The sisters Krivoshlyapova, 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, this was until the moment the girls aroused interest.
These are two people in one body, whom society called only a mistake of nature, and professors considered a scientific experiment.
Sisters Krivoshlyapova: biography of a painful life
Their birth became sensational 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 took delivery by caesarean section, ascertaining that they were twins, immediately fainted. Doctors, thinking over the correct tactics of behavior, told the woman in childbirth that the children were born dead and immediately concocted a false death certificate. Mother could not believe in the death of newborns, because clearly heard their cry. Trying to get the truth, she asked her staff. One compassionate nurse practitioner 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. She never again remembered her first-born, “burying” them in that 16th maternity hospital.
The truth about the children was also known to their father, Mikhail Krivoshlyapov, who was next to his wife during childbirth. He agreed to the recognition of the alleged death of girls, while asking the doctors to do everything possible so that the children survive. He left them his last name, the man asked only to change his middle name. And this is not surprising, because Mikhail worked as a personal driver of Beria. So Krivoshlyapov Maria and Daria Mikhailovna became Ivanovna. Each 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
From the maternity hospital, the girls were transferred to the Institute of Pediatrics of the Academy of Medical Sciences, where they lived for 7 years. All these years, weekly experiments were conducted on the babies 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 the probe, and drove crowds of students to demonstrate the "error of nature." In 1958, American scientists tried to outbid such "interesting material", promising the babies a prosperous life, work and education, but received a categorical refusal. Until the end of this time, and every other day of their excruciating life, the sisters remembered 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 for two years they were taught how to walk 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 one is Dashina, and the third, located to the back perpendicularly and representing two fused legs with 9 fingers, was common. She served the girls to maintain balance, but this was for the time being. Doctors, considering it superfluous, performed a surgical operation, removing the third limb. After that, the Krivoshlyapov sisters stopped walking at all and moved with crutches or in a wheelchair.
To the doctors whom they hated with all the fibers of the soul, throughout the life of the sister they turned only in the most extreme cases.
Unsuitable? Overboard!
The sisters spent 15 years at the scientific institute. No one thought they would live to this age. The experiments were all completed, scientific works were written, interest in the "natural anomaly" gradually faded away. Due to unsuitability, the state decided to send them to the Novocherkassk boarding school for children suffering from diseases of the musculoskeletal system, where the Siamese twins of the sister Krivoshlyapov stayed for 4 years. It was the worst test for them. The guys disliked them, scoffed. The girls constantly suffered humiliation and ridicule, as a result of which they began to stutter strongly. For a bottle of vodka, boarding boys showed a curiosity to local residents.
Thoughts on not living
Krivoshlyapovs Masha and Dasha have been thinking about death all their lives. Several times they tried to cease to exist in this world, wanted to jump out of the window of an 11-story building, more than once poisoned themselves with tablets, 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 housing problem: the society did not want to take on such a burden. The Krivoshlyapov sisters were identified in 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. On the wall hung a huge portrait of Igor Talkov and the icon of the Mother of God. Each week, attendants brought to look at the "mistake of nature" of their friends.
Meeting with mother
Many years later, at the age of 35, the sisters of Krivoshlyapov found their mother’s address through the passport office and visited her. A woman met them with a heavy look and a rebuke: “Where have you been all this time?”, Not realizing that if her children were like everyone else, then they would have found their mother earlier. In addition to Masha and Dasha, Katerina Krivoshlyapova had two more sons who did not recognize their kinship with the sisters. Many years after that meeting, the unrecognized daughters cursed their family. Finding a spell book, at night in pitch darkness they recited a prayer for several hours. The next day, a neighbor saw them a 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 essential attribute of sisters' life
It was after a difficult meeting with the mother of the sister of Krivoshlyapova (the photo presented below that was taken in the last years of their life) that they started drinking daily and thoroughly.
Although they tried alcohol much earlier, at 14 years old. Attempts to get rid of the strongest addiction were unsuccessful. The sisters were encoded, but after a while they had to decode, because they could not help but drink, living in such an ugly body. They became addicted to drunkenness because of hopelessness, understanding their inferiority and dissimilarity to the others. Perhaps the heredity factor played a role: the grandfather, father, and one of the brothers abused alcohol. Dasha drank hardest of all, but since the body was a common, both drunk. But Masha smoked, a day could use up 2 packs of strong “Belomor.”
In the absence of a personal sister, lives had a large number of sexual partners. Dasha always dreamed about children, about 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. Previously, in a boarding school, they earned a little while sewing underpants and nightgowns. It was this kind of work that the sisters did diligently that endowed them with a sense of their own demand. In the nursing home, they were completely isolated from society, and the main entertainment was television.
One or two?
The consciousness of many people who saw these girls perceives them as one person, although in reality 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, could jump in the middle of the night from a nightmare that they had dreamed of. However, with full external similarity, the sisters Krivoshlyapova were completely different. Dasha was soft and kind, Masha - stubborn and harsh. If Masha had only “deuces” and “triples” during her studies, then science was easy for Dasha, and her marks were an order of magnitude higher. The same thing with verses: one taught them responsibly, the other didn’t.
