- A Russian woman who survived a mid-air collision in which
her plane was ripped apart by a Soviet heavy bomber has for the first time
described her 18,000ft plunge to earth.
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- It was nearly two decades ago that Larissa Sovitskaya
miraculously escaped a disaster which killed all the other 30 passengers
on board both craft - including her husband Vladimir, with whom she was
returning from honeymoon.
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- For years afterwards the Soviet authorities ordered her
to remain silent about the causes of the crash because it involved a military
aircraft.
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- The KGB warned her not to talk in public about her ordeal,
and when she complained about her health problems doctors threatened to
lock her up in a psychiatric hospital.
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- Last week, however, Sovitskaya, 39, whose father was
an air traffic controller, spoke for the first time in detail about the
experience.
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- Sovitskaya today Paid just £35 compensation
by Aeroflot, then the state airline, and now too poor even to afford the
painkillers on which she relies, she is planning to write a book about
the accident and about the pressure put on her by Soviet authorities to
hush it up.
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- "I still don't know how I managed to survive,"
she said.
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- "I was later told that the fall took some eight
minutes. At one point I passed out but I was conscious for most of the
fall, just waiting for the moment when I would crash to the ground, knowing
that I was going to die.
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- "Every time I hear the news of a plane crash I am
sick with anxiety because I know what those people went through during
their last few seconds."
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- It was on August 24, 1981 that Sovitskaya, then aged
20, boarded the flight in the town of Komsomolsk-na-Amure in Russia's Far
East. She was returning home with Vladimir to Blagoveshensk, a small town
on the Chinese border, after two weeks away.
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- It was just a three-hour flight - little more than a
short hop by Russian standards - but Sovitskaya had been increasingly nervous.
She had even asked her husband to change their tickets for another day,
but all the flights were booked.
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- "I don't know why, I didn't feel comfortable,"
she recalled. "The flight was delayed and we spent hours in the airport
waiting for the poor weather to clear. Vladimir did his best to calm me
down."
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- Shortly after lunchtime the couple finally boarded an
Antonov-24, a small turbo-prop plane for about 50 passengers.
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- The takeoff was smooth and Sovitskaya fell asleep at
her husband's side. That was the last time she saw him alive.
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- Less than two hours later she was woken by a violent
impact: a Tupolev-16 Soviet bomber, a much bigger and heavier craft which
had taken off from a nearby airfield, had smashed into the airliner, ripping
off its roof and severing both wings.
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- "The scene was apocalyptic," she said. "We
were surrounded by clouds and it was freezing cold. There was a horrible
noise of wind and debris flying around the plane, mixed with awful piercing
screams from other passengers.
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- "I turned to my husband but he was already dead,
his face covered in blood. I couldn't understand what had happened. It
felt like an explosion and I understood that I was about to die."
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- Within seconds Sovitskaya was thrust out of her seat
into the air towards the back of the aircraft. She crashed onto a strip
of metal inside the fuselage and was knocked out.When she came to, a scene
from a film about a plane crash that she had seen a few months earlier
flashed into her mind.
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- "I remembered a woman falling from the sky in her
seat," she said. "So when I saw an empty seat, I threw myself
into it and hung on with all my strength. Then I waited for the moment
when we would crash to the ground."
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- The section of the plane to which she was clinging measured
about 10 square metres and had just four seats left. Lying next to her
were the bodies of her husband and two other passengers, all of whom had
been killed immediately.
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- Sovitskaya was still inside the torn section when it
hit the ground. The impact was softened by one of the thick clumps of birch
trees that dot the marshland of one of Russia's most remote regions, but
debris from the section was scattered far across the taiga. Sovitskaya
was unconscious for several hours.
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- It took rescue teams combing the area with helicopters
three days to locate the wreckage, and Sovitskaya was found by a group
of amazed rescuers who reached her on foot.
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- She was in deep shock and covered with bruises and cuts.
She had severe concussion, a broken hand and rib and had sustained multiple
spinal injuries. Sovitskaya spent a year after the crash unable to sit
or walk, but eventually recovered and now has a son aged 15.
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- Aeroflot paid her £140 for the death of her husband,
in addition to her £35 compensation. It was not until 1986 that the
tightly controlled Soviet press mentioned her escape- and even then it
said she had fallen from a glider.
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- The truth was not revealed for another four years when
the policy of glasnost, or openness, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, the
former Soviet president, had taken root.
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- Sovitskaya eventually resumed her job as a sales manager,
but has worked only sporadically. Just over a year ago she was forced to
give up work completely because of severe back pain and headaches that
give her hallucinations. Unemployed, and with no state help, she lives
on the edge of poverty with her son in a one-bedroom flat in Moscow.
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- "Officially planes never crashed in the Soviet Union,
so imagine admitting to a collision with a military plane," she said.
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- "All these years, every time I asked the authorities
or Aeroflot for help because of the deteriorating state of my health I
was made to feel that nobody is guilty or responsible, except myself because
I survived. It was a miracle that I stayed alive - but I often feel it
would have been better if I had died."
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