Novocherkassk massacre

The Novocherkassk massacre () was a massacre committed against unarmed protesters on June 2, 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkassk by the Soviet army and KGB officials. A few weeks earlier workers organised a labor strike at the Novocherkassk Electromotive (Electric Locomotive) Building Factory (NEBF).
The strike was caused by discontent over an increase of production quotas coinciding with a nationwide 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. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" (page 449 in the abridged version), "Information from a variety of sources is more or less unanimous that some seventy or eighty people were killed".
Arrests, show trials and cover-ups ensued: more than 200 were arrested; seven 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 (terms of some of which were later reduced); news about events never appeared in the state-controlled press and they were 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, shortly after the Soviet Union's collapse, 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 had started. The fate of others as of 2019 remains unknown.
The massacre is commemorated each year on the anniversary of the murders by a group of surviving participants of the protests.
History.
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 (he reportedly said, "I don't see any enemy that we could turn our weapons against"), for which he was later degraded and arrested.
Victims.
According to now available official sources, 26 protesters were machine-gunned and killed by Soviet troops. An additional 87 protesters were wounded, three of them mortally. Due to Soviet propaganda at that time the protesters trusted the Soviet army, and many did not expect them to fire live ammunition at unarmed citizens. After the initial demonstrations a curfew was imposed on the city. The dead were secretly buried in cemeteries scattered across the Rostov Oblast. However, the following morning a group of several hundred demonstrators again gathered in the square. One hundred sixteen were arrested, and fourteen were convicted in show trials. Seven of those convicted received a death sentence. 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 workers were arrested, and several military officials involved in the incident were court martialed. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn claimed that other individuals wounded in the unrest and their families were exiled to Siberia.
The story was hushed-up by Soviet media and remained an official secret until 1992, a year after the fall of the Soviet Union. At that time the remains of 20 protesters were recovered, identified, and buried in the Novoshakhtinsk cemetery.
In media.
During a Politburo scene in "The Devil's Alternative" (1979) 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".
Films "Once upon a time in Rostov" (2012) and "Dear Comrades" (2020) offer depictions of the massacre.