It has been a little more than half a century sinceoccurred in the capital of Soviet Ukraine man-made disaster. It is possible to assert with complete confidence that almost none of the modern youth knows the Kurenev tragedy of 1961.
В силу разных причин, в первую очередь чтобы не to disturb the public, the exact number of the dead was classified. Only the official figure is known - within 145 people. There is nothing surprising, the true consequences of the catastrophe were long and carefully hidden. For several days in a row, Kiev was literally silent - the phones were turned off, it was impossible to get through anywhere. Even passenger planes were forbidden to fly over the crash site for several weeks. Kurenevskaya tragedy happened suddenly, and they tried to keep silent about it.
This event is almost never mentioned.Presumably the death toll is in the range of 1.5-2 thousand of Kiev residents, none of whom suspected that the March day of the 13th of 1961 would be the last in their lives. It is time to find out how the Kurenev tragedy happened and what they hid for so many years!
Monday morning. It would seem that the usual beginning of the labor week of the country of developed socialism. Soviet citizens rush to their jobs, to study. Public transport, as always, is full.
First in Kurenivka, one of the metropolitan areas,the sudden appearance of a small stream of water made it impossible to move along the streets. Soon, from the direction of Babi Yar, a wave of pulp surged 14 meters high, passing every second 5 meters. Literally in just a few minutes, the territory of almost 30 hectares was difficult to recognize. Thus began the Kurenevsky Flood of 1961.
Oncoming mudflowfilled the streets, turning over cars and dump trucks, destroying buildings, carrying along pedestrians. Everything around was covered with a debris layer, which included clay, sand, pellets and other dirt. The fall of electric poles led to the burning of crowded trams, trolley buses and buses. People were actually taken by surprise: someone had breakfast, someone tried to call from a pay phone in a booth, etc. Then they will write that it was Pompeii’s real Kiev day. The Kurenev tragedy of 1961 claimed many lives, but they did not want to talk about it.
The chronology of the terrible event has been preserved.Kurenivke. The destruction of a menacing character occurred at about three in the morning. The critical moment came at six o'clock forty-five minutes (in other sources - at half past eight in the morning). It was a terrible picture. 700 thousand cubic meters of pulp escaped from imprisonment, accelerating, demolishing everything that was in their way, including buildings. In the general stream, which had a width of about 20 meters, were not only living people who were unlucky. The water dug tombs in the cemetery, from where the bodies and the fragments of coffins were removed.
The Kurenev tragedy of 1961 was creepy and frightening. Everything that happened was hard to tell. Survivors do not want to remember that day, as many have lost someone.
Больше всех досталось от разбушевавшейся стихии the company "Ukrpromkonstruktor" tram depot named Krasin, medical institution, the stadium "Spartak". The site of Frunze Street was damaged, as well as residential buildings located in the Yara district. Total in the flooded area of 5000 square meters. m turned 53 buildings, including two dormitories. More than half of the affected structures are one-story houses. The Kurenev tragedy of 1961 in Kiev became the cause of multiple destruction.
Thanks to bold and operational action.workers of the tram depot was disconnected power substation. Thus, it was possible to prevent further fires in electric transport and the potential danger of electric shock. Gradually, the wave lost its strength, already on Frunze Street its height became half less. Nevertheless, she still managed to take the lives of several hundreds of Kiev.
The pulp that filled the territorycompressed, almost not inferior in density to the stone. Liquid substance mixed with mud clay in a thick layer covered the stadium "Spartak", adjacent to the Podolsk descent. Even the high fence was absorbed, because the layer thickness reached three meters.
The Podolsk hospital withstood the blow, on the roof of which she managed to climb and thus saved some of the patients. For many residents of Kurenivka, the fateful Monday was a kind of “Pompeii Day”.
For a very long time, the Kurenev tragedy remained secret. As it was, remember the immediate witnesses, in whose eyes tears are seen.
Received secret instructions from the funeral authoritiescarry out almost secretly without civil funerals at various cemeteries in Kiev. Some graves are even located within the region. Such measures are aimed at hiding the real death toll, thereby avoiding political resonance.
Still, we must pay tribute to the leadership -unfortunate citizens, whose housing was in the disaster zone, were given the keys to the new apartments. In addition, it was given the opportunity to buy in installments household appliances issued by special coupons.
This large-scale Kurenev tragedy of 1961 (Kiev, Ukraine) was qualitatively concealed, which claimed tens of times more lives than was announced for other countries.
There is a logical question about the reasonsKurenevskaya tragedy. Did it all happen suddenly and nothing, as they say, foreshadow trouble? Is it necessary to blame only elements for a man-made disaster? Maybe the disaster was possible because of the human factor (engineering failures, someone's irresponsibility)? Or did the intervention of otherworldly forces take place? To answer questions of this kind, you need to take a digression into the recent past and conduct a small investigation. It was not for nothing that this Kurenev tragedy occurred. "The Curse of Babi Yar" is called by its locals. Why so? This will become clear if you continue reading the article.
В период Великой Отечественной войны, когда Киев was under the occupation of the Nazis, mass executions took place in Babi Yar. In total, more than 260 thousand innocent residents, almost 150 thousand Jews, found their deaths here. The Germans, of course, did everything possible to hide their horrendous crimes, later burning the corpses.
After the victory over fascism, Babi Yar attracted looters to him. With the onset of dusk "black archaeologists" were picking at the ground, trying to find there gold rings and teeth.
Проблему решили кощунственным способом.On the place where the human remains covered with earth were buried, there should have been a park of culture and rest, rides and a dance floor. At the same time, the executive committee of the City Council proceeded from the following reasoned principles: the bodies of the executed Jews do not deserve human treatment, it was necessary to avoid capture.
The end of the 40s - the beginning of the 50s of the last centurymarked by large-scale construction of residential high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Kiev, which the people dubbed "Khrushchev." The capital of the Ukrainian SSR expanded due to new neighborhoods. The construction industry felt an acute need for a large number of bricks. In order to meet the demand, existing brick factories had to work around the clock.
Kurenevskaya tragedy (March 13, 1961, Kiev)did not happen overnight, the prerequisites should be sought in 1950. In Moscow, the Ministry of Industrial Construction Materials developed a project for organizing a hydraulic structure at Babi Yar for the storage of waste mainly from Petrovsky brick factories. Its implementation should have been started after the adoption of the relevant decision under number 582 by the executive committee of the Kiev City Council. Soon the "light" head of some official decided to correct the initial version. Therefore, we took another decision №2405, in accordance with which? after raising the level of influx, he had to reach the extreme line of the ravine.
На месте песчаного карьера в 1952 году приступили to the construction of hydraulic dumps. Initially, earthen dams were poured around it all around the perimeter. After that, with the help of dredgers, waste began to flow into the quarry in the form of pulp from enterprises that mined clay to produce bricks. But soon one thing turned out. For security, a protective dam should be made ten meters higher. The potential danger was presented by the fact that the huge earth capacity filled with production wastes at 60 m rose above the level of one bp of metropolitan areas, where there were many residential buildings and significant enterprises. Kurenevskaya tragedy occurred due to human negligence, it has been proven repeatedly.
Summarizing, we can single out the following main mistakes:
Even when the alarming symptoms become tooobvious, no action was taken. Literally four years before the fateful day, the head of the Special Inspection reported to the administration of Petrovsky brick factories and the head of the city department of Hydromechanization about the current pitiable condition. The situation worsened in the winter. Even then it was often the case that the ravine could not contain a mixture of water and sand, because of which the surrounding areas were partially under water. This is how the Kurenev tragedy began (Babiy Yar of March 13, 1961).
За десять лет в огражденном дамбой овраге gathered about 4 million cubic meters. m of pulp in the liquid state. All responsibility should be assigned to Alexei Davydov, who since 1947 served as head of the city council (mayor). It is believed that it is to him that the essentially blasphemous idea of destroying Babi Yar due to the continuous production of bricks belongs to him. In the future, it was supposed to build recreational facilities on bones and ashes, including attractions with restaurants! If the Kurenev tragedy had not happened, laughter would have been heard over the remains of the captured Jews.
Preserved stories of those who were then innumber of liquidators of consequences. The following picture will probably never be erased from memory. Bulldozers, raking the stratified dirt, with their steel shovels removed the corpses and at the same time dismembered them. Those victims who were fortunate enough to survive were taken to suburban medical institutions. If a person was dying, he was betrayed to the ground near the hospital. Such people are no longer included in the list of victims.
The Kurenev tragedy of March 13, 1961 is a black spot in the history of Ukraine. All this could have been avoided, but sometimes the desire of untold wealth makes one make unforgivable mistakes.
