Most Soviet citizens did not know about large-scale disasters, about which all the media would now talk. But there was an illusion of complete tranquility and order.
Explosion of nuclear waste at the Mayak chemical plant in Chelyabinsk-40 (1957)
This was the first radiation accident in the history of our country. The tragedy is better known as the "Kyshtym accident", since the chemical plant was located in the closed city of Chelyabinsk-40 (now Ozersk), and Kyshtym was the city closest to it, indicated on the maps.
The explosion, estimated at tens of tons in TNT equivalent, occurred in a container for radioactive waste: the cooling system was out of order. The container was destroyed, a concrete ceiling 1 meter thick and weighing 160 tons was thrown aside, about 20 million curies of radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere. A huge territory with a population of 270 thousand people turned out to be in the zone of radiation pollution, which included three regions: Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Tyumen.
No one died directly from the explosion. On the first day after the explosion, servicemen from the nearest unit and prisoners from the colony, which was also nearby, were withdrawn from the affected area. And only a week or two after the accident began the evacuation of the local population, and even then only from the most affected settlements.
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Losses came later - among the hundreds of thousands of servicemen and civilian workers involved in eliminating the consequences of the accident. All of them received significant doses of radiation. Now at the site of the accident is the atomic reserve "East Ural radioactive trace". You cannot visit it: the level of radioactivity in it is still very high.
The authorities concealed information about the catastrophe both from the population of the country and from the inhabitants of the Urals who found themselves in the zone of radioactive contamination. A kilometer-high column of smoke and dust, shimmering in orange-red light, was called the "polar lights" in the newspapers. But the fact of the accident in the Urals soon became known abroad. The Danish press was the first to report this. True, the message was not entirely accurate: it claimed that some kind of accident had occurred during Soviet nuclear tests.
Ballistic missile explosion at Baikonur (1960)
It was not the only catastrophe at Baikonur, but one of the largest that occurred at the cosmodrome during the Soviet period. A fundamentally new Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile R-16 was being prepared for launch.
The Chairman of the State Commission for Testing the R-16 was himself the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Missile Forces (Strategic Missile Forces), Marshal of Artillery MI Nedelin. As often happened in Soviet history, they wanted to make a gift for the 43rd anniversary of the October Revolution, to carry out the first launch before November 7.
All conceivable and inconceivable violations of safety rules were committed in a hurry. As a result, during the tests, a premature engine start and an explosion of propellant occurred. Burned and later died from burns and wounds, according to various sources, from 92 to 126 people. Marshal Nedelin was among the dead.
Information about the tragedy was classified, there were no official reports of the disaster. The relatives and friends of the victims were advised to talk about the accident. Even Marshal Nedelin, according to the official statement, "died tragically in a plane crash."
Airliner collision over Dneprodzerzhinsk (1979)
This plane crash is one of the largest in the history of aviation. In terms of the number of victims in the history of the USSR, it ranks second, and among aircraft collisions in general - third.
In the sky over Dneprodzerzhinsk (Ukrainian SSR), two Tu-134 aircraft of Aeroflot (flights Chelyabinsk - Chisinau and Tashkent - Minsk) collided, as a result of which all 178 people on board were killed. Among the dead were 17 players of the Uzbek football club "Pakhtakor". On that day, in the Kharkov control center, in violation of instructions, an inexperienced dispatcher was in the most tense sector. The situation was further complicated by the fact that one of the three air corridors was “booked” for the highest party nomenklatura Chernenko, who was supposed to fly that day to Brezhnev, who was resting in Crimea.
When the controllers saw that the planes were going across each other, they gave the command to one of the boards to gain altitude. The answer sounded on the air: "Got it." The controllers calmed down, deciding that the command was being carried out by the correct aircraft. In fact, the crew of the third plane, the Il-62, which flew to Tashkent, answered. A minute later, two Tu-134s collided in the air …
This catastrophe would have been silenced, like the others, if not for the death of an entire football team, moreover, from the Major League. As a result, although this plane crash did not receive wide publicity in the USSR (only the newspaper "Soviet Sport" published a tiny note about the death of "Pakhtakor"), but at the international level it was not hushed up.
The death of a plane with the command staff of the Pacific Fleet near Leningrad (1981)
During takeoff from a military airfield in the city of Pushkin (near Leningrad), a Tu-104 transport aircraft crashed, in which were the commander of the Pacific Fleet, almost all his deputies, half of the staff of the headquarters, the command of the naval aviation, flotillas, brigades and squadrons. At one point, the Pacific Fleet lost command. A total of 52 people were killed, including 16 admirals. For comparison: during the entire Great Patriotic War, the Soviet fleet lost only four admirals.
The cause of the tragedy was the overload of the aircraft. In addition to heavy safes with maps and documents, they carried a lot of scarce goods that the authorities could get in Leningrad: household appliances, furniture, even fruits. The crew understood that the plane was overloaded and reported this to the dispatcher, but he did not dare to object to the high authorities.
An overload in the tail section, a sudden increase in wind, incorrect centering of the aircraft and, probably, cargo displaced after take-off - all this led to a disaster. After taking off by 50 meters, the plane fell on the tail and starboard side and fell. On impact, the fuel caught fire - no one managed to survive. Eyewitnesses recalled that after the crash, the entire strip was covered with scarce oranges. After the disaster, all Tu-104s were decommissioned by the Air Force.
The sinking of the motor ship "Alexander Suvorov" (1983)
A cruise ship en route Rostov-on-Don - Moscow entered at maximum speed (25 km / h) under the non-navigable span of the Ulyanovsk bridge across the Volga and, by inertia, passed under the bridge for another 300 meters. As a result, the entire upper part of the vessel was literally cut off: the wheelhouse, the cinema hall, the chimneys. The situation was aggravated by the fact that a freight train was crossing the bridge at that time. Due to the collision of the ship with the bridge, the train was displaced by 40 centimeters. As a result, part of the cars overturned, and their cargo (coal, grain, logs) spilled out onto the ship, increasing the number of victims.
The death toll, according to various sources, ranged from 176 to 600 people. The difficulty in counting was due to the ship being overloaded. In addition to 330 passengers, 50 crew members and 35 service personnel, there were not quite officially the acquaintances and relatives of the crew members on board. Unfortunately, most of the passengers were on the upper deck (in the cinema and on the dance floor), completely destroyed during the collision with the bridge, hence the large number of victims.
One of the main reasons for the late evening tragedy was the lack of signal lights on the bridge. In addition, on the ill-fated non-navigable aisle there was a lineman's booth, which looked like a signal board in the dark, indicating a ship's pass.
The death of two trains near Ufa (1989)
This disaster is the largest in the history of the national railway transport. At the moment of the oncoming passage of two passenger trains - "Novosibirsk - Adler" and "Adler - Novosibirsk" - a powerful explosion occurred. Out of 1370 passengers (among them there were 383 children), 575 people died (according to other sources - 645), of which 181 were children; 623 people were injured.
The explosion was so strong that the shock wave knocked out glass in a neighboring city, located more than 10 kilometers from the scene, and the pillar of fire was visible even 100 kilometers away. Why is there a neighboring town! The explosion triggered the North American Air Defense System (NORAD) alarm! The Americans decided that the Soviets had tested yet another atomic bomb. According to experts, the power of the explosion was almost equal to the power of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima.
What caused such a devastating explosion? On the nearby pipeline Western Siberia - Ural - Volga region, through which the liquefied gas-gasoline mixture was transported, a hole of one and a half meters was formed. The gas that escaped through the hole accumulated in the lowland, not far from the railway line.
A few hours before the disaster, the instruments showed a pressure drop in the pipeline. However, instead of looking for a leak, the personnel on duty only increased the gas supply to restore pressure. As a result, even more gas escaped under the increased pressure. The drivers of the passing trains warned the section dispatcher that there was a strong gas contamination on the stretch, but they did not attach importance to this.
The fire of the "gas lake" was a matter of time. What led to the explosion - a cigarette thrown out of the train window, a spark from under the wheels when braking - can no longer be determined. As well as the reason for the appearance of a hole in the pipeline - due to corrosion or from an excavator bucket.
PS As you must have noticed, the list does not include the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. You can read about it separately, for example here or here.