Kurchenko's last flight of hope. Post in memory of the Soviet stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died in the sky from a terrorist bullet View from the ground

At the end of November 1968, Nadezhda Kurchenko came to work in the Sukhum air detachment, and less than two years later, an entry appeared in her personal file "Exclude from the list of personnel due to death occurring in the line of duty."

He recalls Georgy Chakhrakia, the crew commander of the An-24, No. 46256, who flew on October 15, 1970 on the Batumi-Sukhumi route - I remember everything. I remember perfectly.

Such things are not forgotten, - That day I told Nadia: “We agreed that in life you would consider us your brothers. So why aren't you being honest with us? I know that soon I will have to take a walk at the wedding ... ”the pilot recalls with sadness. - The girl raised her blue eyes, smiled and said: "Yes, probably for the November holidays." I was delighted and, shaking the wings of the plane, shouted at the top of my voice: “Guys! On holidays we walk at the wedding! ”... And an hour later I knew that there would be no wedding ...

At 12.40. Five minutes after takeoff (at an altitude of about 800 meters), a man and a guy sitting in the front seats called the flight attendant and gave her an envelope: “Give it to the crew commander!”. The envelope contained Order No. 9 printed on a typewriter:

1. I order you to fly along the indicated route.
2. Stop radio communication.
3. For failure to comply with the order - Death.
(Free Europe) P.K.Z.Ts.
General (Krylov)

There was a seal on the sheet, on which it was written in Lithuanian: "... rajono valdybos kooperatyvas" ("management cooperative ... of the district"). the man was dressed in the dress uniform of a Soviet officer.

Realizing the intentions of the "passenger", the flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko rushed into the cockpit and shouted: "Attack!" The criminals rushed after her. "No one get up! the younger yelled. “Otherwise we’ll blow up the plane!” Nadia tried to block the bandits' way into the cockpit: "You can't go there!" . "They are armed!" - were the last words of Nadia. Immediately, the flight attendant was killed with two shots at close range.

- Bullets were flying from the cockpit. One went through my hair

- says Leningrader Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov. He and his wife were passengers on the ill-fated flight in 1970. - I saw: the bandits had pistols, a hunting rifle, one grenade from the elder hung on his chest. (...) The plane was thrown left and right - the pilots probably hoped that the criminals would not stand on their feet.
The shooting continued in the cockpit. There they will then count 18 holes, and in total 24 bullets were fired. One of them hit the commander in the spine:
Giorgi Chakhrakia - I lost my legs. Through my efforts, I turned around and saw a terrible picture, Nadia lay motionless on the floor in the door of our cabin and bled to death. Navigator Fadeev lay nearby. And a man stood behind us and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore on the left! Heading south! Do not enter the clouds! Obey, otherwise we will blow up the plane!

The offender did not stand on ceremony. He ripped off the radio communication headphones from the pilots. He trampled on the lying bodies. Flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was also shot at, but he was lucky - the bullet got stuck in the steel pipe of the seat back. When the navigator Valery Fadeev came to his senses (his lungs were shot), the bandit cursed and kicked the seriously wounded man.

Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov - I told my wife: “We are flying towards Turkey!” - and was afraid that when approaching the border we might be shot down. My wife also remarked: “The sea is below us. You feel good. You can swim, but I can't! And I thought: “What a stupid death! He went through the whole war, signed on the Reichstag - and on you!
The pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal.
Giorgi Chakhrakia - I told the bandits: “I am wounded, my legs are paralyzed. I can only control with my hands. The co-pilot should help me,” And the bandit answered: “Everything happens in the war. We can die." The thought even crossed my mind to send "Annushka" to the rocks - to die ourselves and finish off these bastards. But there are forty-four people in the cabin, including seventeen women and one child.
I told the co-pilot: “If I lose consciousness, lead the ship at the request of the bandits and land it. We must save the plane and passengers! We tried to land on Soviet territory, in Kobuleti, where there was a military airfield. But the hijacker, when he saw where I was heading the car, warned me that he would shoot me and blow up the ship. I made the decision to cross the border. And five minutes later we crossed it at low altitude.
... The airfield in Trabzon was found visually. For the pilots, it was not difficult.
Giorgi Chakhrakia - We made a circle and launched green rockets, making it clear that the runway was free. We entered from the side of the mountains and sat down so that, if something happened, we would land on the sea. We were immediately cordoned off. The co-pilot opened the front doors and the Turks entered. In the cockpit, the bandits surrendered. All this time, until the locals showed up, we were under gunpoint...
Leaving the cabin after the passengers, the senior bandit rapped on the car with his fist: “This plane is now ours!”
The Turks provided medical assistance to all crew members. They immediately offered those who wished to stay in Turkey, but not one of the 49 Soviet citizens agreed.

The next day, all passengers and the body of Nadia Kurchenko were taken to the Soviet Union. A little later, the hijacked An-24 was overtaken.

Nadezhda's mother Genrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko says: - I immediately asked that Nadia be buried with us in Udmurtia. But I was not allowed. They said that from a political point of view, this cannot be done.

And for twenty years I went to Sukhumi every year at the expense of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. In 1989, my grandson and I came for the last time, and then the war began. The Abkhazians fought with the Georgians, and the grave was neglected. We walked to Nadya on foot, shooting nearby - there was everything ... And then I impudently wrote a letter addressed to Gorbachev: “If you don’t help transport Nadya, I’ll go and hang myself on her grave!” A year later, the daughter was reburied at the city cemetery in Glazov. They wanted to bury him separately, on Kalinin Street, and rename the street in honor of Nadia. But I didn't allow it. She died for the people. And I want her to lie with people..

The monument on her grave is temporary, made of bad granite. They carved a face that was washed away by rain ... The authorities promised to put a new one, but then the Komsomol broke up, and they forgot about all the promises ...
- After the death of Nadia, did you get any help?
- They gave me a three-room apartment in Glazov. I live with my son and my family. I also have two daughters.
- Do you have grandchildren?
— Two grandsons and three granddaughters. They wanted to name their son's daughter Nadia.

And you know what he said? “Mom, who knows what she will grow up to be? Suddenly dishonor Nadia? And the girl was named Anya ...

- In 1970, you were inundated with letters ...
- There were a lot of letters.

Thousands! I read everything, but I could not answer. And sent them to the museum. Only we had 15 schools in Glazov. And in each there was either a detachment, or a squad named after Nadia.

In Izhevsk, in Tataria, in Ukraine, in Kursk, in the Altai Territory, in her homeland, there were folk museums dedicated to Nadia Kurchenko...

You know, I still cry every day. So many years have passed, and I'm crying. I feel sorry for her, that's all.
- Do you have the feeling that your daughter has been forgotten?
- No! Remember! Remember, thank God! Here, in Glazov, they remember! At the boarding school where Nadia studied.

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko (1950-1970)
She was born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novo-Poltava, Klyuchevsky District, Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district of the UASSR. Since December 1968, a flight attendant of the Sukhum air squadron. She died on October 15, 1970 while trying to prevent a terrorist hijacking. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was moved to the city cemetery of Glazov. She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a small planet.

At the end of 1970, Nadezhda was supposed to have a wedding. The Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote the poem “People have different songs” about Nadezhda and, as it were, on behalf of her young man. In 1971, the composer Vladimir Semenov wrote music to these verses and the song “My Clear Star” was obtained, which was recorded by VIA Flowers in 1972 (Stas Namin, Sergey Dyachkov, Yuri Fokin and Alexander Losev - vocals).

Immediately after the hijacking in the USSR, sparing TASS reports appear:
“On October 15, an An-24 aircraft of the civil air fleet made a regular flight from the city of Batumi to Sukhumi. Two armed bandits, using weapons against the crew of the plane, forced the plane to change its route and land on Turkish territory in the city of Trabzon. During a fight with the bandits, the flight attendant of the plane was killed, who was trying to block the bandits from entering the cockpit. Two pilots were injured. The passengers of the plane are unharmed. The Soviet government turned to the Turkish authorities with a request to extradite the murderous criminals to bring them to the Soviet court, as well as to return the plane and the Soviet citizens who were on board the An-24 aircraft.
Appeared the next day, October 17, "shuffle" reported that the crew and passengers returned to their homeland. True, the navigator of the aircraft, who received an operation, remained in the hospital of Trabzon, who received serious wounds in the chest. The names of the hijackers are not known: “As for the two criminals who committed an armed attack on the aircraft crew, as a result of which the flight attendant N.V. Kurchenko was killed, two crew members and one passenger were wounded, the Turkish government stated that they were arrested and the prosecution authorities an order to conduct an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the case”.

The general public became aware of the personalities of the air pirates only on November 5 after a press conference by the USSR Prosecutor General Rudenko.

Brazinskas Pranas Stasio born in 1924 and Brazinskas Algirdas born in 1955
Pranas Brazinskas was born in 1924 in the Trakai region of Lithuania.

Algirdis (far left) and Pranas (far right) Brazinskasy

According to the biography written by Brazinskas in 1949, the “forest brothers” killed the chairman of the council with a shot through the window and mortally wounded father P. Brazinskas, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas bought a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the head of the household goods warehouse of the Vievis cooperative. In 1955, P. Brazinskas was sentenced to 1 year of corrective labor for embezzlement and speculation in building materials. In January 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, he was again sentenced to 5 years, but already in June he was released ahead of schedule. Having divorced his first wife, he left for Central Asia.

He was engaged in speculation (in Lithuania he bought car parts, carpets, silk and linen fabrics and sent parcels to Central Asia, for each parcel he had a profit of 400-500 rubles), quickly accumulated money. In 1968, he brought his thirteen-year-old son Algirdas to Kokand, and two years later he left his second wife.

On October 7-13, 1970, having visited Vilnius for the last time, P. Brazinskas and his son took their luggage - it is not known where the acquired weapons, accumulated dollars (according to the KGB, more than 6,000 dollars) and flew to the Transcaucasus.

The film "Lies and Hatred" (US espionage against the USSR). 1980 was filmed for viewing at Komsomol and party meetings. The crew members of the AN-24 airliner #46256 talk about the capture at 42:20 minutes of the film.

In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey extradite the criminals immediately, but this demand was not met. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. The Trabzon Court of First Instance did not recognize the attack as premeditated. In his defense, Pranas stated that they hijacked the plane in the face of death, allegedly threatening him for participating in the “Lithuanian Resistance.” And they sentenced 45-year-old Pranas Brazinskas to eight years in prison, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas to two. In May 1974, the father fell under the amnesty law and Brazinskas Sr.'s imprisonment was replaced with house arrest. In the same year, the father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and applied to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to grant them political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brazinskases again surrendered to the Turkish police, where they were kept for another couple of weeks and ... finally released. Then they flew through Italy and Venezuela to Canada. During an intermediate landing in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. The status of political refugees was never granted to them, but for a start they were provided with a residence permit, and in 1983 both were given American passports. Algirdas officially became Albert Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White.
Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko - Seeking the extradition of the Brazinskas, I even went to a meeting with Reagan at the American embassy. I was told that they were looking for my father because he lives illegally in the USA. And the son received American citizenship. And he can't be punished. Nadia was killed in 1970, and the law on the extradition of bandits, wherever they are, allegedly came out in 1974. And there will be no return...

The Brazinskas settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In America, in the Lithuanian community, the attitude towards the Brazinskas was wary, they were frankly afraid. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for a self-help fund failed. In the US, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their "exploits", in which they tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by "the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation." To whitewash himself, P. Brazinskas stated that he hit the flight attendant by accident, in a “shootout with the crew.” Even later, A. Brazinskas claimed that the flight attendant died during a “shootout with KGB agents.” However, the support of the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually faded away, everyone forgot about them. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. The criminals lived miserably, under old age Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable.

In early February 2002, the 911 service in the California city of Santa Monica rang. The caller immediately hung up. The police determined the address from which the call was made and arrived at 900 21st Street. The door was opened to the police by 46-year-old Albert Victor White and led the officers of the law to the cold corpse of his 77-year-old father. On the head of which the forensic experts then counted eight blows from a dumbbell. Murder is rare in Santa Monica—it was the first violent death in the city that year.

Jack ALEX. Brazinskas Jr. lawyer
“I am Lithuanian myself, and I was hired to protect Albert Victor White by his wife, Virginia. There is quite a large Lithuanian diaspora here in California, and you don't think that we Lithuanians have any support for the 1970 plane hijacking.
- Pranas was a terrible person, it used to be, in fits of rage, he chased the neighbor's children with weapons.
Algirdas is a normal and sane person. At the time of the capture, he was only 15 years old, and he hardly knew what he was doing. He spent his whole life in the shadow of his father's dubious charisma, and now, through his own fault, he will rot in prison.
“It was necessary self-defence. His father pointed a gun at him, threatening to shoot his son if he left him. But Algirdas knocked out his weapon and hit the old man several times on the head.
- The jury considered that, having knocked out the gun, Algirdas could not have killed the old man, since he was very weak. The fact that he called the police only a day after the incident also played against Algirdas - all this time he was next to the corpse.
- Algirdas was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison under the article “premeditated murder in the second degree”
“I know this doesn't sound like a lawyer, but let me offer my condolences to Algirdas. When I last saw him, he was in a terrible depression. The father terrorized his son as best he could, and when the tyrant finally died, Algirdas, a man in his prime, would rot in prison for many more years. Apparently it's fate...

She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner.
Today, October 15, marks 48 years since the death of 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who, at the cost of her own life, tried to prevent terrorists from hijacking a Soviet passenger plane.

In modern Russia, the name of Nadezhda Kurchenko is almost forgotten. Probably, official propaganda is trying to make modern girls try to imitate not pure, bright people who are able to give their lives without hesitation, doing their duty, but girls from TV shows and "glossy magazines".

She was born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novo-Poltava, Klyuchevsky District, Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district of the UASSR. Since December 1968, she worked as a flight attendant for the Sukhumi squadron. She died on October 15, 1970, trying to prevent the hijacking of an AN-24 aircraft flying on a Batumi-Sukhumi-Krasnodar flight, captured by terrorists by father and son Brazinskas (45 and 13 years old). At an altitude of 800 meters, two passengers - the father and son of Brazinskasy called the flight attendant and handed over a note to the pilots demanding to change the route and fly to Turkey. The girl rushed into the cockpit and shouted: "Attack!" The criminals rushed after her, opening fire. "Don't get up!" shouted the youngest of the hijackers. "Otherwise we'll blow up the plane!"

The shooting continued in the cockpit. Commander Georgy Chakhrakia was hit by one of the bullets in the spine: Navigator Valery Fadeev was shot in the lung, and flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was the luckiest of all - the bullet got stuck in a steel pipe in the back of his seat. Brazinskas Sr. stood behind the pilots and, shaking a grenade, shouted: "Keep the seashore on the left. Heading south. Do not enter the clouds!"

The pilot tried to deceive the terrorists and land the An-24 at a military airfield in Kobuleti. The pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal, but it was too close to the Turkish border. But the hijacker once again warned that he would blow up the car (later it turned out that Brazinskas was bluffing, since the grenade was training). Soon the captured board crossed the Soviet-Turkish border, and after another half an hour was over the airfield in Trabzon. The plane made a circle over the runway and fired green rockets, asking to be released for an emergency landing. Immediately after landing, the hijackers surrendered to the Turkish authorities. Representatives of the Turkish and American special services left for the place. Passengers and crew members were asked to stay in Turkey, but no one agreed to this. The next day, on a specially sent plane, all the people and the body of the deceased girl were taken to the USSR. A little later, the Turks returned the stolen An-24. After a major overhaul, aircraft N46256 with a photo of Nadia Kurchenko in the cabin flew for a long time in Uzbekistan.

According to the recollections of friends and colleagues, Nadia was a pure and bright person, she had a wedding scheduled three months later. This drama shook the whole country then. The Soviet Union was shocked - such a crime happened for the first time. The name of Nadezhda in one day spread all over the world. And for many years it became a symbol of Komsomol heroism. This was the first such case in the USSR, there were no instructions on this matter, and the 19-year-old Soviet girl acted as her heart and conscience told her.

Suliko Shavidze, Valery Fadeev and flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan recovered and then were able to fly, having worked until retirement. Commander Chakhrakiya was confined to a wheelchair for two years, underwent several operations on his spine, could no longer fly, and remained a second-group disabled person.

Nadezhda Kurchenko is buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was transferred to the city cemetery of the city of Glazov. In the village of Ponino, where she studied, a monument was erected to her. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was given to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a minor planet in the constellation Capricorn.

Pranas Brazinskas was born in 1924 in the Trakai region of Lithuania. In 1949, according to a biography written by Brazinskaosm, the head of one of the detachments of the "forest brothers" killed the chairman of the council with a shot through the window and mortally wounded father P. Brazinskas, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas bought a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the head of the household goods warehouse of the Vievis cooperative. In 1955, P. Brazinskas was sentenced to 1 year of corrective labor for embezzlement and speculation in building materials. In January 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, he was again sentenced to 5 years, but already in June he was released ahead of schedule. Having divorced his first wife, he left for Central Asia.

Being engaged in speculation (in Lithuania he bought car parts, carpets, silk and linen fabrics and sold them in Central Asia, having a profit of 400-500 rubles for each parcel), he quickly accumulated money. In 1968, he brought his thirteen-year-old son Algirdas to Kokand, and two years later he left his second wife.

The USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this requirement was not met. The Brazinskas asked for political asylum. The Turks refused to extradite the terrorists, they were given ridiculous terms, and after three years they were amnestied. After living for several years in a luxurious villa "under house arrest", they went to the United States, where they dreamed of getting.
The farce with the “flight” of criminals to America was arranged as follows: in 1976, the father and son allegedly escaped from house arrest and on June 23 turned to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to grant them political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brazinskases again “surrendered” into the hands of the Turkish police, they were kept under guard for a couple more weeks in a hospital in Istanbul and ... finally released. On July 11, they received a Venezuelan visa. Then, through Italy and Venezuela, they flew to Canada without any problems. On August 24, during an intermediate landing in New York, the Brazinskas got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service.

The Brazinskas were given American passports with new names. Algirdas officially became Albert Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. They settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters, lived together in a one-room apartment, both of them did not have a personal life. In the US, the Brazinskas wrote a book about their "exploits", in which they tried to justify the hijacking and hijacking of the plane by "the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation." To whitewash himself, P. Brazinskas stated that he hit the flight attendant by accident, in a “shootout with the crew.” Even later, A. Brazinskas claimed that the flight attendant died during a “shootout with KGB agents” ... However, the Lithuanian TV channel LNK, shortly before his death, interviewed Pranas Brazinskas, who bluntly stated that he “killed this bitch because she got up with him on a way".

In the Lithuanian community of America, the attitude towards the Brazinskas was wary, they were frankly afraid. An attempt to organize a fundraiser for a self-help fund failed. With Lithuania gaining independence, the “patriots” did not make any attempts to return to their homeland. However, the support of the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually faded away, everyone forgot about them. The criminals lived miserably, under old age Brazinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable. During one of these quarrels, 45-year-old "Lithuanian patriot" Albert Victor White beat his 77-year-old dad with dumbbells to death, was convicted of killing his father Frank.

This was the first case in the USSR of capturing a passenger aircraft of such a scale (hijacking). With him, in essence, began a long-term series of similar tragedies that spattered the skies of the whole world with the blood of innocent people.

And it all started like this.

An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30. Course - to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the aircraft. Scheduled flight time is 25-30 minutes.

But life broke both the schedule and the schedule.

At the 4th minute of the flight, the plane sharply deviated from the course. The radio operators requested the board - there was no answer. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane was leaving towards close Turkey.

Military and rescue boats went to sea. Their captains were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

The board did not respond to any of the requests. A few more minutes - and the An-24 left the airspace of the USSR. And in the sky over the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was an emergency landing signal. The plane touched the concrete pier of a foreign air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported that a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed, there are wounded. All.

BLACK ENVELOPE

I flew to the place of emergency in a few hours. He flew, not knowing either the circumstances of the drama or the name of the murdered flight attendant. Everything had to be found out on the spot.

Today, 45 years later, I intend to recount - at least briefly - the events of those days and again speak about Nadia Kurchenko, her courage and her heroism. To talk about the stunning reaction of millions of people of the so-called stagnant time to the sacrifice, courage, courage of a person. To tell about this, first of all, to the people of the new generation, the new computer consciousness, to tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadya Kurchenko - and without reminders. And it would be useful for young people to know why many streets, schools, mountain peaks and even an airplane bear her name.

After takeoff, greetings and instructions to passengers, the flight attendant returned to her working room, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot up with sparkling tiny cannonballs, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Putting them on a tray, she entered the cabin.

The crew was always glad to have a beautiful, young, extremely benevolent girl in the cockpit. Probably, she felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was also happy. Perhaps, in this dying hour, she thought with warmth and gratitude about each of these guys, who easily accepted her into their professional and friendly circle. They treated her like a little sister, with care and trust.

Of course, Nadia was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life claimed.

Having drunk the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She approached. Passenger said:

Pass it on to the commander urgently, - and handed her some kind of envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

Nadia took the envelope. Their eyes must have met. She must have been surprised at the tone in which those words were spoken. But she did not find out anything, but stepped to the luggage compartment door - then there was the door of the pilot's cabin. Probably, Nadia's feelings were written on her face - most likely. And the sensitivity of the wolf, alas, surpasses any other. And, probably, it was precisely thanks to this sensitivity that the terrorist saw hostility in Nadia's eyes, a subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger. This turned out to be enough for the sick imagination to announce the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. Self-control failed: he literally catapulted out of his chair and rushed after Nadia.

She barely had time to take a step towards the cockpit when he flung open the door to her compartment, which had just been closed by it.

You can't come here! she screamed.

But he was coming closer, like the shadow of a beast. She realized that the enemy was in front of her. In the next second, he also understood: she would break all plans.

Nadia screamed again:

Return to your seat. You can't come here!

But he took out a weapon - the nerves burned to the ground. Nadia did not know his intentions. But I knew he was absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She clearly saw the revolver.

Opening the cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:

Attack! He is armed!

And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned around to face the bandit, enraged by such a course of affairs, and prepared for an attack. He, as well as the crew, heard her words - no doubt.

What was left to do? Nadya made a decision not to let the attacker into the cockpit at any cost. Any!

BATTLE AT THE LAST LINE

He could be a maniac and shoot the crew. He could kill the crew and passengers. He could... She didn't know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: jumping towards her, he tried to knock her down. Leaning her hands against the wall, Nadya resisted and continued to resist.

The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She clung even tighter to the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadia - knock out a weapon from his right hand. The stray bullet went through the ceiling. Nadia fought back with her feet, hands, even her head.

The crew assessed the situation instantly. The commander abruptly interrupted the right turn, in which they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately filled up the roaring car to the left, and then to the right. In the next second, the plane went up steeply: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that his experience in this matter was not great, and Nadia would hold on.

The passengers were still wearing seat belts - after all, the display did not go out, the plane was only gaining altitude.

The young man opened his gray cloak, and the passengers saw grenades - they were tied to their belts. "This is for you!" he shouted. "If anyone else gets up, we'll split the plane!"

In the cabin, seeing a passenger rushing to the cabin and hearing the first shot, several people instantly unfastened their belts and jumped out of their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and they were the first to feel the trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kaishanba, however, did not have time to take a step: they were outstripped by the one who was sitting next to the man who had escaped into the cabin. The young bandit - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be father and son - grabbed a sawn-off shotgun and fired along the salon. The bullet whistled over the heads of the shocked passengers.

Don `t move! he yelled. - Do not move!

Pilots with even greater sharpness began to throw the plane from one position to another. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went right through. Depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was insignificant.

The next moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak and people saw grenades - they were tied to his belt.

This is for you! he shouted. - If anyone else gets up - we will split the plane!

It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the plane, the older one remained on his feet and, with bestial fury, tried to tear Nadia away from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a leader. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.

Struck by Nadia's incredible resistance, enraged by his own impotence to cope with the wounded, bloody, fragile girl, he, without aiming, without thinking for a second, fired at point-blank range and, throwing the desperate defender of the crew and passengers into the corner of a narrow passage, burst into the cockpit. Behind him is his geek with a sawn-off shotgun.

To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet coast - we will blow up the plane!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

Another bullet pierced the back of the commander - Grigory Chakhrakiya. In order to keep at least a little blood in his body, so as not to lose consciousness and not drop the helm from his hands, Grigory pressed himself against the back of the commander's chair with all his might. The next shot - a bullet paralyzes the right hand of the navigator Valery Fadeev and hits the chest. There is a communication microphone in his hand, Fadeev loses consciousness, no one can open his hand with a microphone - each of the crew members is already wounded, Nadia is dead.

There is no way out: the plane must not fall into the sea - there are 46 passengers in the cabin, there are children. The co-pilot sees: the commander still loses consciousness. Shavidze takes control - he drives the car, as in a nightmare: in a cabin filled with the blood of friends, among screaming criminals, under the threat of a sawn-off shotgun and a revolver, under the threat of grenades.

When a Turkish coastal airfield appears in a gray dream of reality, it fires emergency rockets into the sky. And the plane, pierced by forty-two bullets, falls to the hard foreign ground...

LOOKING THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE LIVES...

For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in combat, a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets, and so on were named after Nadia. But it should be said, apparently, and about something else.

The scale of state and public actions associated with an unprecedented event was enormous. Members of the State Commission, the USSR Foreign Ministry negotiated with the Turkish authorities for several days in a row without a single break.

It was necessary: to allocate an air corridor for the return of the hijacked aircraft; an air corridor for the transfer of injured crew members and those passengers who needed urgent medical care from Trabzon hospitals; of course, those who did not suffer physically, but ended up in a foreign land against their will; an air corridor was required for a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadia's body. Her mother had already flown to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

There were many concerns. But all these dramatic actions could not alleviate the acute pain of the loss - Nadia remained at the center of any conversations of a huge country, television and radio programs, and newspapers.

Marshal of Aviation, Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev personally took part in the discussion of the issue of Nadia's funeral. I twice - due to circumstances - talked on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadia's mother in Sukhumi, decide on the place of burial, and other actions. Could there be something similar in our hectic days - the concern of the minister of a superpower about the fate of the murdered flight attendant of a tiny non-commissioned flight?

No. Couldn't. In any case, I don't believe in it.

In Komsomolskaya Pravda, where I then worked (and was the first and only journalist from Moscow at the site of the tragedy), in the first two weeks after even the censored reports, more than 12 thousand letters and telegrams came from shocked readers who mourned Nadya and admired her courage !

There was such a country. And there were such people. Is it possible today?

On the day of Nadia's funeral, over her coffin littered with flowers and over the heads of thousands of people following her coffin through the streets of the city, all the planes leaving for the flight shook their wings, demonstrating respect for their protector, their young colleague, their heroine. In each of these planes, flight attendants tearfully told their passengers:

Look down while the city is visible. These people say goodbye to our friend. With our Nadia.

Do you believe that we are all the same?

Nadia's mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at Nadia's coffin and who dryly and lifelessly repeated, looking at her daughter's strikingly beautiful face: "Now you are not laughing with me, you are serious with me," handed me Nadia's notes, notebooks, papers. Among them, I found the phrase of a 9th grade student Nadezhda Kurchenko: "I want to be a worthy daughter of the Motherland and I am ready to give my life for this, if necessary."

I absolutely believe in these words that are familiar to hearing, but written by Nadia's hand and heart.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured right), a former store manager from Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas (left). The Turkish authorities refused to extradite the criminals to the USSR and condemned them themselves. The eldest received eight years, the youngest - two. After some time, both were released under an amnesty, and the bandits moved to Venezuela, and from there to the USA: they got off the plane in New York bound for Canada. The Lithuanian diaspora obtained permission to leave them in the country.

The Brazinskas settled in Santa Monica, California. In February 2002, 77-year-old Pranas had an argument with his son, for which he received several fatal blows with a bat. Algirdas was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

1973 The ballad "My Clear Star" flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. No one had any doubts: the song is dedicated to the young stewardess, forever remaining in the sky. Murdered three weeks before the wedding. And performed on behalf of her fiancé. The sad story is still replicated on the Internet to this day. However, this is just a beautiful legend...

Composer Vladimir Semenov: "Many people sang and sing this song. But it seems to me that Sasha Losev was and remains the best performer of it ..." Soloist of the student amateur ensemble, winner of the regional competition, where the main prize is the recording of his own record at the Melodiya company ...

The tragic halo that the song acquired, 22 years later, covered its first performer with a black cloud. Shortly before his departure, Losev admitted that before he sang "My Clear Star" with one subtext, now - in memory of his son who died early. And he summed up the sad result: "Inexplicably, the main song in the program became the main one in life."

The main song "Asterisk" became in the life of the composer Vladimir Semenov. He was already 35 years old. Behind Astrakhan, an automobile and road technical school, a home-made electric guitar and hundreds of kilometers on a battered bus that traveled around with concert teams of the Astrakhan Philharmonic ...

“Of course, I remember the story of the hijacking of the plane, then they wrote a lot about Nadia’s feat,” says Semenov. “But, to be honest, I didn’t think about anything like that when I took out a small collection of poems from the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina from the store shelf. Literally 12- 13 pages printed on thin newsprint.I started flipping through them and suddenly came across the words "People's songs are different, but mine is one for ages." Something hooked me in these lines."

A song was born, which Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He brought Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. They recorded a small disc, which consisted of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman's song "Flowers Have Eyes", Sergei Dyachkov's song "Don't Do It" and Vladimir Semenov's ballad "My Clear Star". It scattered across the country with a circulation of almost 7 million copies!

"After all the hassle - rehearsals, recordings - my wife and I went to relax in Sochi," composer Vladimir Semenov recalls today. Sasha Losev's voice: "People have different songs, but mine is one for centuries!"

Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote these lines a few years before the tragedy aboard the An-24. Lines about my own, very personal. Her famous countryman, writer Fyodor Abramov, said that Olga "is very close to life, she always has no fiction, no letters, no words in her poems - poems are generated by life itself ... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and immediacy of feelings" .

All those things that Nadya Kurchenko remembered and forever remained in the people's memory.

How 45 years ago 19-year-old stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko stood in the way of armed bandits

Then, in October 1970, the very attempt of an armed seizure of a civilian aircraft looked like an unprecedented villainy. It is then that terrorists of all stripes will open the hunt for liners around the world. It is worth rummaging through the memory - and right there the hijacking of the Tu-154 flight to Pakistan by the prisoners of the Yakut prison, the seizure of the Aeroflot board by Shamil Basayev in Minvody, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and dozens of other cases will come to light. And the first victim of air piracy was our stewardess Nadya Kurchenko. The tragedy that shook the USSR was the reason for tightening security controls on board civilian ships. A fragile girl gave her life to save many others.

So, on October 15, 1970, a passenger An-24 took off from Batumi on the route Simferopol - Odessa. The plane had not yet managed to gain altitude when two passengers, the father and son of Brazinskasa, called the stewardess and, threatening with a sawn-off shotgun, conveyed the demand to the crew: to head for Turkey. Nadia managed to sound an alarm, block the bandits' way to the pilot's cabin - and was struck down by a point-blank shot. The Brazinskas fired incessantly - both in the cockpit and in the cabin. Then 18 bullet holes will be counted in the skin of the An-24! Navigator Valery Fadeev and flight engineer Hovhannes Babayan were seriously injured. Pilot Giorgi Chakhrakia was shattered by a bullet in the spine, and he landed the plane in Turkish Trabzon with almost failed legs. Planted...

Turkish authorities returned the passengers and the aircraft, but refused to extradite the hijackers. Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas, after serving a short time in a Turkish prison, were released under an amnesty and moved to the United States. There they received new names, a residence permit and a house in California. But it is not in vain that they say that God is targeting a rogue: in a quarrel, the younger Brazinskas killed his father, for which he received 16 years in prison.

The bestial nature of the killers of Nadia Kurchenko manifested itself in full, but America was not even embarrassed. But the US authorities at one time ignored both the demands of the Soviet side to extradite the criminals and the letters of the crew members who remained disabled. The mother of the deceased flight attendant, Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko, managed to get a meeting with President Reagan at the American embassy. After that, the US State Department announced that "the US concern about international terrorism does not extend to the case of the Brazinskas." And then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance declared the killers to be human rights activists.

Everything is stricter, and stricter, and stricter...

After the hijacking of the Batumi plane, measures were taken in the USSR to improve safety on board civil aircraft. On all passenger planes, the doors to the cockpits were reinforced, and peepholes were installed. They began to sell air tickets only with passports, and selective baggage screening was introduced at airports. Flights with routes near the state border were accompanied by police officers in civilian clothes. The Soviet Union became the 120th member of ICAO, ratified the Hague Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft.

But on April 23, 1973, a new incident followed - this time with a Tu-104 en route from Leningrad to Moscow. The hijacker demanded to fly to Stockholm, and when he tried to land at the Soviet airport, he set off an explosive device. The hijacker and the crew commander were killed, and the passengers managed to be rescued from the burning aircraft.

After that incident, mandatory screening of passengers was introduced in civil aviation, and metal detectors appeared at airports. The hijacking of an aircraft began to qualify as an independent type of crime, for which they were given 15 years in the camp and even the death penalty. To combat terrorism, on July 29, 1974, by order of the chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, a special unit was created - group "A".

And in the 1980s and 1990s, there was a new surge in air piracy in our country. We even became leaders among European powers in this type of crime. And every time the flight attendants were the first to encounter the hijackers. Irina Viktorova is one of them.

“At Aeroflot, the name of Nadia Kurchenko was on everyone’s lips, but I couldn’t imagine that something like this could happen to me,” Irina, who at that time was a flight attendant for the Tbilisi air squadron, tells me. - In November 1983, our Tu-134 followed in Batumi. On approaching Kutaisi, we got into a thunderstorm front, the commander decided to return. When I went out to tell the passengers about this, I saw a terrible picture. There was a guy with a grenade in the aisle. Another fired a pistol at a man sitting in front ... As it became known later, seven hijackers from the Georgian "golden youth" registered in the deputy hall, bypassing the inspection. The bandits beat me up. They grabbed the stewardess Valya and dragged her to the cockpit. The pilots saw her face through the peephole and opened the door. Navigator Vladimir Gasoyan opened fire to kill, indiscriminate firing began. In this hell, the fragile Valya dragged the wounded bandit away from the door and helped the pilots to close in the cockpit. The crew miraculously managed to land the plane.

At the trial, the surviving hijackers were asked: "You are the children of wealthy parents - would you take tour packages and stay abroad." The answer caused a shock: “But we wanted to fly away like the Brazinskas - with noise and with shooting! Then they would not have given us away ... "

Nerves are on fire at this job.

But on March 18, 2005, the stewardess of the Aeroflot Boeing, Anya Filatova, could be said to be lucky - like all 214 passengers flying on the Sydney - Tokyo - Moscow flight.

“We had already come in for a landing 15 kilometers from Sheremetyevo, and then the call light came on. I approached the passenger, the guy invited me to sit next to him. Shows - explosives on the belt. Demands to land in Grozny. She reported to the commander, and she continued the conversation with the hijacker. Then she could not remember what we talked about, how he reacted - such was the nervous tension. Fortunately, all ground and special services worked well - the hijacker was neutralized. It turned out that he had a dummy bomb on his belt. But nerves something we expended seriously. That story came back to me: a nervous breakdown, a hospital bed. Until now, I sometimes dream of the eyes of that passenger ... "

Instructions instructions, but no one canceled courage

Today, civil aviation has done a lot to ensure that the tragedy of 45 years ago does not happen again. The pilot's cabin is securely reinforced, the door is always locked. Even a flight attendant can get into the cockpit only after contacting the crew. But what if the offender nevertheless got on board and decided to hijack? The service memo obliges the flight attendant to take additional measures to prevent the possible entry of offenders into the cockpit. To begin with, inform the commander of the situation in the cabin via intercom, make an attempt to convince the offenders that the crew is forced to comply with their requirements, so there is no need to enter there. Agree to transfer the note to the commander of the aircraft only if the offenders are in their places. In a detailed list of further necessary actions, in addition to instructions to distract and deter offenders from violence, recall the inevitability of criminal liability for this.

Nothing is said about personal courage in the instructions. Apparently, because our flight attendants take this quality for granted.

P.S. In Sukhumi, they wanted to put the same An-24 on a pedestal in the park named after Nadezhda Kurchenko. But that car was waiting for a difficult fate. Board number 46586, having undergone a major restoration at the Kiev Aircraft Repair Plant, then ended up in Soviet Uzbekistan. There he honestly worked on local roads until 1997, after which he was sawn into scrap metal.

And it all started like this.

An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30. Course - to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the aircraft. Scheduled flight time is 25-30 minutes.

But life broke both the schedule and the schedule.

Military and rescue boats went to sea. Their captains were ordered to follow at full speed to the site of a possible disaster.

BLACK ENVELOPE

I flew to the place of emergency in a few hours. He flew, not knowing either the circumstances of the drama or the name of the murdered flight attendant. Everything had to be found out on the spot.

Today, 45 years later, I intend to recount, at least briefly, the events of those days and speak again about Nadia Kurchenko, her courage and her heroism. To talk about the stunning reaction of millions of people of the so-called stagnant time to the sacrifice, courage, courage of a person. To tell about it, first of all, to the people of the new generation, the new computer consciousness, to tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadya Kurchenko - and without reminders. And it would be useful for young people to know why many streets, schools, mountain peaks and even an airplane bear her name.

... After takeoff, greetings and instructions to passengers, the flight attendant returned to her working room, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot up sparkling tiny cannonballs, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Putting them on a tray, she entered the cabin.

Of course, Nadia was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life claimed.

Having drunk the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She approached. Passenger said:

- Pass it on to the commander immediately, - and handed her some kind of envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

She barely had time to take a step towards the cockpit when he flung open the door to her compartment, which had just been closed by it.

- You can't come here! she screamed.

But he was coming closer, like the shadow of a beast. She realized that the enemy was in front of her. In the next second, he also understood: she would break all plans.

Nadia screamed again:

- Return to your seat. You can't come here!

But he took out a weapon - the nerves burned to the ground. Nadia did not know his intentions. But I knew he was absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She clearly saw the revolver.

Opening the cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:

- Attack! He is armed!

What was left to do? Nadya made a decision not to let the attacker into the cockpit at any cost. Any!

Trabzon. The released passengers of Flight 244 cry with happiness.

BATTLE AT THE LAST LINE

The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She clung even tighter to the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadia - Knock the weapon out of his right hand. The stray bullet went through the ceiling. Nadia fought back with her feet, hands, even her head.

The passengers were still wearing seat belts - after all, the display did not go out, the plane was only gaining altitude.

The young man opened his gray cloak, and the passengers saw grenades - they were tied to their belts.

"This is for you! he shouted. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll split the plane!”

- Don `t move! he yelled. - Do not move!

Pilots with even greater sharpness began to throw the plane from one position to another. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went right through. The depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was negligible.

The next moment after the second shot, the young man opened his gray cloak and people saw grenades - they were tied to his belt.

- This is for you! he shouted. - If anyone else gets up - we will split the plane!

It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - if they failed, they had nothing to lose.

- To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet coast - we will blow up the plane!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

Another bullet pierced the back of the commander - Grigory Chakhrakia. In order to keep at least a little blood in his body, so as not to lose consciousness and not drop the helm from his hands, Grigory pressed himself against the back of the commander's chair with all his might. The next shot - a bullet paralyzes the right arm of the navigator Valery Fadeev and hits the chest. There is a communication microphone in his hand, Fadeev loses consciousness, no one can open his hand with a microphone - each of the crew members is already wounded, Nadia is dead.

There is no way out: the plane must not fall into the sea - there are 46 passengers in the cabin, there are children. The co-pilot sees: the commander still loses consciousness. Shavidze takes control - he drives the car, as in a nightmare: in a cabin filled with blood of friends, among screaming criminals, under the threat of a sawn-off shotgun and a revolver, under the threat of grenades.

When a Turkish coastal airfield appears in a gray dream of reality, it fires emergency rockets into the sky. And the plane, pierced by forty-two bullets, falls to the hard foreign ground ...

LOOKING THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE LIVES...

For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded military order of the Red Banner, a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets and so on were named after Nadia. But it should be said, apparently, and about something else.

No. Couldn't. In any case, I don't believe in it.

In Komsomolskaya Pravda, where I then worked (and was the first and only journalist from Moscow at the site of the tragedy), only in the first two weeks after even the censored reports received more than 12 thousand letters and telegrams from shocked readers who mourned Nadya and admired her courage !

There was such a country. And there were such people. Is it possible today?

“Look down until you can see the city. These people say goodbye to our friend. With our Nadia.

Do you believe that we are all the same?

... Nadia's mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at the coffin of Nadia and who dryly and lifelessly repeated, looking at her daughter's strikingly beautiful face:“Now you don’t laugh at me, you are serious with me,”handed me notes, notebooks, Nadya's papers. Among them, I found the phrase of a 9th grade student Nadezhda Kurchenko:

“I want to be a worthy daughter of the Motherland and I am ready to give my life for this, if necessary.”

I absolutely believe in these words that are familiar to hearing, but written by Nadia's hand and heart.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured right), a former store manager from Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas (left). The Turkish authorities refused to extradite the criminals to the USSR and condemned them themselves. The eldest received eight years, the youngest two. After some time, both were released under an amnesty, and the bandits moved to Venezuela, and from there to the USA: they got off the plane in New York bound for Canada. The Lithuanian diaspora obtained permission to leave them in the country.

“My clear star, how far you are from me…”

The people dedicated a song written on a completely different occasion to the feat of Nadezhda Kurchenko ...

1973 The ballad "My Clear Star" flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. No one had any doubts: the song is dedicated to the young stewardess, forever remaining in the sky. Murdered three weeks before the wedding. And performed on behalf of her fiancé. The sad story is still replicated on the Internet to this day. However, this is just a beautiful legend…

Composer Vladimir Semyonov:

“Many sang and sing this song. But it seems to me that Sasha Losev was and remains her best performer ... "

Soloist of the student amateur ensemble, winner of the regional competition, where the main prize is the recording of his own record at the Melodiya company ...

The tragic halo that the song acquired, 22 years later, covered its first performer with a black cloud. Shortly before his departure, Losev admitted that he used to sing “My Clear Star” with one subtext, now in memory of his son who died early. And summed up the sad result:

“Inexplicably, the main song in the program became the main one in life.”

“Of course, I remember the story of the hijacking of the plane, then they wrote a lot about the feat of Nadia,” says Semenov. - But, to be honest, I didn’t think about anything like that when I took out a small collection of poems from the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina from the store shelf. Literally 12-13 pages printed on thin newsprint. I started flipping through them and suddenly came across the words “People have different songs, but mine is one for centuries.” There was something about these lines that grabbed me.

A song was born, which Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He brought Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. They recorded a small disc, which consisted of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman's song "Flowers Have Eyes", Sergei Dyachkov's song "Don't" and Vladimir Semenov's ballad "My Clear Star". It scattered across the country with a circulation of almost 7 million copies!

“After all the hassle - rehearsals, recordings - my wife and I went to rest in Sochi,” recalls composer Vladimir Semenov today. - I’m lying on the sand and suddenly I hear something familiar - somewhere in the distance a ship is sailing, a huge, Intourist ship, and Sasha Losev’s voice comes from there:

“People have different songs, but mine is one for the ages!”

Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote these lines a few years before the tragedy aboard the An-24. Lines about my own, very personal. Her famous fellow countryman, the writer Fyodor Abramov, said that Olga

“very close to life, in her poems there is always no fiction, no letters, no words - poems are generated by life itself ... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and immediacy of feelings.”