Novocherkassk massacre

The Novocherkassk massacre was a massacre committed against unarmed protesters on June 2, 1962, in the Russian city of Novocherkassk by the Soviet army and KGB officials. A few weeks earlier workers organised a labor strike at the Novocherkassk Electromotive Building Factory.

The strike was caused by discontent over an increase of production quotas coinciding with a nationwide increase in dairy and meat prices. The protestors called Nikita Khrushchev a "False Leninist" and many were dismayed that the 20th congress and Khrushchev's regime denigrated Joseph Stalin. The events turned into a mass protest at the administration building in the center of the city where armed forces dispersed protesters by gunfire. According to official investigation 26 were reportedly killed by troops, and 87 were wounded. According to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, "Information from a variety of sources is more or less unanimous that some seventy or eighty people were killed".