Nadia Kurchenko biography. Post in memory of the Soviet stewardess of hope Kurchenko, who died in the sky from a bullet of terrorists. "attack! he is armed! ”

She was 19 years old. A beautiful girl got in the way of armed bandits who captured Aeroflot's plane on October 15, 1970. The case was the first. Until that moment, the USSR was not ...

She was 19 years old. A beautiful girl got in the way of armed bandits who captured Aeroflot's plane on October 15, 1970. The case was the first. Up to this point in the USSR there were no aircraft hijackings. Or have we heard nothing about them?

AN-24 took off from Batumi and began to move towards Sukhumi. Normal, unremarkable flight. Such flights were almost bus flights. Thirty minutes and landing. But it turned out that the course did not coincide with the plans of the bandits.

Radars recorded a sharp deviation from the course towards Turkey. The plane was silent. The captains at sea received orders to follow to the possible place of the fall of the airliner. It never occurred to anyone that the plane was hijacked.

A few minutes later, the instruments recorded that the plane crossed the state border of the USSR. The crew fired a specific emergency landing signal from the rocket launcher.

Chassis rolled over foreign territory. Half an hour later, the whole world heard a message: the hijacking of an aircraft of the Soviet Union. The stewardess died, among the wounded passengers.

... Girl Nadia was going to get married. A wedding dress and white shoes are already ready. The wedding is scheduled in three weeks. And the commander is invited with the crew. An hour after takeoff, the commander realized that the wedding would not take place.

In the last hour of her young life, she was friendly and smiling. Spilling over the glasses of Borjomi, carried in the cockpit. As always. The crew loved this modest girl.

Perhaps she was thinking about these people, who would soon come to her wedding? She loved her job, she liked to smile at people. Having drunk the team of pilots, she heard a call from the flight attendant.

The passenger handed a piece of paper and ordered an urgent transfer to the crew. The sheet printed requirements for changing course and turning off radio communications with the ground. Otherwise, the plane will be blown up.

The man who delivered the envelope was in full uniform of an officer. They met eyes, but the sensitivity of the wolf is always higher than any other. He saw hostility in the eyes of a young girl.

A shadow of danger threw him from the chair after Nadia. Opening the compartment door, he realized that now this girl will break his plans. The shadow of the beast hung over her. Nadia screamed. She was heard in the cockpit, and she decided to engage in battle with the enemy.

A young girl could not even imagine what the invader would do. Maniac? Mentally crazy? He could ... She could not let him into the cabin. Jumping, the bandit tries to knock her down. Nadia resisted. The bandit was ready for anything.

First shot. Nadia is injured in the thigh. Nadia pressed her back to the cockpit, and he tried to grab her by the throat. She is trying to knock out a gun, but ... Second shot. By. The girl resisted as best she could - kicked, fought.

The commander quickly realized what was happening outside the door. He began to roll the plane in different directions, hoping to overturn the attacker. And the stewardess will stand, experienced. People are still wearing seat belts.

The passenger rushed to the rescue, but the second bandit jumped up and fired a shotgun into the passage. Passengers realized that it’s not worth moving. And the pilot kept throwing the car from side to side.

Again shot in the skin of the aircraft. The height was not significant, and depressurization did not threaten the aircraft. Nadia screamed: “Attack! He is armed! ” The invader opened his cloak. Grenades hung on the belt.

The plane will be blown up if they do not go abroad. He violently tore the Hope clinging to the door. Some kind of beggar doesn’t pass into the cabin. The third shot - and the fragile, delicate blue-eyed girl falls forever.

Nobody stands between a gangster and a pilot. Nadia fell. And the carnage began. They shot in the cockpit, although the pilots needed the aircraft to continue its journey to a foreign country.

Eighteen holes were in the cockpit after landing. The commander of Chahraqiya was injured in the spine. A terrifying picture behind. Dead Nadia and badly wounded navigator. The wounded flight engineer Babayan groans.

Only the co-pilot Shavidze was lucky. His bullets stuck in the back of a chair. And the bandit was yelling, as if cheering himself up. Among the wild ora, only the word Turkey is heard!

Passengers were ready for death. Criminals too. They kicked the fallen wounded with their feet, the commander of them said that everything happens. Maybe they will die. They can be shot down by Turkish air defense.

A few minutes later the aircraft crossed the state border of the USSR. The on signal “SOS” has worked. They were not shot down. They fired green missiles to free the runway of the Trabzon airfield.

The plane rolled in a strange lane. He was immediately cordoned off by the Turkish security forces. The bandits immediately surrendered to the authorities of the Turkish Republic. Urgent assistance was provided to all victims.

In broken Russian, they offered political asylum to those who wished. No one was willing. The next day, all passengers left Turkey. The body of the young Nadia Kurchchenkov was also sent to the USSR.

The generation of the seventies remembers the stunning news of the death of the flight attendant, who covered the entire male crew of the aircraft with her body. Her name is assigned to the school where she studied, in several cities there are streets with a sign where her last name is written.

Peak of a mountain range, a small planet in deep space. There is even a named plane. For the courageous act, the young girl was awarded posthumously the Order of the Red Banner of War.

What happened to the hijackers? They were arrested and tried in Turkey, refusing to extradite to the authorities of the USSR. Despite a rather severe punishment, they fell under an amnesty. And they were soon released.

Judging by further events, the Brasinsky Pranas and Algirdas - father and son - wanted to go to America. But America refused to seek political asylum. The United States did not want a quarrel with the USSR.

Then the bandits bought tickets to Canada. An intermediate landing in New York was the reason for their detention by the migration authorities. They could not get political status. But American passports were issued to them.

Success in America, father and son did not achieve. We lived on unemployment benefits, were in poverty. Algirdas, a very old father, scored dumbbells. The head of the deceased turned into a mess. The jury sentenced him to twenty years in prison.

October 15 marks the 45th anniversary of the death of 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko, who, at the cost of her own life, tried to prevent the terrorists from seizing the Soviet passenger plane. The story of the heroic death of a young girl awaits you further.

This was the first time that a passenger plane (hijacking) was captured on such a scale. In fact, a long-term series of such tragedies began that sprinkled the blood of innocent people with the skies of the whole world.
And it all started like that.
An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12.30 a.m. The course is to Sukhumi. On board were 46 passengers and 5 crew members. 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. Radio operators requested a board - no response. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane went towards Turkey.
Military and rescue boats went to sea. Their captains received an order: to go at full speed to the place 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 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 someone else's air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported: a Soviet passenger plane was hijacked. The flight attendant is killed, there are wounded. All.

He recalls Georgy Chakhrakiya, the An-24 crew commander, No. 46256, who performed a flight en route Batumi-Sukhumi on October 15, 1970. I remember everything. I remember thoroughly.
Such things are not forgotten, - That day I said to Nadia: “We agreed that in life you would consider us your brothers. So why aren’t you honest with us? I know that soon you 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 on the November holidays." I was delighted and, shaking the wings of the plane, shouted loudly: “Guys! We go to the weddings for the holidays! ”... And within an hour I knew that there would be no wedding ...
Today, 45 years later, I intend to reiterate - at least briefly - the events of those days and again talk 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 sacrifice, courage, courage. First of all, to tell this to people of a new generation, a new computer consciousness, to tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadya Kurchenko - 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 stewardess returned to her working room, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot at her with sparkling tiny cores, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Putting them on a tray, she entered the cabin.
The crew was always happy to have a beautiful, young, extremely friendly girl in the cockpit. Probably, she felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was happy too. Perhaps, at 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 younger sister, with care and trust.
Of course, Nadia was in a wonderful mood - claimed everyone who saw her in the last minutes of her clean, happy life.
After watering the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the stewardess. She came up. The passenger said:
“Pass it on urgently to the commander,” and handed her an envelope.

At 12.40. Five minutes after take-off (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 the crew commander!” The envelope was printed on a typewriter "Order No. 9":
1. I order you to fly on the specified route.
2. Stop the radio connection.
3. For failure to comply with the order - Death.
(Free Europe) P.K.Z.Ts.
General (Krylov)
On the sheet there was a seal on which in Lithuanian it was written: "... rajono valdybos kooperatyvas" ("cooperative of management ... of the district"). the man was wearing the full dress uniform of a Soviet officer.
Nadia took the envelope. Their views must have met. She must have been surprised at the tone of these words. But she didn’t find out anything, but she stepped to the tailgate - 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, is superior to any other. And, probably, thanks to this sensitivity, the terrorist saw in the eyes of Nadi hostility, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger. This turned out to be enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, sentence, exposure. Self-control refused: he literally catapulted from the chair and rushed after Nadia.
She only managed to take a step to the pilot's cabin when he opened the door to her compartment, which she had just closed.
- You can’t come here! she cried.
But he was approaching, like the shadow of a beast. She understood: the enemy is in front of her. The next second, he realized: she would break all plans.
Nadia screamed again.
And at the same moment, slamming the door of the cabin, turned to face the bandit furious in this course of affairs and prepared to attack. He, like the crew, heard her words — no doubt. What was left to do? Nadia decided: not to let the attacker into the cockpit at all costs. Any!
He could be a maniac and shoot the crew. He could destroy the crew and passengers. He could ... She did not know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: jumping to her, he tried to knock her down. With her hands on the wall, Nadia resisted and continued to resist.
The first bullet hit her thigh. She snuggled closer 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 to the ceiling. Nadia fought back with her feet, hands, even her head.
The crew appreciated the situation instantly. The commander abruptly interrupted the right turn, in which they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately threw the roaring car to the left, and then to the right. The next second, the plane went up steeply: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that his experience in this matter was small, and Nadia would hold on.
Passengers were still with belts - the display was not blank, the plane was only gaining altitude.
In the cabin, seeing a passenger rushing to the cabin and hearing the first shot, several people instantly unfastened their seat belts and jumped from their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and the first to feel trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kaishanba did not have time, however, to take a step: they were ahead of the one who was sitting next to the one who had escaped into the cabin. The young thug - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be a father and son - grabbed a sawn-off shotgun and shot along the cabin. A 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 from one position to another. Young shot again. A bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went right through. Depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was not significant.
Having opened the pilot's cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:
- The attack! He is armed!
The next moment after the second shot, the young man opened a gray cloak and people saw grenades - they were tied to a belt.
- This is for you! he cried. “If anyone else gets up, we’ll blow up the plane!”
It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - in case of failure they had nothing to lose.
Meanwhile, despite the evolution of the aircraft, the elder remained on his feet and with bestial fury tried to tear Nadia from the door of the pilot's cabin. He needed a commander. He needed a crew. He needed a plane.
Struck by Nadia's incredible resistance, furious with his own powerlessness to cope with a wounded, bloodied fragile girl, he, without aiming, without thinking for a second, shot at point blank range and, throwing a desperate defender of the crew and passengers into the corner of a narrow aisle, burst into the cabin. Behind him is his geek with a sawn-off shotgun.
Then there was the carnage. Their shots were muffled by their own cries:
- To Turkey! To Turkey! Return to the Soviet coast - we will blow up the plane!

Bullets flew from the cockpit. One walked through my hair, ”says Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov, Leningrader. He and his wife in 1970 were passengers of the ill-fated flight. - I saw: the bandits had pistols, a hunting rifle, one grenade from the older one hung on his chest. The plane was thrown left and right - the pilots probably hoped that the criminals would not stand on their feet.
Shooting continued in the cockpit. Thereafter, 18 holes were counted, and a total of 24 bullets were fired. One of the commanders got into the spine:
George Chahraqia - My legs were taken away. Through efforts, I turned around and saw a terrible picture, Nadia without movement lay on the floor in the doors of our cabin and was bleeding. Nearby lay the navigator Fadeev. And behind us stood a man and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore to the left! Heading south! Do not enter the clouds! Obey, or we’ll explode the plane! ”
The offender did not stand on ceremony. He ripped off the radio headphones from the pilots. Stomped on lying bodies. The mechanic Oganes Babayan was wounded in the chest. Suliko Shavidze was also shot at the second pilot, but he was lucky - the bullet was stuck in the steel tube of the seatback. When the navigator Valery Fadeev came to his senses (his lungs were shot through), the bandit cursed and kicked a seriously wounded leg.
Vladimir Gavrilovich Merenkov - I told my wife: “We are flying towards Turkey!” - And he was afraid that when approaching the border they could bring us down. The wife also remarked: “Under us is the sea. 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! ”
Pilots still managed to turn on the SOS signal.
George Chahraqia - I told the bandits: “I am injured, my legs were paralyzed. I can only control with my hands. The co-pilot should help me, ”- the bandit replied:“ Everything happens in war. We may perish. ” Even the thought flashed to send the "Annushka" to the rocks - to perish themselves and finish off these bastards. But there are forty-four people in the salon, including seventeen women and one child.
I told the second pilot: “If I lose consciousness, lead the ship at the request of the bandits and land. It is necessary to 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 directing the car, warned that he would shoot me and blow up the ship. I decided to cross the border. And five minutes later we crossed it at a low altitude.
... The airfield in Trabzon was found visually. For pilots it was not difficult.
George Chahraqia - We made a circle and launched green rockets, making it clear that they freed the strip. We went from the side of the mountains and sat down so that, if something happened, 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 appeared, we were at gunpoint ...
Leaving the passenger compartment after the passengers, the elder bandit punched the car with his fist: “This plane is ours now!”
The Turks provided all crew members with medical assistance. They immediately offered to stay in Turkey, but not one of the 49 Soviet citizens agreed.
The next day, all the passengers and the body of Nadia Kurchenko were taken to the Soviet Union. A little later they surpassed the stolen An-24.
For courage and heroism, Nadezhda Kurchenko was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the name of Nadia was a passenger plane, an asteroid, schools, streets and so on. But it should be said, apparently, about something else.
The scale of state and public actions connected with an 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.
Following: to allocate an air corridor for return of the hijacked plane; an air corridor for transporting injured crew members and those passengers who needed urgent medical care from Trabzon hospitals; of course, and those who were not physically injured, but found themselves in a foreign land not of their own free will; an air corridor was required to fly a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadi’s body. Her mother was already flying to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

Tells the mother of Nadezhda Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko: - I immediately asked that Nadia be buried in our Udmurtia. But I was not allowed. They said that from a political point of view this should not 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 arrived for the last time, and there the war began. The Abkhazians fought with the Georgians, and the grave was launched. We walked to Nadia on foot, shot nearby - everything was ... And then I impudently wrote a letter to Gorbachev: “If you do not help transport Nadia, I will go and hang myself on her grave!” A year later, the daughter was reburied at the city cemetery in Glazov. They wanted to bury separately, on Kalinin Street, and rename the street in honor of Nadi. But I didn’t allow it. She died for the people. And I want her to lie with people ..

Immediately after the hijacking in the USSR, mean TASS messages appear:
“On October 15, an An-24 civilian aircraft flew a regular flight from the city of Batumi to Sukhumi. Two armed bandits, using weapons against the command of the plane, forced the plane to change the route and land on the territory of Turkey in the city of Trabzon. During the clash with the bandits, an aircraft stewardess was killed who tried to block the bandits from entering the pilot's cabin. Two pilots were injured. Passengers are unharmed. The Soviet government asked the Turkish authorities to extradite the killer criminals to bring them to Soviet court, as well as return the plane and Soviet citizens aboard the An-24.
Appearing the next day, October 17, “tassovka” reported that the crew and passengers returned to their homeland. True, in the hospital of Trabzon there remained a navigator of the aircraft, who was seriously injured in the chest, who underwent surgery. The names of the hijackers are not called: “As for the two criminals who carried out an armed attack on the crew of the plane, as a result of which the flight attendant N.V. Kurchenko was killed, two crew members and one passenger were wounded, the Turkish government said that they were arrested and the prosecutor’s office was given order to conduct an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the case. ”

The public became aware of the identities of air pirates only on November 5 after a press conference by 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.
According to the biography written by Brazinskas in 1949, the “forest brothers” shot the chairman of the council through a window and mortally wounded his father P. Brazinskas, who happened to be nearby. With the help of local authorities, P. Brazinskas acquired a house in Vievis and in 1952 became the head of the warehouse of household goods 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 and sent parcels to Central Asia, for each parcel he made 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 left his second wife.
On October 7–13, 1970, when he last visited Vilnius, 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) and flew to Transcaucasia.

In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately surrender criminals, but this requirement was not met. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. The Trabzon trial court did not find the attack intentional. In his defense, Pranas claimed that they hijacked the plane in the face of death, which allegedly threatened 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, his father fell under the amnesty law and was replaced by the imprisonment of Brazinskas Sr. with house arrest. In the same year, the father and son allegedly fled from house arrest and applied to the American embassy in Turkey with a request to provide them with political asylum in the United States. Having been refused, the Brasinsky again surrendered to the Turkish police, where they were held for another couple of weeks and ... finally released. Then, through Italy and Venezuela, they flew to Canada. During an intermediate landing in New York, the Brasinsky got off the plane and were "detained" by the US Migration and Naturalization Service. The status of political refugees was not provided to them, but for a start they were provided with a residence permit, and in 1983 they issued both American passports. Algirdas officially became Albert-Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White.
Henrietta Ivanovna Kurchenko - In order to extradite the Brazinskasov, I even went to the American Embassy to meet with Reagan. They told me that they are looking for a father, because he lives illegally in the United States. And the son received American citizenship. And he cannot be punished. Nadia was killed in 1970, and the law on the extradition of bandits, wherever they were, allegedly came out in 1974. And there will be no return ...
The Brazilian people settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In America, the attitude towards the Brazilian people in the Lithuanian community was wary, they were frankly afraid. An attempt to organize a fundraiser in a self-help fund failed. In the USA, the Brasinsky wrote a book about their "exploits" in which they tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the aircraft by the "struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from the Soviet occupation." In order to whitewash himself, P. Brazinskas stated that he had accidentally hit the flight attendant in a “skirmish with the crew”. Later, A. Brazinskas claimed that the stewardess died during the “shoot-out with KGB agents”. However, the support of the Brazinskas by Lithuanian organizations gradually came to naught, everyone forgot about them. Real life in the US was very different from what they expected. The criminals lived wretchedly, under old age, Brasinskas Sr. became irritable and unbearable.
At the beginning of February 2002, a call rang in the 911 service of the California city of Santa Monica. The caller immediately hung up. The police determined the address from which they called, and arrived at 900 on 21st Street. 46-year-old Albert Victor White opened the door to the police and led law enforcement officers to the cold corpse of his 77-year-old father. On the head of which forensic experts then counted eight strokes from the dumbbell. Santa Monica is rarely killed - it was the first violent death in the city that year.
Jack ALEX. Brazinskas Jr. lawyer
“I am Lithuanian myself, and his wife Virginia hired me to protect Albert Victor White.” Here in California there is a fairly large Lithuanian diaspora, and you don’t think that we Lithuanians support the capture of the 1970 plane
- Pranas was a terrible person, it happened that in fits of rage he was chasing arms next to the kids.
- 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 a necessary self-defense. The father pointed a gun at him, threatening to shoot his son if he abandoned him. But Algirdas knocked out his weapon and hit the old man on the head several times.
- The jury considered that, having knocked out a gun, Algirdas might not have killed the old man, since he was very weak. Another fact that played against Algirdas was the fact that he called the police only a day after the incident - all this time he was next to the corpse.
- Algirdas was arrested in 2002 and sentenced to 20 years in prison under the article “intentional murder of the second degree”
“I know this does not sound like a lawyer, but let me express my condolences to Algirdas.” The last time I saw him, he was in terrible depression. The father terrorized his son as best he could, and when the tyrant was finally gone, Algirdas, a man in his prime, would continue to rot for many years in prison. Apparently, this is fate ...

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 Ukrainian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Since December 1968, the flight attendant of the Sukhumi squadron. She died on October 15, 1970, trying to prevent the hijacking of an airplane by terrorists. In 1970 she was buried in the center of Sukhumi. After 20 years, her grave was transferred to the city cemetery of Glazov. She was awarded (posthumously) the Order of the Red Banner. The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was assigned to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and a small planet.

Since childhood, I love the song "My Clear Star" performed by VIA Flowers !! Some time ago, I came across an article about this song. In which it was said that the poem, which was subsequently put on music, was dedicated to the Soviet stewardess Nadezhda Kurchenko.

I was very impressed with this story and I think that it deserves our attention.

It was the end of the "velvet season." From the city of Batumi, flight N244 to Batumi-Sukhumi-Krasnodar flew An-24 aircraft with 46 passengers on board. People who rested in the Caucasus did not yet know that in the next day they were to become witnesses and participants in the drama associated with the first successful hijacking of a passenger plane abroad in the history of the USSR.

A few minutes after take-off at an altitude of 800 meters, two passengers - Father and son Brazinskasa called the stewardess and, threatening an explosion, demanded a landing in Turkey. In those years, the door to the cockpit did not lock in airplanes, and there were no special staff in the cabin either. Nadia tried to block the bandits from entering the cockpit. She rushed into the cab and shouted: "Assault!"

The terrorists killed the flight attendant, who blocked their path, with the first shots and burst into the cabin. Terrorists fired in all directions. Later, 18 holes were counted in the skin. Several bullets were fired towards the saloon; none of the passengers were injured. The first pilot, George Chakhrakia, a bullet hit the spine, and his legs were taken away.

Overcoming pain, he turned around and saw a terrible picture: Nadia lay motionless in the door of the pilot's cabin and bleeding. Navigator Fadeev was shot in the lungs of a navigator, and flight engineer Oganes Babayan was wounded in the chest. The co-pilot Suliko Shavidze was most lucky - the bullet stuck in a steel pipe in the back of his seat. Behind the pilots stood Brazinskas Sr. and, shaking a grenade, shouted: “Keep the seashore to 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. But the hijacker warned again that he would blow up the car (it later turned out that Brazinskas was bluffing because 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 launched green rockets, asking to be released for emergency landing. Immediately after landing, the hijackers surrendered to the Turkish authorities. 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 and the stolen An-24. After major repairs, the board N46256 with a photograph of Nadia Kurchenko in the cabin for a long time flew in Uzbekistan.

The Brazilians in 1983 were issued with American passports. Back in 1976, Algirdas officially became Albert-Victor White, and Pranas became Frank White. They settled in the town of Santa Monica in California, where they worked as ordinary painters. In the USA, the Brasinsky wrote a book about their “exploits”, in which they tried to justify the seizure and hijacking of the aircraft by “the struggle for the liberation of Lithuania from Soviet occupation.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, in the Lithuanian community of America, the attitude towards the Brazilians was wary, they were frankly afraid. The attempt to organize fundraising for the self-help fund failed - almost none of the Lithuanian immigrants gave them a dollar. In his old age, Brasinskas Sr. became irritable and bile, and therefore quarrels often began to arise in the two-room apartment, which he shared with his son.

During one of these quarrels, a 45-year-old son killed his 77-year-old dad with a baseball bat and was convicted of murdering his father on household grounds. This tragedy received a very wide resonance at that time. In fact, it was not only the first successful act of air terrorism in the history of the USSR, but also the first case in the world when a crew member died during the hijacking of an aircraft. Much has been written about the tragedy in newspapers around the world.

The death of the very young Nadia Kurchenko, whose wedding was appointed three months later, shocked the country. One of them, the famous Vologda poetess Olga Fokina, wrote a poem in the early 70s entitled “People have different songs.” At one of the creative meetings, Fokina admitted that she was struck to the core by the tragic death of Nadezhda Kurchenko, which happened on the eve of Nadya’s wedding, that the verse was written with the thought of the dead flight attendant and, as if on behalf of her young man, mourning the death of his bride, her little star. ...

After some time, a poem by Olga Fokina caught the eye of the then-beginning composer, guitarist Vladimir Semenov. He then wrote in 1971 the song "My Little Star" with these verses. Especially for the performance of a song and recording a record with it, a musical group was created which was called the VIA "Flowers" (later the "Stas Namin Group").

And the singer of the Flowers, now the late Alexander Losev, sang an unusually lyrical and penetrating song. The song “My Clear Star”, which lifted VIA “Flowers” \u200b\u200bto the pop Olympus and made the ensemble super popular in the USSR, has not lost its popularity for almost 40 years and thanks to its extraordinary lyricism, sincerity and sincerity still lives in the hearts of so many people.


Lives in the memory of people and the name of the STAR - the young young flight attendant Nadia Kurchenko, who, at the cost of her own life, tried to save people from armed bandits ... ETERNAL MEMORY! The name of Nadezhda Kurchenko was assigned to one of the peaks of the Gissar Range, a tanker of the Russian fleet and an asteroid.

This was the first case in the USSR of hijacking a passenger plane of this scale (hijacking). In fact, a long-term series of such tragedies began that sprinkled the blood of innocent people with the skies of the whole world.

And it all started like that.

An-24 took off from the Batumi airfield on October 15, 1970 at 12.30 a.m. The course is to Sukhumi. On board the aircraft were 46 passengers and 5 crew members. 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. Radio operators requested a board - no response. Communication with the control tower was interrupted. The plane went towards Turkey.

Military and rescue boats went to sea. Their captains received an order: to go at full speed to the place 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 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 someone else's air harbor. Telegraph agencies around the world immediately reported: a Soviet passenger plane was hijacked. The flight attendant is 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. All had to find out on the spot.

Today, 45 years later, I intend to reiterate - at least briefly - the events of those days and again talk 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 sacrifice, courage, courage. To tell about this, first of all, to people of a new generation, a new computer consciousness, to tell how it was, because my generation remembers and knows this story, and most importantly - Nadia Kurchenko - 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 stewardess returned to her working room, a narrow compartment. She opened a bottle of Borjomi and, letting the water shoot at her with sparkling tiny cores, filled four plastic cups for the crew. Putting them on a tray, she entered the cabin.

The crew was always happy to have a beautiful, young, extremely friendly girl in the cockpit. Probably, she felt this attitude towards herself and, of course, she was happy too. Perhaps, at 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 younger sister, with care and trust.

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

After watering the crew, she returned to her compartment. At that moment, the bell rang: one of the passengers called the stewardess. She came up. The passenger said:

“Pass it on urgently to the commander,” and handed her an envelope.

"ATTACK! HE IS ARMED! ”

Nadia took the envelope. Their views must have met. She must have been surprised at the tone of these words. But she didn’t find out anything, but she stepped to the tailgate - then there was the pilot’s cabin door. Probably, Nadia's feelings were written on her face - most likely. And the sensitivity of the wolf, alas, is superior to any other. And, probably, thanks to this sensitivity, the terrorist saw in the eyes of Nadia hostility, subconscious suspicion, a shadow of danger. This turned out to be enough for the sick imagination to sound the alarm: failure, sentence, exposure. Self-control refused: he literally catapulted from the chair and rushed after Nadia.

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

- You can’t come here! She cried.

But he was approaching, like the shadow of a beast. She understood: the enemy is in front of her. The next second, he realized: she would break all plans.

Nadia screamed again:

- Return to your place. This is not allowed!

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

She clearly saw the revolver.

Having opened the pilot's cockpit, she shouted to the crew with all her might:

- The attack! He is armed!

And at the same moment, slamming the door of the cabin, turned to face the bandit furious in this course of affairs and prepared to attack. He, like the crew, heard her words — no doubt.

What was left to do? Nadia decided: not to let the attacker into the cockpit at all costs. Any!

Trabzon. Exempted passengers on Flight 244 cry with happiness.

LAST ABROAD GATHERING

He could be a maniac and shoot the crew. He could destroy the crew and passengers. He could ... She did not know his actions, his intentions. And he knew: jumping to her, he tried to knock her down. With her hands on the wall, Nadia resisted and continued to resist.

The first bullet hit her thigh. She snuggled closer 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 to the ceiling. Nadia fought back with her feet, hands, even her head.

The crew appreciated the situation instantly. The commander abruptly interrupted the right turn, in which they were at the moment of the attack, and immediately threw the roaring car to the left, and then to the right. The next second, the plane went up steeply: the pilots tried to knock down the attacker, believing that his experience in this matter was small, and Nadia would hold on.

Passengers were still with belts - the display was not blank, the plane was only gaining altitude.

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

"This is for you! He cried. “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 from their seats. Two of them were closest to the place where the criminal was sitting, and the first to feel trouble. Galina Kiryak and Aslan Kaishanba did not have time, however, to take a step: they were ahead of the one who was sitting next to the one who had escaped into the cabin. The young thug - and he was much younger than the first, for they turned out to be a father and son - grabbed a sawn-off shotgun and shot along the cabin. A 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. Young shot again. A bullet pierced the fuselage skin and went right through. Depressurization of the aircraft was not yet threatened - the height was not significant.

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

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

It was obvious that this was not an empty threat - in case of failure they had nothing to lose.

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

Struck by Nadia's incredible resistance, furious with his own powerlessness to cope with a wounded, bloodied fragile girl, he, without aiming, without thinking for a second, shot at point blank range and, throwing a 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 sawn-off shotgun.

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

42 CREW BULBS

Another bullet pierced the back of the commander - Grigory Chakhrakiy. To preserve at least a little blood in the body, so as not to lose consciousness and not to drop the helm out of his hands, Gregory pressed against the back of the commander’s seat with all his might. The next shot - a bullet paralyzes the right hand of navigator Valery Fadeev and gets into the chest. There is a communication microphone in his hand, Fadeev is losing consciousness, no one can open his hand with a microphone - each of the crew members is already wounded, Nadya is dead.

There is no way out: the plane should not fall into the sea - there are 46 passengers in the cabin, there are children. The second pilot sees: the commander is still losing consciousness. Shavidze takes control - drives a car, like in a nightmare: in a blood-soaked cabin of 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 a gray dream of reality, it launches emergency rockets into the sky. And the plane, shot down by forty-two bullets, crashes into alien hard ground ...

LOOK THROUGH THE YEARS

WHILE HOPE IS ALIVE ...

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

The scale of state and public actions connected with an 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.

Following: to allocate an air corridor for return of the hijacked plane; an air corridor for transporting injured crew members and those passengers who needed urgent medical care from Trabzon hospitals; of course, and those who were not physically injured, but found themselves in a foreign land not of their own free will; an air corridor was required to fly a special flight from Trabzon to Sukhumi with Nadi’s body. Her mother was already flying to Sukhumi from Udmurtia.

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

Marshal of Aviation, Minister of Civil Aviation of the USSR Boris Pavlovich Bugaev personally participated in the discussion of the issue of Nadi's funeral. I twice, due to circumstances, spoke on the phone with the minister, who listened to wishes, advice, requests to meet Nadi’s mother in Sukhumi, to determine the place of the funeral, and other actions. Could there be something similar in our busy days - the concern of the superpower minister about the fate of the murdered flight attendant of a tiny state flight?

Not. It couldn’t. In any case, I do not 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), only in the first two weeks after even the reports distorted by censorship came over 12 thousand letters and telegrams from shocked readers who mourned Nadia and admired her courage !

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

On the day of Nadi’s funeral, over her coffin littered with flowers and over the heads of thousands of people following her coffin through the city streets, all the planes leaving for the flight shook their wings, showing respect to their defender, their young colleague, their heroine. In each of these aircraft, the stewardesses, with tears in their eyes, said to their passengers:

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

Do you believe that we are all the same?

... Nadia’s mother, Henrietta Ivanovna, with whom I stood at Nadia’s tomb and who repeated dryly and lifelessly, looking at her daughter’s strikingly beautiful face:“Now you don’t laugh at me, you are serious,”handed me notes, notebooks, Nadia's papers. Among them, I found a phrase from a 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.”

Here in these words, habitual for hearing, but written by a hand and heart of Nadi, I absolutely believe.

PAY

The bandits punished themselves

The terrorists turned out to be the 46-year-old Lithuanian Pranas Brazinskas (pictured right), a former commissar from Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas (left). The Turkish authorities refused to extradite the USSR criminals 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 United States: they got off in New York from a plane bound for Canada. The Lithuanian diaspora has obtained permission to leave them in the country.

The Brazilian settled in California Santa Monica. 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.

"My little star is clear, how far are you from me ..."

The people dedicated the feat of Nadezhda Kurchenko a song written for a completely different reason ...

1973 year. The Soviet Union flew around the dove ballad "My clear star." No one was in doubt: the song is dedicated to a young stewardess, forever remaining in the sky. Killed three weeks before the wedding. And executed on behalf of her fiance. A sad story is still being circulated on the Internet. However, this is just a beautiful legend ...

Composer Vladimir Semenov:

“This song was sung and sung by many. But it seems to me that her best performer was and remains Sasha Losev ... "

The soloist of the student amateur ensemble, the winner of the district competition, where the main prize is recording your own record at the company "Melody" ...

The tragic halo that the song acquired, after 22 years, covered the 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 early dead son. And summed up the sad result:

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

The main song "Zvezdochka" also became in the life of the composer Vladimir Semenov. He was already 35 years old. Behind Astrakhan, a road technical school, a home-made electric guitar and hundreds of kilometers on a splattered bus traveling with concert bands of the Astrakhan Philharmonic ...

“Of course, I remember the story of the hijacking of an airplane, then they wrote a lot about the exploit of Nadi,” says Semenov. - But, to admit, I didn’t think of anything like this when I took a small collection of verses 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 stumbled upon the words "People have different songs, and mine is one forever." Something caught me in these lines. ”

A song was born that Semenov showed to his friend, composer Sergei Dyachkov. He led Semenov to Stas Namin, who led the vocal and instrumental ensemble. We recorded a small disc, consisting of three compositions - Oscar Feltsman’s songs “Flowers Have Eyes”, Sergey Dyachkov’s songs “Don't Need 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 rest in Sochi,” composer Vladimir Semenov recalls today. - I’m lying on the sand and suddenly I hear something familiar - somewhere in the distance a motor ship, huge, foreign, is floating, and from there comes the voice of Sasha Losev:

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

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

"She is very close to life, she always doesn’t have fiction in her poems, not letters, not words - poems are generated by life itself ... they captivate, fascinate you with sincerity, purity and spontaneity of feelings."