody even asked our opinion. We learned everything from the newspapers. The authors of “Mama” did not understand anything about what happened.”

The fate of the surviving Ovechkins, who had long since served their sentence for what they had committed, was truly difficult. Olga, being pregnant on the day of the plane hijacking, gave birth to a daughter in the colony. Sergei Ovechkin, who was only 9 years old in 1988, did not fully understand what happened then. He was not privy to the plans, but he paid for the theft along with the others. It’s not easy to live in Irkutsk with such a surname.

The Ovechkins claim that Oleg was the instigator, and the 52-year-old mother found out about everything on the plane. The children are still confident that their mother raised them correctly - she taught them to work from morning to night and not to feel sorry for themselves. But they didn’t spare other people either.

Unfortunately, the hijacking of the plane was not an isolated incident; a similar story ended tragically for

On March 8, 1988, during the next flight from Irkutsk to Leningrad, a man who carried a sawn-off shotgun and homemade explosive devices on board the plane in a case with a double bass, passed a note to a flight attendant, who an hour later he himself shot at point-blank range. The note read: “set course for London. Don't descend, otherwise we'll blow up the plane. Now fulfill our demands." Sitting next to the man were his accomplice, his nine-year-old brother Sergei, eight other brothers and sisters and the family's beloved mother, who was killed later that day.

Between 1950 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, hijackers attempted to take control of more than sixty Soviet aircraft. The hijackers' demands were always the same: to redirect the plane to another country behind the Iron Curtain.

To escape from Soviet Union, the hijackers risked the lives of other people. Few of them lived to see their destination with their own eyes: some were shot as soon as they set foot on the ground, others were immediately arrested, and only a small part escaped.

Article about the hijacking of an airplane by the Ovechkin family in East Siberian Pravda, March 3, 1988

Among the hijackers were dissident intellectuals who were not appreciated, there were disgruntled officers and even schoolchildren. However, none of them were as unusual as the Ovechkin family. The mother and her eleven children grew up in absolute poverty in Siberia. They gained international fame by dying terrible death as a result of an escape plan that is not so daring as it is naive.

Ninel Ovechkina's mother accidentally shot herself for the first time when she was five years old. She spent her childhood in an orphanage. Later she got married, but her husband was an alcoholic and after another binge he tried to shoot his sons with a hunting rifle. At that time, private commercial activity was officially prohibited, but the small Ovechkin farm survived by selling its produce at local markets.

Ninel Ovechkina

The family grew, the husband periodically disappeared for several weeks, and then Ninel became a farmer, and her children became farm laborers. Children milked cows and spread manure under the watchful eye of a caring mother who gave precise instructions. Ninel was principled, but kind. She loved her children. Later, one of the sons, Mikhail, recalled his mother: “We couldn’t tell her no. It’s not that we were afraid of her, we couldn’t even think of ignoring her request.” Mikhail played the trombone and was thirteen years old at the time of his escape.

The father of the family, Dmitry, died in 1984. The mother replaced the father for the children. Tatyana, who was fourteen years old at the time of the hijacking, said later: “We were good children, we never drank or smoked, we never went to discos.” Neighbors noted that the Ovechkins rarely spoke to strangers while in their own company after school. Each new purchase or important decision discussed at family council.

Siberian Dixieland

The simple life of a family on the outskirts of the industrial city of Irkutsk was changed by one meeting. Vladimir Romanenko, a music teacher, noticed the Ovechkin siblings' love for jazz while their group was performing a folk song after school. In a few seconds, a challenging idea formed in his head: these guys from the same family would become a Dixieland group from Siberia. Romanenko divided the guys into groups and taught them to play Louis Armstrong and other interpretations. This is how the group “Seven Simeons” was born, named after a Russian fairy tale.

Success came to them instantly. When Gorbachev's perestroika made Western culture not only fashionable, but also legal, the phenomenon of the “peasant family jazz orchestra” appeared. The family begins touring Soviet palaces culture. We didn't understand jazz. People applauded politely at the end of the songs, not knowing how to react and clapping in unfamiliar rhythms, not daring to get up from their chairs. There were seven boys in the group. Their sisters did not study music. And, although the older brothers were experienced musicians, the eyes of the audience were always drawn to two little boys, Mikhail and Sergei, who played a banjo that seemed larger than themselves.

In Irkutsk they became a sensation and a symbol of the city. The Ovechkins moved from their estate to two large adjacent apartments, they were given additional coupons for food (this was the case in the USSR from the mid-80s until its collapse), the eldest of the two children was sent to a prestigious music school in Moscow. But in new apartment There was often no water, there was not enough food, and again, in order to survive, Ninel begins to distill vodka and sell it illegally in the market during the day or in the apartment at night. The Ovechkins knew what they deserved better life. Existing when after concerts they returned to an apartment where there was not enough food became simply humiliating. The group's leader, Vasily, became disillusioned and dropped out of the music academy, claiming that the classically trained professors could not teach him jazz. He saw his horizons much further. The turning point was a trip to Japan. The brothers who survived the hijacking said they were shocked in Japan to see neon lights, supermarket shelves filled with food bought without coupons, and, what shocked them, flowers in toilets. Seven Simeons could have followed the path blazed by other Soviet defectors, such as dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. While on tour, they might ask for asylum in one of the Western embassies. But their mother, who remained at home, would most likely have faced questions from intelligence agents, and even possibly a criminal case would have been brought against her for not promptly informing the authorities about the possible betrayal. They would never see her again.

Plan

From the 1920s until the collapse of the USSR, Soviet citizens could not leave the country freely; only a few traveled on business trips or on cultural tours. The Ovechkins understood that as nationally famous performers, they would never be allowed to emigrate. They came up with a plan. Mikhail later said: “Before we did anything, we agreed that if the hijacking failed, we would commit suicide rather than surrender to the police. We will all die together." The Ovechkins bought a hunting rifle from a friend. A farmer sold them gunpowder, from which they made several primitive homemade explosive devices. Finally, they took the instrument with a double bass, the case of which, due to its size, could not pass through the security scanner. The police did not search the celebrities boarding a flight to Leningrad for the next concert, and Ninel, her three daughters and seven sons boarded the plane.

One of the many photographs of the musicians' family

The family sold everything they owned and dressed themselves in new outfits that would be greeted by the world's media as they stepped off the plane in London. However, like many previous hijackers, their destination remained a fantasy. The TU-154 they were flying in did not have enough fuel to fly further than Scandinavia. The security officer advised the crew: “Land the plane on the Soviet side of the border with Finland, tell them that they are already in Finland. Promise them that in exchange for the release of the passengers, they will be given safe passage to Helsinki." The authorities wanted to use the same tactics and the same airport as during the hijacking five years ago, but upon landing, when the plane stopped, Dmitry noticed Russian inscriptions on the refueling trucks. As a warning, he shot flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya and demanded that the plane take off right now.

On March 8, the large Irkutsk Ovechkin family, consisting of a mother and 11 children, attempted to hijack a Tu-154 plane with the aim of escaping from the Soviet Union abroad. However, their idea failed: after the aircraft landed in the wrong place, it was stormed. At the same time, five newly minted terrorists died: mother, Ninel Ovechkina, and her four eldest sons. A show trial was held over the surviving children. We would like to highlight this topic and tell how the Ovechkin family hijacked the plane. TEAM COMPOSITION

In that ill-fated year, the Ovechkin family consisted of a mother, Ninel Sergeevna, and 11 children aged from 9 to 32 years. There was another, the eldest daughter, Lyudmila, but by that time she had already married and lived separately from her relatives, and therefore did not participate in the hijacking of the plane. There was once a father in the family, but he died back in 1984 from severe beatings inflicted on him by his eldest sons. However, then there was no evidence, and if there was such an incident in the biography of the Ovechkins, then why the sons beat their own father is unclear.
From left to right: Olga, Tatyana, Dmitry, Ninel Sergeevna with Ulyana and Sergey, Alexander, Mikhail, Oleg, Vasily

The male Ovechkin family consisted of seven brothers, who early years studied music. Even in 1983, they turned to a teacher at the Irkutsk School of Arts for help to help them create a family jazz ensemble, the so-called jazz band. The teacher was not averse to it, and as a result, the jazz group “Seven Simeons” appeared.

Gradually, the newly formed group began to gain popularity. The brothers began to be invited to play at local events held in Irkutsk. They even performed in the city park during the holidays. But truly great success came to them in 1984, when they took part in the “Jazz-85” festival at the national level. After him, “Seven Simeons” began to be invited to film television programs and were even filmed about them documentary. In 1987, the Ovechkin family, consisting of mother and sons, was invited to tour to Japan. It was then that the head of the family, Ninel Ovechkina, having visited the other side of the Iron Curtain, came to the conclusion that they were very unlucky to be born and live in the Soviet Union. That's why the idea of ​​fleeing the USSR came up.

LONG PREPARATION

While touring Japan, everyone came to the conclusion that with such talent and success they could achieve real fame abroad. After returning home, the Ovechkin family, led by Ninelya Sergeevna, began to hatch an escape plan. Since in the USSR everyone would not be allowed abroad, the family decided to hijack a plane on domestic airlines and then fly it to another country.
The implementation of the plan was scheduled for March 8, 1988. On that day, the entire Ovechkin family, except eldest daughter Lyudmila, who was not in the know, bought tickets for a Tu-154 plane flying Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad. Friends and airport employees were told that the Ovechkins were going on tour and therefore were taking a lot of musical instruments with them. Naturally, they were not given a thorough search. As a result, the criminals managed to smuggle two sawn-off shotguns, one hundred rounds of ammunition and homemade explosives on board the aircraft. All this stuff was hidden in musical instruments. Moreover, by the time the plane was hijacked, the Ovechkin family had already managed to sell all the things from the house and buy new clothes in order to pass as one of our own abroad.

PLANE hijacking
Nine-year-old Sergei Ovechkin

Already at the very end of its journey, when the plane was approaching Leningrad, the Ovechkins, through a flight attendant, passed a note demanding to fly to London or any other capital of the country. Western Europe. Otherwise they threaten to blow up the plane. However, the crew of the aircraft decided to cheat and told the terrorists that the plane would not have enough fuel and would therefore need to be refueled. It was stated that the plane would be refueled in Finland, but the pilots who contacted ground services landed the plane at a military airfield near the Soviet-Finnish border.

TRAGEDY ON BOARD
Olga Ovechkina at trial

Noticing at the airport Soviet soldiers, The Ovechkins realized that they had decided to deceive them, and opened fire. One of the older brothers shot the flight attendant, after which they all tried to break down the door to the cockpit. Meanwhile, the assault began. Realizing that they had failed, Ninel Sergeevna demanded to be shot, after which the plane was blown up. One of the older brothers shot his mother, but the bomb explosion turned out to be targeted, and the desired effect could not be achieved. But as a result, three passengers were killed and 36 more were injured. After this, the older brothers - Vasily, Oleg, Dmitry and Alexander - took turns shooting themselves with a sawn-off shotgun. The explosion started a fire, as a result of which the plane was completely burned out.

CONSEQUENCES

On September 8, 1988, the trial of the surviving Ovechkins was held. Older brother Igor and sister Olga received eight and six years in prison, respectively. The minor Ovechkins were initially sent to an orphanage. However, then their older sister Lyudmila took them under her wing. Olga, whose daughter was already born in prison, and Igor served only half of their sentences and were released.

(board number 85413) with the aim of escaping from the USSR.

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The case of the Ovechkin family (narrated by historian Alexey Kuznetsov)

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Background

In 1988, the Ovechkin family consisted of mother Ninel Sergeevna (51 years old) and her 11 children (father, Dmitry Dmitrievich, died on May 3, 1984): 7 sons (Vasily (26 years old), Dmitry (24 years old), Oleg (21 years old ), Alexander (19 years old), Igor (17 years old), Mikhail (13 years old) and Sergey (9 years old)) and 4 daughters (Lyudmila (32 years old), Olga (28 years old), Tatyana (14 years old) and Ulyana (10 years old) years)). The male part of the family was part of their family jazz ensemble "Seven Simeons", named after the Russian woman of the same name folk tale. Vasily played the drums, Dmitry played the trumpet, Oleg played the saxophone, Alexander played the double bass, Igor played the piano, Mikhail played the trombone, Sergey played the banjo. Officially, members of the ensemble were listed as musicians in the association of city parks "Leisure".

Ninel Sergeevna, who thanks to the ensemble received the title “heroine mother,” was born into the family of a single mother who was killed by a drunken watchman while attempting to steal from a potato field, and her father was convicted earlier. She worked as a salesperson most of her life. In the mid-1980s, Vasily Dmitry and Oleg took turns conscript service in the so-called Red Barracks of Irkutsk

Sergei played in restaurants with Igor for some time, then traces of him were lost.

Exactly 30 years ago, March 8, 1988, large family The Ovechkins - a mother and ten of her eleven children - decided to escape from the USSR, hijacked an Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad flight and demanded to fly to England. But instead of Heathrow, the Tu-154 landed at the Veshchevo military airfield near Vyborg. The negotiations ended in a firefight, as a result of which the plane was completely burned out, 11 people were killed and 35 were injured. Almost all of the air terrorists committed suicide during the assault. All these years, the materials of the criminal case and trial were stored in the Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg, and, according to employees, no one from the media tried to get acquainted with them. In search of new details, the correspondent studied the history of the last flight of the Ovechkin family.

Problematic family

On March 8, 1988 at 14:52 Moscow time, the crew of the Tu-154 aircraft operating flight 85413 on the route Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad, through a flight attendant, one of the passengers passed a note with approximately the following content: “The crew should follow to any capital country (England). Don't descend, otherwise we'll blow up the plane. The flight is under our control." The note itself is not in the case materials - it burned down along with the plane.

This case went down in the history of world aviation under the name “Seven Simeons” - that was the name of the Ovechkin family jazz band. One feature distinguishes it from other similar stories: the mastermind of the operation was 53-year-old peasant woman Ninel Ovechkina. The modern generation does not know that the name Ninel is one of the first Soviet neologisms, resulting from rearranging the letters of the pseudonym of the leader of the world proletariat (Lenin) backwards.

The Ovechkins were a simple Siberian family, in some ways even ordinary. She had many children, living in an ordinary Irkutsk wood-and-stone house with “conveniences in the yard,” as they said then. They had a large subsidiary farm, on which they had to work from morning to night. The father, Dmitry Vasilyevich, worked as a mechanic - and, as they would later write in the indictment, “due to alcohol abuse he became disabled and died in 1984.”

The mother was left alone with ten children: seven boys and three girls. She worked as a salesperson in the wine and vodka department. In the materials of the criminal case about the hijacking of the plane there is a short, non-binding phrase that “characterizes”, as lawyers say: “For a long time, Ninel Sergeevna Ovechkina worked as a seller of wine and vodka products and all this time she was engaged in speculation in alcoholic beverages, including including at home, in the presence of her children, for which she was brought to criminal liability. Constantly striving for profit by any means, the mother, possessing a strong and powerful character, raised her children in the spirit of money-grubbing.”

In fact, people who lived in the Soviet Union remember very well: due to widespread shortages and poverty-stricken wages for the majority of the population, everyone worked as hard as they could: some took “hack work,” some did handicraft at night, some from spring to I plowed my garden plots in the fall.

From this point of view, the Ovechkins were absolutely no different from millions of other families in the USSR. In villages, and even in small towns, children spent more time with adults from the beginning of the sowing season until the end of the harvest season: the problem of attending classes was very acute for most provincial schools. Hence the long summer holidays, which are different from those in the rest of the world.

But the same work on a personal plot could be reflected differently in the characteristics. For favorite students they wrote: “A caring and hardworking student who constantly helps his parents.” And for violators, the same thing was indicated by a completely different phrase: “Tends to skip classes under the pretext of helping the family, prone to money-grubbing.”
In the characteristics of the Ovechkins, collected by operatives, both phrases are found: in particular, for going abroad to the international festival of youth and students, they indicated about all children: “Assiduous, caring, take a great part in public life, actively discuss with teachers during lessons; they help the mother, including by keeping an eye on her younger brothers and sisters.” And a year later, the same people signed completely different characteristics: “Without good reasons missed classes at school, had a negative impact on younger brothers and sisters, entered into disputes with teachers.”

There was a similar ambiguity with the criminal case against Ninel Ovechkina: USSR KGB officers removed it from the archives, and the investigator filed it in the appropriate volumes. This is typical for the mid-80s of the last century: first, the local police officer, under protocol, interviews several local alcoholics, and they voluntarily and sincerely say that you can buy vodka from Ninel at any time. Then these same people give the same testimony to the police investigator. After which the house is searched and a couple of bottles of vodka are found.

In March 1984, Kuibyshevsky of the city of Irkutsk initiated a criminal case under the article “Speculation”. The owner of the house herself explains that she stores alcohol for personal use. For six months, no new papers appear in the criminal case, and in January 1985 (when the delegations from Irkutsk to the international festival of youth and students are being formed), the investigator decides to release Ninel Ovechkina from criminal liability, since she is a mother-heroine and can reform with the help of the team.

It is clear that such a criminal case was simply a certain form of pressure on workers or residents. One can, of course, assume that Ninel gave a bribe to the investigator... Be that as it may, now we will never know the truth. The children saw everything that was happening - and knew a lot from the words of their parents and friends. The duplicity of power was projected onto the duplicity of every full member of advanced Soviet society.

And, by the way, the cult of men reigned in the Ovechkin family. Given that everyone worked equally, the best always went to the men. The daughters had been preparing all their lives to play second roles. Although Ninel Ovechkina herself, according to the same neighbors, was a very powerful and decisive woman. But the saleswoman in the wine and vodka department cannot be a sissy... It was precisely because of a certain “privileged” position that all the Ovechkin boys studied music in clubs from childhood. According to the mother, all her sons were talented, although the teachers questioned later did not confirm this.

On the jazz wave

Be that as it may, at the beginning of 1982 the Ovechkins created the jazz band “Seven Simeons”: in honor of the heroes of the Siberian fairy tale of the same name about seven twin brothers who attracted the local tsar for their prowess. It included seven brothers - no girls were taken. The eldest, Vasily, was 20 years old at that moment, the youngest, Seryozha, was three years old.

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

Actually, it was precisely the external data and the unusual repertoire for the Soviet Union - jazz, which was not very popular at that time - that attracted attention to the Ovechkins. In their native Irkutsk they were quite popular, but not with everyone: for example, at the airport only three or four passengers recognized them, mainly by their musical instruments. And of the entire crew of the hijacked plane, only the flight attendant knew who they were and told everyone else. As follows from the crew’s testimony, everyone had heard about “Seven Simeons,” but they didn’t know it by sight and weren’t even familiar with the work.

Nevertheless, an excellent profile (children from a peasant family who became at a young age brilliant musicians), similarity of faces and contrast in age, unusual repertoire and youthful enthusiasm, as well as reviews from public and Komsomol organizations that actively invited an ensemble with an unusual repertoire, played a role - the Ovechkins were noticed. As they said then, they “fell into a stream” that carried them upward.

In 1985, they were part of the cultural delegation of Irkutsk to the International Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. Reports were made about the delegates of this event - and the Ovechkins were noticed. In the same 1985, a documentary film was made about them, the leitmotif of which was peasant hands making amazing roulades. And, of course, an interview with Nineli Sergeevna (with the “Mother Heroine” order on her chest) and sisters who are proud of their brothers and say a big thank you to the relatives of the party and the government, who managed to reveal the talent in ordinary farmers.

It was a façade. Behind him are many letters of complaint: to the director of the Pioneer House with a request to be accepted into the music section at preferential terms, to the State Concert - to help purchase musical instruments at discounted prices, to the city committee of the Komsomol - to allocate funds for sewing concert costumes... To the Irkutsk City Executive Committee - with a request to allocate two apartments. Ovechkina, being a Soviet trade worker, knew better than many others what it meant to “go with the flow.” And how it should be done.

Actually, the group “Seven Simeons” did not have enough stars from the sky, but it was profitable and convenient largely because it remained amateur and did not require funding. In the end, everyone was happy: the musicians who became popular and in demand, the local authorities who discovered the nuggets, and Ninel Ovechkina...

"Having musical abilities, the Ovechkin brothers, with the help of city organizations, created the family musical ensemble “Seven Simeons” in 1982, but they pursued only one goal - to get rid of the unattractive, in their opinion, work in their subsidiary plot, earning money as part of the ensemble. (...) Soon the Ovechkin ensemble gained fame, but wages was not satisfied with the selfish aspirations of the family. And even when the brothers Vasily, Dmitry, Alexander and Oleg, as an exception, were accepted into music school named after the Gnessins, and Igor and Mikhail were given the opportunity to study at the Dunaevsky school; after studying for one semester, they left their studies and returned to Irkutsk, since the dream of big earnings was postponed indefinitely.”

Behind the Iron Curtain

In November 1987, “Seven Simeons”, as part of the cultural delegation of Irkutsk, went on tour to Japan. According to an unspoken, but strictly observed rule in the USSR, the whole family could not travel abroad, and only the sons flew to Tokyo: the mother and sisters remained in Irkutsk.

The indictment states that in Japan, the Ovechkin brothers intended to apply to the US Embassy for asylum, but could not find an acceptable way to do this and abandoned their intention. From the testimony of the accused Olga and Igor Ovechkin, it follows that the older brothers really wanted to ask for political asylum abroad, but necessarily with the whole family; they did not want to leave their mother and younger sisters in the USSR. Be that as it may, “the competent authorities did not record any attempts by the Ovechkins to contact the US Embassy during their stay in Japan in November 1987.”

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

Inspection of the homemade bomb test site.

However, it was after returning from the Country rising sun The Ovechkin family started thinking about emigration. Moreover, “Seven Simeons” not only completely freely purchased very scarce and standard-quality radios and cassette recorders there, but also brought them to the USSR, where they sold them very profitably. At first, the dreams were abstract, according to the principle “it would be nice to live there...” Then they began to acquire specific details.

From the indictment:“Initially, mother and sister Olga did not support this decision, but then, under the influence of persuasion from other family members, they agreed, and in mid-February it was decided at the family council final decision- hijack a plane in flight and force the crew to land outside the USSR. From that moment, the Ovechkins began active preparations for the implementation of their plan: family members, including Igor, began to sell various household items, furniture, radio equipment, carpets, personal items, etc., and Olga closed her personal account on March 2, 1988 in the savings bank of Irkutsk."

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

The uniform of a military medic who was sitting in the second row and was wounded during the attack on the plane.

The investigation painstakingly restored recent months the lives of the Ovechkins - and the slightest signs that they began to prepare to hijack the plane actually appeared only in February 1988, less than a month before March 8.

The day before

Even when testifying, the surviving members of the Ovechkin family defended their mother: apparently, they loved her. Therefore, the main “drivers” of the seizure, as follows from the indictment, were the brothers Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg and Igor. Three of them had already completed military service in the Soviet army, and, contrary to the tradition of serving far from home, they served in Irkutsk, in the Red Barracks, which were occupied by an air defense division. They had combat training- but in general Siberians and so with early childhood they know what a weapon is and from which end it is loaded.

In mid-February, Vasily and Dmitry came to their neighbor, a famous hunter, and asked him for a gun. They explained their interest by the fact that on March 8th they were invited to hunt together with the big Irkutsk leaders. The neighbor gave me a gun.

The brothers immediately made a sawn-off shotgun from the weapon they received, but then the unexpected happened: the owner of the gun, frightened by something, demanded that the weapon be returned. And then Dmitry and Vasily simulated the rupture of weapon barrels, which supposedly occurred due to an accidental shot. So they managed, albeit through a quarrel, but not to attract attention to themselves.

They took two new guns under the same pretext from another neighbor, as well as from an officer of the unit where the older brothers served. He bought a hunting license with his own and gave the brothers caps, gunpowder, cartridges... The officer gave the brothers tools for loading cartridges and poured out the shot.

Igor helped the older brothers make homemade explosive devices (homemade bombs): it was he who, through former classmates, found an approach to the master of industrial training at the school UPK (training and production plant). Under the guise of some “glasses for musical instruments that are needed as counterweights,” the teacher carved out three shells for grenades. Judging by the fact that Vasily paid chervonets (ten rubles) for each of the parts, the main condition was speed: in normal times, such work did not cost more than three rubles.

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

Examination of weapons found in a burned-out plane.

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Three more similar parts were made for them “out of acquaintance” by a garage turner of the Irkutsk Regional Consumer Union - also under the guise of musical counterweights. Having loaded the grenades with gunpowder, the brothers tested them: they blew up a tree in the city garden. The birch survived, but, apparently, the Ovechkins were satisfied with the achieved effect.

In the early 70s in the USSR there were several cases of aircraft being hijacked and hijacked abroad. Almost no one wrote about this then, but people talked a lot about it. The most striking confirmation of the veracity of the tales was the introduced inspection system: all airports in the Soviet Union short period They were equipped with X-ray machines (intrascopes) and hand-held metal detectors, and the boarding gate was redesigned so that it became impossible to pass without inspection. The Ovechkins, who flew to performances in Moscow several times, carrying musical instruments with them, knew the specifics of the inspection and the procedure for transporting large luggage.

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

A drawing by Misha Ovechkin, in which he showed how his older brothers hid weapons in the double bass.

From the indictment: “The Ovechkin brothers decided to carry weapons, ammunition and explosive devices on board the plane in a contrabass. Wanting to check whether the double bass was inspected at airports, Dmitry and Alexander flew with the double bass to Moscow on February 17, 1988, traveled by train to Leningrad, from where they returned to Irkutsk by plane. Having made sure that during inspection the double bass could be placed in the intrascope and weapons could be detected, Dmitry installed a pickup on the double bass, which increased its dimensions, but did not allow the double bass to be placed in the intrascope, and placed and secured weapons, ammunition and explosive devices inside the double bass.”

At the same time, the Ovechkins hastily sold all their property. When, immediately after the capture, operatives of the USSR KGB came to search their house, they found literally empty walls: there were no carpets, no radio equipment, no watches or valuables. The fate of the jewelry and money is unknown; most likely, they burned down along with their owners.

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

This is how KGB officers found the Ovechkins’ apartment in Irkutsk.

The route to Leningrad was not chosen by chance: unlike flights to Moscow, planes to the city on the Neva flew regularly and often, but were half empty. This was important for the capture: the whole family could gather together in a convenient place in the cabin, surrounding themselves with hostages.

To a better life

The flight from Irkutsk to Leningrad made an intermediate stop in Kurgan. An hour after departure from this city, the Ovechkins handed the flight attendant a note written on a squared piece of paper torn from a school notebook: “The crew should follow to any capital country (England). Don't descend, otherwise we'll blow up the plane. The flight is under our control." Immediately after this, for some reason one of the Ovechkin girls stuck two pieces of adhesive tape on the partition in the cabin - so that they formed white cross. It was never possible to find out why this was done, but it was this white cross that was remembered better than the rest by all participants in the tragedy: both passengers and crew.

At 14:52 Moscow time, the note was transferred to the aircraft commander. After reading it, he immediately pressed the special “distress” button, and a little later reported by radio to the Vologda Air Traffic Control Center: at that time there was an airplane in his area of ​​​​responsibility at an altitude of 11,600 meters.

From the interrogation protocol of the aircraft commander Kupriyanov:“Immediately after receiving the note, I kicked the flight attendants out of the cabin, locked the door, then the crew and I loaded our service pistols and read the instructions on what to do in the event of hijacking. After that, I asked the flight attendant to report on the situation in the cabin. Vasilyeva reported that the invaders were a group of 11 people, including three children aged 9-10-11 years. They are armed with two sawn-off shotguns and have a cross pasted on the panel on the left. The crew and I agreed to simulate a flight abroad.”

At 15:11 the crew was asked to proceed to Tallinn, but 20 minutes later a new command was received - to choose either Siverskaya airport or Veshchevo airport. At the same time, changing the route required a significant U-turn. And although the earth was hidden by clouds, the terrorists could not help but notice such a turn by the sun shining through the portholes.

At 15:19, flight engineer Ilya Stupakov went to negotiate with the terrorists - he was the most senior of the crew and the most representative. “When I entered the salon, they immediately pointed two sawn-off shotguns at me and forbade me to approach. I said that we were going to refuel, since there was not enough fuel even to the USSR border. In response, I was required to refuel in any country outside the socialist camp, except Finland. I said that we wouldn’t have enough kerosene anywhere, and then the criminals agreed to Finland,” is recorded in the protocol of his interrogation.

At 15:24, the “Alarm” plan was announced in the North-Western Military District of the USSR. Details are not reflected in the criminal case materials. At 15:25 the alarm was announced to the Alpha group. At 15:30, officers from the Vyborg police departments and the KGB of the USSR began to gather on alert.

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

At this time, the plane, in order to simulate a long flight to Finland, extremely reduced speed...

At about 15:45 the plane began to descend. Only at this time did the flight attendants announce to the passengers that the plane had been hijacked and was flying abroad at the request of the criminals. But by this time, many had already guessed that something strange was happening: those who tried to go to the toilet saw two young men armed with sawn-off shotguns, and a strange cylindrical object was hanging on the chest of one of them.

Veshchevo Airport at that time was military unit. Its commander, having received an alarm, ordered the personnel to cordon off the runway. No one told him that this could not be done (then the newspapers wrote that in a few minutes the soldiers turned a Soviet military facility into some kind of Finnish small town, - but this is not true).

From the interrogation report of the flight attendant:“Just before landing, Ninel Ovechkina, and then Olga Ovechkina, demanded that the male criminals make sure that the plane was landing in Finland. However, under the pretext of lack of fuel, the crew immediately went to land. Olga Ovechkina, who was watching through the window, saw the soldiers and screamed that the plane was landing at a Soviet airfield.”

The plane landed at 16:05. The Ovechkins immediately demanded that the passengers not stand up or move. Immediately after landing, Igor moved to the cockpit and demanded to open the door. Then he plugged the peephole in the door chewing gum. After 15 minutes, a flight engineer came out to him and explained that he needed to refuel. In response to this, the Ovechkins took flight attendant-instructor Tamara Zharkaya hostage... They forced her to sit in the row they occupied and forbade her to move.

“Igor behaved like this: he shouted into the cabin in a menacing voice so that the passengers would not move, and then turned to me and in a completely different, calm tone, told me about his life. Then he said in a scary voice into the cockpit that in 10 minutes they would start killing hostages, but then he calmly continued the conversation with me. I got the impression that he was only imitating threats,” flight attendant Irina Vasilyeva said during interrogation on March 9.

Immediately after landing, the crew commander conveyed to the air traffic control center the terrorists' demand to remove the soldiers. And they were removed - taken off the runway and hidden “in the folds of the terrain.”

At 16:30, a task force from Vyborg arrived at the Veshchevo airfield, consisting of 16 people - police and KGB officers and sergeants, pulled out of their homes and not trained in anything. They immediately ran up to the plane from the nose and tail, so that they could not be seen through the windows. And one of them, investigator of the Vyborg police department, senior lieutenant Petrov, climbed into the cockpit using a stepladder through the window. He had a pistol in one hand, a spare magazine for it in the other, and a bulletproof vest over his pea coat.

“The capture group entered the cabin with such noise that it immediately became clear to the criminals that there were strangers on board,” all crew members repeated several times during interrogations. In response to this, Dmitry Ovechkin shot Tamara Zharkaya in the head. Her body was left lying in the passage.

By 18:00, in addition to the pilots, there were two police officers in the cockpit, armed with Makarov pistols and bulletproof shields. At 18:30, the headquarters informed the board that the signal for the start of the assault would be the start of the aircraft moving along the runway. And they forbade us to move without a command.

Negotiation varying degrees intensity continued until 18:32. During this time, tankers approached the plane three times, and police officers and KGB officers approached under their cover. They were simply gathering in a blind spot. Using ordinary pliers, they were able to open the hatches of the luggage compartment, penetrate it, and discover technological hatches leading to the passenger compartment. But, unfortunately, the Ovechkins heard all this well.
The command to “start takeoff” came at 18:42 - and the plane began to move.

The policemen in the cockpit opened the door to the cabin and opened fire along the aisle. At the same time, they hit the passengers sitting in the first rows and wounded Igor Ovechkin, who was standing near the door, in the leg. Vasily and Dmitry, in response to the shots, opened fire with sawn-off shotguns - and wounded both policemen. Both sides were out of ammunition and the door to the cabin was closed.

From the interrogation report of Igor Ovechkin: “At this time, my older brother Dmitry shouted that soldiers had entered the salon, after which he showed us all to the carpet that they were trying to lift from below near the kitchen. The shooting started, I didn’t see who was shooting at that moment because I hid in the kitchen.

From the protocol of interrogation of minor witness Mikhail Ovechkin:“As a result of this shooting, Seryozha was wounded; at that time he, together with his mother and Ulya, was sitting in a seat in the third row from the tail of the plane. Dima also shot back once. I remember well that first shots were heard from below, from under the rising carpet, and then Dima responded. At this time, the shooting in the first salon stopped.

The brothers realized that they were surrounded and decided to blow themselves up. Dmitry at this time said that he would not sit in Soviet prison[and committed suicide]. Vasily and Oleg approached Sasha, who had been sitting in a seat in the last row on the left side of the plane all this time, stood tightly around the explosive device, and Sasha set it on fire. They called Igor with them so that he would also blow himself up with them, but he did not answer, and the guys thought that they had killed him. When the explosion occurred, none of the guys were hurt, only Sasha’s trousers caught fire. In addition, the explosion caused the upholstery of the chair to catch fire and the window glass was broken. A fire started, then Sasha [committed suicide]. Then Oleg [committed suicide]. When Oleg fell, my mother asked Vasily to shoot her. Vasily took the single-barreled sawn-off shotgun from Dima’s hands and shot his mother in the temple. After mom fell, Vasya told us to all run away. All this happened at the very tail of the plane. At that time I was sitting in a seat in the last row on the right side of the plane and saw how the guys [committed suicide].”

Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg

Items belonging to the Ovechkins were found during the inspection of the scene and in the military hospital where the survivors were taken.

As a result of the emergency, five criminals were killed and two more were wounded; three passengers and one crew member were killed, 14 passengers received injuries of varying severity. The plane burned down completely. First and only official message appeared only a day later, on the afternoon of March 9.