Tragic story of conjoined sisters subjected to horror by Russian ‘docs’ – and how one died after refusing separation from her dead twin
Siamese twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyopova were the world's oldest living conjoined twins when they died in 2003.
IT is deep in the winter of 1950, and Siamese twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyopova are born in Moscow after a successful cesarean section.
But instead of being greeted by the cries of her newborn daughters when she woke from her anaesthetic, their mother was told that her children had tragically passed away.
This was a lie told by doctors under orders from Stalin's Soviet medical researchers.
They wanted to get their hands on healthy conjoined twins for a series of cruel and inhumane experiments.
This was the fate that awaited poor Masha and Dasha — human guinea pigs whose lives would be scarred by the warped fantasies of evil scientists working for a totalitarian regime.
These sick boffins marvelled at how the sisters shared a blood system but had separate nerves, making them idea for their twisted tests.
Treated like lab rats, Masha and Dasha stayed in a glass cot near their lab and were put through extreme changes in temperature, hunger and sleep deprivation to see how their unique shared body would cope.
And their misery did not end there.
Masha died on April 17, 2003 at the age of 53 of a heart attack.
Instead of agreeing to a separation, Dasha remained conjoined to her dead twin and died 17 hours later due to blood poisoning from the toxic by-products of her sister's decomposing body.
After being transferred to the Central Scientific Research Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics in 1956, the twins were kept hidden away from the public for eight years.
Then they were moved to a boarding school for children with motor-impairment in the south of the country.
A journalist Julie Butler, who befriended the twins in later life, revealed they blocked out the horrific trauma of their childhood as adults.
She told that they could only remember "happy things", adding: "It was myself who told Dasha and Masha that they had been subject to these cruel experiments from birth until the age of six, when I found out about them."
Mrs Butler claimed Masha was a "psychopath" who bullied her sister, ruined a potential romance Dasha wanted with a boy, and even forced her to drink alcohol because she couldn't consume it herself.
She said: "They had their own hearts and lungs but shared a blood supply, so when one drank alcohol they could both get drunk."
The twins found their birth mother Yekaterina Krivoshlyapova and two living brothers in 1985, but offers from doctors to separate their bodies were refused by Masha.
"Masha denied Dasha everything she ever longed for – a chance of love, a relationship with their mother, a job and even what she wanted most: a separate body," added Mrs Butler.
They were the oldest living conjoined twins when they died in 2003 aged 53.
On April 17 of that year, Masha died of a heart attack and Dasha died 17 hours later from the toxic by-products of her sister's decomposing body.
Mrs Butler has written a book The Less You Know The Sounder You Sleep based on their lives.
Fascinating pictures have shown the lives of conjoined twins in Victorian times who were forced into human ‘freak’ shows.
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