Museum of tragedy 1962 year in Novocherkassk

Museum of tragedy 1962 year in Novocherkassk in located in Ataman Palace. For a long time the information about the tragic events, which happened in Novocherkassk on June 1-2, 1962, was highly classified. But in the 90th it was declassified, and in the 2000th a museum devoted to that tragedy appeared at the Ataman Palace.

NEVZ (Novocherkassk locomotive works) with 10 thousand workers is in Novocherkassk. After production norms were again raised by 30% in 1962, which reduced the wages against the background of increase in the prices of food staples, a strike began at NEVZ on June 1, 1962. However, the director of the works was very rude with the workers. 

As a result, the strike involved the entire works and the adjoining smaller enterprises. Over 5 thousand people who came out to the protest blocked the railroad connecting the south of Russia to Moscow. Khrushchev issued the order to cruelly suppress the protest. It came even to forcing out the workers from the yard of the works with tanks without using weapons. 

On June 2 the workers decided to go to the building of the regional party committee, which was then located at the Ataman Palace. At that time there was a large square in front of the palace, instead of the today public garden. By the evening of the same day the confrontation between the armed soldiers and the crowd came to such a degree that the «unidentified individuals» began to fire at the people who pressed against the building. As a result, 24 persons were killed. All of them were secretly buried in another`s graves. Several dozens of persons were wounded, and after the fast trial of instigators 7 persons were executed.

Now a memorial stone is on the place in front of the Ataman Palace where the people were killed, and a museum devoted to those events was opened in the palace itself.