The Onion Lake Tragedy: The Secret Death of 26 Soviet Children in 1960

Water accidents are a common cause of child deaths. Trouble can happen suddenly and anywhere, even if the water is only knee-deep. The mass death of 26 children at the Lukovoe Ozero pioneer camp in June 1960 shows that the presence of adults does not always guarantee safety. A tragedy of this scale could seriously undermine trust in children's camps, which is why the incident was kept under wraps for many years.

This terrible incident did not happen in Siberia or Kamchatka or in a fast-moving mountain river. It all happened on Lukovoe Lake, located in the Noginsk District of the Moscow Region, just 70 km from the capital. On an island in the middle of a large reservoir was the Lukovoe Lake pioneer camp, and on the shores were several recreation centers and boarding houses.

Of course, it was far from "Artek", but at least it was not far to go. It is easy to guess that in the pioneer camp located on the island, most of the entertainment was connected with water. Here they equipped beautiful beaches with awnings and slides, built a pier. The only floating craft was a homemade catamaran made of two boats connected by a wooden deck. There was a motor on one of them. The island was not completely isolated from the land - it was connected to the "mainland" by a swampy isthmus. Children often went for walks along it. This was the case on June 10, 1960. A group of children with a teacher were returning from a walk. They had less than a kilometer to go along the coast and the isthmus to get to the residential buildings.

But the teacher saw a motorman on a catamaran near the shore, testing the engine after another repair. She asked him to give the children a ride to the camp to shorten the route. 29 boys and girls aged 9-10 climbed onto a small boat together with the teacher. The motor started working, the catamaran sailed away from the shore. But soon the engine began to work intermittently, and then stalled. The man began to repair, and the children, despite the teacher's warnings, began to fool around. One girl fell overboard, which caused panic among the others. They rushed about the catamaran. The homemade vessel was not originally designed for such a large number of passengers. When everyone began to move around chaotically, one of the boats took on water. The catamaran tilted and sank to the bottom. Many of the children did not know how to swim. In a panic, they began to drown. Two adults tried to help, but it turned out to be impossible. The frightened schoolchildren grabbed the teacher and the motorman and dragged them to the bottom. As a result, not only the children died, but also both adults, who were excellent swimmers.

The terrible tragedy happened because the teacher did not want to walk an extra kilometer in the mud. Her decision to return on a faulty catamaran, and even with an overload, turned out to be fatal. The children died in a lake only 200 meters wide, in calm, sunny weather. There was not the slightest disturbance on the water, and no one could have imagined that the walk would be mortally dangerous.

A little later, another horrific detail came to light. The teacher Maria Zinovieva, who drowned with the children, was pregnant. It turns out that on that fateful day, Lukovoe Lake took not 28, but 29 lives. Only three survived that day - a girl and two boys. The girl was pulled out of the water by a local resident, Leonid Belousov, who was fishing nearby. The boys managed to swim to the shore themselves.

Rescuers who arrived from Noginsk spent the entire evening and night searching for the bodies of the drowned. Some children tried to swim to the shore, but in panic they moved along it and, exhausted, drowned. They were found away from the main group of bodies. Lukovoe Lake, although small, is quite treacherous. Most of its depth does not exceed 3.5 meters, but there are some holes up to 12 meters deep.

The pioneer camp "Lukovoe Ozero" was departmental and belonged to the machine-building plant of the city of Elektrostal. This settlement was located 20 km from the lake. Already on the morning of June 11, rumors of some serious incident reached the city. Worried parents left work and household chores and went to the camp to find out what had happened.

The children's bodies were taken to the city morgue. Local residents said that the screams and sobs of the parents could be heard far beyond the camp. Sergei Lebedev, who was vacationing in the camp at the time, recalled years later:

A few days later, the most tragic funeral in the city's history took place in Elektrostal. Local residents saw everyone off, and the procession stretched for more than a kilometer. An entire alley of identical metal monuments with portraits of children and the same date appeared in the old cemetery: June 10, 1960.

The two main culprits of the schoolchildren's deaths also died. But someone had to be punished. The camp director Ivan Zubov was brought to trial. He received three years in prison, served the full term, and died two years after his release from a heart attack.

Ironically, Zubov was not in the camp at the time of the tragedy; he had gone to the city to buy a new catamaran. Two days before the incident, after another breakdown of the boat, the director forbade using it for walks with children. This circumstance softened the sentence, which could have been harsher.

Information about the tragedy in the Moscow region appeared in the media only once - a short note in Izvestia. After that, the authorities classified all information about what happened. The emergency was discussed only at the local level - in institutions and schools in Elektrostal. In the Moscow region, orders were issued to check equipment in pioneer camps and conduct briefings for children and adults on the rules of conduct on the water.

The tragedy on Lukovo Lake is a terrible reminder of the importance of water safety, especially when it comes to children. Despite decades, such incidents, unfortunately, continue to occur. Do you think enough attention is paid to teaching children how to safely behave on the water? What measures, in your opinion, could reduce the number of such incidents? Share your opinion in the comments!