Troops Killed 24 Protesters in ‘62, Soviet Says

MOSCOW —  A retired Soviet general revealed Friday for the first time that troops in southern Russia shot and killed up to 24 people during a 1962 protest over price rises.

The disclosure, by Lt. Gen. Matvey K. Shaposhnikov in the Communist Youth League daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, was the first time an authoritative source for the death toll has been revealed in an incident long shrouded in secrecy.

Unofficial versions at the time said 80 people were killed when troops opened fire on crowds of workers on June 2, 1962, in the city of Novocherkassk, 700 miles south of Moscow.

Publication of the general’s account coincided with heated debate in the new Congress of People’s Deputies on the use of troops against peaceful protesters in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, on April 9 this year. Twenty people died, many of them women.

Shaposhnikov, who was deputy commander of troops but opposed the decision by his superior to move against workers, said he was 1,200 feet away when he heard machine-gun fire.

“Some 22 or 24 people, including a schoolboy, died as a result of the use of arms,” he said.

“Thirty people were wounded. The next morning I learned those killed had been buried secretly.”

A. Simonov, a teacher, told the paper that after the massacre, “They tried to wash the blood from the square for a long time, first with fire engines, then other ways, with brushes, and at last called in a steamroller and laid a thick layer of pavement.”

Komsomolskaya Pravda said Shaposhnikov had tried for many years to reveal the truth about the event but had been prevented from doing so.