An account of the workers uprising in Novocherkassk, USSR, which
lasted from June 1-3 and ended in a massacre and mass arrests.
by Piotr Suda (Piotr Siuda was one of the participants in the
workers uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962. After several years
of imprisonment he devoted himself to investigating the tragedy
and bringing information about it to the public. This became
possible only after the beginning of glasnost. This article is
part of a longer piece which appeared originally in 1988 in
samizdat magazine, "Obschina".) In the 1950's industrial wages
in the USSR were arbitrarily lowered almost every year. These
decreases allowed officials to publish statistics indicating
increases in labor efficiency, automation and mechanization,
decreases in the cost of production without corresponding new
capital investment, and improvements in organization and in
technology. In capitalist countries, if a corporation tried to
improve its financial showings by lowering wages, the workers
would respond with protests a