Recalling the tragedy: 20 years ago in Minsk 53 people died in a terrible crush on the subway

20 years ago there was one of the worst tragedies in the history of sovereign Belarus. 30 May 1999 was a beer festival in the center of the Belarusian capital. The weather deteriorated sharply, a thunderstorm with hail began. Thousands of people rushed to the subway, there was a crush, writes Currently,.

Фото: Depositphotos

Then, on the steps of the crossing of the Nemiga metro station, 53 people died, 250 was injured. Most of the dead are young people from 14 to 20 years, only three were older than 30. Among them, 42 girls and 2 police officer.

The concert continued for another hour. At these moments the group “Mango-Mango” was performing.

Negligence and hops

After the tragedy, a criminal case was opened under the article “negligence”. The accused were the head of public security of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate of the Minsk City Executive Committee, Viktor Rusak, and the head of the department of public events, Mikhail Kondratin. But in 2002, the chairman of the Central District Court, Peter Kirkovsky, reclassified the charge to an article that did not provide for liability for the deaths of people, and dismissed the case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. Relatives of the victims received compensation.

Lawsuits were repeatedly filed against the city authorities, the Mir radio station and the production center Class Club JazzCraft (they were responsible for the organization and security at the beer festival). All of them were rejected.

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President Alexander Lukashenko visited the scene of the tragedy that evening. In his opinion, there was no need to look for the guilty - the doctors and the police acted flawlessly, and the main cause of the tragedy was hops. 1-th and 2-th June in Belarus declared mourning.

Chairman of the Minsk City Executive Committee Vladimir Yermoshin wrote a letter of resignation, but Lukashenko did not accept it. Yermoshin held office until February next year.

Relatives of the victims blamed the authorities and the police: many said that the hustle was provoked by several unknown young people who managed to escape punishment. The authorities insisted that this was a coincidence. After the tragedy, corresponding plans were developed, which, fortunately, have not yet been tested in actual conditions.

“There is no need to carry those who are not breathing into the ambulance, so as not to take up space and save the living”

In 1999, Anna was 17, she was finishing school. Together with classmates decided to go to the beer festival on Nemiga. Today, Anna told the Belarusian service of Radio Liberty how she did not accidentally get into the crowd and what was happening that evening.

“There were no such large-scale events at that time,” recalls Anna, today she is 37. “So everything was new to us. People drank a lot of alcohol. We were having fun. Mostly young and middle-aged people came to the holiday, many came with children.”

On May 30, 1999, Radio Mir celebrated its second anniversary with a holiday with a concert and a prize draw. Ten empty cigarette packs were exchanged for half a liter of beer for free. The then popular Russian group Mango-Mango played two songs in front of a crowd of thousands. At 20:25 it began to rain heavily.

“It suddenly got dark and hail began to fall,” says Anna. – I was wearing a thin shirt. Hailstones the size of quail eggs hit my body painfully. There were no shelters or awnings nearby. Although it was warm, people were still looking for somewhere to hide. Those who managed to hide under the bridge near Svisloch. But there wasn’t much space there.”

Anna and her friends first ran under the bridge, and then decided to take the subway and go home. Already at the steps to the metro crossing, Yuri, Anna’s friend, said: “Wait, there’s a crowd there! We will be crushed!

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At the entrance to the metro they saw people being passed through the crowd. “I saw a young guy, completely blue. He was out of breath. At that time I still thought: “Nightmare! Is it like squeezing a person so that he can’t breathe?” – recalls Anna. Only later did the girl find out that 53 people were killed and more than a hundred were injured.

“Then it seemed like an endless stream. More than one hundred people were carried out. Whether he would survive or not was not at all obvious.”

The victims were transferred upstairs. They didn't go down. Those who showed signs of life were taken by the arms and legs at the very exit and carried into ambulances in such positions.

“A certain defense mechanism worked for me,” says the girl. “I looked at everything as if it was happening not to me, but in a movie.” There were almost no emotions. I remember how they helped one injured woman get to the ambulance. She kept asking where her son was. And now 20 years have passed, and this is “Where is my son? Where is my Zhenechka? still in my memory.

Ambulances filled instantly. They came two or three, and queues lined up near them, eyewitnesses told.

“Suddenly in the crowd they said: “There is no need to carry those who are no longer breathing at all into the ambulance, so as not to take up space and save the living.” The bodies of the dead were piled near the Christmas trees. There was a whole mountain there,” Anna recalls.

The doors of the subway during the stampede were closed. People asked to let them in, but metro workers decided that people would jump through the turnstiles and fall onto the rails. And they gasped on the steps.

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Everyone reacted differently: loss of control, shock, could not say anything, someone was shaking.

Anna’s friend could not help the orderlies: what she saw made her sick. “Look, this is someone's shoe. Where is his owner?” she asked, and she immediately vomited.

“It wasn't a crowd. It was a herd,” says Anna. – A simple conclusion should be drawn from this tragedy: do not give in to the crowd. But it probably doesn’t work in real life.”

After the tragedy, Anna developed a fear of crowds. “Now I know what a crowd can do,” she says. “That’s why I step aside at big concerts, especially when I don’t have enough air. The Nemiga tragedy is also a cautionary tale. A crowd is something where no one can do anything, even if they really wanted to.”

In 2002, a memorial in the form of 53 roses scattered along the steps was installed at the site of the tragedy, as well as a small chapel with a metal plate inside, on which the names of the dead were carved.

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