Novocherkassk: The Story of the Shot City, to which Soviet Children Own a Happy Childhood

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

56 years since the Novocherkassk tragedy. Not a round date, but few people paid attention even to the anniversary that happened last year, and even more so, few tried to comprehend the meaning of those events - it’s painfully scary. Already after Stalin's death, when, it would seem, the entire "bloody" part of Soviet history was left behind, the "workers" state fired at the workers. How and why this happened and what impact the events in Novocherkassk had on the fate of all those born in the USSR - read our material.

The epithet "rebellious" is most suitable for the decade of the "early thaw" from March 1953 to the summer of 1962. Soviet citizens had more than enough reasons for dissatisfaction. The late Stalinist state was not at all a kind mother: prices were high, and wages were low. And practically no one managed to hold their entire salary in their hands, because in addition to mandatory payments to the state and taxes, part of it was taken with the help of regular "voluntary-compulsory" contributions and loans. High school and higher education were paid, and manufactured goods were very expensive. For example, 1500 rubles had to be paid for a men's suit, while the salary of an ordinary engineer was 1100 rubles. per month, and the worker - only 442 rubles.

Soviet citizens worked an average of 10 hours with a 6-day working week. For an attempt to resign of their own free will or for being late without good reason, criminal liability was imposed. This measure, like fees for higher education, was introduced even before the war, and was not canceled after.

Unrest began during Stalin's lifetime. The first swallows were the famous "bitch wars" in the Gulag. A wave of strikes and uprisings followed in the camps for special purposes, where the "political" were kept. Of course, they were suppressed, but part of the requirements still had to be satisfied. Realizing that the GULAG system is gradually turning into a barrel of dynamite, the authorities hastily launched a process of mass rehabilitation. By the beginning of the famous XX Congress, only 114,000 "political" ones remained in the camps.

But the wave of rebellion has already swept over the barbed wire and splashed out into the wild. A number of so-called "hooligan performances" swept across the country - in Leningrad (1954), in Magnitogorsk (in 1955 and 1956), in Novorossiysk and Donbass (1956), in Podolsk (1957) and in many other settlements. As a rule, the reason was the ill-treatment of the detainees by the police. The people took to the streets, after which the situation escalated either into a mass brawl with the police, or into a spontaneous demonstration with social slogans.

At the same time, a massive "quiet protest" was growing. State institutions, members of the Politburo and ministers began to receive regular letters with threats, anti-government slogans were written on the back of ballots, and homemade leaflets were pasted on trees and walls of houses by hundreds of invisible hands.

Steam managed to play off a little after the XX Congress, at which, in addition to the famous report, a course was taken to "improve the material standard of living of the working people."In the same year, the criminal article for being late for work and dismissal on one's own was abolished and a 42-hour working week was established. A little later, by resolutions of the Supreme Council, the work of adolescents under 16 was prohibited, the length of women's maternity leave was increased, and academic leave was introduced for those who combined work with study. In 1956, for the first time, they began to pay pensions not to individual categories, but to everyone. In addition to collective farmers, pensions were introduced for them only in 1964.

Even these rather modest social programs have significantly reduced state budget revenues. In addition to them, the deplorable state of the economy, inherited from Stalin, the rearmament of the army, the dash into space, and the program for the development of virgin lands, which almost ended in complete disaster, hung around the neck of the Soviet elephant. They tried to correct the situation by raising prices and increasing production rates at enterprises. This was the reason for the events in Novocherkassk.

At the city-forming Novocherkassk Electric Locomotive Plant (NEVZ), the increase in production rates was carried out since January 1962. By the end of May, the old wage rates were retained only by steelmakers. It so happened that the announcement of the factory administration on raising the norms in this shop, made in the morning of June 1, coincided with the news that came from Moscow about a “temporary” 25-35 percent increase in prices for meat, milk, eggs and a number of other products. '

The catastrophic housing situation, which has long agitated the city, added fuel to the fire. Throughout the country, Khrushchev buildings were being built at an accelerated pace, and most Novocherkassians still huddled in the barracks of Stalin's times or were forced to give almost a third of their salary for a rented apartment.

That morning, work in the steel shop never started. Instead, workers began to discuss the latest news, gathering in the factory yard. A group of about twenty people went to demand clarification from the head of the shop. The director of NEVZ Boris Kurochkin, who learned about the "fermentation", also rushed there. It was he who uttered the very phrase that will become the "trigger" to the beginning of all subsequent events. To the exclamation of one of the workers, "The children see neither meat nor milk!" Kurochkin replied: "Not enough for meat - eat pies with liver."

Now historians already know for sure that Queen Marie Antoinette never uttered her famous phrase about cakes. But she, like many other "fakenews" went down in history and successfully entrenched in the mass consciousness. And the fact that a Soviet production official, a representative of the "workers'" government, almost word for word repeated the dubious aphorism of the deposed French queen - said a lot.

At least the workers understood the director's words that way. One of the groups went to the factory compressor room and turned on the horn, the second went to the workshops, calling for a general strike. Already after a couple of hours, the plant completely "stopped". At the same time, the workers blocked the railway tracks passing not far from the NEVZ territory with an improvised barricade and stopped the Saratov-Rostov train. On a diesel locomotive, someone wrote the slogan "Khrushchev for meat!" and a homemade poster "Meat, butter, increase in wages!"

By noon, almost 10,000 people had gathered in the square - workers from the second and third shifts came. Attempts to disperse the demonstration and stop the strike by the forces of the people's militia did not yield any results. Sticks and stones were thrown at the policemen, who were trying to persuade the crowd to disperse with the help of megaphones. Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan and member of the CPSU Central Committee Frol Kozlov urgently left for Novocherkassk. The spontaneously nominated leaders of the protest urged people not to start pogroms and not to seize state institutions.

At the same time, the authorities did not abandon their attempts to provoke the crowd. Summer turned out to be hot, and few people thought of taking a supply of drinking water with them to the square. A truck loaded to the brim with boxes of citro tried to drive through the outraged and thirsty mass of people. They let the car go without taking a single bottle from it and the provocation fell through.

At that moment, the first units of the Novocherkassk garrison entered the city. But instead of cordoning off and dispersing, the soldiers began fraternizing with the workers - as in 1917. A little later, military equipment, already with fully officer crews, blocked the bridge over the Tuzlov River.

The crowd began to disperse a little - some went to persuade workers from other enterprises to join the strike, others went home. The next day, a march was scheduled to the city center. At night, fresh troops arrived in Novocherkassk, hastily transferred from Rostov-on-Don.

The next morning, NEVZ workers who came to their home plant found that it had already been captured by soldiers and people in civilian clothes who looked like KGB officers. The crowd gathers for a spontaneous rally at the central entrance, opens the factory gates and goes to the city. On the way, employees of the Electrode Plant, Neftemash and other enterprises join it. Outwardly, the procession resembles a May Day demonstration: people are carrying red flags and portraits of Lenin. Only the slogans are not festive at all: "Bread, meat, butter!" …

On the morning of the same day, Khrushchev, in his speech at a meeting of Soviet and Cuban students, utters another landmark phrase: “Enemies do not always appear with a rifle in hand. The enemy may be wearing the same work blouse as you. Enemies have always used and will use our difficulties. The fate of the Novocherkassk workers was a foregone conclusion.

At about 10 am the crowd approaches the blocked bridge over Tuzlov. The commander of the checkpoint, General Matvey Shaposhnikov, ordered the soldiers and tankers to discharge their submachine guns and hand over their ammunition in advance. To the order received "from above" to move tanks and attack, the general replied "I do not see an enemy in front of me who should be attacked with our tanks" - and cut the connection. The crowd passed over the bridge without interference. For this act, Shaposhnikov was persecuted until the beginning of Perestroika.

By the time the demonstrators approached the building of the city committee, there was no one there, the city party leadership and all employees fled. The crowd broke through the soldiers' cordon and rushed inside. A spontaneous rally unfolded on the square in front of the building, during which the worker E. P. Levchenko spoke from the balcony and said that those detained during yesterday's events were taken to the city police department and beaten there.

The rumor spread instantly and about three hundred demonstrators moved to the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The military guarding the building refused to let the crowd inside the department, saying that there were no detainees inside. In the course of the skirmish, one of the workers managed to snatch the machine gun from the soldier. Either he tried to use it as a club, or he tried to pull back the bolt - but it was this episode that became the reason for the terrible command "Open fire!"

Bursts of machine gun fire hit the crowd. The first warning shots fired over the heads fell on those who climbed onto the branches of trees, among whom were many children. Then the fire was transferred to the demonstrators. People rushed from the square in horror, leaving behind the dead and wounded. The major who gave the order went out into the yard, stood with his feet in a pool of blood and shot himself.

In the meantime, a delegation sent to the representatives of the Soviet government who had arrived in the city was arrested. Mikoyan spoke on the radio, and the troops began a systematic "cleanup" of the central square and the streets adjacent to it. In the evening, a curfew was declared in the city. By June 4, the unrest in Novocherkassk was finally suppressed.

The exact number of victims is still unknown. The dead were buried secretly, in pits and in rural cemeteries around Novocherkassk, without notifying their relatives. According to the KGB, there were about 27 dead and 87 wounded, witnesses say about 50 corpses only at the city police department. Arrests began within a few days. A brigade of 27 KGB investigators who arrived in the city worked on the Novocherkassk case. As a result of their work, seven "ringleaders" were sentenced to death, another 110 were sentenced as participants in the riots to terms of imprisonment up to 10 years.

But at that moment, the authorities realized the main thing - it would not be possible to “twist the screws” and “tighten the belts” indefinitely, the times are not the same. She had no means for a relatively peaceful suppression of the riots. In "fraternal" Poland, a special unit ZOMO has already been created, but its domestic counterpart, the OMON, was formed only in 1988. So the only means were the troops, which could only shoot in the air or to kill. And the troops were still commanded by officers who had gone through the war, who would have had the courage to refuse to carry out such an order. The episode with Matvey Shaposhnikov frightened many and made them think.

In relation to Novocherkassk itself, measures were taken almost immediately. In the first days after the tragedy, at meetings of the Politburo, the question of expelling almost half of the city's residents was still discussed, but instead they decided to increase the pace of housing construction and reduce prices in stores, although production rates were still too high. For the rest of the country, changes began after a new riot - this time not by ordinary citizens, but by the high-ranking Soviet bureaucracy that overthrew Khrushchev.

In his place came the compliant, who preferred to negotiate rather than break the ridges of Brezhnev, who had already led a completely different social policy. The beginning of a new era was facilitated by the discovery of oil fields in Western Siberia. "Black gold" poured into the West, returning to the country with a full-fledged dollar, which provided the "blissful" stagnation - probably the most calm and prosperous era in the history of Russia.

When the grown-up representatives of the last three generations of Soviet children talk about a happy and cloudless life in the USSR, they remember exactly this time. But would the Soviet bureaucracy have become so easy to share the petrodollar if not for the events in Novocherkassk and other cities? If not for the thousands of nameless, striding with their breasts on barbed wire and police bullets, imprisoned for long periods and shot for inciting riots? Who knows, but history definitely does not have a subjunctive mood.