In the history of Ukraine in the 20th century, the Kyiv tract of the Babyn Yar is usually associated with the victims of the German occupation. At the same time, one of the largest man-made disasters in Ukraine is associated with it, which took place on March 13, 1961, when a sand and earth mass washed into this place covered the residential area of Kurenivka.
According to most researchers, the main cause of the tragedy was the political decision of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR to eliminate Babyn Yar to destroy the memory of the mass shootings of Jews by the Nazis. However, in 1950, a purely economic problem also arose. On March 28, 1950, by decision No. 582, the Executive Committee of the Kyiv City Council decided to fill Babyn Yar with waste from the production of the Petriv Brickworks, located nearby, at 33 Syretska Street. Soils unsuitable for brick production were mixed with water and, as a slurry, were discharged through pipes into the spurs of Babyn Yar. In just 10 years, more than 4 million cubic meters of soil were washed into the spurs of the ravine in this way.
The dredging was carried out at heights of 40 to 60 meters above the level of the large industrial and residential district of Kyiv – Kurenivka, but instead of a concrete dam, an earthen one was built, which did not meet either the project or safety standards. The dredging, despite all the prohibitions, was carried out even in winter. According to the technological conditions, the pulp was to be fed into the ravine only for eight hours a day, so that the water could reach the collection well in time, but in fact it was fed around the clock. At the same time, the well was cleaned only once – in 1959.
As early as March 11-12, 1961, streams of water were overflowing the dam, becoming increasingly strong, but no measures were taken to urgently strengthen the dam or evacuate people from the danger zone.
On March 13, at about 9:20 a.m., a mass of clay and water broke through the dam in Babyn Yar and spilled onto Kyrylivska Street (then known as Frunze Street). 30 hectares of Kurenivka Square were flooded with liquid mud. The mudslide destroyed 68 residential and 13 administrative buildings, as well as destroying about 300 apartments and houses. In a matter of minutes, almost 1,300 Kyiv residents were left homeless. The wave also covered the Krasin tram depot (now the Podilsky tram depot) - the dormitory miraculously survived, but 52 depot employees remained at their workplaces forever. The wave also swept away a tram car. Only at 10 a.m. did the slurry and water from Babyn Yar stop arriving.
When restoration work began a few days later, the excavators refused to work: their machines repeatedly pulled out fragments of human bodies – some of them remained unidentified. They dug up a group from a kindergarten with a teacher, a tram car with all passengers, and the buildings of a tram depot. According to official information alone, 145 people died. Now some Ukrainian historians claim that the number of dead was much higher.
The authorities for a long time concealed and downplayed the scale and consequences of the accident. Information about the Kurenivka events was subject to strict censorship, and on March 13, long-distance and international communications were turned off in Kyiv. Despite this, in the afternoon of the same day, Western radio stations broadcasting to the USSR reported on the event. The official report about the disaster on the state-owned Ukrainian Radio was broadcast only on March 16.
Many of the dead were buried in various cemeteries in Kyiv (Baykovo, Lukyanivs'kyi, Kurenivs'kyi, Berkovets'kyi) and outside of Kyiv (in Pushcha-Vodytsa and Gorenka), indicating different dates and causes of death in documents and in inscriptions on graves.
In secret, the Prosecutor's Office of the Ukrainian SSR initiated a criminal case and investigated. The materials of the criminal case were quickly destroyed. A closed court sentenced six officials to prison - two designers from Moscow and four heads of the Kyiv construction department. According to the conclusion of the state expert commission, the cause of the accident was called "errors in the design of the hydraulic dumps and dams" and "a consequence of defects in the construction work". The disaster of March 13, 1961, in Kyiv was hushed up in the official discourse. Information about it was undesirable neither for internal discussion nor for a foreign audience. The causes of the accident presented the Soviet system in an unattractive light, illustrating mismanagement and negligence.
The memory of the victims of the Kurenivka tragedy was immortalized only in 1995, when a memorial sign with the names of the deceased employees was installed near the passing tram depot. Another memorial sign appeared in 2006 on the 45th anniversary of the events. During the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Kurenivka tragedy, on March 13, 2011, a memorial sign in the form of a tombstone was installed in the first row of the Lukyanivka cemetery.
Daria Yesina