The Krivoshlyapov sisters, Dasha and Masha, are Siamese twins. Their fate has become a winning topic for many dissertations, and they themselves have become a welcome experimental material for prominent figures in Russian medicine. True, it was so until the moment when the girls aroused interest.
These are two people in one body, which the society called only a mistake of nature, and the professors considered a scientific experiment.
The Krivoshlyapov sisters: a biography of a painful life
Their birth became a sensation for the whole world. The girls lost their parents immediately, without even having time to open their eyes. January 4, 1950 Krivoshlyapova Katerina - their mother, was heavily relieved from the burden. The midwife who delivered the baby by caesarean section, stating that they were twins, immediately fainted. Doctors, thinking over the correct tactics of behavior, told the woman in labor that the children were born dead and immediately concocted a false death certificate. Mothercould not believe in the death of newborns, because she clearly heard their crying. Trying to get the truth, she questioned it from the staff. One compassionate nanny-trainee took pity and led to the ward where the girls were. After what she saw, Katerina Krivoshlyapova spent two years in one of the Moscow psychiatric clinics. Never again did she remember her firstborn, "burying" them in that 16th maternity hospital.
The truth about the children was also known by their father, Mikhail Krivoshlyapov, who was next to his wife during childbirth. He agreed to the recognition of the imaginary death of girls, while asking the doctors to do everything possible so that the children survived. He left them his last name, the man asked only to change his patronymic. And this is not surprising, because Mikhail worked as Beria's personal driver. So the Krivoshlyapovs Maria and Daria Mikhailovna became Ivanovnas. Every month, the father transferred a decent amount to the research institute for the treatment of his children. He died of brain cancer in 1980.
At the beginning of a difficult journey
The girls were transferred from the maternity hospital to the Institute of Pediatrics of the Academy of Medical Sciences, where they lived for 7 years. All these years, weekly experiments were carried out on the little ones, aimed at explaining the natural anomaly. At the age of three, they were put on ice for a long time, after which one of the babies fell ill with pneumonia. They were hung with sensors, forced to swallow a probe, crowds of students were led to demonstrate the “mistakes of nature”. In 1958, American scientists tried to outbid such “interesting material”, promising babiessecure life, work and education, but received a categorical refusal. Until the end, the sisters remembered this time, and every other day of their painful life, with fear and pain.
Experiments on people and their lives continue
By the age of seven Krivoshlyapovs Masha and Dasha could no longer walk, they also sat with difficulty. They were transferred to the Central Research Institute of Prosthetics and Prosthetics, where in two years they were taught to move around on crutches and do without them for some time. Here the sisters were also taught to read and write. By nature, the twins had three legs. The left Machine, the right - Dashina, and the third, located perpendicular to the back and representing two fused legs with 9 fingers, was common. She served the girls to keep their balance, but it was so for the time being. Doctors, considering it superfluous, performed a surgical operation, removing the third limb. After that, the Krivoshlyapov sisters stopped walking altogether and moved around with the help of crutches or in a wheelchair.
The doctors, whom they hated with every fiber of their soul, throughout their lives, the sisters turned only in the most extreme cases.
Professional unsuitable? Overboard
The sisters spent 15 years at the scientific institute. No one thought that they would live to this age. The experiments were all completed, scientific papers were written, interest in the "natural anomaly" gradually faded away. Due to their incompetence, the state decided to send them to the Novocherkassk boarding school for children suffering from diseases of the musculoskeletal system, where Siamese twinsthe Krivoshlyapov sisters stayed for 4 years. It was the worst test for them. The guys disliked them, scoffed. The girls constantly endured humiliation and ridicule, as a result of which they began to stutter badly. For a bottle of vodka, boarding school boys showed a curiosity to local residents.
Thoughts of not living
Krivoshlyapovs Masha and Dasha thought about death all their lives. Several times they tried to end their existence in this world, wanted to throw themselves out of the window of an 11-story building, poisoned themselves with pills more than once, cut their veins, constantly asking for death from God.
In 1970 they moved to Moscow, where for a long time they could not solve the issue of housing: society did not want to take on such a burden. The Krivoshlyapov sisters were assigned to nursing home No. 6, which became their last shelter. They had a separate room there, which served as a living room, dining room and bedroom at the same time. A huge portrait of Igor Talkov and an icon of the Mother of God hung on the wall. Every week, the attendants brought their acquaintances to see the "mistake of nature"
Meeting Mother
Many years later, at the age of 35, the Krivoshlyapov sisters found their mother's address through the passport office and visited her. A woman met them with a heavy look and reproach: “Where have you been all this time?”, not realizing that if her children were like everyone else, they would have found their mother earlier. In addition to Masha and Dasha, Katerina Krivoshlyapova had two more sons who never recognized their relationship with their sisters. Many years after thatmeeting unrecognized daughters cursed their family. Having found a book of spells, at night in pitch darkness for several hours they read a prayer. The next day, a neighbor saw their homemade cotton doll, all studded with needles. Mother, after meeting with her first-born, began to get very sick and did not live long.
Alcohol is an integral attribute of the life of sisters
It was after a difficult meeting with the mother of Krivoshlyapova's sister (the photo below was taken in the last years of their life) that they began to drink, daily and soundly.
Although they tried alcohol much earlier, at the age of 14. Attempts to get rid of the strongest addiction were unsuccessful. The sisters were coded, but after a while they had to be decoded, because they could not stop drinking, living in such an ugly body. They became addicted to drunkenness out of hopelessness, understanding their inferiority and dissimilarity to others. Perhaps the factor of heredity played a role: the grandfather, father and one of the brothers abused alcohol. Dasha drank the most, but since the body was common, both got drunk. But Masha smoked, she could use 2 packs of strong Belomor a day.
With no personal life sister had a large number of sexual partners. Dasha always dreamed of children, of her husband. But the desire to find their own family was restrained by their lack of independence, in which the sisters could not fully serve even themselves. Before, in the boarding school, they earned a little,engaged in tailoring cowards, nightgowns. It was this kind of work, which the sisters performed diligently, that endowed them with a sense of their own relevance. In the nursing home, they were completely isolated from society, and the main entertainment was the TV.
One or two?
Consciousness of many people who saw these girls perceives them as one person, although in fact they are two completely different personalities. Each had its own passport and medical book. They easily read each other's thoughts, even saw the same dreams, they could jump up in the middle of the night from a dreaming nightmare. However, with a complete external similarity, the Krivoshlyapov sisters were completely different. Dasha was soft and kind, Masha was stubborn and harsh. If Masha during her studies had only "deuces" and "triples", then Dasha was given science easily, and the marks were an order of magnitude higher. The same with poetry: one taught them responsibly, the second did not.
Cause of death of the Krivoshlyapov sisters
Thanks to the strength of character, the Siamese twins lived to be 54 years old. The cause of death was an acute coronary infarction of one of the twins. Masha died first. After that, Dasha lived for 17 hours, she was killed by ptomaine that had reached the circulatory system. The diagnosis was predictable, because due to heavy drinking, both had severe liver damage. Also, pulmonary edema was found in the body and the heart was badly damaged. Doctors many years ago thought about operating on the sisters and separating them. But with a common circulatory system, this turned out to be impossible.
SistersThe Krivoshlyapovs, whose funeral took place at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery, ended their painful life path, which brought them a lot of pain, both physical and mental. Such is the sad story of long-lived Siamese twins.
