Uprising in Novocherkassk
The Novocherkassk uprising occurred on June 1 and 2, 1962 in the city of Novocherkassk and was the most significant labor unrest in the Soviet Union .
As a result of a supply crisis , Khrushchev had raised prices by up to 35% and at the same time lowered wages by 35%. Locomotive factory workers went on strike, burned Khrushchev pictures, and demanded wage increases and food for their families. On the evening of June 1, 1962, the first tanks arrived. The next day the workers moved from the factory to the city, where strikes also broke out. They showed portraits of Lenin and were initially peaceful, but then stormed the buildings of the militia and the party's executive committee . Officials were ridiculed and militiamen were beaten. Allegedly about half of the city's population showed solidarity with the demonstrators. Units of the Soviet Army had meanwhile cordoned off the inner city. From 11:00 a.m. onwards, the military fired at demonstrators and ended the riot. There were 24 or 26 dead, a show trial and numerous secret trials . Seven participants identified as ringleaders were later sentenced to death for armed gangs , and numerous other participants were sentenced to prison terms . The Soviet government kept silent about the events as far as possible. As the commander in charge of the North Caucasus military district , General Issa Pliyev ordered the operation against the demonstrators.
Lieutenant General Matwei Shaposhnikov refused to use tanks against the insurgents as ordered by the commander of the military district General Pliyev . Shaposhnikov was released into the reserve in 1966 and expelled from the CPSU in 1967 . In the same year he was charged with “anti-Soviet propaganda” - he had sent letters about the events in Novocherkassk to several writers, among others - but the charges were dropped in view of his war merits. In 1988 Shaposhnikov was rehabilitated and re-accepted into the party.
It was not until 1992 that the files on the case were opened. Twenty bodies were identified in 1992 and buried in the Novoshakhtinsk cemetery. Criminal proceedings against those responsible for the military operation were discontinued in 1992 because none of the accused was alive. With a decree of the Russian President Yeltsin of June 8, 1996, all convicted were rehabilitated. The massacre is discussed in Francis Spufford's “Red Plenty” (2010) and in Des Teufels Alternative by Frederick Forsyth (1979). Also in 2020 in the Russian feature film Dorogie Tovarischi! by Andrei Konchalovsky .
See also
- Vorkuta Uprising (1953)
- Kengir Uprising (1954)
literature
- Samuel H. Baron: Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962. Stanford University Press, Stanford 2001.
- Maurice Gerschon Hindus: The Grandchildren of the Revolution: Human Problems in the Soviet Union. Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1967.
- Н. Я. Емельяненко, Н. А. Крпвова, Р. Г. Пихоя, С. В. Попов: Новочеркасская трагедия, 1962. In: Исторический архив , 1993, No. 1, pp. 110-136 and No. 4, pp. 143-177.
Individual evidence
- ^ The warning from Novocherkassk on derstandard.at
- ↑ Novocherkassk: Commemoration of the 1962 uprising on aktuell.ru