Home » Holidays in Russia » A post in memory of the Soviet flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died in the sky from a terrorist bullet. Last flight of hope Kurchenko View from childhood

A post in memory of the Soviet flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died in the sky from a terrorist bullet. Last flight of hope Kurchenko View from childhood

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

And it all started like this.

The An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30 p.m. Heading to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the plane. Flight time according to schedule is 25-30 minutes.

But life has ruined both the schedule and the schedule.

At the 4th minute of the flight, the plane sharply deviated from its course. The radio operators asked for the board, but there was no response. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane was leaving towards nearby Turkey.

Military and rescue boats went out to sea. Their captains received orders: to proceed 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 USSR airspace. And in the sky above the Turkish coastal airfield of Trabzon, two rockets flashed - red, then green. It was a signal emergency landing. The plane touched the alien's concrete pier air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported: a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed and some were wounded. All.

BLACK ENVELOPE

I was flying to the scene of the emergency a few hours later. I flew without 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 again - at least briefly - outline the events of those days and again talk about Nadya 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 man. To tell about this, first of all, to 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 the plane bears her name.

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

The crew was always glad to have a beautiful, young, extremely friendly girl in the cockpit. She probably felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was happy too. Perhaps, even 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, Nadya was in a wonderful mood - everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her pure, happy life affirmed.

After giving the crew a drink, she returned to her compartment. At that moment the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She came up. The passenger said:

Tell it urgently to the commander,” and handed her some kind of envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

Nadya took the envelope. Their gazes must have met. She was probably surprised by the tone in which these words were spoken. But she didn’t find out anything, but stepped towards the luggage compartment door - then there was the pilot’s cabin door. Probably, Nadya'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, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger in Nadya’s eyes. This was enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. His self-control failed: he literally ejected from his chair and rushed after Nadya.

She only managed to take a step towards the pilot's cabin when he opened the door to her compartment, which she had just closed.

You can't go here! - she screamed.

But he approached like the shadow of an animal. She realized: there was an enemy in front of her. The next second, he also realized: she would ruin all plans.

Nadya screamed again:

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

But he took out a weapon - his nerves burned to the ground. Nadya did not know his intentions. But I understood: he is absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She saw the revolver clearly.

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

Attack! He's armed!

And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned to face the bandit, furious with this course of affairs, and prepared to attack. He, like the crew members, heard her words - without a 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 FRONTIER

He could have been a maniac and shot the crew. It could have killed the crew and passengers. He could... She didn't know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: by jumping towards her, he tried to knock her off her feet. Pressing her hands against the wall, Nadya held on and continued to resist.

The first bullet hit her in the thigh. She pressed herself even tighter against the pilot's door. The terrorist tried to squeeze her throat. Nadya - knock the weapon out of his right hand. A stray bullet hit the ceiling. Nadya 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 rolled the roaring car to the left, and then to the right. The next second the plane went steeply upward: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that he had little experience in this matter, but Nadya would hold on.

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

The young man opened his gray cloak, and the passengers saw grenades - they were tied to his belt. “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 seat belts and jumped out of their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and were the first to sense trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kayshanba, however, did not have time to take a step: they were ahead of them by the one who was sitting next to the one who had fled into the cabin. The young bandit - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be father and son - pulled out a sawn-off shotgun and fired along the cabin. The bullet whistled over the heads of the shocked passengers.

Not moving! - he yelled. - Don't move!

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

The 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’ll 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 elder remained on his feet and with bestial fury tried to tear Nadya away from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a commander. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.

Struck by Nadya’s incredible resistance, enraged by his own powerlessness to cope with the wounded, bloodied, 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 cabin. Behind him is his geek with a sawed-off shotgun.

To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet shore - we'll blow up the plane!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

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

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

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

A LOOK THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE LIVES...

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

The scale of government and public actions related to this unprecedented event was enormous. Members of the State Commission and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs 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 plane; an air corridor to transport wounded crew members and those passengers in need of urgent medical attention from Trabzon hospitals; of course, those who were not physically harmed, but found themselves in a foreign land not of their own free will; an air corridor was required for a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadya’s body. Her mother was already flying to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

There were a lot of worries. But all these dramatic actions could not smooth out the acute pain of loss - Nadya remained at the center of any conversation across the vast country, television and radio programs, and newspapers.

Air Marshal, Minister of civil aviation USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev. Twice - due to circumstances - I spoke on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadya’s mother in Sukhumi, to decide on the place of the funeral, 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 run-of-the-mill flight?

No. It couldn't. In any case, I don’t believe in it.

In Komsomolskaya Pravda, where I worked then (and was the first and only journalist from Moscow at the scene of the tragedy), in the first two weeks alone, even after the reports distorted by censorship, over 12 thousand letters and telegrams arrived from shocked readers mourning Nadya and admiring her courage !

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

On the day of Nadya’s funeral, over her coffin littered with flowers and over the heads of thousands of people walking behind her coffin through the streets of the city, all the planes leaving for the flight swayed their wings, showing tribute to their protector, their young colleague, their heroine. On each of these planes, flight attendants tearfully told their passengers:

Look down while the city is visible. These are people saying goodbye to our friend. With our Nadya.

Do you believe that we are still the same?

Nadya’s mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at Nadya’s coffin and who dryly and lifelessly repeated, looking at her daughter’s strikingly beautiful face: “Now you don’t laugh with me, you’re serious with me,” handed me Nadya’s notes, notebooks, and papers. Among them, I found a phrase from 9th grade student Nadezhda Kurchenko: “I want to be a worthy daughter of the Motherland and am ready to give my life for it, if necessary.”

I absolutely believe in these words, familiar to the ear, but written by Nadya’s hand and heart.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured on the 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 convicted 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 United States: they got off a plane in New York heading to 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 quarreled 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 Little Star” flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind: the song was dedicated to the young flight attendant who remained in the sky forever. Killed three weeks before the wedding. And it is performed on behalf of her groom. The sad story is still being replicated on the Internet. However, this is just a beautiful legend...

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

The tragic aura 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 Little Star” with one subtext, now - in memory of his early deceased son. And he summed it up sadly: “Inexplicably, the main song in the program became the main song in life.”

“Zvezdochka” became the main song in the life of composer Vladimir Semyonov. He was already 35 years old. Behind me is Astrakhan, an automobile and road technical school, a homemade electric guitar and hundreds of kilometers on a tattered bus traveling with concert teams of the Astrakhan Philharmonic...

“Of course, I remember the story of the plane hijacking, then they wrote a lot about Nadya’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 store shelf by the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina. Literally 12- 13 pages printed on thin newsprint. I started leafing through them and suddenly came across the words “People have different songs, but mine is the same for centuries.”

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

“After all the hassle - rehearsals, recordings - I went with my wife to relax in Sochi,” recalls composer Vladimir Semenov today. “I was lying on the sand and suddenly I heard something familiar - somewhere in the distance a motor ship was passing, a huge, foreign tourist one, and from there I could hear Sasha Losev's voice: “People have different songs, but mine is one for centuries!”

Vologda poetess Olga Fokina wrote these lines several years before the tragedy on board the An-24. Lines about your own, very personal things. Her famous fellow countryman, writer Fyodor Abramov said that Olga “is very close to life, her poems are always not fiction, not letters, not words - poems are generated by life itself... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and spontaneity of feelings.” .

All the things that Nadya Kurchenko was remembered for and will forever remain in the people’s memory.

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

Then, in October 1970, the very attempt of an armed hijacking of a civilian aircraft looked like an unprecedented crime. Then terrorists of all stripes will start hunting for airliners around the world. It is worth rummaging through the memory - and immediately the hijacking of a Tu-154 flight to Pakistan by prisoners in a Yakut prison will appear, the hijacking of an Aeroflot flight in the Minvody by Shamil Basayev, the attack by terrorists on the World War II shopping center in New York and dozens more cases. And the first victim of air piracy was our flight attendant Nadya Kurchenko. The tragedy that shook the USSR became the reason for tightening control over safety on board civilian ships. The 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 gained altitude when two passengers, father and son Brazinskasa, called the flight attendant and, threatening with a sawed-off shotgun, conveyed a demand to the crew: to set a course for Turkey. Nadya managed to sound the alarm, block the bandits’ path to the pilot’s cabin, and was shot at point-blank range. The Brazinskas fired non-stop - both in the cockpit and in the cabin. Then there will be 18 bullet holes in the skin of the An-24! Navigator Valery Fadeev and flight mechanic Oganes Babayan were seriously injured. Pilot Giorgi Chakhrakiya's spine was shattered by a bullet, and he landed the plane in Turkish Trabzon with his legs almost giving out. Planted...

Turkish authorities returned the passengers and the plane, but refused to hand over 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, residence permits and a house in California. But it’s not for nothing that they say that God marks the rogue: in a quarrel, the younger Brazinskas killed his father, for which he received 16 years in prison.

The bestial nature of Nadya Kurchenko’s killers was fully revealed, 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, secured a meeting with President Reagan at the American Embassy. After which the US State Department announced that “US concerns about international terrorism do not apply to the case of the Brazinskas.” And then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance declared the killers human rights activists.

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

After the hijacking of the Batumi plane, the USSR took measures to improve security on board civil aircraft. At all passenger planes The doors to the crew cabins were strengthened and peepholes were installed. They started selling air tickets only using passports, and random luggage inspections were introduced at airports. Flights with routes near the state border were accompanied by police officers in plain clothes. The Soviet Union became the 120th member of ICAO and 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 trying to land at a Soviet airport, he activated explosive device. The hijacker and crew commander were killed, and the passengers were rescued from the burning plane.

After that incident, mandatory screening of passengers was introduced in civil aviation, and metal detectors appeared at airports. Aircraft hijacking began to be classified as an independent type of crime, punishable by 15 years in prison and even the death penalty. To combat terrorism, on July 29, 1974, by order of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, a special unit was created - Group A.

And in the 1980-1990s, there was a new surge in air piracy in our country. We have even become a leader 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, everyone knew the name Nadya Kurchenko, but I couldn’t imagine that something like that could happen to me,” Irina, who was a flight attendant at the Tbilisi air squad at that time, tells me. — In November 1983, our Tu-134 was en route to Batumi. On approach to Kutaisi we encountered a thunderstorm front, the commander decided to return. When I went out to inform the passengers about this, I saw a terrible picture. There was a guy with a grenade standing in the aisle. Another shot a pistol at the man sitting in front... As it later became known, seven hijackers from the Georgian “golden youth” registered in the deputy hall, bypassing the search. The bandits beat me up. They grabbed the flight attendant 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, and indiscriminate firing began. In this hell, fragile Valya pulled the wounded bandit away from the door and helped the pilots lock themselves 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: “And we wanted to fly away like the Brazinskas - with noise and shooting! Then we wouldn’t have been extradited...”

My nerves burn at this type of work.

But on March 18, 2005, Aeroflot flight attendant Anya Filatova was, one might say, lucky - like all 214 passengers flying on the Sydney-Tokyo-Moscow flight.

“We had already landed 15 kilometers from Sheremetyevo, and then the call light came on. I approached the passenger, the guy invited me to sit next to him. He shows there are explosives on his belt. Requires landing in Grozny. She reported to the commander, and she continued the conversation with the hijacker. Then I couldn’t remember what we talked about, how he reacted - such was the nervous tension. Fortunately, all ground and special services worked efficiently - the hijacker was neutralized. It turned out that he had a dummy bomb on his belt. But we seriously used up our nerves. That story came back to haunt me: a nervous breakdown, a hospital bed. I still sometimes dream about the eyes of that passenger...”

Instructions are instructions, but courage has not been canceled

Today, much has been done in civil aviation 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 enter the cabin only after first contacting the crew. Well, what if a criminal managed to get on board and decide to hijack it? The official memo obliges the flight attendant to take additional measures to prevent the possible penetration of offenders into the pilot's cabin. To begin, let us know by intercom the commander of the situation in the cabin, attempt to convince the offenders that the crew is forced to comply with their demands, so there is no need to enter there. Agree to hand over the note to the aircraft commander 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, remind of the inevitability of criminal liability for this.

The instructions say nothing about personal courage. Apparently because our flight attendants take this quality for granted.

P.S. In Sukhumi they wanted to put that same An-24 on a pedestal in the park named after Nadezhda Kurchenko. But a difficult fate awaited that car. Aircraft No. 46586, having undergone major restoration at the Kiev Aircraft Repair Plant, later ended up in Soviet Uzbekistan. There he worked honestly on local tracks until 1997, after which he was cut up for scrap metal.

Forty-nine years ago, the first plane hijacking occurred in the Soviet Union. An An-24 flying from Batumi to Sukhum was captured by Lithuanian terrorists.

Sputnik, Astanda Ardzinba.

Capture

On October 15, 1970, a Soviet civil aircraft An-24 took off from Batumi to Sukhum. The travel time would have taken 30-35 minutes, but five minutes after takeoff, at 12:40 local time, two passengers in the front row called the flight attendant and demanded that the envelope be handed over to the pilots. It was “Order No. 9”, printed in Vilnius, in which the terrorists demanded to fly to Turkey and stop radio communications, for failure to comply with the order - death. At the same time, one of the terrorists announced to the passengers that there was no longer Soviet power on their plane.

Thus began the first hijacking of a passenger plane in the history of the USSR. There were 46 passengers and five crew members on board.

The terrorists turned out to be Lithuanians, father and son Brazinskas. Later, the competent authorities will thoroughly study all stages of their lives. It turns out that the elder Brazinskas, 45-year-old Pranas, an anti-communist, served in the auxiliary troops of the German division in 1944, where he assembled pontoon bridges. Later he supplied Lithuanian members of the Resistance with weapons. In 1965, Pranas Brazinskas, working as the manager of a household goods warehouse, received five years in a general regime colony for theft of socialist property, but he was released on parole after three years, and in order not to tempt fate, he left with his son Algirdas for Uzbekistan.

But even there, Pranas became the organizer of the local black market, and his son also participated in his father’s scams. When the KGB became interested in the Brazinskas in 1970, they decided to flee the country, unable to think of anything better than to hijack the plane.

However, these curious details of the biography of the invaders were not yet known to either the passengers on board or the crew members.

Turboprop passenger aircraft "AN-24"

19-year-old flight attendant of the Sukhumi aviation detachment Nadezhda Kurchenko rushed towards the pilots shouting: “Attack!” - The terrorists rushed after her. “Don’t let anyone get up!” Algirdas shouted. “Otherwise we’ll blow up the plane!” “Kurchenko tried to block their path into the cabin, and then Pranas shot her point-blank with a sawn-off shotgun.

The terrorists burst into the cockpit and began shooting at the crew, wounding the commander, flight mechanic and navigator; only the co-pilot was unharmed. Later they will explain that they deliberately decided to wound three crew members, but not kill them, and leave one unharmed so that he could fly the plane.

Standing behind the pilots, Pranas Brazinskas shook a grenade and ordered them to head south, towards Trabzon.

About an hour and a half after the hijacking, the aircraft landed in this Turkish city. Local special forces, who were alerted to the incident, surrounded the plane. Coming off the plane, Brazinskas Sr. said: “Here it is, freedom!” - Both terrorists voluntarily laid down their arms and surrendered to the police.

All crew members received medical assistance. Passengers and pilots were offered to stay in Turkey, but none of them accepted this offer. A day later, a Soviet military plane took them all back to the USSR, and the body of the deceased flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko was delivered to Sukhum on a special flight.

In memory of Nadya

The feat of nineteen-year-old Nadezhda Kurchenko, a graduate of the Poninsky boarding school in the Glazovsky district in Udmurtia, a flight attendant of the Sukhumi aviation detachment, did not go unnoticed. Songs were written in Nadya’s honor, parks and streets of Soviet cities were named, minor planet No. 2349, discovered by scientists at the Crimean Observatory, was named after her, and the film “Entrant” was made about her. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Nadezhda Kurchenko was posthumously awarded the Military Order of the Red Banner for courage and bravery.

Opening of a monument to flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who died at the hands of the Brazinskas father and son, who hijacked the An-24 passenger plane, which was operating regular flight No. 244 from Batumi to Sukhum.

Nadezhda Kurchenko was born on December 29, 1950 in the village of Novopoltava, Klyuchevsky district. Altai Territory. She graduated from a boarding school in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district, Udmurt Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In December 1968, Nadya moved to Sukhum, where she began working as a flight attendant for a local airline. Young Nadezhda Kurchenko did not live two and a half months before her twentieth birthday and three months before her wedding.

Body killed by terrorists The flight attendants were brought on a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhum, where her mother was already flying from Udmurtia. They decided to bury Nadya Kurchenko in Sukhum, in one of the central parks, which to this day bears her name.

On the day of her funeral, thousands of people followed the coffin through the streets of the city and brought her flowers. And the planes leaving for the flight shook their wings as a sign of respect to their young colleague.

Twenty years after tragic death in 1990, the ashes of Nadya Kurchenko, at the insistence of her mother, were transported to Udmurtia; the remains of the heroine now rest in the cemetery of her hometown of Glazov. At the school of young pilots in the capital of the republic, Izhevsk, a museum named after her was opened, which was awarded the title of “national”.

Life "under the supervision of the KGB"

The Turkish authorities, largely due to US influence, did not hand over the terrorists to the Soviet Union. They were sentenced: the father to eight years in prison, the son to two. But less than two years later, both bandits were free and managed to move to the United States, where the Lithuanian diaspora obtained citizenship for them. In the West, they believed that the Brazinskas could not be put on a par with other terrorists; they were supposedly fighting against the Soviet regime.

In America, they changed their names to Frank and Albert White and settled in the town of Santa Monica in California. Life got better for both of them. Brazinskas Sr. first worked as a painter, and then became a co-owner of a weapons store. His son graduated from accounting courses, got a job at an insurance company and married an American.

However, until the end of his life, Brazinskas Sr. was haunted by the communists. It seemed to him that the house was being watched by KGB agents who wanted to steal him back to the USSR. In the 1980s, he was chronicled several times when, with a pistol in his hand, he brought “KGB agents” - some of the first people he met on the street - to the police station.

In America, Algirdas wrote a book of memoirs about his “exploits” with his father, in which he tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the plane with the “struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation,” and also talked about the horrors of life in the Soviet Union. But even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Lithuania's independence, the Brazinskas did not return to their homeland, still fearing disguised KGB agents.

In his old age, Brazinskas Sr. became irritable, and he and his son often began to have quarrels. During one of these, 45-year-old Algirdas beat his 77-year-old father to death with a sports dumbbell. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to 16 years in prison.

Monument to Hope in Sukhum

In Sukhum, a city park was named in honor of Nadezhda Kurchenko, in which a monument to the brave flight attendant was erected.

During the Patriotic War of the people of Abkhazia, the monument suffered significant damage, as it was subjected to constant shelling.

In 2010, the city administration allocated funds and the holes in the monument were patched, but damage from heavy shelling took its toll when a tree fell on it in 2013 and the monument fell into pieces.

In 2017, the monument will be restored and installed in its original location.

In the Soviet Union, the status of a flight attendant was only slightly lower than that of a film actress or pop singer. Young and beautiful girls in elegant uniforms with friendly smiles seemed like real celestials. Plays were written about them, films were made, songs were dedicated to them. One of these songs, “My Clear Little Star,” was a real hit at dance parties in the seventies. However, not all of the dancers knew that the piercingly sad words and melody of this song are dedicated to the tragic death of a flight attendant, or, to put it official language, flight attendant Nadezhda Vladimirovna Kurchenko.

Komsomol member, athlete and beauty

Nadya Kurchenko was born on December 29, 1950 in the Altai Territory. Her childhood included dense forests near her native village of Novo-Poltava (Klyuchevsky district), excellent grades at school, a large and friendly company of peers. Later, Nadya’s family moved to the homeland of her mother, Henrietta Semyonovna, in the village of Ponino, Glazovsky district (Udmurtia). It was not easy to establish life in a new place - my father’s alcoholism, two younger sisters and a brother. Nadya had to study at the Glazov boarding school. However, she became one of the best students at school, loved poetry very much and recited it beautifully. Beautiful blue-eyed Nadya was the permanent Snow Maiden at New Year's matinees, and after joining the Komsomol, she became a pioneer leader in the junior classes, organized hikes, and published a wall newspaper. For Nadezhda, the Komsomol card was not an empty formality, and the concepts of “conscience” and “duty” were not just words.

It’s hard to say why a girl from an Udmurt village decided to throw in her lot with aviation. However, after graduating from school, Nadya went to a distant place southern city Sukhumi, where she first started working in the airport accounting department, and when she turned 18, she switched to working as a flight attendant. The girl quickly mastered the technical intricacies of her profession and knew how to get along with the most restless passengers. Her school passion for tourism continued in her new place - she became responsible for sports work in the air squadron, organized exciting hikes around the outskirts of Sukhumi, and even passed the standards for the “USSR Tourist” badge. In the very first year of work, the first serious test came - a fire on board the aircraft and the need to land it with one engine. For the flawless performance of their duties in emergency situation Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded a personalized watch.

Nadezhda had many plans - entering law school, marrying her school friend Vladimir Borisenko. In May 1970, Nadezhda went on vacation to visit her relatives. We agreed that the wedding would take place in November or new year holidays. And on October 15, the girl went on her last flight.

Close with yourself

Flight 244 from Batumi to Krasnodar with a landing in Sukhumi was considered short and uncomplicated, from Batumi to Sukhumi only half an hour of summer. 46 people boarded the AN-24. Among them were a middle-aged man with a fifteen-year-old son - Pranas and Algirdas Brazinskas. Ten minutes after takeoff, Brazinskas Sr., who was sitting next to the service compartment, called Nadezhda Kurchenko and ordered her to take an envelope with a note to the cockpit. The typewritten text contained a demand to change the route and a threat of death in case of disobedience. Seeing the flight attendant's reaction, the man jumped out of his seat and rushed to the cockpit. “You can’t go here, come back!” - Nadezhda shouted, blocking his path. She managed to shout “Attack” and fell - the bandits started shooting. Under the threat of the plane exploding, the wounded pilots had to head to Trabzon airport. The Turkish authorities were lenient towards the hijackers - after serving a short sentence and being released under an amnesty, they moved to the United States, but that’s a completely different story.

Nadezhda Kurchenko was buried in Sukhumi - in the uniform of a flight attendant and with a Komsomol badge; 20 years later, at the request of her mother, the ashes were reburied in Glazov. A tanker, the peak of the Gissar ridge and a planet in the constellation Capricorn were named after Nadezhda. In addition, after the death of flight attendant Kurchenko, the rules for passenger safety during air travel were radically changed and the norms of international laws against air terrorism were tightened.

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

And it all started like this.

The An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12:30 p.m. Heading to Sukhumi. There were 46 passengers and 5 crew members on board the plane. The scheduled flight time is 25-30 minutes.

But life has ruined both the schedule and the schedule.

Military and rescue boats went out to sea. Their captains received orders: to proceed 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 USSR airspace. And in the sky above 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: a Soviet passenger plane had been hijacked. The flight attendant was killed and some were wounded. All.

BLACK ENVELOPE

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

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

After giving the crew a drink, she returned to her compartment. At that moment the bell rang: one of the passengers called the flight attendant. She came up. The passenger said:

“Tell the commander urgently,” and handed her an envelope.

"ATTACK! HE'S ARMED!"

Nadya took the envelope. Their gazes must have met. She was probably surprised by the tone in which these words were spoken. But she didn’t bother to find out anything, but stepped towards the luggage compartment door - then there was the pilot’s cabin door. Probably, Nadya'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, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger in Nadya’s eyes. This was enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, verdict, exposure. His self-control failed: he literally ejected from his chair and rushed after Nadya.

She only managed to take a step towards the pilot's cabin when he opened the door to her compartment, which she had just closed.

- You can’t come here! - she screamed.

But he approached like the shadow of an animal. She realized: there was an enemy in front of her. The next second, he also realized: she would ruin all plans.

Nadya screamed again:

- Go back to your place. You can't go here!

But he took out a weapon - his nerves burned to the ground. Nadya did not know his intentions. But I understood: he is absolutely dangerous. Dangerous for the crew, dangerous for the passengers.

She saw the revolver clearly.

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

- Attack! He's armed!

And at the same moment, slamming the cabin door, she turned to face the bandit, furious with this course of affairs, and prepared to attack. He, as well as the crew members, heard her words - without a doubt.

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

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

BATTLE AT THE LAST FRONTIER

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

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

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

- Don't move! - he yelled. - Don't move!

The pilots began to throw the plane from one position to another with even greater sharpness. The young man fired again. The bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went straight through. The aircraft was not yet in danger of depressurization - the altitude was insignificant.

The 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’ll 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'll blow up the plane!

42 BULLETS ON THE CREW

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

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

A LOOK THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE LIVES...

Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded for courage and heroism 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, about something else.

Air Marshal, Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev personally took part in the discussion of Nadya’s funeral. Twice, due to circumstances, I spoke on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadya’s mother in Sukhumi, to decide on the place of the funeral, 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, run-of-the-mill flight?

No. It couldn't. In any case, I don’t believe in it.

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

- Look down while the city is visible. These are people saying goodbye to our friend. With our Nadya.

Do you believe that we are still the same?

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

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

I absolutely believe in these words, familiar to the ear, but written by Nadya’s hand and heart.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

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

The people dedicated a song written for a completely different reason to Nadezhda Kurchenko’s feat...

1973 The ballad “My Clear Little Star” flew around the Soviet Union like a dove. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind: the song was dedicated to the young flight attendant who remained in the sky forever. Killed three weeks before the wedding. And it is performed on behalf of her groom. The sad story is still being replicated on the Internet. However, this is just a beautiful legend...

Composer Vladimir Semenov:

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

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

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

“Of course, I remember the story of the plane hijacking, then they wrote a lot about Nadya’s feat,” says Semenov. “But, I must admit, I didn’t think about anything like that when I took out a small collection of poems by the Vologda poetess Olga Fokina from the store shelf. Literally 12-13 pages printed on thin newsprint. I started leafing through them and suddenly came across the words “People have different songs, but mine is the same for centuries.” Something caught my attention in these lines.”

A song was born that Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He brought Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. We recorded a small record consisting of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman’s song “Flowers Have Eyes,” Sergei Dyachkov’s song “Don’t” and Vladimir Semenov’s ballad “My Clear Little Star.” It spread 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. “I’m lying on the sand and suddenly I hear something familiar - somewhere in the distance a huge, Intourist ship is sailing by, and from there comes the voice of Sasha Losev:

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

“she is very close to life, her poems are always not fiction, not letters, not words - poems are generated by life itself... they captivate, enchant you with sincerity, purity and spontaneity of feelings.”

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