Novocherkassk massacre


The Novocherkassk massacre was a massacre committed against unarmed protesters on June 2, 1962 in the city of Novocherkassk, Soviet Union by Soviet Army and KGB officials. A few weeks earlier workers organised a labor strike at the Novocherkassk Electromotive Building Factory. The strike was caused by discontent over increase of production quotas coincided with nation-wide increase in dairy and meat prices. The events spurred into a mass protest at the administration building in the center of the city where armed forces dispersed protesters by gunfire. According to official investigation 26 were reportedly killed by troops, and 87 were wounded. Arrests, show trials and cover-ups ensued aftermath: more than 200 were arrested; 7 people were convicted and sentenced to death over various "crimes" such as "mass disorder" and approximately hundreds of others were imprisoned up to 15 years ; news about events never appeared in state controlled press and held secret up until 1992. The 26 dead were secretly buried by KGB operatives in false graves which were never disclosed to relatives until June 2, 1994 when all bodies were discovered and reburied at the official memorial.
In 1992 the events were investigated by General Prosecutor. Major suspects among the highest soviet officials such as Nikita Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan, Frol Kozlov and several others who were deemed responsible for the massacre were never held accountable due to their deaths by the time the investigation has started. The fate of others as of 2019 remains unknown.
The massacre is commemorated each year on the anniversary of the murders by group of survived participants of the protests.

Timeline

1962

The riots were a direct result of shortages of food and provisions, as well as the poor working conditions in the factory. The protest began on June 1 in the Budyonny Electric Locomotive Factory, when workers from the foundry and forge shops stopped work after factory management refused to hear their complaints. The strike and attendant discussions had spread throughout the whole factory by noon.
The unrest began when Nikita Khrushchev raised the prices of meat and butter throughout the Soviet Union on June 1. On the same day, as required by a separate economic plan, the minimum production quotas for each worker at the factory were increased, thereby effectively reducing pay rates. This culminated in a march on the town hall and police headquarters, and the strike spread to other enterprises after police arrested thirty workers.
According to documents declassified in 90's, motorised infantry units were called to suppress the protesters, but they fired in the air, and the lethal fire came from a unit of Internal troops, from Rostov-on-Don composed of 10 snipers and 2 machine guns, who were set up at the "Don" hotel. Orders to kill were approved through the whole chain of command, from Khrushchev, through the ministry of defense.
The Commander of the North-Caucasian Troops, general Matvey Kuzmich Shapochnikov, refused to execute an order to attack peaceful demonstrators with tanks, for which he was later degraded and arrested.
Vladimir Putin lays flowers, on 1 February 2008, at the memorial to the victims of the massacre.

Victims

According to now available official sources, 26 protesters were killed by the machine-gun-equipped Soviet Army troops, and 87 were wounded with 3 of those dying later of their wounds. Due to strong propaganda during the time of the massacre, the mob was overly disillusioned in the soviet army and many did not expect them to fire live rounds at unarmed citizens until the very shooting. After the initial demonstrations, a curfew in the city was imposed. The dead bodies were secretly buried in various cemeteries in towns across the Rostov Oblast. However, the following morning, a large group of several hundred demonstrators again gathered in the square. One hundred and sixteen were arrested, of which fourteen were convicted by show trials. Seven of those fourteen received a death sentence and were executed. The others were sentenced to prison terms of ten to fifteen years.
Following the incident, the Soviet government directed extra food supplies to the region and began an investigation. Additional arrests of workers followed, as did courts martial of military officials involved. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn claimed that individuals wounded in the unrest and their families were exiled to Siberia.
The whole story was censored by Soviet media and never allowed to any other mass media and remained an official secret until 1992, year after fall of the Soviet Union, when the remains of 20 bodies were recovered and identified in 1992 and buried in the cemetery of Novoshakhtinsk.

In fiction

During a Politburo scene in The Devil's Alternative by author Frederick Forsyth, the KGB chief, asked if he could suppress riots during famine, responds that the KGB could suppress ten, even twenty Novocherkassks, but not fifty – intentionally using the example to highlight how serious the difficulties would be that the Soviet Union finds itself in the novel.
The massacre is dramatised in Francis Spufford's 2010 novel Red Plenty.
Once upon a time in Rostov is a 2012 film depicting the massacre.