The Crash Of The Royal Train - Alternative View

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The Crash Of The Royal Train - Alternative View
The Crash Of The Royal Train - Alternative View

Video: The Crash Of The Royal Train - Alternative View

Video: The Crash Of The Royal Train - Alternative View
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On October 17, 1888, the Russian telegraph reported the tragic news: on the section of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway, near the Borki station, located seven miles south of Kharkov, a train crashed, on which Emperor Alexander III and his wife and children were returning to St. Petersburg after rest in Crimea. It was the largest railway accident of that time - but the sovereign and members of the august family were not seriously injured, and their salvation was regarded as nothing less than a miracle.

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In the language of numbers

At 14 hours 14 minutes, the train, numbering two locomotives and 15 carriages, descended from the slope at a speed of about 64 miles per hour (68 kilometers per hour). Suddenly, a strong jolt followed, throwing people from their seats. The train derailed, 10 out of 15 cars collapsed on the left side of the embankment. Some cars collapsed, five of them almost completely. At the scene of the accident, 21 people died, two more died from its consequences later. There were 68 wounded, of whom 24 were seriously injured. The royal family at the time of the catastrophe was in the dining carriage, which was badly damaged, all furniture, window panes and mirrors were broken in it.

The carriage, where the courtiers and the pantry servants were located, received the greatest damage - all 13 people who were in it died.

Through a gap in the wall, the young Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna and her nanny were thrown onto the embankment. The eldest daughter of Emperor Xenia, as a result of a sudden fall, later developed a hump. According to doctors, from the bruises received on that day from Alexander II! later he developed kidney disease, from which he died six years later.

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When not enough bandages

What is left outside the framework of dry statistics? First of all - the heroic behavior of the Russian sovereign, his wife Maria Feodorovna and the heir to the throne Nikolai Alexandrovich (the future Emperor Nicholas II). After the car went off the rails, its walls sagged and the roof began to collapse. Alexander III, who possessed remarkable strength, supported the roof until the others got out. The Tsarevich helped everyone to leave the carriage and, together with his father, was the last to leave.

The king and his wife took an active part in the search and rescue of people. It was Alexander III who, with the help of a nameless soldier, took out his young son Mikhail from the wreckage, who turned out to be alive and well. The Empress in one dress, despite the cold and injured left arm, helped the wounded.

Since there were not enough bandages, Maria Fedorovna ordered to bring suitcases with her clothes and she cut the outfits herself so that the wounded could be bandaged.

The six-year-old Grand Duchess Olga, thrown out of the carriage, began hysterical, the emperor calmed her, carrying her in his arms. The girl's nanny, Mrs. Franklin, suffered a broken rib and severe internal injuries - during the fall, she covered the child with her body.

To take away the royal family, an auxiliary train arrived from Kharkov. But the emperor ordered the wounded to be immersed in it, and he himself remained with others to disassemble the rubble.

The work continued until dusk, until the rescuers were convinced that there were no more people in need of help. Only then the royal family got on another train and departed back to the Lozovaya station. There, in the third class hall (as the most spacious) at night, a thanksgiving prayer was served for the salvation of the sovereign and his relatives. In the morning, Alexander III and his family left for Kharkov, and when the rubble was dismantled - to St. Petersburg.

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The version of the terrorist attack

The famous lawyer Anatoly Koni headed the investigation into the crash of the imperial train.

The first version was the assumption of a terrorist act. In the memoirs of the Minister of War of Russia, Adjutant General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, it is mentioned that the accident could have been caused by the actions of an assistant cook who had connections with revolutionary organizations. This man got off the train at a stop before the crash and urgently went abroad. He had the opportunity to plant a time bomb in the dining car.

The Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna also repeatedly argued that the carriage did not collapse, but that it exploded and, together with her nanny, was thrown onto the embankment by a blast wave.

The railway disaster of 1879 has not yet been forgotten, when several groups of revolutionaries from the secret society "Narodnaya Volya" carried out a terrorist act to murder Alexander III's father, Emperor Alexander II. Dynamite was laid under the rails in three places at once along the route of his train. The Emperor and his family were saved by a number of miraculous circumstances. First, the train changed its route and went not through Odessa, but through Aleksandrovsk - and the explosives planted by Vera Figner's group on the stretch near Odessa were not needed. An explosive device installed by Andrey Zhelyabov's group near Aleksandrovsk became damp and did not work. And near Moscow, where the terrorists under the leadership of Sophia Perovskaya, in order to lay the dynamite, dug a tunnel under the railway track from the cellar of a house standing next to it,As a result of a locomotive breakdown, the Tsar's train and the train with its retinue were unexpectedly reversed - and the People's Will blew up the cars where the Emperor was not (fortunately, the terrorist attack did not lead to human casualties).

Anatoly Koni and his subordinate investigators announced that no traces of an explosive device could be found. But among the emperor's inner circle, there were rumors that this was done by order of the sovereign: Alexander III simply did not want to draw attention to a possible terrorist attack, because he believed that the news of a successful undermining would strengthen the revolutionary movement. The catastrophe was declared an accident. Indirectly, these rumors are confirmed by the fact that the investigation, according to the instructions of the emperor, was quickly stopped and no one, in fact, was punished.

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Too many to blame

The investigation team had to determine whose actions contributed to the accident: train employees or railway employees. It turned out that both contributed to the disaster.

The train did not follow the schedule, it often lagged behind and then, in order to get on the schedule, it went overspeed. The two locomotives were of different types, which greatly impaired handling. One of the cars (by an absurd case, it was the car of the Minister of Railways Konstantin Posiet, who accompanied the emperor), a spring burst, it was skewed. The train was formed in order to achieve the greatest comfort for its passengers, and they did it technically incorrectly: the heaviest cars that did not have brakes were in the center. In addition, shortly before the accident, the automatic braking system of several cars at once failed, and the conductors were forgotten to warn them that they should use the hand brake when the locomotive whistles. It turned out that a heavy, poorly controlled train moved at an increased speed with practically no brakes.

The management of the railway also did not differ in correct actions. Rotten sleepers were laid on the tracks, taken by the inspectors for a bribe. The embankment was not monitored - as a result, from the rains, it became much steeper than it was supposed to by the standards.

A year later, the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway was to be bought by the state. Its cost was determined by the average net profit, so private owners cut their operating costs in every possible way - they reduced any repair work, reduced staff and reduced salaries for technical personnel.

The findings of the investigation team were as follows: the train was traveling too fast; the tracks were in an inadequate condition; because of the speed and rotten sleepers, one of the locomotives began to wobble, because of which the car of the Minister of Railways collapsed and went off the rails first, and then the other cars.

Help of the holy icon

The case never came to punishment - the Minister of Railways Konstantin Posiet was retired and immediately appointed a member of the State Council. The chief inspector of railways, Baron Kanut Shernval, and the manager of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railway, engineer Vladimir Kovanko, resigned - but there was no trial over the persons who made the disaster.

In 1891, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Chapel of the Savior Not Made by Hands were erected at the crash site according to the design of the architect Robert Marfeld (the chapel was erected where the dining car overturned; according to legend, the sovereign had an icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, which helped him and his family to escape) … Both structures were transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Railways. A hospital, a nursing home for railway workers and a free library named after Emperor Alexander III were built next to them with funds from the ministry and private donations. Until his death, the sovereign came here annually during the Easter celebrations. The railway platform equipped here, and then the village that grew up nearby, were called Spasov Skeet.

After the Bolsheviks came to power, the church was closed, a warehouse was set up in it, and later - an orphanage. The village changed its name to Pervomaiskoe. During the war, the temple burned down, its remains were turned into a firing position and destroyed. The villagers managed to hide some of the surviving mosaic paintings; now they can be seen in the local museum.

The restoration work in the chapel took place in 2002-2003. The railway platform was recreated in the style of the late 19th century, and the stations returned to their former name Spasov Skeet. Today it is a large tourist center of the Kharkiv region, reminiscent of one of the pages of our past.

Elena LANDA