In 1961, the state began mass purchases of grain from Canada, and a year later, lard and meat, which became scarce, soared in price by about a third. A little later, as a result of an acute shortage of food, dairy products also became more expensive in the USSR.
Unrest began in many cities of the state, but the city of Novocherkassk turned out to be the most active, in which the party food program accidentally coincided with a decrease in wages at the largest local plant producing electric locomotives. As a result, the workers took to the streets. They demanded negotiations with the city administration.
The Novocherkassk execution would not have taken place if it were not for an absurd negligence. The detonator was a thoughtless phrase expressed by the director of the plant, who, when asked how the workers should live, suggested that they eat liver pies instead of meat. This random remark was enough to set the gunpowder on fire.
The plant went on strike
During the night, all important city facilities - telegraph, post office, city committee andThe city executive committee - were taken by the authorities under the strictest protection, all the money with valuables was hastily taken out of the bank of Novocherkassk. The garrison was put on alert.
Meanwhile, the square was gradually filled with workers and members of their families, who in front of the administration building loudly demanded that the local leadership come out to them. However, this did not happen.
The administration, in a panic, asked the capital for help in suppressing the "anti-Soviet rebellion." Mikoyan, the right hand of General Secretary Khrushchev, flew into the city. Troops were brought into Novocherkassk, the crowd began to be gradually forced out of the factory territory. At about three o'clock in the morning, the shooting of demonstrators, which remained in history as "Novocherkassk", began, which for a long time was not mentioned in the press.
The crowd, numbering more than four thousand strikers, was forced out, gradually it began to thin out. The plant was completely under the control of the military, a curfew was set in the city.
According to those who were in the square at that time, the crowd was noisy and did not want to disperse, not heeding the calls of the military. And then the soldiers gave a few short bursts of machine guns and machine guns. They fired into the air, but the bullets hit several boys, who, climbing the trees, watched the events with childlike curiosity. The boys' bodies were never found afterwards.
The Novocherkassk execution caused significant casu alties. Sixteen people were killed, more than forty were injured. The factory square was literally flooded with blood, which was promptly washed away during the night, and the bodies of the deadhastily buried on the outskirts of the city in a common grave. Relatives were not allowed to attend the funeral.
More than a hundred people were arrested. Two months later, the trial took place. Seven people who, by court decision, provoked the execution in Novocherkassk were sentenced to death, the other seven to life imprisonment. And although at the hearing they tried to prove that they were not going to take any action, but only tried to agree, the judges did not believe them.
The Novocherkassk massacre and the whole truth about it were carefully hushed up for more than two decades, and only twenty years later comparatively objective articles about these bloody events began to appear in the press. And already in the mid-nineties of the last century, the prosecutor's office began an investigation, but those responsible for the deaths of civilians were never found.
