For whom the bell was silent: 7 major disasters in the USSR that did not receive publicity

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Many events that took place in the Soviet Union were not subject to wide publicity. For the Western media, a picture of an almost ideal socio-political structure in a single country was drawn. However, from time to time there were such disasters that it was simply impossible to completely hide. But even in this case, the information was presented in a very metered manner, and the scale of the consequences was openly underestimated.

Kyshtym accident

The explosion of radioactive waste occurred in 1957 at the Mayak chemical plant in Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozersk), and the scale of the tragedy was truly frightening.

The explosion of a container with a volume of 30 cubic meters occurred after a breakdown of the cooling system, the explosion raised a radioactive cloud to a height of about two kilometers, after which the substances in it fell out at a distance of about 350 kilometers from the accident site. The radioactive substances that entered the atmosphere were estimated at 20 million curies. The contaminated area was 23 thousand kilometers, where more than 270 thousand people lived. Hundreds of thousands of military personnel eliminated the accident. During the liquidation, 23 villages were resettled, all property and pets were destroyed along with the harvest.

Subsequently, the catastrophe was called the Kyshtym accident, and the contaminated area was called the "East Ural radioactive trace". The name of the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 was forbidden to be mentioned even in correspondence even before the tragedy.

READ ALSO: The first nuclear catastrophe in the USSR: the exclusion zone, which was silent for more than 30 years >>

Nedelin disaster, 1960

Information about this tragedy was made public in the media almost 30 years after the incident, in 1989. An attempt to have time to launch a rocket by the Day of the October Revolution, neglecting safety measures and the quality of the preparation of the apparatus, ended in tragedy.

On October 24, one of the engines of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile spontaneously launched. As a result of the destruction of the tanks, a large-scale fire broke out. According to official information, the total number of deaths reached 78 people, but unofficial figures call the figure of 126 deaths. Among the dead were the designer and commander of the missile forces, Marshal M. I. Nedelin, whose name was given to the catastrophe in the West.

Collision of passenger planes over Dneprodzerzhinsk, 1979

One of the largest plane crashes occurred on August 11, 1979 in the sky over Dneprodzerzhinsk (today Kamenskoe). As a result of an error of air traffic controllers at an altitude of 8400 meters, two TU-134 aircraft collided on flights 7628 Chelyabinsk - Chisinau and 7880 Tashkent - Minsk. Killed 178 people, all passengers and crew members, including the Uzbek football team "Pakhtakor".

It was precisely because of the death of the football team that the disaster could not be completely silenced, a short note about the death of the football players was posted in the newspaper "Soviet Sport", but in the west the story received a lot of publicity.

READ ALSO: The mystery of the death of the football team "Pakhtakor": The history of one of the largest plane crashes in the USSR >>

Plane crash in Pushkin, 1981

As a result of the crash of the Tu-104 aircraft due to an overload of the side and a crew error, the entire command of the country's Pacific Navy was killed. They were all on their way home after the planned command post exercise.50 people, including 4 crew members, died 8 seconds after takeoff. Immediately after the crash, only one person remained alive, but he also died in the ambulance.

After the disaster, the only short obituary was published in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. It was simply impossible to completely hide the tragedy, but the relatives of the victims received an official notification of their death only in 1997.

READ ALSO: 5 Major Plane Crashes: For What Reasons They Happened, And Who Was Lucky To Survive In Them >>

Mass stampede at Luzhniki, 1982

For seven years there was no information about this tragedy. During the match "Spartak Moscow" (USSR) and "Haarlem" (Netherlands) on October 20, there was a massive crush, which killed 66 people - the fans of the Soviet team. On the fact of the incident, a small note was published in the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva. The exact number of victims was released only seven years later.

Collision of the motor ship "Alexander Suvorov" with a railway bridge, 1983

On June 5, 1983, one of the largest accidents in the history of Russian shipping took place. As a result of an incorrectly chosen span of passage of the Ulyanovsk bridge across the Volga (the navigator passed under the sixth span instead of the third), the upper part of the Alexander Suvorov motor ship was demolished. It was there that a cinema hall for passengers was located, in which at that time the film was shown, a wheelhouse and chimneys.

Only an approximate number of those killed at the time of the accident is named - 176 people. It was not possible to determine the exact number, since, in addition to the passengers and the crew, there were numerous relatives and just acquaintances of the crew members on board.

The situation was aggravated by the fact that at the moment of the collision a freight train was passing over the bridge, and part of the cargo from the overturned wagons fell onto the deck of the motor ship.

Railway accident near Ufa, 1989

40 minutes before the passage of two trains along the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section, following the Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk route, a gas leak began on the Siberia - Ural - Volga region pipeline section. At the moment the two trains met, the gas mixture exploded from a spark of unknown origin. The blast wave damaged the glass in the city, located 10 kilometers from the accident site. About 600 people died in the crash, of which 181 were children.

Today, to many, the truth of the achievements of the Soviet Union seems controversial, given the price for these achievements had to be paid, but it is impossible to deny the fact that the era of the USSR was a time of global changes in all sectors of the country's life.