The Sokolniki Tragedy 1975

[Robert Gordon Orr]

The Sokolniki Tragedy 1975

One of the deadliest tragedies involving a hockey game occurred on March 10, 1975.
It happened 41 years ago and much of it was clouded in mystery until recently. This happened at the height of the cold war era. The 1972 Summit Series was still very fresh in the memories of hockey fans.

Barrie Colts had just won the Wrigley National Midget Hockey Tournament (later Telus Cup), Canada's national midget ice hockey championship. Each year, the winning team represented Canada in the Soviet Union for a series of games against their elite teams

In 1975 Barrie Colts went over to the Soviet Union where they played a six-game exhibition series. Several of these games was against the Soviet U-18 team.

On the fateful day of March 10, the teams lined up against each other for the third time.
Barrie had just lost against the Soviet U-18 team by a 1-5 score two days earlier.

The game was played at the Sokolniki Sports Palace in Moscow, an arena that initially opened in 1956, but didn’t get a roof until 1973. The seating capacity was 5000.
On March 10, 1975 the arena was about 500 people short of capacity.
Of the around 4500 people present, many were young students between the age of 11 and 17 from the Sokolniki district. Around 100 people were Canadians (family etc)

Through diligent research by some Russian hockey fans, several eyewitnesses were tracked down in recent years. They were all at that game.

- Aleksandr Medvedev who was 17 at the time
- Aleksandr Goncharov, 17 at the time and a former classmate of Medvedev
- An employee of the Sokolniki Sports Palace, who worked that evening but who wished to remain anonymous

During the game the rumour had spread in the stands that the Canadian players would toss out chewing gum after the game. They had apparently done so in the previous games.

Many unfortunate circumstances led to the tragedy. First of all, the director of the rink was absent, and his deputy left the rink before the game ended. The only rink personnel at hand was one manager who was at the service entrance, an usher/electrician (who was reportedly drunk), plus a handful of other maintenance people.

Secondly, the “electrician” prematurely turned off the lights just as the game ended.
Thirdly, one of the four exits was sealed off, and it was the one were most people gathered after the game. So when they tried to get away from the stampede, they couldn’t.

The two teams fought to a 3-3 tie, and immediately after the game, the Canadian players skated towards the boards and threw hundreds of chewing gums (sponsored by Wrigley’s). This of course set off a tumultuous scene. People rushed down the concrete stairs to get their hands on the gum. Chewing gum from a western country was “hard currency” and highly sought after at the time.

In the fight for chewing gum, people fell off the concrete stairs, others were crushed from the massive onslaught of people. With the nearest exit blocked/shut, it made it worse.

According to eyewitnesses, Wrigley’s had a film crew with them at the game. They filmed the event for advertising purposes to show “the joy of Russian children getting their hands on the “forbidden” Western chewing gum”.

The few policemen at hand were completely caught off guard. People pressed forward from behind, someone stumbled and fell, and started a chain reaction as people piled on top of each other.

The scenes were chaotic. People screamed for help and desperate efforts were made to pull people out of the piles. After several minutes, the nearest exit door that had been blocked, opened. The people nearest the exit literally collapsed to the ground, some of them unconscius, some already dead.

The police rushed to the scene as people were dragged out to the street.
One of the victims was 16-year old Tanya Lobanova who had been at her first hockey game ever. As ambulances arrived, one of the eyewitnesses saw how a doctor tried to revive Tanya Lobanova, but her chest was completely crushed.

Most of the victims were students from the nearby 367th school. The funeral drew a large crowd of mourners. All the 21 victims were buried at the Preobrazhensky cemetery in Moscow.

After the tragedy very little information leaked out. The Soviet media did not publish anything on it and the information passed only by word of mouth. Canadian newspapers at the time wrote briefly about it, but didn’t have much information either.

UPI and AP had brief stories a few days later, including a few comments by the Canadian players.

Peter Prezecak, 16 was one of the Barrie players: “We were going out the door”, he said “I saw a woman being carried on a stretcher with a blanket over her head. Her leg was badly cut.”

Mike Grubb, 16, the captain of the team, said he saw three or four injured persons lying on the ground and others being put into an ambulance.

After the tragedy the Sokolniki Sports Palace was immediately closed. An investigation began. The lack of policemen at the venue resulted in the police captain and his deputy receiving a two year sentence.

The director of Sokolniki Sports Palace, Aleksandr Borisov was sentenced to five years in prison. He got out after only serving half of the term. He later became the director of the famous Luzhniki Stadium. His deputy Victor Titievsky got away with probation.

Sokolniki Sports Palace was later reconstructed as the stairs were redesigned to avoid another tragedy. Passages were widened and extended. The angles of the stairways were reduced, the lightning was improved and the number of stairs and exits were increased.
These changes were tried with soldiers in the stands and test evacuations of the arena were made.

/RGO

Click to read more...

 

[Pominville Knows]

Have a look at the following link, did Mike Gartner play on that team some time during that season or was it some kind of other age bracket? Look on top of his career stats: http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=22110

 

[Theokritos]

I was aware there was a tragedy of some sorts at one point in time, but I didn't know anything about the details. Very sad. Can't imagine how the guys who threw the gum must have felt afterwards. If they only knew beforehand...

Anyway, thanks for informative (albeit depressing) write-up.

 

[Crosbyfan]

I had not heard of this. Very tragic. I wonder if the players knew the extent of it.

 

[Hawksfan2828]

I was aware there was a tragedy of some sorts at one point in time, but I didn't know anything about the details. Very sad. Can't imagine how the guys who threw the gum must have felt afterwards. If they only knew beforehand...

Anyway, thanks for informative (albeit depressing) write-up.

I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea....

These people would spend half their salary for American shoes or products in general (even up to recent times)... You can bet free gum would cause a riot.

 

[Pominville Knows]

I don't understand why they thought it was a good idea....

These people would spend half their salary for American shoes or products in general (even up to recent times)... You can bet free gum would cause a riot.

I think it would be more strange for them to presume people would die from it.

 

[joeyjojo shabbadu]

I signed up just to say this because I was googling past history about the team to find articles for family and stumbled on this site and thread. The team was the Barrie Co-ops or Co-op Midgets, not the Colts. The Captain was Mike Gibb, not Grubb. Mike Gartner was in fact on that team but was not the star. There was nobody on that team named Peter Prececak, there was a Peter Traziuk.

They were a AA team that decided to enter the tournament. They realized they would have to play AAA all year if they did enter, but decided to do it anyways. It was the ultimate Cinderella story to win the Wrigley Tournament, and they beat everyone including the reigning champions Verdun. Dominated really.

I was a child and went to those games. It been legend and talked about even until now for some of us. I can honestly say two things about this that I know to be fact. 1) The gum was mostly traded away outside of games for pins, medals and flags and russian souveniers by the players and I know what some of them had as mementos. They were 15-16 and had no money. And they brought alot of gum back (I remember there being a drawer full for some time 2) I have never once heard this story from family, or any of the players or parents about anyone dying as a result of something they did. I just called around and nobody knew about this in our family that is still living. Maybe they decided to bury this amongst everyone and 100 people there, maybe this happened outside or away from the rink and nobody saw or knew, but its kind of unlikely. I believe CTV filmed it, maybe it was CBC, because there was a film somewhere that was re-watched yet the news was did not make it to the majority of canadian media.

I scoured the net alot today and I can only find one mention in an Ottawa paper of 3 people dying at that arena when fans where leaving the building were crushed in a stairwell out of only one open exit, all 100 Canadian fans were outside already. This did not happen at the rink because players tossed gum over the boards.

There were enough mistakes to make me just wonder, and this should have been news in our family, but I highly doubt this had anything to do with gum or the team, or that's it's 100% factual from the USSR at the time. And I just felt compelled to chime in, as their story is a great story.

 

[Canadiens1958]

March 12, 1975 The Gazette

From the front page of the March 12, 1975, Montreal Gazette:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=oX0xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xKEFAAAAIBAJ&hl=fr&pg=6846,3384398

No reference to gum, three deaths alleged but unconfirmed.

 

[joeyjojo shabbadu]

From the front page of the March 12, 1975, Montreal Gazette:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=oX0xAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xKEFAAAAIBAJ&hl=fr&pg=6846,3384398

No reference to gum, three deaths alleged but unconfirmed.

Thank you.

 

[Theokritos]

I signed up just to say this because I was googling past history about the team to find articles for family and stumbled on this site and thread.

Thank you for chiming in. Some of the inaccuracies you point out probably stem from transliterating names from one alphabet (Latin, as used in English) to another (Cyrillic, as used in Russian) and then back to Latin. The Russian reports I can find (including a Russian Wikipedia entry on the tragedy) refer to the Canadian team as "Бэрри Кап", which transliterates to "Barry Cap". That's close enough to the actual English name of the club. Likeweise Mike Gibb and Mike Grubb. The Prezecak / Traziuk one is more of a headscratcher.

Anyway, let's get to the meat of the question:

1) The gum was mostly traded away outside of games for pins, medals and flags and russian souveniers by the players and I know what some of them had as mementos. They were 15-16 and had no money. And they brought alot of gum back (I remember there being a drawer full for some time 2) I have never once heard this story from family, or any of the players or parents about anyone dying as a result of something they did. I just called around and nobody knew about this in our family that is still living. Maybe they decided to bury this amongst everyone and 100 people there, maybe this happened outside or away from the rink and nobody saw or knew, but its kind of unlikely. I believe CTV filmed it, maybe it was CBC, because there was a film somewhere that was re-watched yet the news was did not make it to the majority of canadian media.

I scoured the net alot today and I can only find one mention in an Ottawa paper of 3 people dying at that arena when fans where leaving the building were crushed in a stairwell out of only one open exit, all 100 Canadian fans were outside already. This did not happen at the rink because players tossed gum over the boards.

Here's an account that veteran sportswriter Vladimir Pakhomov has given in 2001:

"Our past stores a lot of dramas that have taken place at sports facilities. Unfortunately, the socio-political situation that existed in the country did not allow it to broadcast or write about human pain and suffering. In recent years there has been more grieving as people finally learned about many events that were glossed over back in the day. (...) Personally, I got word of the tragedy in Sokolniki on a trip to West Germany with the Soviet national team. [Note by Theokritos: The USSR team played exhibition games there from March 7th to 16th.] A colleague told me on the phone what had happened, but in Aesopian language: He was afraid of leaking information on the international phone line, because Moscow had immediately ordered those who worked for Glavlit (aka censorship) to surpress any mention of what had happened at the rink. Curiously enough, right after my telephone conversation with Moscow I opened the current issues of the local newspapers and I had to gasp: they reported about the drama after the hockey match in Moscow. West German radio and television reported the same information."​

Original:
Наше прошлое хранит немало драм, происходивших на спортсооружениях. К сожалению, общественно-политическая ситуация, существовавшая в стране, не позволяла писать или передавать в эфир о человеческих болях и страданиях. Болей в последние годы стало больше — народу сообщили о многих событиях, в свое время скрытых. (...) О трагедии в Сокольниках я узнал в поездке со сборной СССР по ФРГ. Коллега по телефону рассказал мне о случившемся эзоповым языком: боялся утечки информации на международной линии, ведь в Москве сразу дали команду работникам Главлита (в обиходе — цензуры) запретить какое-либо упоминание о случившемся на катке в Сокольниках. Любопытно, что сразу же после телефонного разговора с Москвой, развернув свежие номера местных газет, я ахнул: сообщалось о драме после хоккейного матча в Москве. Соответствующей информацией пичкали бюргеров западногерманские радио и телевидение.

Pakhomov says 21 people were killed and 25 others injured. His version of the tragedy:

"Nowadays, chewing gum is sold at every corner, but back then it was a curiosity. Anyone who travelled abroad tried to bring some gum back as a souvenir for his friends, relatives or anyone interested in the tour. Foreigners knew how high a role of gum was on our list, so they stuffed their pockets and briefcases before travelling to Moscow and then handed it to our citizens everywhere. That evening, the guests from across the Ocean – the youths and the adults accompanying them – headed from the locker room to the bus that was ready to take them back to their hotel and on their way they began to hand out roles of chewing gum. Back then there were no glass or stained-glass panels behind the last row at the Sokolniki rink. Leaning over the concrete barrier, you could observe what was happening on the first floor of the building, outside of the oval of the stands. The spectators who left the rink looked out and saw the chewing gum thrown from the bus to all sides. Someone shouted: 'Faster, downwards!' Without examining their steps, the crowd, intoxicated with the desire to get a priceless souvenir from the Canadians, rushed headlong down the steep stone stairs that had no interruptions. Suddenly the light went out. On the first floor, the metal door to the street was locked. Meanwhile, people from above were all running downwards...".​

Это сейчас жевательная резинка продается на каждом шагу, но тогда она была в диковинку. Любой, кто выезжал за рубеж, старался привезти в качестве сувенира жвачку друзьям, родным или всем, кто оказывался причастен к выезду. Иностранцы знали, как высоко котируется у нас пластинка резинки, они набили перед отлетом в Москву ею свои карманы, папки, портфели, а потом повсюду дарили ее нашим гражданам. Вот и в тот вечер гости из-за океана — юнцы и сопровождавшие их взрослые, направляясь из раздевалки к автобусу, увозившему делегацию в гостиницу, стали разбрасывать пластинки жвачек. Тогда позади последнего ряда сокольнического катка не было стеклянных или металлических витражей. Так что, перегнувшись через бетонированный барьер, можно было наблюдать, что происходит на первом этаже здания, за внешним овалом трибун. …Зрители, покидавшие каток, выглянув наружу, увидели, как внизу, около автобуса, в разные стороны разлетается жевательная резинка. Кто-то крикнул: "Быстрее вниз!" Толпа, опьяненная желанием получить от канадцев бесценный сувенир, бросилась вниз сломя голову по крутой каменной лестнице, не имевшей окон, не разбирая ступенек. Неожиданно в каменном мешке погас свет, а металлическая дверь на первом этаже, которая открывалась на улицу, оказалась запертой, между тем люди сверху все бежали…​

Pakhomov also recalls the aftermath:

"Returning from my trip [to West Germany], I went to the [Moscow] City Sports Committee and told them there were rumours of an outrageous numbers of victims in Sokolniki creeping around the city while the media remained silent. In response, there was zero reaction. For the longest time the head of the sports section of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party, Sergey Galin, refused to tell me how many fans had died and how many the ambulances had taken away, even in confidental off-the-record conversations."

Вернувшись из командировки, я отправился в городской спорткомитет и попытался сказать, что по городу ползут слухи о невероятном числе жертв в Сокольниках, а СМИ молчат. В ответ ноль реакции. Заведующий сектором спорта МГК КПСС Сергей Галин долго отказывался сказать мне даже доверительно, не для печати, сколько болельщиков погибло в Сокольниках, а скольких увезли кареты "скорой помощи".