• Account in Gulag Archipelago (Solzhenitsyn) written in 1968
• 1991 Pravda account of the events in Novocherkassk in 1962
• A review of Samuel H. Baron's recent book about this incident
• An account of the event by witness and participant Piotr Siuda

Let me then put down here all that I have been able to gather.  We can say without exaggeration that this was a turning point in the modern history of Russia. If we leave out the Ivanovo weavers at the beginning of the 1930s (theirs was a large-scale strike, but it ended without violence), the flare-up at Novocherkassk was the first time the people had spoken out in forty-one years (since Kronstadt and Tambov): unorganized, leaderless, unpremeditated, it was a cry from the soul of a people who could no longer live as they had lived.

On Friday, June 1, one of those carefully considered enactments of which Khrushchev was so fond was published throughout the country--raising the prices of meat and butter. On that very same day, as demanded by another and quite separate economic plan, piece rates at the huge Electronic Locomotive Works in Novocherkassk (NEVZ) were lowered, in some cases by 30 percent. That morning the workers in two shops (the forge and the foundry), usually obedient creatures of habit, geared to their jobs, could not force themselves to work--so hot had things become for them. Their loud, excited discussions developed into a spontaneous mass meeting. An everyday event in the West, an extraordinary one for us. Neither the engineers nor the chief engineer himself could persuade them. Kurochkin, the works manager, arrived. When the workers asked him, "What are we going to live on now?" this well-fed parasite answered: "You're used to guzzling meat pies--put jam in them instead." He and his retinue barely escaped being torn to pieces. (Perhaps if he had answered differently it would all have blown over).

By noon the strike had spread throughout the enormous locomotive works. (Runners were sent to other factories, where the workers wavered but did not come out in support). The Moscow-Rostov railway line runs close to the works. Either to make sure that the news would reach Moscow more quickly, or to prevent troops and tanks from moving in, a large number of women sat down on the tracks to hold up the trains, whereupon the men began pulling up the rails and building barriers. Strike action of such boldness is unusual in the history of the Russian workers' movement. Slogans appeared on the works building: "Down with Khrushchev!" "Use Khrushchev for sausage meat!"

While all this was happening, troops and police began converging on the works (which stands, with its settlement, three to four kilometers from Novocherkassk, across the Tuzlov River). Tanks took up position on the bridge over the Tuzlov. From evening until the following morning, movement inside the city or across the bridge was completely forbidden. Even during the night the workers' settlement did not quiet down for a moment. Overnight about thirty workers were arrested as "ringleaders" and carried off to the city police station.

On the morning of June 2, some other enterprises in the city struck (but by no means all of them). Another spontaneous mass meeting at NEVZ decided on a protest march into the town to demand the release of the arrested workers. The procession (only about three hundred strong to begin with--you had to be brave!), with women and children in the ranks, carrying portraits of Lenin and peaceful slogans, marched over the bridge past the tanks without obstruction, then uphill into the town. Here their numbers were quickly swelled by curious onlookers, individual workers from other enterprises, and little boys. At several places in the city people stopped lorries and used them as platforms for speech-making. The whole town was seething. The NEVZ demonstrators marched along the main street and some of them began trying to break down the locked doors of the town police station in the belief that their arrested comrades were inside. They were met with pistol shots. Further on, the street led to the Lenin monument and by two narrow paths around a public garden to the headquarters of the town Party committee. All the streets were choked with people and here, on the square, the crowd was densest. Many little boys had climbed trees in the garden to get a better view.

The Party offices were found to be empty--the city authorities had fled to Rostov. Inside the building there was broken glass and the floors were strewn with documents, as they must have been after a retreat in the Civil War. A couple of dozen workers walked through the palace, came out on its long balcony, and harangued the crowd in halting speeches.

It was about 11 A.M. There were no police to be seen in the town, but there were more and more troops. (A revealing picture: at the first slight shock the civil authorities hid behind the army). Soldiers had occupied the post office, the radio station, the bank. By this time the whole of Novocherkassk was beleaguered, and every entry and exit barred. (For this task they had brought in, among others, cadets from the officers' training schools in Rostov, leaving some behind to patrol that city). Tanks crawled slowly along main street, following the route demonstrators had taken to Party headquarters. Boys started scrambling onto the tanks and obstructing the observation slits. The tanks fired a few blank shells, rattling the windows of shops and houses all along the street. The boys scattered and the tanks crawled on.

And the students? Novocherkassk is of course a town of students! Where were they all? . . . The students of some institutes, including the Polytechnic, and of some technical secondary schools, had been locked in their dormitories or in other school buildings from early morning. Their rectors had thought quickly. But we may as well say it: the students for their part showed little civic courage. They were presumably glad of this excuse to do nothing. It would take more than the turn of a key to hold back rebel students in the West today (and took more in Russia in days gone by).

A scuffle broke out inside the Party building, step by step the speakers were dragged back inside and soldiers emerged onto the balcony, more and more of them. . . . A file of riflemen began forcing the crowd back from the small square immediately before the palace, toward the railings of the garden. (Several witnesses say unanimously that these soldiers were all non-Russians--Caucasians brought in from the other end of the province to replace the cordon from the local garrison previously posted there. But not all witnesses agree that the previous cordon had been ordered to open fire, and that the order was not carried out because the captain who received it killed himself in front of his men rather than pass it on. That an officer committed suicide is beyond doubt, but accounts of the circumstances are vague and no one knows the name of this hero of conscience). The crowd backed away, but no one expected the worst. It is not known who gave the order, but these soldiers raised their rifles and fired a first volley over the heads of the crowd.

Perhaps General Pliev had no immediate intention of firing on the crowd; perhaps the situation got out of hand. The burst of fired over the heads of the crowd found the trees in the little garden and the boys who had climbed into them, some of whom fell to the ground. The crowd, it seems, gave a roar, whereupon the soldiers, whether at a command, or because they saw red, or in panic, started firing freely into the crowd, and--yes--with dumdum bullets. . . . The crowd fled in panic, jamming the narrow paths around the garden, but the troops went on firing at their backs as they retreated. They continued firing until the large square beyond the garden and the Lenin statue was completely empty. . . . (An eyewitness says that the area looked like one great mound of corpses. But many of those lying there were of course only wounded). Information from a variety of sources is more or less unanimous that some seventy or eighty people were killed. The soldiers looked around for lorries and buses, commandeered them, loaded them with the dead and the wounded, and dispatched them to the high-walled military hospital. (For a day or two afterward these buses went around with bloodstained seats).

That day movie cameras took pictures of the rebels on the streets. The firing ceased, the terror passed, the crowd poured back onto the square, and was fired upon again. All this happened between noon and 1 P.M.

This is what an observant witness saw at 2 P.M.: "There are about eight tanks of different types standing on the square in front of Party headquarters. A cordon of soldiers stands before them. The square is almost deserted, there are only small groups of people, mostly youngsters, standing about and shouting at the soldiers. On the square puddles of blood have formed in the depressions in the pavement. I am not exaggerating; I never suspected till now that there could be so much blood. The benches in the public garden are spattered with blood, there are blood-stains on its sanded paths and on the whitewashed tree trunks in the public garden. The whole square is scored with tank tracks. A red flag, which the demonstrators had been carrying, is propped against the wall of the Party headquarters, and a gray cap splashed with red-brown blood has been slung over the top of its pole. Across the facade of the Party building hangs a red banner, there for some time past: 'The People and the Party are one.'

"People go up to the soldiers, to curse them or to appeal to their conscience. 'How could you do it?' 'Who did you think you were shooting at?' 'Your own people you were shooting at!' They make excuses: 'It wasn't us! We've only just been brought in and posted here. We had nothing to do with it.' That's how efficient our murderers are (and yet people talk about bureaucratic sluggishness). Those soldiers have already been taken away, and perplexed Russians put in their place. He knows his business, that General Pliev. . . ."

Toward five or six o'clock the square gradually filled with people again. (They were brave, the people of Novocherkassk! The town radio kept appealing to them: "Citizens, do not fall for provocation, go home quietly!" The riflemen still stood there, the blood had not been mopped up, and again they pressed forward). Shouts from the crowd, more and more people, and another impromptu meeting. They knew by now that six senior members of the Central Committee had flown in (probably arriving before the first shootings?), among them, needless to say, [Anastas] Mikoyan (the expert on Budapest-type situations) and Frol Kozlov. (The names of the other four are not known for certain). They stayed in [a military compound] as if it were a fortress. And a delegation of younger workers from NEVZ was sent to tem to tell them what had happened. A buzz went through the crowd: "Let Mikoyan come down here! Let him see all this blood for himself!" Mikoyan wouldn't come down, thank you. But a reconnaissance helicopter flew low over the square around six o'clock. Inspected it. Flew off again.

Shortly afterward the workers' delegation came back. . . . As agreed, the military cordon let the delegates through and officers escorted them to the balcony of the Party building. Silence. The delegates reported to the crowd that they had seen the Central Committee members and told them about this "Bloody Saturday," and that Kozlov had wept when he heard about the children falling from the trees at the first volley. (You know Frol Kozlov, the Leningrad Party gang boss, the cruelest of Stalinists? He wept! . . .) The Central Committee members had promised to investigate these events and severely punish those responsible, . . . but for the present everyone must go home to prevent the outbreak of fresh disorders in the town.

The meeting, however, did not disperse! The crowd grew ever denser toward the evening. The desperate courage of Novocherkassk! . . . Around nine in the evening they tried to drive people away from the palace with tanks. But as soon as the drivers switched on their engines people clustered around the tanks, blocking the hatches and the observation slits. The tanks stalled. The riflemen stood by and made no effort to help the tank crews.

An hour later tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared from the opposite side of the square, with an escort of Tommy-gunners perched on top of them. (Our battle experience counts for something! We are the ones who defeated the Fascists!) Advancing at high speed (to the jeers of young people on the footpaths--the students had been released toward evening), they cleared the roadways of main street and an adjoining prospect. At last, toward midnight, the riflemen began firing tracer bullets into the air and the crowd slowly dispersed. (What power there is in a popular disturbance! How quickly it changes the whole political situation! The night before there had been a curfew, and people had been frightened anyway, but now the whole town was strolling about and hooting at the soldiers. A people transformed--can it be so near to breaking through the crust of this half-century, into a completely different atmosphere?)

On June 3 the town radio broadcast speeches by Mikoyan and Kozlov. Kozlov did not weep. Nor did they any longer promise to find the culprits (those in higher places). What they now said was that these events were the result of enemy provocation, and that these enemies would be severely punished. (The people had of course gone from the square by now). Mikoyan said further that dumdum bullets had never been adopted as part of the equipment of Soviet troops, and that they must therefore have been used by enemies of the state. (But who are these enemies? How had they parachuted into the country? Where were they hiding? Show us just one! We are so used to being treated like fools: "Enemies," they say, and all is explained. In the Middle Ages it was "devils").

The shops were immediately the richer for butter, sausage, and many other things not seen in those parts for a long time, or anywhere outside the capitals. The wounded all vanished without a trace; not one of them went home. Instead, the families of the wounded and the killed (who of course wanted to know what had become of their kin) were deported to Siberia. So were many of those involved in the demonstration who had been noticed or photographed. Some participants were dealt with in a series of trials in camera. There were also two "public" trials (with entry by ticket for factory Party officials and for the town administrators). At one of these, nine men were sentenced to be shot and two women to fifteen years' imprisonment. The membership of the town Party committee remained as before.

On the Saturday following "bloody Saturday," the town radio announced that the "workers of the Electric Locomotive Works have solemnly undertaken to fulfill their seven-year plan ahead of time."

Source: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, vols. v-vii (Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 507-514.

In the morning of 2 June, a crowd of people, many thousands strong, including women and children, marched in a column on Novocherkassk. They intended to express their demands and to free the people held at the local militia station, who had been arrested the day before in the neighbourhood of the locomotive factory. Pliev, a captain in the garrison of troops stationed in the city, had ordered that the progress of this column be halted. In the morning of 2 June the commander of the tank division of the Novocherkassk garrison, Colonel Mikheev, had concentrated a force under his command on the bridge over the river Tuzlov. It had 9 or 10 tanks and several armed personnel carriers. When the people arrived at the bridge they ignored the demands of the military commanders to halt and continued further into the town.

In the morning of 2 June, party leaders from Moscow, comrades Kirilenko, Kozlov, Mikoyan, Il'ichev, Polyansky, Shelepin and responsible staff of the central organs of the country arrived at the building of the City Party Committee and City Executive Committee. Kozlov informed Khrushchev about the situation and requested, through the Minister of Defence of the USSR, that the commander of troops I A Pliev be instructed to use troops to break up any possible riots in the city. On 2 June troops were brought from Rostov-on-Don and all were given weapons and ammunition, and by 10 o'clock all divisions of these troops were in a state of battle-readiness. The many thousand-strong crowd was now within 60 to 100 metres from the City Executive Committee building.

The Chairman of the City Executive Committee, comrade Zamula, and Communist Party leader comrade Stepakov attempted to address the crowd from the balcony using a microphone, calling on them to stop their march and disperse back to their places of work. Zamula, Stepakov and other persons on the balcony were met with a hail of sticks and stones in response. At the same time threats were shouted by the crowd. The most aggressive group broke into the building and started a riot. Windows and doors were broken, furniture and the telephone switchboard were broken, and chandeliers and paintings were thrown to the ground.

Major-General Oleshko, the commander of the Novocherkassk garrison arrived at the City Executive Committee building with fifty soldiers from the military forces armed with machine-guns. These pushed the people back from the building, spread out along its façade and faced them two ranks deep. Oleshko addressed the crowds from the balcony, ordering them to cease their rioting and disperse. The crowd did not react; there was shouting and threats of reprisals, the whole square was engulfed in noise. The troops fired a warning volley into the air from their machine-guns. This caused the people who were right up against the soldiers making a noise to drop back. Shouts were heard from the crowd: "Don't panic, they're firing blanks", at which time people again surged towards the City Executive Committee building and the soldiers spread out along its façade. There followed a second warning volley, and then individual shots into the crowd, which left 10 - 15 people lying in the square. After these shots panic broke out, people began to run away, and a crush began.

At the same time an aggressively-minded crowd had also gathered at the city headquarters of the militia and the KGB. It pushed away the armed troops of the 505th Regiment, and actively tried to break into the militia station through broken windows with the aim of releasing the citizens who were held there. Shouts were heard from the crowd to seize weapons. One of the rioters managed to grab a machine gun from Private Repkin, and he tried to open fire on the soldiers with this weapon. Serviceman Azizov was faster than this rioter, and fired several shots, killing him. Four other people among the rioters were also killed at the same time, and others received injuries. More than thirty rioters, who had broken into the corridors and the yard of the militia station, were detained and locked in the cells. Soldiers and officers of the military forces drove rioters out of the State Bank building, which they had managed to break into for a short period.

Using their weapons in self-defence, on 2 June the troops of the armed forces killed 22 and wounded 39 participants in the disorders in the square and at the militia station. Two more people were killed in the evening of 2 June in unexplained circumstances.

Source: First Published in Pravda, 3 June, 1991; Republished in A. S. Orlov et. al., Khrestomatiya po istorii Rossii s drevneyshikh vremen do nashykh deny (Moscow, 2000).

BOOK REVIEW from THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW: Samuel H. Baron, Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2001. Pp. xvi, 241.

This fine study, which Samuel H. Baron accurately describes as a cross between history and journalism, examines the Khrushchev-era massacre of strikers in the provincial industrial city Novocherkassk and the decades-long cover-up that followed. The June 1, 1962, attack on workers, who were protesting a steep national hike in food prices, killed twenty-four people and seriously wounded sixty-nine others. Accounts of what was dubbed the "Novocherkassk tragedy" circulated widely in dissident circles, but serious study of the event had to await Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power.

The thorough examination this book provides may not be the last word on this sorry event, however, since Baron's reconstruction of the massacre relies primarily on a 176-page summary of the government's official investigation. The thirty-one-volume collection of testimony on which the summary is based remains off limits to historians.

Baron argues that both sides lacked the skills necessary to bring the strike to a peaceful conclusion. Shocked by the workers' amazingly courageous challenge to their authority, party leaders and the soldiers sent to restore order panicked when a tiny minority of the protestors turned violent. Baron lays primary blame on the government for the killing, but he also comes down surprisingly hard on the strikers for what he characterizes as their "self-defeating tactics." He suggests negotiations over work norms, which could have offset the price increases, were conceivable if the strikers had elected leaders and drawn up a list of negotiable demands. While recognizing that the strikers' lack of experience negotiating with authorities accounted for their "blunders," Baron fails to take into sufficient account the fact that collective protests were virtually unheard of since they had been brutally suppressed in the early 1930s.

Historians have known the bare outlines of the massacre. New is Baron's account of the cover-up that followed immediately on the heels of the massacre. Military trucks gathered up the corpses and secretly buried them in various places around the province (relatives only learned where in 1992). The police were sworn to silence. Mass arrests followed, with a kangaroo court ensuring harsh sentences for those considered ringleaders. The government executed seven and sentenced scores of others to long terms in the Gulag. All means possible were used to intimidate the town's population and prevent word of the massacre from spreading, including closing all roads out of the city, cutting off telephones, and blocking transmissions by amateur radio operators.

Word did slowly seep out. Radio Liberty broadcast an early account. Alexander Solzhenitsyn described the massacre in The Gulag Archipelago (1974). Finally, with the coming of glasnost', one of the strikers who had spent years in prison, Petr Siuda, launched a successful campaign to bring his samizdat writings about the massacre to public attention. Though Baron recognizes this was only one of the many shocking revelations of the Gorbachev era, Novocherkassk no doubt did play a role in the discrediting of the Soviet Union during its last years.

Baron rightly makes much of the similarities with Bloody Sunday. Those similarities are no accident, since the Novocherkassk's strikers drew on their knowledge of revolutionary history, confident the "workers' state" would not dare respond to a workers' demonstration as the autocracy had so notoriously done in January 1905. Spontaneously modeling themselves after their St. Petersburg predecessors, the strikers used analogous symbols. They sang the "Internationale" (the Soviet version of "God Save the Tsar"), carried portraits of V. I. Lenin (in 1905 the strikers carried portraits of Nicholas II), and included women and children in their initially peaceful and orderly march to the city's party headquarters. But tragically, as in 1905, the government wrongly assumed a show of force would disperse the crowd.

Baron fails to explain why collective opposition to the price hike was limited to Novocherkassk. Other than a recent wage cut, living and working conditions in Novocherkassk, as he recognizes, were not exceptional. Baron concludes by making, almost in passing, big claims for the long-term impact of this seemingly minor episode, including a suggestion that Bloody Saturday contributed significantly to the breakup of the Soviet Union since the government resolved never to raise food prices again, causing a serious imbalance in the Soviet economy from the unending agricultural subsidies this decision necessitated. But exploring these issues in some depth would have taken Baron away from the events he is content to examine.

Charters Wynn,
University of Texas at Austin

In the 1950's industrial wages in the USSR were arbitrarily lowered almost every year. These decreases allowed officials to publish statistics indicating increases in labor efficiency, automation and mechanization, decreases in the cost of production without corresponding new capital investment, and improvements in organization and in technology. In capitalist countries, if a corporation tried to improve its financial showings by lowering wages, the workers would respond with protests and strikes. In the USSR, however, the working class was unable for decades to struggle in defence of its own interests. The democratization of the late 1950's was really a way for the authorities to fool the working masses into hoping for a genuine dialogue with state and party officials. The Novocherkassk tragedy exposed the fraud and hypocrisy of the criminal totalitarian regime.

On January 1, 1962, wages were lowered by 30 to 35 percent at the largest electrolocomotive plant in Novocherkassk (NEVZ). The last shop in the plant where wages were scheduled to be lowered was the steel shop. By that time workers in the other shops had somehow become accustomed to the constant infringement on their rights, but for the workers in the steel foundry the cut in wages was a fresh insult. On the morning of June 1 the government radio announced that there would be a sharp "temporary" increase in the price of meat and dairy products (up to 35%). It was an unexpected and severe attack on the standard of living of all working people in the USSR and was bound to produce general discontent. But there were other circumstances which also contributed to the strike at NEVZ. City and factory authorities had long been neglecting the severe housing problem at NEVZ. What construction that had taken place was grossly inadequate and the cost of lodging in the private sector amounted to about 30 percent of a worker's monthly wages.

Because Novocherkassk was, at that time, considered a city of students, very little meat and butter were delivered to the government stores and they were too expensive at the market. The new increase in state prices led to an increase over the already very high prices for food at the market. On the way to the plant that morning the workers discussed the price increases with great indignation and in the steel shop the workers gathered in small groups and feverishly discussed the announced price increases but also the recent lowering of wages. No one, however, thought at that time of protests, meetings, or strikes. The workers had neither organization nor leadership and were afraid of the very idea of trying to liberate themselves from the political and social slavery imposed on the working people of the USSR by Stalinism.

It is probable that the discontented grumblings of the workers reached the ears of the party committee and the plant director, because the director, Kurochkin, and the party secretary visited the steel shop to speak to the workers. It was not, however, a business-like dialogue but an arrogant, lordly monologue. As the director spoke to the group of workers surrounding them, a women approached holding meat pies and Kurochkin, trying to be clever, said to the workers: "You don't have any money, so eat meat pies with liver." This remark was the very spark that brought about the tragedy of Novocherkassk. This event concentrated
and reflected the whole spectrum of the social, political and material situation of the working people of the USSR. The workers were outraged by the director's insensitivity and they divided into groups and began shouting: "Bloody swine, they are jeering at us!" One group went to the plant compressor shop and switched on the plant whistle. V.I. Tchernykh and V.K. Vlasenko were in that group. Another group went round the shops of the plant with appeals to stop all work and to call a strike.

It is necessary to note that neither at the beginning of the strike, nor during the ensuing events of June 1-3, were any groups formed that could have taken responsibility for the organization and direction of the workers' actions. All the events took place on the spot, spontaneously. The initiative bubbled up from below, from the mass of workers. No outsiders had anything to do with the events. This testifies to the absence of workers representation in the face of the unlimited power usurped by the Stalinist officialdom. And from this we must conclude that a situation in which the working class lacks the will to struggle is intolerable. There was no need to campaign for the strike among the workers of the plant. It was enough for the group which called for a strike to appear, and work stopped immediately. The mass of strikers was growing like an avalanche. At that time there were about 14 thousand workers at the plant. The workers went out to the plant grounds and filled the square near the plant management office. The square could not hold all the strikers.

A group of workers removed some bars from the fence surrounding the square and used them to barricade the railway line leading to the plant; they hung some red cloth over it. Thus the Moscow-Saratov train was stopped, and railway traffic on that part of the line was interrupted. By interrupting railway traffic the workers were trying to spread information about their strike along the railway line.

On the initiative of the plant metal craftsman V.I. Tchernykh, his comrade, the shop painter V.D.Koroteev, painted posters with demands like: "Give us meat and butter," "We need apartments." These posters were fastened to one of the trolley posts at the railway which was being electrified. Someone wrote on the locomotive of the passenger train: "Make meat from Khrushchev!" This slogan also appeared in some other places. The second and third shift workers and the inhabitants of the workers' villages began to flow towards the plant.

Neither the party organs nor administration of the plant or the authorities tried to negotiate with the workers. The leading engineer at the plant, S.N. Yolkin, tried to speak to the workers on his own initiative; he had no authority to hold negotiations and made neither promises nor assertions, but only tried to convince the workers to stop the riot and begin working. The indignant workers dragged him into the back of a truck and tried to demand a real solution to the problems from him. I also asked him questions and this was later used against me at my trial.

At about noon the word spread amongst the strikers: "The militia has come!" All the people rushed to the railroad and towards the militia. I was at the front of the crowd and when I reached the railroad, I looked around. What I saw was very impressive. About 350-400 metres of the railway were submerged beneath a menacing and dense wave of people and about 200-250 metres beyond the railway line more than 100 militiamen were forming two ranks. The vehicles which had delivered them were turning around on the vacant lot. On seeing the menacing wave of people the militia ranks dissolved immediately. The militiamen rushed after the vehicles which were turning around and jumped in confusion into the moving trucks. Only two militiamen failed to escape; their knees were shaking, either with fear or from running. The wave of strikers did not overtake the militiamen who managed to make a cowardly escape and who left their two comrades at fate's mercy. But wrathful as they were, the workers were not violent; they did not even touch the remaining militiamen and saw them off with the advice not to poke their noses into strikes.

We later learned that the militiamen were given plain clothes to wear instead of uniforms and they were sent into the crowd of strikers. These cowards are inevitably mean and insidious, so they were sent into the crowd of workers as to make better use of their nature. KGB men were also sent there; they were supplied with miniature cameras, built into lighters, cigarette cases, and who knows what else. Photos were also taken from the fire-tower. Later, during the inquest, I saw piles of photos of thousands of strikers. The well-oiled machinery of the police state worked almost perfectly.

Attempts were also made to provoke the strikers. June 1 was a clear, hot day. There were no sources of water near the plant grounds. I remember the painful thirst felt by everybody but nobody left the square. The people were united by their faith in their power and in the fairness of their demands. At that moment a truck heavily loaded with boxes of lemonade, approached the square. The temptation was immense for everybody but not a single bottle was taken from the truck. Railway traffic was paralyzed completely, but the truck with the lemonade was allowed to go through the whole crowd of many thousands of thirsty people. The provocation failed.

By the end of the work day the first military detachments of the Novocherkassk garrison arrived at the square but they were not armed. Having approached the people, the soldiers were immediately absorbed by the crowd. The soldiers and the strikers began to fraternize, to embrace and kiss each other. Yes, they kissed each other. It was difficult for the officers to separate the soldiers from the people, to gather them and to take them away from the strikers. After some time, the first secretary of the Rostov district CPSU committee Basov tried to speak from the balcony of the plant management office wing which was being built. He was surrounded by officials. The cowardice of the party officials was not only obvious to everyone, but also insulting. Nobody wanted to speak to the strikers on equal terms, which testified to their extreme subjugation and lack of any rights. The strikers threw various objects at Basov and his toadies but they were, literally, high above the mass of the working people, so it was impossible to hit them.

Then the armoured carriers with officers began to arrive at the square. The authorities had determined that the soldiers of the Novocherkassk garrison were unreliable, and decided to rely upon the officers. It was a small-scale civil war. The officers literally felt the strength of the workers' hands. The workers were swinging the armoured carriers from side to side with amazing ease. The colonels and majors rocking on their seats and trying to keep self-control presented a pitiful sight. The confusion and fear on their faces showed that they could not stop the people's wrath either. The armoured carriers left the square. The unarmed,
disorganized workers were so far winning one victory after another with seeming ease, due only to their numerical strength and the unity of their outrage, without any direct violence or extremism. This very fact frightened the "leaders" and rulers, the party and state officials, most of all. The people had risen from their knees!

The strikers' enthusiasm did not decrease; on the contrary, it increased with each new attempt to suppress their actions. A spontaneous meeting sprang up. The peak of a pedestrian tunnel served as a platform. At the meeting there were appeals to send workers to other cities, to other enterprises, to seize the city post-office and telegraph in order to send appeals for support for the strike of electric locomotive builders to every city. It was then that we first heard that the roads to the city were blocked by the militia and the troops.

I did not intend to speak at the meeting but I was alarmed by the appeals to seize government offices. I remembered all too well the accounts of those who had taken part in the events in Hungary and in Georgia. Attempts to capture government offices in the city could have terrible consequences. Later the authorities characterized these appeals as calls to seize power in the city and this absurd assertion worked so magically that up until recently I did not even try to dispute such nonsense. On hearing the calls to seize government offices, I appealed to the workers to continue the strike and to maintain discipline. I suggested that the next day everybody should go hold a demonstration in the city, work out common demands and present these demands to the authorities. The appeal to seize government offices was rejected completely. It was decided to have a demonstration in the city the next morning. This fact alone shows that the events in the city were not accompanied by any kind of extremism or violence against the authorities. Later, neither the investigators nor the court could find (hard as they tried) any proof of extremism or violence aside from two insignificant cases. The first case concerned the chief engineer of the plant, S.N. Yolkin, who was forcefully dragged into a truck, but was not beaten. The second case concerned the communist Braginsky, who received a few earboxes from his subordinates; but they did not inflict any trauma and it was not necessary for him to see a doctor.

Late that evening, when the workers' wrath had reached its highest level but they still had no concrete means of expressing it, they took Khrushchev's portrait down from the facade of the plant management office. Then they went through all the rooms, took down all the portraits and threw them into a heap in the square and made a large, smoky fire. The crowd near the plant began to break up as it was beginning to get dark. At that time a group of workers headed by a wonderful man, Sergei Sotnikov, went to the gas-distributing station in order to block the delivery of gas to the industrial enterprises of the city, but they were unable to do it.

At 5 o'clock in the morning I was awakened by the noise of tanks and left for the plant. About 400-500 metres from the railway, the villagers began to gather in small groups of 5-15 people. I came up to the group standing nearest to the railway, about 300-350 metres from it. We all observed that the railway along the plant and the plant itself were surrounded by soldiers with sub-machine guns. Near the plant and the railway station there were tanks. The people told me that at about midnight the troops and the tanks had been brought into the city, the village and the plant. They said that during the night the inhabitants had tried to build barricades from improvised materials in front of the tanks, but that the tanks had overcome them easily. Then the workers began to jump onto the moving tanks and to cover the observation slits with their clothes as to blind them.

An officer and a soldier armed with a sub-machine gun approached our group. The group dissolved quickly except for 5 to 7 people who remained. The wrangling with the officer began. He demanded that we go to the plant. We refused, saying,"let the troops which have seized the plant do the work". During this heated exchange we failed to notice that two sub-machine gunners had appeared behind us. We were arrested and delivered to the plant management office. Around us there were many soldiers from the Caucasus, officers, civilians, and KGB officers. The latter met me with malicious joy, saying they had long been "waiting" for me and were glad to meet me. I was soon delivered to the GOVD (City Department of Internal Affairs) by car, escorted by three men as well as the driver; there a large staff of officials was busily engaged in suppressing the uprising. During the drive the men in the car swung their fists in front of me, threatened me, and insulted me.

More and more arrested people were brought to the GOVD. I was led to a room where about six officials were seated. A brief interrogation was held. They demanded a promise from me that I would not take part in the "mass riots". I answered that I would do the same as the majority of workers. They suggested that I think it over and dismissed me. I heard the tension and nervousness increase behind the door. The telephones were ringing incessantly. The order was issued that no large assemblies be allowed. I understood that I had made a mistake and gotten into trouble, so I asked to see the officials again and began to tell them that I had thought it over and would not take part in the disturbances. But, due to my young age, I failed to keep back a malicious smile, and that gave me away. I was brought to the cell, and after 15-20 minutes put into a Black Maria together with five other men and sent to Bataisk, a town 52 kilometres from Novocherkassk. From that moment my participation in the Novocherkassk tragedy ended. I spent long months and years under investigative isolation in the cells of the KGB, in the Novocherkassk prison and in a concentration camp together with the active participants of the further events. I did all I could to reconstruct little by little the course of the ensuing events. I checked and re-checked, compared all the facts, the smallest details, so I can vouch for the accuracy of this account.

In the morning the workers of the first shift, and of other shifts as well, came to the plant. The plant was crowded with soldiers. Tanks were standing near the gates. There were outsiders in the shops - soldiers and civilians, evidently KGB men. In spite of the demands to disperse, the workers were gathering in groups. Their indignation and wrath were growing. A group of workers began to leave the work area, to leave the shops. Everybody was seized by elemental rage. The small groups began to merge into large ones. This process could not be stopped by anyone. The larger groups began to move towards the entrance of the factory. The courtyard of the plant could not hold all the workers. The pressure on the gates was increasing. The workers swung the gates open by force and flooded the square. They remembered the meeting the day before and the appeals for a demonstration. Many thousands of people started for the city. The way was long: it was 12 kilometres from the plant to the city centre. Some of the workers went to other plants with appeals to support the strike. The appeals were readily answered by the builders, the workers of the electrode plant, the Neftemash (oil industry machine) plant and some smaller enterprises. Columns of marchers were converging on the city from everywhere and there appeared red flags, portraits of Lenin. The demonstrators were singing revolutionary songs. Everybody was excited, full of belief in their power and in the fairness of their demands. The column of demonstrators was becoming larger and larger.

While approaching the bridge across the railway and the Tuzlov river, the demonstrators noticed a cordon of two tanks and armed soldiers on the bridge. The column slowed to a standstill and the revolutionary singing died down. Then the dense mass of people moved slowly forward. Outcries were heard: "Give way to the working class!" Then the shouts merged into a powerful, unified chant. The soldiers and the tankmen not only did not try to stop the column of marchers, but actually helped the people get over the tanks. The stream of people flowed on both sides of the bridge cordon. The excitement grew. The revolutionary songs grew louder, more harmonious and more powerfull. The demonstration reached the main street in the city. I will not even try to estimate the number of demonstrators but everyone agreed that the large city square in front of the CPSU committee (the former palace-office of the ataman of the Don Army), the most part of main street, and part of an adjoining Prospect were crowded with people.

The demonstrators were seething in front of the city CPSU committee building. The building itself was full of soldiers from the Caucasus. The demonstrators exchanged heated remarks with the soldiers through the door. One Caucasian lost his temper, broke the glass of the door with the butt of his sub-machine gun and through the hole struck a woman with it. Under the pressure of the indignant demonstrators, the door of the building swung open. The crowd broke through and scattered the soldiers. The one who had struck the woman appeared under the staircase. According to some reports he was beaten black and blue. It was the only case of beating a representative of the state or of the armed forces that had captured the city. The City Committee building was completely occupied by the demonstrators. They rushed into one of the rooms. On the table there was cognac and rich refreshments, and the table was set for two. Nobody could escape from the room, although, according to some stories, during the seizure of the committee by the demonstrators many civilians jumped out of the second floor windows; evidently these were the KGB men. There was nobody in the room and the workers began to search it. Behind the sofa they found the public prosecutor from the district prosecutor's office, and A.N. Shelepin was hiding in the bookcase. Wasn't it his guard that had jumped out of the window so courageously? The demonstrators began to drag Shelepin and the prosecutor to the balcony, demanding that they speak before the people but they refused. Then the demonstrators took the cognac and the refreshments and showed them from the balcony for everybody to see. A rally began.

Y.P. Levchenko spoke at the rally. She reported that at night and in the morning the arrests of the strikers had taken place and that the arrested had been beaten. She was telling the truth but she could hardly know that many of those arrested were already far from the city. The demands to liberate the prisoners became more and more persistent. A group of workers went to the offices of the city militia. It was also full of Caucasian soldiers. The demonstrators began to push themselves into the building. The door swung open and the demonstrators rushed into the building. At that moment one of the soldiers brandished a sub-machine gun at a worker in blue overalls. The latter grabbed the gun and a struggle began. The sub-machine gun appeared in the worker's hands but the soldier had the sub-machine gun's ammunition clip. The gun in the worker's hands could serve only as a cudgel but he did not use it even in that capacity yet the soldiers were commanded to open fire and the worker was killed on the spot. Not a single bullet is likely to have been wasted: the crowd was too dense. And the crowd in the city department building was seized with panic. One of the participants in these events who was later imprisoned, Alexander Teremkov, who was wounded in the shoulder-blade by a ricochet, told me in the concentration camp that they had been compelled to pile up the bodies in the cellar of the neighbouring State Bank, and that they were still alive, jerking their arms and legs. Who knows, maybe some of them could have been saved. None of the participants could give even an approximate number of the dead.

The soldiers near the party committee building were also ordered to open fire, though there had been no assault, no violence there. Curious children were sitting high in the trees in a small public garden in front of the party committee. Behind them stood a monument to Lenin. Several witnesses reported that the officer who had been ordered to open fire, refused to give the order to the soldiers and shot himself in front of the formation. But nevertheless the soldiers opened fire. First upwards, at the trees, at the children who fell down, killed, wounded, frightened. In such a way the party, the state and the army were eradicating different trends of thought, asserting the unity of the party and the people, proving the democratic character of the socialist state. Then the machine guns were pointed at the crowd.

People have told me: an elderly man was running by a concrete vase on a pedestal. A bullet struck his head and his brains were instantly splashed all over the pedestal. A mother was walking by a store carrying a dead baby. A hairdresser was killed at her work-place. A girl was lying in a pool of blood. A dumbfounded major stepped into this blood. Somebody said to him: "You swine, look where you are standing!" The major shot himself on the spot. People have told me a lot, but I will stop here.

Trucks and buses were driven to the site. The corpses were hastily thrown and thrust into them. Not a single body was given to the family to be buried. The hospitals were crowded with wounded. Nobody knows what became of them. The blood was washed from the streets by fire engines but dark stains of blood remained on the asphalt for a long time. I have heard about this shooting more than once. People have told me: the soldiers are opened fire, the panic-stricken crowd began running. The firing stopped - the crowd stopped too and crawled slowly back. The soldiers began firing again. Everything was repeated. Up till now the number of dead, crippled and wounded is unknown.

No, the uprising was still not suppressed. The crowd in the square continued to seethe. Terrible rumors were spreading all over the city. Some people were leaving the square, others were entering. Information was received that members of the Political Bureau of the CPSU and the government had arrived at the city. Among them were A.I. Mikoyan, and F.R. Kozlov. Without any elections, spontaneously, a delegation from the demonstrators was formed. The representatives of the Central Committee and the government were afraid of the working masses. They were hiding near the tank unit. The delegation went there. Delegate B.N. Mokrousov recited a poem by Nekrasov called "Who lives well in Russia" to the representatives of the Central Committee and the government. This was the main reason that the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, under the chairmanship of L.N. Smirnov, sentenced him to be shot.

It has been reported that on hearing about the tragedy Kozlov wept. Possibly, but these were crocodile tears. Mikoyan demanded that the demonstrators allow the tanks to leave the square, after which he would speak. When this demand was told to the demonstrators they answered clearly: "No! Let them look at their handiwork!" They did look at their handiwork - in the light of a helicopter which was flying over the square and the adjoining streets. Mikoyan spoke on the municipal radio station. The newscasters, even the local one, uttered not a single word about the events. A curfew was imposed. Rumours began to spread about a possible banishment of all the citizens. But the tragedy was not over. A period of trials followed. The most blatantly cruel was the trial of 14 of the participants in the strike and rallies. This trial was held in the military garrison. Seven of the fourteen were sentenced to be shot - sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of the RSFSR with L.I. Smirnov presiding and with the participation of prosecutor A.A. Kruglov. They were prosecuted for banditism according to Article 77 of the RSFSR Criminal Code and for mass riots according to Article 79 of the RSFSR Criminal Code.

The tendency of such prosecutions was obvious. People with previous convictions were picked out from the participants first of all. At another trial a person with evident mental defects was convicted. The only goal was to compromise the Novocherkassk uprising by any means. It should be admitted that in the KGB cells we were treated with extreme politeness but the isolation from the external world was absolute: no radio, no newspapers. In the carpeted corridors the warders' steps were noiseless and the dead silence was oppressing. An electric light was burning day and night. The food, however, was plentiful and substantial, better than we had outside where the situation with food was very hard.

At first they demanded evidence on the Novocherkassk tragedy, but they stopped on realizing that they would get nothing from me. Then they began to insist on a "little thing" - that I should admit that the events were criminal and that my participation in them was a mistake. But by that time I had already got to know about the terrible tragedy in Novocherkassk. It was impossible to give in then. It was I who had called for continuing the strike and for a demonstration, and I fully realized my responsibility for the deaths. Giving in would have been the vilest treason. I refused to be freed at such a cost. Then they began to work on me.

I repeat that in the KGB I was neither beaten nor tortured, they treated me with extreme courtesy and spoke in a polite manner. The other people under investigation were at first strongly convinced that their cases were coming to an end and each of them would soon be set free. Then the person under investigation who had been fooled in such a way was placed in my cell. Such neighbours could think about nothing but their coming freedom. And when they were called upon with baggage, they were happy. I must point out that the cells were designed for two. Then another fooled neighbour was brought. It is terrible for a young man to stay alone, completely isolated from the external world, and to see that all the participants of the Novocherkassk tragedy are returning safely to liberty, that liberty was quite accessible - it was enough to weaken one's resolve a bit.

The only trouble was that all the dreamers who had believed the KGB appeared later as convicts in the prison cells and concentration camps where I met them. But at that time it was also hard on me; I also believed. I was in my 25th year and I could not bear it any more. In the cells we were allowed to have an abundance of cigarettes and matches. I had heard that it was possible to poison oneself with a sulphur match. Secretly, so that even my neighbour noticed nothing, I crumbled the sulphur from 20 match-boxes. I waited till he fell asleep, dissolved the sulphur in the water and took the mug to my lips. But the warders turned out to have seen what the neighbour had not seen. Before I managed to make a gulp, the door opened noiselessly and the mug was on the floor. I need not describe the further scenes. Let everybody imagine them in their own way. They stopped working on me and in order to give me a psychological rest, they sent me to the Novocherkassk prison, to a common cell. The meeting with the Novocherkassians was really a treat for me, but the warders in the prison were boorish and rude.

One day a guard sergeant rushed into the cell. He began to insult all Novocherkassians in hysterical tones, shouting something about the troubles with the weavers from Ivanovo-Voznesensk before the revolution. I got indignant, refused to take any food and demanded to speak to a prosecutor. After dinner I was taken to the prosecutor and sharply protested our treatment by the guard. After that I heard nothing more about boorishness and rudeness towards the Novocherkassians on the part of the guard. I was sent back to the KGB cells.

In September 1962 in the Lenin district court of Rostov-on-the-Don under the chairmanship of member of the board of the Rostov court, N.A. Yaroslavski, and with the participation of the prosecutor A.I. Brizhan, there was a trial of seven Novocherkassians including me. Formally, the trial was open, but nobody in Novocherkassk knew about it. That is why there was nobody at the trial except the relatives of the defendants and the witnesses. The court sentenced one of us to seven years, three to ten years and three, including me, to twelve years. Soon after the trial I was sent to the Novocherkassk prison again. This time I met a lot of acquaintances there. I do not remember in which month the first transport of Novocherkassians was sent to Siberia. I was sent with the second transport in winter. The concentration camp to which the Novocherkassians were sent to serve their terms, was about 40 kilometres from the Sindor railway station in the Komi ASSR.

Our meeting with our fellow-townspeople was joyful but from the very first we were overwhelmed by the news that the first Novocherkassians had been organized by the guards into some kind of internal police force to maintain order inside the camp. This news aroused our extreme indignation. We (V. Vlasenko, V. Tchernykh, V. Globa, myself and others) managed to convince them that the existence of something like this and the participation in it of Novocherkassians was unacceptable. So the guards' plan failed. All the prisoners of our concentration camp worked at timber-cutting and the building of a narrow-gauge railway designed to transport timber. Camp life went its usual way. Periodically small and sharp conflicts with the camp administration sprang up. Once, a dispute with a guard resulted in sub- machine gun fire being directed at me but at the very last moment another guard struck the gun upwards and the fire went into the air. We managed to insist on dismissing a brutal officer from the organs of the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs), and to open an evening school with the teachers from the number of prisoners. At the same time we did not listen meekly to the deceptive lessons on political science. Once the major in charge of these studies lost his temper and called me to his room and forbade me to attend these lessons.

Even among the officers of the guard there were people who were friendly towards the Novocherkassians. Once, on a day off, I was standing near the small camp football ground. A guard lieutenant stopped near me. When he was sure that there was nobody about, he told me through his teeth, without moving his lips, that a tragedy similar to the Novocherkassian one had taken place in Murom. In this way the Novocherkassians got to know about one more crime committed by the party and the state.

After some time the cases of the Novocherkassians started to be reviewed in Moscow. I was one of the last whose term was shortened to 6 years. The Novocherkassians began to be freed in the spring of 1965. As for me, no freedom was in sight. I felt depressed and dejected. My mother, who had passed through all the circles of the Stalinist hell, who was sentenced in 1943 according to Article 58.10 of the Criminal Code of the USSR, part two, who had served her full penalty in the concentration camp in the Kirov district, had remained "stoic". In those years she lived in Novocherkassk less than in Moscow; she lived also in Sindor. She was a reliable postwoman for the prisoners; I remember not a single failure of communication, not a single misfortune with the mail. She bribed everyone possible, considering that everyone sold themselves cheap. It was due to bribery that she managed to get a good reference for me and I was liberated before time in July 1968.

Completed on the 1st of July 1988