It's been a little more than half a century since the man-made disaster that occurred in the capital of Soviet Ukraine. It can be said with full confidence that almost none of today's youth knows the Kurenevskaya tragedy of 1961.
What Kyiv was silent about
For various reasons, primarily in order not to disturb the public, the exact number of dead was classified. It is known only about the official figure - within 145 people. There is nothing surprising here, the true consequences of the disaster were long and carefully concealed. For several days in a row, Kyiv was silent in the literal sense - the phones were turned off, it was impossible to get through anywhere. Even passenger planes were banned from flying over the crash site for several weeks. The Kurenevskaya tragedy happened suddenly, and they tried to keep silent about it.
This event was hardly mentioned anywhere. Presumably, the death toll is in the range of 1.5-2 thousand Kyivans, none of whom suspected that the March day of the 13th of 1961 would be the last in their lives. It's time to find out howKurenevskaya tragedy and what was hidden for so many years!
How it happened
Monday morning. It would seem that the usual beginning of the work week of the country of developed socialism. Soviet citizens rush to their jobs, to study. Public transport is full as usual.
First in Kurenevka, one of the metropolitan areas, the sudden appearance of a small stream of water made it impossible to move through the streets. Soon, a wave of pulp 14 meters high poured from the side of Babi Yar, passing 5 meters every second. Literally just a few minutes later, the territory of almost 30 hectares was difficult to recognize. This is how the Kurenev Flood of 1961 began.
An impending gray-brown mudslide filled the streets, overturning cars and dump trucks, destroying buildings, dragging pedestrians along with it. Everything around was covered with a mudflow layer, which included clay, sand, pellets and other dirt. The fall of electric poles set fire to overcrowded trams, trolleybuses and buses. People were actually taken by surprise: someone was having breakfast, someone was trying to get through from a pay phone in a booth, etc. Later they will write that it was a real Kyiv day of Pompeii. The Kurenevskaya tragedy of 1961 claimed many lives, but they didn’t want to talk about it.
Creepy picture
The chronology of the terrible event in Kurenevka has been preserved. The destruction of a threatening nature took place from about three o'clock in the morning. The critical moment came at six forty-fiveminutes (in other sources - at half past nine in the morning). It was a terrible picture. The 700,000 cubic meters of pulp escaping from confinement, accelerating, demolished everything that was in their path, including buildings. In the general stream, which had a width of about 20 meters, there were not only living people who were unlucky. The water dug graves in the cemetery, from where they removed corpses and undecayed fragments of coffins.
Kurenevskaya tragedy of 1961 was terrible and frightening. Everything that happened was hard to describe. The survivors do not want to remember that day, as many have lost someone.
A destructive stream of water passed down Frunze Street
Most of all got from the raging elements to the enterprise "Ukrpromkonstruktor", the Krasin tram depot, a medical institution, the Spartak stadium. A section of Frunze Street was damaged, as well as residential buildings located in the Yar area. In total, in the flood zone of 5000 sq. m turned out to be 53 buildings, including two hostels. More than half of the affected buildings are one-story houses. The Kurenevskaya tragedy of 1961 in Kyiv caused numerous destructions.
Thanks to the courageous and prompt actions of the workers of the tram depot, the power substation was turned off. Thus, it was possible to prevent further fires on electric vehicles and the potential threat of electric shock. Gradually, the wave lost its strength, already on Frunze Street, its height became half as much. Nevertheless, she managed to take the lives of several hundred Kyivans.
Monday is a hard day
The pulp that filled the area was compressed, almost as dense as the stone. A liquid substance of clay mixed with mud covered the Spartak Stadium, adjacent to Podolsky Spusk, with a thick layer. Even the high fence was swallowed up, because the thickness of the layer reached three meters.
The Podolsk hospital withstood the blow, on the roof of which it managed to climb and thereby saved some of the patients. For many residents of Kurenevka, the fateful Monday was a kind of “Pompeii day.”
The Kurenevskaya tragedy remained a secret for a very long time. As it happened, direct eyewitnesses recall, in whose eyes tears can be seen.
Strange order
There was a secret order from the authorities to carry out funerals almost secretly without civil memorial services at various cemeteries in Kyiv. Some graves are even within the area. Such measures are aimed at hiding the real death toll, thereby avoiding political resonance.
Still, we must pay tribute to the leadership - the unfortunate citizens, whose housing was in the disaster zone, were handed the keys to new apartments. In addition, it was possible to buy household appliances in installments using special coupons issued.
This large-scale Kurenevskaya tragedy of 1961 (Kyiv, Ukraine), which claimed dozens of times more lives than was announced for other countries, was qualitatively hidden.
Excursion to the recent past
There is a legitimate question aboutabout the causes of the Kurenevskaya tragedy. Did everything happen suddenly and nothing, as they say, did not portend trouble? Should only the elements be blamed for a man-made disaster? Maybe the disaster became possible due to the human factor (engineering miscalculations, someone's irresponsibility)? Or was there an intervention of otherworldly forces? To answer questions of this kind, it is necessary to make an excursion into the recent past and conduct a little investigation. This Kurenevskaya tragedy happened for a reason. "The curse of Babi Yar" is called by the locals. Why exactly? This will become clear if you continue reading the article.
During the Great Patriotic War, when Kyiv was under the occupation of the Nazis, mass executions took place in Babi Yar. In total, more than 260 thousand innocent inhabitants found their death here, of which almost 150 thousand Jews. The Germans, of course, did everything possible to hide their terrible crimes by burning the corpses afterwards.
Terrifying facts
After the victory over fascism, Babi Yar attracted marauders. As dusk fell, "black archaeologists" dug into the ground, trying to find gold rings and teeth.
The problem was solved in a blasphemous way. On the site where the human remains sprinkled with earth rested, a park of culture and recreation, attractions and a dance floor were supposed to appear. At the same time, the Executive Committee of the City Council proceeded from the following well-reasoned principles: the bodies of executed Jews are notdeserve human treatment, should have avoided captivity.
The end of the 40s - the beginning of the 50s of the last century was marked by the large-scale construction of residential multi-storey buildings in the vicinity of Kyiv, which the people dubbed "Khrushchev". The capital of the Ukrainian SSR expanded with new microdistricts. The construction industry felt an urgent need for large quantities of bricks. Existing brick factories had to work around the clock to meet demand.
Roots of man-made disaster
The Kurenevskaya tragedy (March 13, 1961, Kyiv) did not happen overnight, the prerequisites should be sought in 1950. In Moscow, the Ministry of Industrial Construction Materials developed a project to organize a hydraulic structure in Babi Yar to store waste, mainly from Petrovsky brick factories. Its implementation should have been started after the adoption of the relevant decision number 582 by the executive committee of the Kyiv City Council. Soon the “bright” head of some official decided to correct the original version. Therefore, they have already adopted another decision No. 2405, in accordance with which? after raising the level of the influx, it should have reached the extreme line of the ravine.
On the site of a sand pit in 1952, began the construction of a hydro dump. At first, earthen dams were poured around it around the entire perimeter. After that, with the help of dredgers, waste in the form of pulp began to flow into the quarry from enterprises that extracted clay for the production of bricks. But one thing soon became clear. For safety reasons, the protective dam shouldmake ten meters higher. A potential danger was also the fact that a huge earthen container filled with industrial waste was 60 meters above the level of one bp of the metropolitan areas, where there were many residential buildings and significant enterprises. The Kurenevskaya tragedy occurred due to human negligence, this has been proven repeatedly.
Mistakes at the cost of life
Summing up, we can highlight the following main mistakes made:
- The not fully thought out design of the hydraulic fill was completely disfigured by the amendments of the local "expert".
- The authors of the project apparently miscalculated the water content of the soil at the bottom of the former quarry.
- In winter, heavy snowfalls sometimes occur, which is important.
- It was necessary to build a more reliable and durable concrete structure instead of earthen dams.
- Saved on drainage pipes. Due to their small diameter, the system did not function properly, the water with the brought soil did not have time to be discharged. In addition, the pulp was supplied continuously in such an amount that it exceeded by 3 times the value contained in the initial calculations. Brick factories tried to exceed the plan without stopping production, with a three-shift work schedule.
Even when the alarming symptoms became too obvious, no action was taken. Literally four years before the fateful day, the head of the Special Inspectorate informed the administration of the Petrovsky brick factories and the head of the city departmentHydromechanization about the current deplorable state. The situation worsened during the winter. Even then, it often happened that the ravine could not accommodate a mixture of water and sand, which is why the surrounding areas were partially under water. This is how the Kurenevskaya tragedy began (Babi Yar, March 13, 1961).
For ten years, about 4 million cubic meters of gas have accumulated in the dam-enclosed ravine. m pulp in liquid state. All responsibility should be assigned to Alexei Davydov, who since 1947 served as the head of the city council (mayor). It is believed that it was he who came up with the inherently blasphemous idea of destroying Babi Yar by continuously producing bricks. In the future, it was supposed to build entertainment establishments on bones and ashes, including attractions with restaurants! If the Kurenevskaya tragedy had not happened, then laughter would have been heard over the remains of the captured Jews.
Instead of an epilogue
The stories of those who were then among the liquidators of the consequences have been preserved. The next picture will probably never be erased from memory. Bulldozers, raking the stratified dirt, with their steel shovels removed the corpses and dismembered them at the same time. Those victims who were lucky enough to survive were taken to medical institutions in the suburban area. If a person died, then he was interred near the hospital. Such people were no longer included in the list of victims.
Kurenevskaya tragedy on March 13, 1961 is a black spot in the history of Ukraine. All this could have been avoided, but sometimesthe desire for untold we alth leads to unforgivable mistakes.
