Ovechkin. The bloodiest terrorist act of the times of the USSR: thirty years ago, a large Ovechkin family from Irkutsk hijacked a plane Seven Simeons ensemble true or myth

On March 8, 1988, passengers of a Tu-154 flying from Irkutsk to Leningrad were in good mood. Climbing on board, many of them made plans for the evening: someone was flying home, someone was visiting or on business. Ninel Ovechkina and her children also had their own special plan, for which the exemplary family had been preparing for almost half a year - an airplane hijacking and a daring escape from Soviet Union.

"Poor" Ovechkins

The Ovechkins lived modestly, their father liked to drink, so the mother, Ninel Sergeevna, was mainly involved in raising 11 children. A woman has always been an authority for all members of a large family, but becoming a widow in 1984, she further strengthened her influence on her family. It was she who noticed that her boys - Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg, Alexander, Igor, Mikhail and little Sergey - are incredibly musical. In 1983, the sons organized the Seven Simeons jazz ensemble. The success was enormous. Filmed about gifted musicians documentary. The state, from whose strong embrace they later want to escape, gave the mother of many children two three-room apartments. The talented seven were accepted out of competition at the Gnessin School, but due to tours and constant rehearsals, the Simeons left their studies after a year.

In 1987, Ovechkin had an incredible chance for those times - a trip to Japan, where young talents had to perform in front of a huge audience. Perhaps it was these tours that subsequently pushed the brothers to a terrible crime. Having escaped from the Union, they no longer wanted to live "in a country of queues and shortages." Later, one of the surviving Ovechkins will tell the investigation that during the tour abroad, young people were made a profitable offer - a good contract with an English recording company. Even then, the brothers were ready to say yes and stay in a foreign land. But having done this, they could forever say goodbye to their mother and sisters, who would never have been released from the Soviet Union. Then the musicians decided that in the near future they would leave the Scoop at any cost, and began to prepare to escape from the country.

Seriously

The flight on the route Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad passed smoothly. But when the aircraft landed at Kurgan for refueling and took off again, it became clear that before northern capital The plane will not fly that day. The Ovechkins began to act quickly, according to the previously worked out scheme. Through the stewardess, the brothers gave the pilots a note in which they demanded to change the route abruptly and fly to London. Otherwise, the invaders promised to blow up the plane. At first, the pilots thought that the musicians were joking. However, when the older Ovechkins took out the sawn-off shotguns and began to threaten the passengers, it became clear that the criminals were determined. It was necessary to neutralize the armed terrorists as soon as possible before they killed someone, but how was this done? The second pilot offered the commander to deal with the invaders on his own. The crew had a personal weapon - Makarov pistols. In case of danger, the pilots had the right to shoot to kill. However, fearing the consequences, they decided to abandon the risky plan and wait for instructions from the ground. There, the KGB officers took over the operation. At first, they tried to negotiate with the young terrorists: they were offered to disembark all passengers in exchange for refueling the plane and a guaranteed flight to Helsinki. But the Seven Simeons, led by their mother, did not want to make concessions. Then the flight engineer of the aircraft, Innokenty Stupakov, entered into negotiations with the armed criminals. The man was given clear instructions - to convince the Ovechkins that the fuel was running out, which means that they urgently needed to land. The young people believed Stupakov and were ready to land anywhere. Anywhere but outside the Soviet Union. After some conferring, the invaders gave the command to head for Finland. Flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya was next to negotiate with the brothers. She told the frantic criminals that the plane would soon land in the Finnish city of Kotka. From that moment on, the task of the flight crew was to simulate a flight to Finland. It was decided to land at the Veshchevo military airfield, near Leningrad, the crew hoped that the Ovechkins would not notice the deception and, as soon as the aircraft landed, the terrorists would be neutralized.

Ninel Ovechkina

At 16:05 the plane landed safely in Veshchevo, everything was going well. The newly minted terrorists did not suspect that they were still in their homeland. But then something happened that broke the coup of the entire capture operation. Suddenly, the Soviet military began to approach the aircraft from all sides. It dawned on the Ovechkins - all this time they remained in the "fucking Sovka", the stories about Finland were lies! In anger, 24-year-old Dmitry immediately shot at point-blank flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya. At the same moment, Ninel Ovechkina gave the command to storm the cockpit. But the attempt to break through to the pilots failed, then the brothers threatened to start shooting the passengers if the plane was not refueled and would not be allowed to take off quietly. The terrorists flatly refused to let even the women and children go. When the family saw the tanker, they let the flight engineer outside to open the fuel tanks. In fact, there was a gas station, but it worked as a kind of screen - a whole performance was taking place outside. Everything was subordinated to one goal - to play for time until two capture groups approached the plane. According to the plan, several armed fighters of the special group were supposed to get on board the Tu-154 through a window in the cockpit, others through the entrance in the tail. When the plane took off and began taxiing to the runway, the operation to capture and neutralize the Ovechkins began.

Terrorist back-up plan

In 1988 the system law enforcement The USSR was not yet designed to counter terrorists, whose goal is to become civilians. Simply because the attacks themselves or attempts to carry them out were extremely rare one-time actions. Accordingly, the mechanisms for capturing terrorists and releasing hostages were not developed. There were no units specially trained for such actions in each major city, the regional center. Patrol officers acted as special forces. This explains how they acted in an attempt to neutralize the Ovechkin brothers.

The fighters in the cockpit were the first to launch the attack. They opened fire, but the unfortunate arrows did not hit the brothers, but managed to injure four passengers. The Ovechkins turned out to be much more accurate; in the return firefight, the terrorists wounded the fighters, who eventually disappeared behind the armored door of the cockpit. The assault from the tail was also unsuccessful, opening the hatch, the special forces began to shoot at the legs of the invaders, but it was all in vain. According to eyewitnesses, the terrorists rushed around the cabin like animals driven into a cage. But at some point, Ninel gathered four sons around her: Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg and Alexander. The passengers did not immediately understand what these people were trying to do. Meanwhile, the Ovechkins said goodbye to each other and set fire to one of the pipe bombs. It turns out that even before the hijacking of the plane, the family agreed in case of failure of the operation to commit suicide. A second later, an explosion thundered, from which only Alexander died. The plane caught fire, panic began, a fire broke out.

But the terrorists continued their work. Ninel ordered her eldest son Vasily to kill her, he shot at his mother without hesitation. Dmitriy was next at the barrel of the sawn-off shotgun, then Oleg. 17-year-old Igor did not want to say goodbye to life and hid in the toilet - he knew that if his brother found him, he would not survive. But Vasily had no time to look, there was very little time left. Having dealt with Oleg, he shot himself. In the meantime, one of the passengers opened a door not equipped with a ladder; fleeing from the fire, people began to jump out of the plane, all of them received serious injuries and fractures. When the capture group finally got on board, the fighters began to take people out. At eight o'clock in the evening, the operation to free the hostages was completed. As a result of the hijacking attempt, four civilians died - three passengers and a flight attendant. 15 people received various injuries. Of the seven Ovechkins, five died.

This dramatic story happened in the Soviet Union on March 8, 1988. symbolic numbers. The large Ovechkin family committed a real terrorist act - they hijacked a passenger plane in order to leave their native country. It is also noteworthy that the leader of the gang was the mother of the family. Let's try to reconstruct the picture of what happened.

The Ovechkins lived in a suburb of Irkutsk and played in a family jazz ensemble led by the mother of the family, Ninel Ovechkina. Her husband and father of children, Dmitry Ovechkin, died in 1984, and their mother carried all family worries. As they would say now, she was the main sponsor, creative director and producer of her team. Needless to say, the woman was imperious, despotic and ambitious. The ensemble was called "Seven Simeons" and seven brothers aged 8 to 26 played music in it - Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg, Alexander, Igor, Sergey, Mikhail. The family was very famous in Irkutsk.

Local television even made a film about them (which, however, the mother did not like). Newspapers and radio also regularly reported on the talented family ensemble. There were eleven children in the family. Ninel Ovechkina received the Mother Heroine order, as well as two three-room apartments in a new house on the same floor, while retaining the old private house. It would seem that life is getting better. A unique family in the midst of Glasnost and Perestroika can become a new creative star of the national stage. "Seven Simeons" achieved victories in music competitions in different cities USSR, and in 1987 they were even invited on tour to Japan. But everything was not so rosy.

Ovechkin family

The father of the family drank alcohol until his death. In a drunken stupor, he liked to chase children with a gun in his hands. Mother is a pupil of an orphanage who lost her parents in her childhood. According to the recollections of the neighbors, the family was not friends with anyone, they lived apart. The children did not seem to be hooligans - music lessons took a lot of time, but they did not communicate with their peers, they were always gloomy and unfriendly.

Neighbors also spoke of them as proud and narrow-minded people, for whom the jazz orchestra was not an end in itself, but only a way to break out "into the people." The need forced the Ovechkins to lead a subsistence economy - in their house in the suburbs of Irkutsk, they kept pigs and even cows. After the death of her husband, Ninel still sold vodka. big family out of 12 people (there were also sisters) it was necessary to survive, and musical instruments sons were expensive.

It was on tour in Japan that the family (and Ninel Ovechkina in particular) realized that they wanted to leave the Soviet Union. The children noticed that in the Land of the Rising Sun there are even flowers in the toilets, and such Japanese aesthetics made them think that they had the misfortune to be born in the USSR. Their mother supported them. It seems like they were even approached by a certain American producer who promised to record their compositions in an album and release it in thousands of copies. But this is fame and big money.

The family had already rushed to the USA straight from the Japanese tour, but there was not enough money for a taxi to get to the American embassy. However, upon returning to the USSR, the Ovechkins did not give up on the Western dream. They, on the contrary, began to prepare a plan for a daring escape. The next foreign tour did not turn up, and nothing better musicians
did not figure out how to hijack a passenger plane from the territory of the USSR. They apparently did not think much about the consequences of such an action and what awaits them both in their homeland and in the dream country.

Ovechkins - plane hijacking

Ovechkins picked up a flight western direction Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad. To capture the eldest sons acquired two sawn-off shotguns from single-barreled and double-barreled guns, and also made improvised explosive devices. During previous flights, they noticed that the double bass that was in their orchestra does not fit into the security scanner and airport employees check it manually. This is what the Ovechkins decided to take advantage of. In the double bass case, they made a double bottom, where they hid sawn-off shotguns, 100 cartridges for them and bombs. Played into the hands of their fame.

Before the ill-fated departure, the popular family was practically not inspected. They planned to fly to London, although they were ready for any other western country. In addition to the mother and seven brothers, three more daughters from the Ovechkin family went on board - the eldest has already acquired own family, lived separately and did not participate in terms of mother and brothers.

Already after refueling in Kurgan, flying in the Vologda region, the commander of the ship Kupriyanov receives a note with the following content: “Proceed to England (London). Don't go down. Otherwise, we'll blow up the plane. You are under our control."

The commander transmits this information to the ground. Fuel remained for an hour and a half of the flight, the plane would not have flown to London under any circumstances, not to mention the fact that the crew had no experience in international flights. They tried to explain this fact to family terrorists. Flight engineer Innokenty Stupakov went into the cabin and, as a result of negotiations, managed to explain to the Ovechkins that there was not enough fuel to fly to the UK, after which he managed to convince the terrorists to allow the landing
for aircraft refueling in Finland.

Then they ordered to land in the nearest "abroad" for refueling. "Earth" at first gave the go-ahead, but it was impossible to fly even to Finland with Sweden, and the criminals could recognize Tallinn from the air. It was decided to send the plane to an alternate airfield near Vyborg in the hope that the Ovechkins would not recognize it. But for the landing approach, the Tu-154 crew has to make a noticeable maneuver - a 180-degree turn. The terrorists notice this and start to panic. Flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya tries to reassure them that the plane is maneuvering before landing in the Finnish city of Kotka.

Already on the ground, the Ovechkins notice that “Flammable” is written in Russian on the approaching refueling car, and then they also noticed the fighters with Kalashnikovs surrounding the plane. Then the second son - Dmitry Ovechkin - kills the stewardess Tamara. The nerves of all family members fail, the passengers then describe them as having lost their minds. They did not go to negotiations, they refused to let passengers go. In addition, there was a bomb threat. Well, then the capture group acts completely unprofessionally.

First, one machine gunner bursts into the salon, makes a line and leaves the salon. After a while, a full-fledged assault begins. The terrorists fire back and manage to detonate the bomb, but it does not kill anyone, but only starts a fire. The result - 9 dead, 30 wounded, the plane was engulfed in flames and subsequently completely burned down.

Passengers jumping out of a burning plane in a panic were surrounded on the ground and beaten with rifle butts, “what if there were terrorists among them” - that was the justification of the security forces. In case of failure, Ninel's mother left clear instructions to the children: kill her, shoot themselves and detonate the bomb. Dmitry Ovechkin shot himself after the murder of a flight attendant, followed by Oleg and Alexander. The eldest son, Vasily Ovechkin, fulfilled his mother's request - he killed her and shot himself. Igor Ovechkin got scared and hid in the toilet, later appearing before the court along with his older sister Olga, who played the role of a servant in the family and also flew on this flight.

The case got loud. The prosecutor's office was inundated with angry letters from citizens, and the case materials eventually consisted of six volumes. The dead stewardess Tamara Zharkaya was buried by the whole city. The trial was held openly, so many people gathered in the hall that there were not enough seats for everyone. Passengers of the hijacked liner, as well as crew members, acted as witnesses at the trial. The younger brothers, Misha and Seryozha, were too small to bear criminal responsibility, so Igor and Olga Ovechkin, who received 8 and 6 years in prison, respectively, ended up in the dock.

The terrorists of the 1960s and 1980s are generally often idealistic romantics, which, of course, does not in the least justify their actions. And law enforcement agencies were just learning to neutralize them, they learned, among other things, from their bloody mistakes. Well, the number "7" was definitely unlucky for the seven brothers from the "Seven Simeons". But the language does not turn to call them romantics, led by the mother-heroine ...

Exactly 30 years ago, on March 8, 1988, the large Ovechkin family - a mother and ten of her eleven children - decided to escape from the USSR, seized the Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad scheduled 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 burned down completely, 11 people were killed, 35 were injured. Almost all air terrorists committed suicide during the assault. All these years, the materials of the criminal case and litigation were stored in the Leningrad Regional State Archives in Vyborg, and, according to the employees, none of the media representatives tried to get acquainted with them. In search of new details, the correspondent studied the history of the last flight of the Ovechkin family.

Problem family

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

This case entered 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 53-year-old peasant woman Ninel Ovechkina was the mastermind behind the operation. 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 an ordinary one. She has many children, lives in an ordinary Irkutsk wooden-stone house with “comfort in the yard”, as they said then. They had a large subsidiary farm, on which they had to work from morning to night. Father, Dmitry Vasilyevich, worked as a mechanic - and, as they later write in the indictment, “because of 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 on the hijacking of the aircraft there is a short, non-binding phrase, “characterizing”, as lawyers say: “For a long time, Ovechkina Ninel Sergeevna 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 prosecuted. Constantly, by any means striving for profit, the mother, possessing a strong and domineering character, raised her children in the spirit of money-grubbing.

In fact, people who lived in the Soviet Union remember very well: due to the widespread shortage and beggarly wages for the majority of the population, everyone was spinning as best they could: someone took “hack work”, someone needleworked at night, someone from spring to autumn plowed on personal plots.

From this point of view, the Ovechkins were absolutely no different from millions of other families in the USSR. In the villages, and even in small towns, children from the beginning of the sowing campaign to the end of the harvest spent more time with adults: the problem of attending classes was very acute for most provincial schools. Hence - and long, not like in the rest of the world, summer holidays.

But the same work on a personal plot in the characteristics could be reflected in different ways. For beloved 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: "Prone to skipping 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 traveling abroad to the international festival of youth and students, they indicated about all children: “Assiduous, caring, take a great part in public life, in the classroom actively discussing with teachers; help mothers, including by looking after younger brothers and sisters. And a year later, the same people signed completely different characteristics: “Without good reason, he skipped classes at school, negatively influenced his younger brothers and sisters, entered into disputes with teachers.”

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

In March 1984, the Kuibyshev city of Irkutsk initiated a criminal case under the article "Speculation". The mistress of the house herself explains that she keeps alcohol for personal needs. 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 improve with the help of the team.

It is clear that such a criminal case was simply certain form pressure on employees or residents. One can, of course, assume that Ninel gave a bribe to the investigator ... Be that as it may, now we will not know the truth. The children saw everything that happened - 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 progressive Soviet society.

And, by the way, the cult of a man reigned in the Ovechkin family. Despite the fact that everyone worked on an equal footing, the best always went to men. Daughters were preparing all their lives to be on the sidelines. Although Ninel Ovechkina herself, according to the same neighbors, was a very domineering and determined woman. But the saleswoman of the wine and vodka department cannot be a sissy ... It is because of a certain “privileged” position that all the Ovechkin boys have been studying music in circles since childhood. According to the mother, all her sons were talented, although the teachers interrogated later did not confirm this.

On the jazz wave

Whatever it was, but in early 1982, the Ovechkins created the Seven Simeons jazz band: in honor of the heroes of the Siberian fairy tale of the same name about seven twin brothers who liked the local king with their prowess. It included seven brothers - girls were not taken. The eldest, Vasily, was 20 years old at that moment, the youngest, Seryozha, was three years old.

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

Actually, it was external data and an unusual repertoire for the Soviet Union - not very popular then jazz - that attracted attention to the Ovechkins. In their native Irkutsk, they were quite popular, but not with everyone: for example, only three or four people recognized them at the airport, mostly by 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 testimonies of the crew, everyone heard about the "Seven Simeons", but they did not know by sight and were not even familiar with the work.

Nevertheless, an excellent questionnaire (children from a peasant family who became young age brilliant musicians), the similarity of faces and the contrast of age, an unusual repertoire and youthful enthusiasm, as well as feedback from public and Komsomol organizations, who actively invited an ensemble with an unusual repertoire, played their role - the Ovechkins were noticed. As they said then, they "hit the jet" that carried them up.

In 1985, they entered the cultural delegation of Irkutsk to the International Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. Reports were filmed 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 Ninel Sergeevna (with the order "Mother Heroine" on her chest) and sisters who are proud of their brothers and thank the relatives of the party and the government, who managed to reveal the talent in ordinary farmers.

This was the façade. Behind him - many plaintive letters: to the director of the house of pioneers with a request to accept them into the music section on preferential terms, to the State Concert - to help purchase musical instruments at preferential prices, to the Komsomol city committee - to allocate funds for tailoring concert costumes ... To the Irkutsk City Executive Committee - with a request to allocate two apartments. Ovechkina, being a Soviet trade worker, knew better than most what it meant to “go with the flow.” And how it should be done.

Actually, the Seven Simeons group 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 were becoming popular and in demand, and the local authorities, who discovered the nuggets, and Ninel Ovechkina…

“Possessing musical abilities, the Ovechkin brothers, with the help of city organizations, created the Seven Simeons family musical ensemble in 1982, but they pursued only one goal - to get rid of unattractive, in their opinion, work in their subsidiary plots, earning money as part of the ensemble . (...) Soon the Ovechkin ensemble gained fame, but wage did not suit the selfish aspirations of the family. And even when the brothers Vasily, Dmitry, Alexander and Oleg, as an exception, were admitted to the Gnessin Music College, 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, as the dream of large 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, it was impossible for the whole family to go abroad, and only sons flew to Tokyo: mother and sisters remained in Irkutsk.

The indictment states that in Japan, the Ovechkin brothers intended to apply to the US Embassy with a request for asylum, but could not find an acceptable way for this and abandoned their intention. From the testimony of the accused Olga and Igor Ovechkin, it follows that the older brothers really wanted to seek political asylum abroad, but without fail - with the whole family, they did not want to leave their mother and younger sisters in the USSR. Be that as it may, but "attempts during their stay in Japan in November 1987 to contact the US Embassy by the Ovechkins were not recorded by the competent authorities."

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

Inspection of the test site of a homemade bomb.

However, it was after returning from the Land of the Rising Sun that the Ovechkin family thought about emigration. Moreover, Seven Simeons not only freely acquired 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, dreams were abstract, according to the principle “it would be nice to live there ...” Then they began to grow into concrete details.

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

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

The uniform of a military medic, who was sitting in the second row and was wounded during the storming of the aircraft.

The investigation painstakingly restored recent months life of the Ovechkins - and the slightest sign that they began to prepare for the hijacking of the plane did not really appear until 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 "engines" of the seizure, as follows from the indictment, were the brothers Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg and Igor. Three of them by that time had already completed military service in Soviet army, moreover, contrary to the tradition of serving away from home, they served in Irkutsk, in the Red barracks, which were occupied by the air defense division. They had combat training- but in general Siberians and so on early childhood they know what a weapon is and from which end it is loaded.

In mid-February, Vasily and Dmitry came to a neighbor, a well-known hunter, and asked him for a gun. They explained their interest by the fact that on the eighth of March they were called to hunt along with the big Irkutsk bosses. A neighbor gave me a gun.

The brothers immediately made a sawn-off shotgun from the received weapon, but then the unexpected happened: the owner of the gun, frightened of something, demanded that the weapon be returned. And then Dmitry and Vasily imitated the rupture of the barrels of weapons, which allegedly occurred during 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 also bought for his hunting ticket and gave the brothers caps, gunpowder, shells ... The officer gave the brothers devices for equipping cartridges and poured out shots.

Igor helped his older brothers to make improvised explosive devices (self-made bombs): it was he who, through former classmates found an approach to the master of industrial training of the school CPC (training and production plant). Under the guise of some "glasses for musical instruments that are needed as counterweights," the teacher carved three cases for grenades for them. Judging by the fact that Vasily paid a gold piece (ten rubles) for each of the details, the main condition was speed: in normal times, such work did not cost more than three rubles.

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

Examination of weapons found in a burned-out aircraft.

1 /10

Three more similar parts “by acquaintance” were made by a garage turner of the Irkutsk Regional Consumer Union - also under the guise of musical counterweights. Having equipped 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 effect achieved.

In the early 1970s, there were several cases of aircraft hijacking and hijacking abroad in the USSR. At that time, almost no one wrote about it, but people talked a lot. The most striking confirmation of the veracity of the tales was the screening system introduced: all airports in the Soviet Union for short period 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 several times to performances in Moscow, carrying musical instruments with them, knew both the features of the check and the procedure for transporting bulky luggage.

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

Misha Ovechkin's drawing, in which he showed how the 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 double bass. Wishing to check whether the double bass was inspected at airports, Dmitry and Alexander flew to Moscow on February 17, 1988 with the double bass, traveled by train to Leningrad, from where they again returned to Irkutsk by plane. Convinced that during the inspection, the double bass could be placed in the intrascope and detect weapons, 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 strengthened weapons, ammunition and explosive devices inside the double bass.

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

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

In this form, the 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 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 at Kurgan. An hour after taking off from this city, the Ovechkins handed over to the flight attendant a note written on a piece of paper torn from a school notebook in a box: “The crew should go to any capital country (England). Do not descend, otherwise we will blow up the plane. The flight is under our control." Immediately after that, one of the Ovechkin girls for some reason stuck two pieces of adhesive tape on the partition in the cabin - so that they formed a white cross. Why this was done, it was not possible to find out, but it was this white cross that was remembered better than the rest by all the participants in the tragedy: both passengers and crew.

At 14:52 Moscow time, the note was handed over to the aircraft commander. After reading it, he immediately pressed the special “distress” button, and a little later he reported by radio to the Vologda air traffic control center: at that time there was an aircraft in his area of ​​​​responsibility at an altitude of 11,600 meters.

From the protocol of the interrogation of the commander of the aircraft Kupriyanov:“Immediately after receiving the note, I drove 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 case of capture. 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. They are armed with two sawn-off shotguns, a cross is 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 after 20 minutes a new command arrived - either Siverskaya Airport or Veshchevo Airport. At the same time, a change in route required a significant U-turn. And although the earth was hidden by clouds, the terrorists could not fail to notice such a turn from the sun shining through the windows.

At 15:19, flight engineer Ilya Stupakov went to negotiate with the terrorists - he was the oldest 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, as there would not be enough fuel even to the border of the USSR. In response, they demanded that I refuel in any country outside the socialist camp, except for Finland. I said that we would not have enough kerosene anywhere, and then the criminals agreed to Finland, ”the protocol of his interrogation recorded.

At 15:24, the Nabat plan was announced in the Northwestern Military District of the USSR. Details in the materials of the criminal case are not reflected. At 15:25, an alarm was announced to the Alpha group. At 15:30, on alarm, officers of the Vyborg police departments and the KGB of the USSR began to gather.

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

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

Around 15:45 the board began to decline. Only at this time, the flight attendants announced to the passengers that the plane was hijacked and, at the request of the criminals, was flying abroad. But by this time, many have already guessed - something strange is happening: those who tried to go to the toilet saw two young men armed with sawn-off shotguns, and a strange cylindrical object hung on the chest of one of them.

Veshchevo airport at that time was military unit. Its commander, having received an alarm signal, ordered the personnel to cordon off the runway. Nobody told him that this could not be done (then the newspapers wrote that in a few minutes the soldiers turned the Soviet military facility into a kind of Finnish small town, - but this is not true).

From the protocol of the interrogation of the stewardess:“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 a lack of fuel, the crew immediately went to land. Olga Ovechkina, who was watching through the window, saw the soldiers and shouted that the plane was landing on a Soviet airfield.

The plane landed at 16:05. The Ovechkins immediately demanded that the passengers not get 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 with chewing gum. After 15 minutes, a flight engineer came out to him, who explained that he needed to refuel. In response to this, the Ovechkins took flight attendant-instructor Tamara Zharkuya hostage ... They forced her to sit on the row that they themselves 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 about his life. Then he said in a terrible voice into the cockpit that in 10 minutes they would begin to kill the hostages, but then he calmly continued talking to me again. I got the impression that he was only imitating threats,” flight attendant Irina Vasilyeva said during an interrogation on March 9.

Immediately after landing, the crew commander handed over to the center of the organization air traffic the terrorists' demand is to remove the soldiers. And they were removed - they were taken outside the runway and hidden "in the folds of the terrain."

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

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

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

Negotiations of varying degrees of intensity continued until 18:32. During this time, tankers drove up to the plane three times, and under their cover, police officers and KGB officers approached. They were just going to the blind spot. With the help of ordinary pliers, they were able to open the hatches of the luggage compartment, penetrate into it, and find technological hatches leading to the passenger compartment. But, unfortunately, the Ovechkins heard all this well.
The command to "start takeoff" was received at 18:42 - and the plane began to move.

The policemen who were in the cockpit opened the door to the saloon and opened fire along the aisle. At the same time, they hit the passengers sitting in the front 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 ran out of ammo and the cockpit door was closed.

From the protocol of interrogation 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, which they tried to lift from below near the kitchen. Shooting began, who was shooting, I did not see at that moment, because I hid in the kitchen.

From the protocol of the interrogation of the minor witness Mikhail Ovechkin:“As a result of this shooting, Serezha was wounded, at that time, together with his mother and Ulya, he was sitting in a chair in the third row from the tail of the plane. Dima also fired once in response. I remember very well that first shots rang out from below, from under the rising carpet, and then Dima answered. At this time, the shooting in the first saloon stopped.

The brothers realized that they were surrounded - and decided to blow themselves up. Dmitry at that time said that he would not sit in a Soviet prison [and committed suicide]. Vasily and Oleg approached Sasha, who had been sitting in a chair all this time in the last row on the left side of the plane, 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 was heard, none of the guys were hurt, only Sasha's trousers caught fire. In addition, the upholstery of the seat caught fire from the explosion and the glass of the porthole was shattered. A fire started, then Sasha [committed suicide]. Then Oleg [committed suicide]. When Oleg fell, my mother asked Vasily to shoot her. Vasily took a single-barrel 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 chair in the last row on the right side of the plane and saw how the guys [committed suicide].”

Leningrad Regional State Archive in Vyborg

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

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

It happened almost 30 years ago, on a holiday on March 8, 1988. The large and friendly Ovechkin family known throughout the country - the mother-heroine and 10 children from 9 to 28 years old - flew from Irkutsk to music Festival in Leningrad.
They brought with them a bunch of instruments, from a double bass to a banjo, and everyone around them smiled happily, recognizing the "Seven Simeons" - Siberian nugget brothers playing incendiary jazz.

But at a 10-kilometer altitude, people's favorites suddenly took out sawn-off shotguns and a bomb from their cases and ordered to fly to London, otherwise they would start killing passengers and generally blow up the plane. An attempted hijacking turned into an unheard-of tragedy


“Wolves in the shoes of the Ovechkins” – this is how the stunned Soviet press later wrote about them. How did it happen that sunny, smiling guys turned into terrorists? From the very beginning, the mother was blamed for everything, allegedly raising her eldest sons as ambitious and cruel. Plus, a noisy glory somehow easily and immediately fell upon them, and it completely blew their heads off. But also, some saw Ovechkin as sufferers, victims of the absurd Soviet system, who went to crime just to "live like a human being."

"Family-sect"

Siberian nuggets

Shine and poverty

"We'll blow up the plane!"

Tamara Hot

The result of the tragedy

The further fate of the Ovechkins

On March 8, 1988, during the next flight from Irkutsk to Leningrad, a man who carried a sawn-off shotgun and improvised explosive devices on board the plane in a case with a double bass handed a note to the stewardess, who an hour later he himself shot point-blank. The note read: “Set a course for London. Don't go down or we'll blow up the plane. Now fulfill our demands." Sitting next to the man was his accomplice, his nine-year-old brother Sergei, eight other siblings, 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 demands of the hijackers have always been the same: redirect the plane to another country behind the Iron Curtain.

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

Article about the hijacking by the Ovechkin family in Vostochno-Sibirskaya 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 notoriety by dying grisly deaths in an escape plan that was not so daring as it was naive.

Ninel Ovechkina's mother accidentally shot for the first time when she was five years old. She spent her childhood in an orphanage. Later she married, but her husband was an alcoholic and after another drinking bout 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 products in local markets.

Ninel Ovechkina

The family grew, the husband periodically disappeared for several weeks, and then Ninel became a farmer, and her children were laborers. The children milked the cows, scattered the manure under the watchful eye of a caring mother who gave out precise instructions. Ninel was principled, but kind. She loved her children. Later, one of the sons, Mikhail, recalled his mother: “We could not say no to her. It's not that we were afraid of her, we couldn't even think of ignoring her request." Mikhail played the trombone, he 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, later said: "We were good children, we never drank or smoked, we never went to discos." Neighbors noted that the Ovechkins rarely spoke to strangers, being in their company after school. Each new purchase or an important decision was discussed at the 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 of jazz during their band's performance of a folk song after school. A provocative idea formed in his head in a few seconds: these guys from the same family would become a Dixieland band from Siberia. Romanenko divided the guys into groups and taught them to play Louis Armstrong and other interpretations. This is how the Seven Simeons collective 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 to tour the Soviet palaces of 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 riveted on two little boys, Mikhail and Sergey, who played a banjo that seemed larger than themselves.

In Irkutsk, they have become a sensation and a symbol of the city. From their estate, the Ovechkins moved into two large adjoining apartments, they were given additional coupons for food (this was the case in the USSR from the mid-80s until its collapse), the oldest of the two guys was sent to a prestigious music school in Moscow. But in the new apartment there was often no water, there was not enough food, and again, in order to survive, Ninel begins to drive vodka and sell it illegally in the market during the day or in the apartment at night. The Ovechkins knew they deserved a better life. Existence, when after the concerts they returned to the apartment, where there was not enough food, it became simply humiliating. The leader of the group, Vasily, became disillusioned and left the music academy, claiming that professors trained in classical music could not teach him jazz. He saw his horizons much further. The turning point was a trip to Japan. The surviving brothers of the theft said they were shocked in Japan when they saw neon lighting, supermarket shelves full of food bought without coupons, and what shocked them, flowers in the toilets. The Seven Simeons could have followed the path trodden by other Soviet defectors such as the dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. While on tour, they might ask for asylum in one of the Western embassies. But their mother, who had stayed at home, would most likely have faced questions from intelligence agents, and it was even possible that a criminal case would have been initiated against her for not informing the authorities about a possible betrayal in a timely manner. 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 renowned performers, they would never be allowed to emigrate. They came up with a plan. Mikhail later said: “Before doing anything, we agreed - if the hijacking fails, we will commit suicide, and not surrender to the police. We will all die together." The Ovechkins bought a hunting rifle from an acquaintance. The farmer sold them gunpowder, from which they made several primitive improvised explosive devices. Finally, they took a double bass as an instrument, the case of which, due to its size, could not pass through the security scanner. The police did not search the instruments of celebrities on their way to Leningrad for the next concert, and Ninel, her three daughters and seven sons boarded the plane.

One of the many photographs of the family of musicians

The family sold everything they had, dressed in the new outfits that the world's media would greet them as they stepped off the plane in London. However, like many previous hijackers, their destination remained a fantasy. The TU-154 they were flying did not have enough fuel to fly beyond Scandinavia. The security officer advised the crew: “Land the plane on the Soviet side of the border with Finland, tell them 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 while landing, when the plane stopped, Dimitri noticed Russian inscriptions on refueling trucks. As a warning, he shot the stewardess Tamara Zharkuya, and demanded that the plane take off right now.