Masha and Dasha's case is now considered a prolonged case of medical torture. The twins were placed in the Academy of Medical Sciences Pediatric Institute, where a team of Anokhin's physiologists continued to carry out experiments on them for the following six years. In Autumn 1950, under Stalin's rule, Anokhin was exiled for two years for his anti-Soviet views on genetics (which taught Lysenkoism and Lamarckian evolution rather than Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution). The Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences produced a documentary film detailing the research.

In reality, the twins had been taken to the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Moscow to be studied and experimented on under laboratory conditions. Scientists did not want her to keep custody of them, so she was later told by one of Anokhin's physiologists that they had died of pneumonia. A night nurse brought the twins to their mother and let her hold them. She agreed, but on the condition that she would keep custody and visit them regularly. When the twins were born, their mother was told they required full-time care from the State. They were born joined at the waist at a 180-degree angle with two heads, two torsos, four arms and one leg each, and a third, vestigial limb at their back that had some movement. The doctors told her she had delivered a severely disabled child ( урод) and she was not shown the babies. Masha and Dasha's mother, Yekaterina Krivoshlyapova, did not know she was having twins and spent two days and nights giving birth naturally.

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