6,000 people killed/died in one day

in Odessa, Russia.

"The Potemkin Mutiny", by Richard Hough

Just another story in history we never heard about because those communist were bad people. My husband rented the 1935 movie about it and I was shocked to learn of it. So I went to the library and the book was in the basement. Very, very, interesting. Here's a website about that incident.


http://www.shipsonstamps.org/Topics/html/potemkin.htm

On June 25, 1905, "Potemkin" left the port of Sewastopol (Sebastopol {town in N. Cal named after that city}/Sevastopol)for gunnery exercises in the bay of Tendra. Captain Golikov, called "the dragon", cut the crew’s lunch break in half and cancelled the weekly wash-day without replacement.

The unrest increased on June 27 when the sailors discovered putrid rotten meat hanging from a hook on the upper deck. At noon time, when the crew refused eating the spoiled meat, the captain ordered all sailors to line up on the afterdeck. He threatened to hang the rebels from the yardarms. When the situation escalated further, the captain left command to his chief mate. He threatened to execute 30 sailors with death by firing squad.

The sailors defended themselves, a shot was fired. The chief mate presumably shot fireman Vakulincuk, a known agitator, following a short exchange of words. The crew rushed at the officers, threw seven of them overboard and locked the others in their quarters. Other reports state that Vakulincuk fired the first shot.

The sailors took over the ship. They formed a committee led by sailor Matjusenko and entered the port of Odessa with a hoisted red flag. They anchored on the outer roadstead. There was a general strike in Odessa. There were riots and fights between workers and the police leading to several hundred shot dead. The city was declared to be under a ’state of siege’.

Vakulincuk’s casket was brought ashore and laid out at the quay on June 28th. Thousands of striking demonstrators streamed to the port and summoned up new courage. The sailors of the "Potemkin" had triumphed over the ruling classes. Vakulincuk's burial immediately became a violent, political demonstration. The Cossack police retaliated against the strikers, over 500 people were killed during this day, and some 6,000 workers were killed the following night. A quarter of the city was up in flames.

<snip>


http://www.shipsonstamps.org/Topics/html/potemkin.htm

Check the date again...

So therefore the (up and coming) communist were bad, smarty pants.

Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) is a staple of film history classes. It's very old by modern standards (b&w, silent, grainy, etc...), but worth checking out, since you will see scenes out of it in dozens of modern day movies (such as the famous 'women with broken glasses and the baby carriage tumbling down the stairs' shot).

Thanks for sharing.

crushed by the Czar's troops.

I take it your prefacing comment was tongue in cheek? Eisenstein's "Potemkin" is a masterpiece of both filmmaking in general and in propaganda filmmaking. The massacre on the Odessa steps is a classic scene that has been copied, used and lampooned in dozens of films since then.

I must say, however, if not for that film I would not likely have ever heard of the incident - as you said, the communists were bad people who did what they did because they were bad people, not because they suffered under an incredibly brutal autocratic regime that wielded power with medievel subtley.

As a kid the motto was "Better dead then red" so no good stories, especially rebellion, was taught when it came to Russia. McCarthyism was alive and well in the south that's for sure. To them the overthrow of the Czar was wrong. Little wonder that it happened when the people of Russia were being treated very badly. Just like the labor movement in the USA at the same time and really all over the world, we weren't taught in school; this incident was also a labor movement.

Really tough. Every Russian seeing the film in 1925 would have been familiar with recent history, and seen it through the lens of the 1918 revolution and the following civil war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_Potemkin_uprising

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battleship_Potemkin