About the Khodynka disaster
The accession to the throne of Nicholas II was marked by a terrible tragedy that went down in history under the name "Khodynskaya tragedy" or "Khodynskaya crush": 1389 people died during the festivities, and 1500 were injured. And this is just the official data. Eyewitnesses of the tragedy call other figures: on May 18, 1896, more than 6,000 crushed people were buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery …
Immediately after the catastrophe, different versions of what had happened appeared in society, they named the perpetrators, among whom were the Governor-General of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, and the Chief of Police Colonel Vlasovsky, and the Emperor Nicholas II himself, nicknamed "Bloody". Someone stigmatized officials-slobs, someone tried to prove that the disaster at Khodynskoye field was a planned action, a trap for the common people. Thus, the opponents of the monarchy had another weighty argument against the autocracy. Over the years, "Khodynka" has become overgrown with myths. It is all the more curious to figure out what actually happened in those distant May days.
Chronology of the Khodynskaya tragedy
Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894, after the death of his father Alexander III. Urgent affairs, state and personal (the wedding with his beloved bride Alisa of Hesse-Darmstadt, in Orthodoxy Alexandra Fedorovna), forced the tsar to postpone the coronation for a year and a half.
During all this time, a special commission was developing a plan of celebrations, for which 60 million rubles were allocated. Two festive weeks included a large number of concerts, banquets, balls. They decorated everything that was possible, even the Ivan the Great Bell Tower and its crosses were hung with electric bulbs. As one of the main events, a festivities were envisaged on the specially decorated Khodynskoye field, with refreshments with beer and honey, and royal gifts.
They prepared about 400 thousand knots from colored scarves, each of which was wrapped with a sausage, half a pound of sausage, a handful of sweets and gingerbread, as well as an enamel mug with a royal monogram and gilding. It was the gifts that became a kind of "stumbling block" - unprecedented rumors spread about them among the people. The further from the capital, the more seriously the cost of the hotel increased: peasants from remote villages of the Moscow province were absolutely sure that the sovereign would grant each family a cow and a horse. However, the free half-pound of sausage also suited many. Thus, only the lazy did not gather in those days on the Khodynskoye field.
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The organizers, however, only took care of arranging a square kilometer-sized festive area, on which swings, merry-go-rounds, wine and beer stalls, tents with gifts were placed. When drawing up the project of the festivities, they absolutely did not take into account that the Khodynskoye field was the place of troops stationed in Moscow. There were military maneuvers and trenches and trenches were dug. The field was covered with ditches, abandoned wells and holes from which sand was taken.
Tverskaya-Yamskaya street during the coronation of 1896
On the eve of the disaster
Mass celebrations were scheduled for May 18th. But already on the morning of May 17, the number of people heading for Khodynka was so great that in places they blocked the streets, including pavements, and interfered with the passage of carriages. Every hour the influx increased - whole families walked, carried small children in their arms, joked, sang songs. By 10 o'clock in the evening, the crowd of people began to take on threatening proportions, by 12 o'clock in the morning it could be counted tens of thousands, and after 2-3 hours - hundreds of thousands. The people did not stop arriving.
Crush
According to eyewitnesses, from 500 thousand to one and a half million people gathered on the fenced field: “A thick fog of steam stood over the crowd of people, making it difficult to distinguish faces at close range. Those who were even in the front ranks drenched in sweat and looked exhausted. " The crush was so strong that after three o'clock in the morning many began to lose consciousness and die of suffocation. The victims and corpses closest to the aisles were dragged out by the soldiers to the inner square set aside for walking, and the dead, who were in the depths of the crowd, continued to "stand" in their places, to the horror of the neighbors who tried in vain to move away from them, but, nevertheless, did not try leave the celebration.
Shouts and groans were heard everywhere, but the people did not want to disperse. 1800 police officers, of course, were not able to influence the situation, they could only watch what was happening. The first corpses of 46 victims, carried through the city in open carts (there were no traces of blood and violence, since they all died of suffocation) did not make an impression on the people: everyone wanted to visit the holiday, to receive the royal present.
To put things in order, at 5 am it was decided to start distributing gifts. The artels, fearing that they would be swept away along with the tents, began to throw packages into the crowd. Many rushed after the bags, fell and immediately found themselves trampled into the ground by the neighbors pressing from all sides. After 2 hours, a rumor spread that cars with expensive gifts arrived and their distribution began, but only those who are closer to the cars will get the gifts. The crowd rushed to the edge of the field where the unloading was in progress.
Exhausted people fell into ditches and trenches, slid down the embankments, and the next followed. There is evidence that a relative of the manufacturer Morozov who was in the crowd, when he was carried to the pits, began to shout that he would give 18 thousand to the one who would save him. However, it was impossible to help him - everything depended on the spontaneous movement of a huge flow of people.
Meanwhile, unsuspecting people arrived at Khodynskoye field, many of whom immediately found their death there. So, workers from Prokhorov's factory stumbled upon a well, filled with logs and covered with sand. As they passed, they parted the logs, some of them simply broke under the weight of the people, and hundreds flew into this well. They were dragged out of there for three weeks, but they could not get all of them - the work became dangerous due to the cadaverous smell and constant debris from the walls of the well.
On the Khodynskoye field
And many died, never reaching the field where the walk was supposed to. Here is how the resident of the 2nd Moscow City Hospital Alexei Mikhailovich Ostroukhov described the spectacle that appeared before his eyes on May 18, 1896:
“A terrible picture, however. The grass is no longer visible; all beaten out, gray and dusty. Hundreds of thousands of feet trampled here. Some impatiently rushed to the gifts, others stamped their feet, being clamped in a vice from all sides, fought from powerlessness, horror and pain. In other places, they were sometimes so squeezed that clothes were torn. And here is the result - I have not seen piles of bodies of one hundred, one and a half hundred, piles less than 50-60 corpses. At first, the eyes did not distinguish the details, but saw only legs, arms, faces, the likeness of faces, but everything was in such a position that it was impossible to immediately orientate itself, whose hands were this or whose, someone's legs. The first impression is that these are all "cunning", all in dust, in tatters. Here is a black dress, but a gray-dirty color. Here you can see the naked, dirty thigh of a woman, underwear on the other leg; but strangely, good high boots are a luxury that is not available to “cunning people” …
A thin gentleman was spread out - his face was covered with dust, his beard was full of sand, and there was a gold chain on his waistcoat. It turned out that in the wild crush everything was torn; the fallen ones grabbed at the trousers of those who were standing, tore them off, and in the numb hands of the unfortunates there was only one clump. The fallen was trampled into the ground. Therefore, many of the corpses took on the appearance of ragamuffins. But why did separate heaps form from the heap of corpses?.. It turned out that the distraught people, when the crush stopped, began to collect the corpses and dump them into heaps. At the same time, many died, since the revived, being crushed by other corpses, had to suffocate. And that many were fainting, this is evident from the fact that I and three firefighters brought 28 people to life from this heap; there were rumors that the dead were reviving in police corpses …"
Throughout the day on May 18, carts loaded with corpses ply in Moscow. The emperor learned about what had happened in the afternoon, but did nothing, deciding not to cancel the coronation celebrations. Following this, Nicholas II went to a ball with the French ambassador Montebello. Naturally, he would not have been able to change anything, but his soulless behavior was greeted by the public with obvious irritation.
Consequences of the Khodynskaya tragedy
Nicholas II, whose official accession to the throne was marked by many human sacrifices, from that time began to be called among the people "Bloody". Only the next day, the tsar, together with his wife, visited the victims in hospitals, and ordered each family that had lost a relative to be given 1000 rubles. But for the people, the emperor did not become kinder from this, he was accused of the tragedy in the first place. Nicholas II was unable to take the right tone in relation to the tragedy. And in his diary on the eve of the new year, he artlessly wrote: "God grant that the next year, 1897, will go as safely as this one."
Consequence
The commission of inquiry was set up the next day. However, those responsible for the catastrophe were not publicly named. But even the Empress Dowager demanded to punish the mayor of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was grateful for “exemplary preparation and holding of celebrations” by the highest rescript, while Muscovites awarded him the title of “Prince Khodynsky”. And the chief of police of Moscow Vlasovsky was sent on a well-deserved rest with a pension of 3 thousand rubles a year. This is how the sloppiness of the responsible was "punished".
Who's guilty?
The shocked Russian public did not receive an answer from the commission of inquiry to the question: "Who is to blame?" And it is impossible to answer it unequivocally. Most likely, a fatal coincidence of circumstances is guilty of what happened. The choice of the place for the festivities was unsuccessful, the ways of people approaching the place of events were not thought out, and this despite the fact that the organizers had already counted on 400 thousand people (the number of gifts).
A very large number of people, attracted to the holiday by rumors, formed an uncontrollable crowd, which, as you know, acts according to its own laws (of which there are many examples in world history). It is also curious that among those hungry for free food and gifts were not only poor working people and peasants, but also very wealthy citizens. They could have done without the "goodies". But they could not resist the "free cheese in a mousetrap."
So the instinct of the crowd turned the festive party into a real tragedy. The shock of what had happened was instantly reflected in Russian speech: for more than a hundred years, the word "hodynka" has existed in everyday life, included in dictionaries and explained as "a crush in a crowd, accompanied by injuries and victims …"
And there is still no reason to blame Nicholas II for everything. By the time the tsar, after the coronation and before the ball, drove into the Khodynskoye field, everything had already been carefully cleaned up here, the dressed-up audience crowded and a huge orchestra performed a cantata in honor of his accession to the throne. “We looked at the pavilions, at the crowd that surrounded the stage, the music played the hymn and“Glory”all the time. Actually, there was nothing there …"
A. Ilchenko