Spitak earthquake 1988. What trip is complete without photos? How many days did you stay at the facility
It happens like this: I am sure that some events have long been forgotten, and suddenly you suddenly begin to remember.
Although 20 years have passed. After the earthquake in the Armenian city of Spitak, I went there as a volunteer rescuer.
Now I remember what was there. And what was not. I'm sorting my memories into two piles, what was and what wasn't.
There were no stoves in the tents, and the tents themselves, bulldozers, excavators. There were no jacks. There were no respirators. I tried to make gauze, like surgical masks - but I couldn’t work in them, I need special ones. Dust is harmful as such, and dust mixed with cement, asbestos, etc. is toxic. Did not have.
There were no cranes.
There was water. Of course, there was no washing, but there was drinking. Mineral. Local. You can drink, but the tea turns out - the muck is unbearable.
The coffins were free. Need - come, take it. They immediately appeared, there were no volunteer rescuers, fires were still burning, and military coffins were already laid down at the stadium. Such long stacks. Almost on the first day.
There were no sappers, there was no one to organize directed explosions for clearing. The military gave us some packages, and one of the rescuers made cords (a hole in the rubble, where the charge is laid, and around it is filled with sand). I asked him - where did you study? and he says: what are you doing! I've been since childhood! In general, I entered the Technological Institute, I didn’t get half a point. But in general, our wall of collapse is cut in a wrong way. I feel. So if we don’t get screwed over now, I will do it again, for sure.
There were construction helmets. Lot. But this is for dismantling the rubble outside, the rescuers do not need them. It is still impossible to work in a blockage in a helmet.
There were a lot of marauders. If they don’t cover the dead with a tarpaulin, there’s no strength to watch, fingers stick out in different directions at wild angles, marauders removed the ring.
There were no rescue ropes, carts, emergency sleeves. There were no jacks - I already said that. There were no boards to strengthen the galleries, drifts and manholes. Soldiers chopped furniture for this, and collected all kinds of fittings. It turned out badly: there is not enough furniture that survived, it is immediately taken away for firewood, and if there is, it is too thin. But there were no boards, there was nothing to strengthen. You crawl, the blockage lives its own life, as if breathing. Fearfully.
There were soldiers. Lot. With machine guns at the ready, as in war.
There were no geophones - devices capable of picking up sounds made by people; there were no trained dogs to search under the rubble.
Alcohol was. Lot.
There was humanitarian aid. A lot, good. It was sold in all city markets. The military were busy guarding it, the authorities were busy distributing it, the bandits were taking it away.
There were no lights or spotlights. But they also worked at night. How - now I can not even explain. Somehow. Partly because it's cold to sleep: -10 degrees, not everyone has sleeping bags, there was no heating.
There were no diesel generators.
There were Austrian rescuers with specially trained dogs, which they carried over the rubble in their arms. A man in my life only once carried me in his arms, like they carry their dogs.
There were pseudo-victims of the earthquake, in Yerevan knocking out money in various instances.
There was no “hour of silence” when they turn off all the equipment and listen - suddenly they are alive under the rubble. Because you need to listen to it with equipment, but it was not there. It was suitable for these purposes from the military, but on the third day they were forbidden to give it because of secrecy. But sometimes you hear it.
There was an elderly woman, she knocked on the surviving pipe with a piece of brick, she was clearly audible on the surface. We dismantled 14 hours. When a part was dismantled, a part was collapsed, a hole was made, and I went down to it into the rubble, because it was necessary to fix it on a stretcher. I sat there with her for about three hours - it was somehow embarrassing for me to leave, but when you say “I will come back for you”, they do not believe, they immediately begin to howl. There were no jacks, there were no proper stretchers, there was no crane, only a makeshift winch. They dragged it hard. So she told me: baby! You can’t say such words to a young girl, no one will marry you!
The board was not given back either, there was none. We flew for our own money, through Krasnodar, the devil knows how.
I did not see the volunteer rescuers with whom I was there again. To write, call each other - this was not the case.
It's good that we were there.
I think so.
22.08.16 16:20
As you know, provocative pro-Western propaganda in order to make the former peoples of the USSR hostile to Russia invents and exacerbates all sorts of historical myths. Today, the “puppeteers” from the United States, who are trying to get Armenia into the anti-Russian camp, are trying to launch the myth of the alleged “genocide”, which, they say, Russia once organized against the Armenian people.
It is clear that no anti-Russian myths can compete with the myth of the "Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire". Although more and more Armenians blame not only the Ottoman Empire, but also Russia (but not themselves) for the events of 1915. In the absence of evidence of a “genocide-comparable” catastrophe of Armenians that could be attributed to Russia, those who are tasked with further embroiling Armenians and Russians resort to complete historical fiction, which, nevertheless, resonates in the infected Russophobia of Armenia.
To this end, they begin to exploit the topic of the Spitak earthquake, trying to prove that it was in fact nothing more than an act of "genocide" of Russia in the form of the then USSR against the Armenians. Say, the earthquake happened because Russia decided to use "geophysical weapons" against the Armenians.
It is in this vein that this tragedy is presented by the material “How Spitak was blown up in 1988 - the monstrous murder of 350 thousand Armenians” posted on the website analitik.am on March 31, 2016 (two days before the start of the four-day war in Karabakh, after which anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia began to go off scale). I wonder if this is a “coincidence”, or is there some kind of pattern here?
Here is an excerpt from this article:
“From the summer to the end of November 1988, in an urgent but organized manner, under the leadership of the military and representatives of the KGB of the USSR and Armenia, all Azerbaijani villages were resettled in “Azerbaijan” and Georgia, starting from Kapan in the south, to Stepanavan, Kalinino and Ghukasyan - in the north.
In November 1988, the wife of a Russian general, who was resting in the Arzni sanatorium, confidentially (in her ear!) Ruzan Yeremyan, the wife of academician S.T. . She informed me about this. I called the Armenian KGB, where these rumors were denied as not worthy of attention.
In mid-November 1988, pianist Svetalna Navasardyan received a call from her friend from Leningrad who advised all Leninakans to urgently leave the city of Leninakan.
At the end of November 1988, a telephone operator in the city of Hrazdan overheard a conversation with Moscow of a Russian general, where he told his wife literally the following: “I'm delayed! I'll come after the test."
In late November - early December 1988, dozens of cases were noted in Leninakan when the military, while remaining in the city themselves, sent their wives and children from Armenia to Russia without explanation.
On December 4, 5 and 6, 1988, powerful explosions thundered in the Spitak-Kirovakan region, causing an earthquake with a magnitude of 3-4 points. The earth trembled, glass rattled; fleeing snakes and all living creatures appeared in the mountains - rats, moles. The inhabitants said: “What are these damned soldiers doing to us? If it goes on like this, they will destroy our houses!”
On December 7, 1988, at 10:30 am, Turkish workers working on the right bank of the Arpa River near Leninakan left their jobs and hurriedly retreated deep into their territory.
On December 7, 1988, at 11 o’clock, a soldier came out of the training ground near Spitak and told the peasants who were working in the field picking cabbage: “Go away! Hurry! Now the tests will begin!
On December 7, 1988, at 11:41 am, in the area of the city of Spitak and the village of Nalband, two powerful explosions were heard with an interval of 10-15 seconds: after the first explosion, the earth went in a horizontal direction, a column of fire, smoke and burning erupted from the ground. height over 100 meters.
One peasant from the village of Nalband was thrown up to the top of the electric pole wires. At the top of Spitak, near a grocery store, a Zhiguli car was thrown 3-4 meters towards the fence. Before the passengers had time to get out of the car, the second terrible explosion thundered, accompanied by an underground rumble. This is the energy of the bowels released! The city of Spitak went underground, settled in front of the passengers of the car. In Leninakan, 75 percent of the buildings were destroyed. High-rise buildings after the first blow turned around their axis and after the second blow, without returning back, they settled down, went underground to a height of 2-3 floors.
After testing geophysical weapons, the cities of Leninakan and Spitak were cordoned off by troops. Under Nalband, which was completely destroyed, the military cordoned off ... a wasteland where the ground sank 3-4 meters. It was forbidden not only to approach, but also to photograph this area.
Dosimetry was also prohibited. Special military brigades that arrived in Leninakan were given the task of cleaning up the hostel for the military.
They refused to rescue the civilian population from the ruins, referring to the fact that: "There is no such order." These were soldiers from the Tomsk airborne division, airlifted to Yerevan in the summer of 1988, where the girls presented them with flowers, gave them cake and cigarettes. In the absence of any rescue equipment, the surviving population of Leninakan and relatives who broke into the city raked the ruins of houses with their hands, from where, in the bitter cold, the groans of the wounded and calls for help were heard.
In general, everything is clear. The "insidious" Russians in 1988, like the no less "insidious" Turks in 1915, decided to exterminate the Armenians, planned and carried out a monstrous crime. Therefore, Russia, like Turkey, must forever repent before the Armenians and recognize its terrible “seismic genocide of 1988”.
What can be said about this?
Let's start with the fact that the author of the "sensational" material is trying to present the matter in such a way that supposedly the Soviet authorities (read - Russians), trying to arrange another "genocide" of Armenians, and not wanting to jeopardize "kindred in spirit" Azerbaijanis, deliberately resettled them from the place this very future "seismic genocide of Armenians" to safer places.
Well, the unfortunate Armenians did not know anything about the impending "genocide" and apparently were very surprised why their Azerbaijani neighbors were leaving them so unexpectedly "for some unknown reason".
But the reality, alas, was quite different. Azerbaijanis left their villages, where their ancestors had lived for centuries, not according to the “insidious plan of the Russians and the KGB”, but fleeing from mass pogroms and brutal murders by Armenian nationalists who swept across the entire Armenian SSR in 1988, but were distinguished by particular cruelty precisely in northern regions of the republic.
The Russian historian Yuri Pompeev described the horrors of the violence of the pogroms and the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in the autumn of 1988 in this way. Here is an excerpt from his memoirs:
“Defenseless and unarmed Azerbaijanis, usually being driven out of their homes undressed and barefoot, they said: “Damned Turks, get out of Armenia!”
On the night of November 25-26, the Armenians carried out an armed attack on the village of Shaumyan (the former name was Vartanly) near the city of Kirovakan (now Vanadzor), 14 Azerbaijanis were brutally killed and burned. The surviving population of the village hid in the mountains and forests during the day on snowy and cold days, and set off on the road at night, and only after 13-14 days they were able to reach Azerbaijan.
On November 28, 1988, attacks on Azerbaijanis were also carried out in the Spitak region (Khamamli). Three people were killed, 7 were seriously injured.
Before the Spitak earthquake on December 7, 1988, in all areas where Azerbaijanis lived on the territory of Armenia, Armenian armed groups committed riots, murders and robberies.
Armenian bandits in the village of Kuibyshev, Stepanavan (Jalalogly) region, mercilessly killed 3 more Azerbaijanis with cold weapons. And in the village of Gerger, one woman was burned alive, and the corpse was thrown into a garbage dump….”
There are other facts and eyewitness accounts. In November 1988, in the city of Spitak, the first secretary of the Spitak city committee of the Communist Party N. Muradyan, the first secretary of the regional executive committee of the Communist Party F. Abuchyan, the head doctor of the district R. Baghdaryan, judge E. Nazaryan, the head of police V. Sargsyan, the prosecutor Arakisyan, accompanied by several armed militants expelled Azerbaijani families from their apartments and massacred them. As a result, 36 people, unable to withstand the sophisticated torture, died.
On November 27-28, 1988, Norayr Muradyan, the first secretary of the Spitak district committee of the party, allegedly organized the removal of Azerbaijanis from Armenia. People were put into trucks, but they never reached their destination. Between the Russian villages of Lermontovo and Fioletovo, these innocent people were burned alive. There were children, women, old people in the trucks. By chance, the survivors traveled through snowy passes to the Kazakh region of Azerbaijan for 5 days.
But the worst crime in the Spitak region was the following: several dozen children aged 5 to 12 were walled up alive in a pipe 20 meters long and 1.5 meters in diameter. Another 27 Azerbaijani children were taken away in an unknown direction, no one knows what happened to them.
This is only a small part of the facts of the monstrous atrocities of the Armenian nationalists against the Azerbaijani population. So the Azerbaijanis were evicted from the Spitak region not at all “according to the insidious plan of the KGB”, but to escape from the real genocide. Unfortunately, not everyone managed to escape.
As for the “selection of facts” that allegedly testify to the “artificial” nature of the Spitak earthquake, then yes, indeed, in their nationalistic hatred of other peoples, including Russians, many Armenians believed in these myths then and now .
As you know, hatred, especially nationalistic, deprives people of reason and it is very easy to convince them of the most fantastic "versions" of natural disasters, providing dubious and tendentious information.
In reality, however, technologies and methods that would make it possible to reliably cause an earthquake in a precisely given place do not exist even now, just as they did not exist in 1988.
Undoubtedly, the study of the influence of various impacts on seismic processes is being studied in many countries. They also studied in the USSR ... It was even scientifically proven that earthquakes can be quite provoked by such an impact on deep layers as excessive pumping of minerals, the same oil or gas, or filling large reservoirs with water, etc. But in order to deliberately provoke a destructive earthquake at a certain point, science has not yet reached this not in the years of the USSR, nor today.
Even underground nuclear tests in seismically active areas, such as the Semipalatinsk region in Kazakhstan and the test site in the US state of Nevada, did not lead to catastrophic earthquakes.
The focus of the Spitak earthquake was at a depth of 10 km. Provocateurs and creators of the myth about the “seismic genocide of Armenians” are trying to prove that the Soviet authorities deliberately provoked it by drilling a well and organizing an underground explosion.
However, the reality is that the Spitak area is already a seismically active zone. It is enough to take even Soviet seismic maps published long before 1988, as it is clear that historically numerous earthquakes were precisely with epicenters in the area of the Pambak ridge located near Spitak or to the north of it, in the region of the Javakheti ridge which crosses the current Armenian-Georgian border.
It is strange why the Armenians, being supposedly "believing Christians", seek to blame Russia, do not take into account another hypothesis, which is obvious from the point of view of Christianity: a natural disaster is often sent by God as a punishment for transcendent human sins and crimes. The fact of such a crime in the Spitak region was recorded.
The fact is that when during the rescue work in the Spitak region a terrible find was discovered: several dozen corpses of Azerbaijani children walled up in a pipe. The foreign rescuers who discovered them were so shocked that they continued to participate in the work.
Who knows how many similar "finds" the rescuers mistook for those who died from the earthquake - but in reality they were Azerbaijanis killed even before the earthquake. Considering that just the day before, a wave of pogroms and murders of peaceful Azerbaijanis swept across Armenia, and many of them were considered missing, it becomes clear what transcendent atrocities were committed by local Armenian nationalists.
The earthquake in Spitak was perceived by those in Moscow who wanted to extinguish the Karabakh conflict at any cost as a kind of "appeal to reason" - albeit a terrible one. They still hoped that the earthquake would force people in Armenia to change their minds and stop both the persecution of Azerbaijanis in the Armenian SSR and demand the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Unfortunately, the earthquake only delayed the bloody events of the final expulsion of the Azerbaijani population from the Armenian SSR in a very short time, not to mention the fact that it did not at all prevent the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan and the activity of militants in Karabakh.
Despite the fact that the majority of Azerbaijanis, natives of the northern regions of the Armenian SSR, were saved precisely by the fact that at the time of the earthquake they had already been expelled from their homes, which after the earthquake turned into ruins (often buried under the ruins of the Armenian marauders who captured them), in many Azerbaijani villages people were still there. But the local Armenian nationalists did everything to prevent aid from reaching the Azerbaijanis who suffered from the earthquake. The Azerbaijanis, who naturally survived the earthquake, were expelled from Armenia within a few months.
The myth about the "artificial" Spitak earthquake, in principle, was invented by the "well-wishers" of Russia long ago. But today it falls on "fertile ground" in the form of the consciousness of the majority of Armenians clouded by transcendental nationalism. It is possible that the matter will not be limited to this myth. Perhaps in the near future there will be other absolutely fantastic versions accusing Russia of "plans of genocide" of the Armenian people.
On December 7, 1988, at 11:41 Moscow time, an earthquake occurred in Armenia. The cities of Spitak, Leninakan, Stepanavan, Kirovakan were destroyed. About 60 villages in the north-west of the republic were turned into ruins, almost 400 villages were partially destroyed. According to scientists, during the earthquake in the zone of rupture of the earth's crust, energy was released, equivalent to the explosion of ten atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The wave caused by the earthquake circled the globe and was recorded by seismographs in Europe, Asia, America and Australia.
500 thousand people died, tens of thousands were injured, missing, traumatized for life. The pain of the Armenian people was felt by the people of the whole planet. The bell of tragedy was heard by all mankind. In those days, Armenia became a place of achievement. And together with everyone, this feat was accomplished by a detachment of rescuers from the Peoples' Friendship University. The fighters of the student detachment of the UDN them. Patrice Lumumba took on the responsibility of helping people in distress. And God knows, we have done everything possible for this.
We bring to your attention 2 interviews of the eyewitnesses of the earthquake in Armenia, who cleared the rubble.
Earthquake in Armenia
Yuri Alexandrovich Reznikov, a graduate of the law faculty of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, was a member of the detachment that was sent to Armenia in 1988 in connection with the tragic event.
Yuri Alexandrovich, tell me,please about the squad. What did you do there?
There were two detachments, they were sent in turn, one after the other. I was in the first one. There were many brigades inside the detachment: rescue, medical, humanitarian aid detachment, corpse brigade. I was in the brigade of corpses. Some guys worked there. Each brigade needed a representative who would solve organizational issues, and I was such a representative. It was at the beginning of the first course. I just recently returned from the army (I served in Afghanistan), perhaps this is one of the reasons why I was chosen as a brigadier. When they arrived at the scene, they immediately began to dig and search. We searched for the living, but unfortunately we did not find the living... We went around the objects, collected, cleaned, loaded the dead bodies.
Ruins, dead bodies... YouIt was scary?
It was. Not without it. But my partner was a marine, a very good person, in any troubles with him it was not so scary. Still, of course, it was difficult. The boys screamed at night in their sleep, woke up. After having seen enough for a day, it was not so easy to fall asleep.
How many days did you stay at the facility?
About two weeks, but there every day passed like a year. There were a lot of bad things.
How did the residents of the city behave? Did they help you?
They helped as much as they could ... But they were in a completely different situation. How were they to dig? Suddenly one of the relatives will be found? It so happened that they were sitting near the ruins, burning fires, waiting. We cleared the rubble. There were children, and old people - everything in a row. They were also broken. After we found the bodies, they called them meat, there was a lot of cynicism on purpose, in order to make it easier to relate to what they saw, they put it in a coffin and either gave it to relatives, or took the coffin to the square, from where their relatives soon took them . There were cases when people simply fainted when they recognized one of the dead.
What trace did this tragic event leave in your life?
This is a huge mark on my life. These two weeks have changed my life. I began to look at the world differently. By that time I already had army experience - these are not the first dead people I have seen in my life.
What is important in this incident is how living people behaved in the midst of all this nightmare. How the locals behaved, who miraculously retained at least some mind, it was something incredible for them. How our guys behaved, detachment - each of them can be proud of.
Do you remember your state whenreturned to Moscow?
We often met, especially the first few weeks: could not part. It felt like we were different from other people. We have become different. We were looking for meetings with each other, because some kind of pain settled inside, which no one will understand, except for the one who was there. One had only to approach, look into each other's eyes, say some words ... and you understand a person in a completely different way. No one understands you better than someone who has gone through this.
Do you often remember this event?
Yes. Now less often. It was too painful, too scary to remember it. In the early years it was a huge block of its own history. These two weeks have been very concentrated. In the army, in Afghanistan, I have never seen so many deaths. Due to the fact that we saw a lot of the dead, the smell of life was very acute. Many people live and never think about death, avoid thinking about it. After this story, everyone present there had a different outlook on life.
What would you, having gone through such a difficult life path, wish us, the youth of the 21st century?
Probably look at your life with wide eyes, even if they are open. Open them again and again. Evaluate life based on death, knowing that death is inevitable, it will happen to everyone.
Earthquake in Armenia 1988, video
Kamo Pavlovich Chilingaryan, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Languages of the Faculty of Law, shared his memories, and this is what I managed to find out.
I know that 20 years ago, immediately after the tragic events in Armenia, RUDN University students went to the scene, and you were among them. Tell me how many students succeeded to go to the rescue and what united you?
At first there were 33 of us, then 33 more, then 13. Another 7 people traveled alone, for a total of 86. Everyone was united by one desire to help people in trouble. RUDN University students came to help my people, although many of them only heard about Armenia during geography lessons.
Who took part in this trip?
Among us were guys from different faculties, even graduate students. I was a student at that time. There were not only Armenians, but also Russians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks. There were many who wanted to go and help, but the issue of obtaining visas played an important role here.
How did you manage to go to Armenia almost immediately after the earthquake, because there were not enough tickets for all the people who wanted to help?
I remember it was December 10th. On this day in the morning, donors went to donate blood. About an hour later, the products were ready for shipment, but the question of the detachment had not yet been resolved. Organizational issues were resolved quickly, on the run. Everyone was involved: the party committee, the trade union committee, the Komsomol committee. A couple of hours later, we were "given the go-ahead", but it was not known whether all the volunteers were coming or only half of them. Everyone was in a hurry. They loaded the bus with blankets and food. We acted like a capture team. We went to Vnukovo airport. To get to the box office, you had to push the crowd. We were offered an option: to act with a policeman. Finally, late in the evening, everything was settled: our detachment flew out the next day in the morning.
Analysis of the rubble of Armenia
What did you have to deal with at the airport?
There were a lot of people at the airport - a real pandemonium. All these people listened to and watched the Vremya program with faces petrified from experiences. There were tears in their eyes. People tried to fly there, but there were no tickets. I remember that everyone considered himself the most necessary. One woman argued that she has the right to fly first, as she works in a hospital, and rescuers are not the main thing.
With what thoughts did you go to Armenia, to the scene of the incident?
I thought: tomorrow we will see the pain and the full depth of the tragedy with our own eyes. From tomorrow we are fighters.
And what did you see upon arrival?
We arrived in Leninakan. We entered the city at midnight and searched for headquarters until two o'clock. There was no water in the city, fires were burning. It was a ghost town. In the darkness of the night, in the headlights, we saw the horror with our own eyes. Corpses, ruins, coffins, coffins, coffins... We pitched two tents on Lenin Square. Night. Dirt. Rain. Cold. Faceless people. There were also marauders among them: in front of our eyes, unknown people were dragging toys, pens from the former Children's World ...
What problems did you havecollide?
Infection spread in the city, so the main problem was the lack of water. You can't drink water. Mineral only. The city was paralyzed. And the incredible was happening on the square: there was a queue for diesel fuel, bread, water. However, there was still no mineral water. We approached other detachments, asked for at least one bottle, they did not refuse us. Sometimes food was provided by the army. After a few days it became very cold: 20 was at night, 10 during the day. The newspapers wrote that there were bathhouses, but at the headquarters they only promised to take us there. Armenian students took several children with them and went home to wash themselves. Everywhere, in all yards, there are coffins. Large and small, plywood and plank, hastily put together. The presence of such a huge number of corpses in a few days could cause an epidemic. I remember, as our doctor said, our health is in our hands. But it was not a slogan. This is the truth of life. I was a supply manager, and that meant a lot of work. Every day it was necessary to get bread, mineral water. I remember once the French gave us a bag of concentrates and a bag of biscuits. "Will live!" we thought.
Did you have a certain object,And what was your team involved in?
The desire to work did not leave us, despite everything we saw. We helped everyone. The next day, as soon as we arrived there, in the afternoon, some people approached us and asked us to remove the children from under the rubble of the school. Even now it's hard to talk about it. That day, we returned to the camp tired, frightened ... Then, for the first time in our lives, we shook hands with death.
What is left of the city of Leninakan?
The Flower City has turned into a Dead City. From everywhere there is only noise, fuss, smoke, stench. Ironically, next to the ruins was the exhibition "Leninakan Today", though empty. At times, the landscape resembled a surreal painting. The house, as if cut off by a powerful cutter, with all its sofas, bathtubs, hangers, stands in front of you and silence ...
What feelings came over youreturn to another world, to Moscow?
A strange feeling seized everyone who came from the place of the earthquake. It seemed like it was just a nightmare. The withdrawal was slow. Our detachment fulfilled its duty to the Armenian people, to the Motherland.
What has this trip changed in your life?
I began to appreciate life more. "Friendship" from an ephemeral concept has turned into a real concept. We then lived in an overly politicized state. But here, in Leninakan, we saw Americans, Swiss, Poles and many other volunteers from different countries ready to help the people in trouble and the country as a whole.
We began to treat Israel differently when we saw their rescuers with dogs. There were no more enemies, imaginary and real. It was the unity of peoples, which we sometimes lack so much today.
In 2016, the film "Earthquake" was released, which tells about the events of the 1988 Spitak earthquake in Armenia. The city of Spitak was completely destroyed in half an hour, and with it the settlements of Gyumri, Vanadzor, Stepanavan. This film tells directly about the city of Leninakan, which is now called Gyumri. We came here to see the remains of the ruins and chat with the locals who caught this terrible time.
In the center of the city, everything has been rebuilt a long time ago, the city hall is located on Vardanants Square.
And in the center of the square, the monument to Vardan Mamikonyan is the national hero of Armenia, the leader of the Armenian uprising against the Iranian Sassanids, who tried to impose the Zoroastrian religion.
To the question of the locals in the cafe: "What to see in your place?" Everyone answered: "We have beautiful churches." There are even two of them in this area.
Church of the Virgin.
And the Amenaprkich Church, which is still being restored.
By the way, this is how it looked after the earthquake.
But we are not entirely interested. Having learned the direction of movement to the area where the devastation remained after those times, we went to look for the ruins.
To be honest, even without an earthquake, the city is not in the best condition, although it is the second largest city in Armenia.
Electrician's nightmare
Slowly, we got to that area, destroyed, but never restored.
It seems that the earthquake took place here not 29 years ago, but yesterday.
The government set a period of 2 years for restoration, however, after 3 years the Soviet Union collapsed, in connection with which the period was pushed back. Actually, the consequences of the 1988 earthquake have not been eliminated so far. Remarkably, the Union threw all its financial and labor resources to help those affected by the disaster in Spitak: more than 45,000 volunteers came from the republics. Tens of thousands of parcels from all over the Soviet Union arrived in the city and surrounding settlements as humanitarian aid.
During this earthquake, about 30,000 people died and more than 140,000 people became disabled.
And someone dropped everything and left.
It is noticeable here how one strong wall of the house was preserved, and a completely different wall was built up to it from the remains of bricks.
This house just got a wall
There are also beautiful buildings nearby.
This memorial park
There is a memorial sign here, but its meaning is almost impossible to understand.
And on the other side of the square, there is a new monument “To Innocent Victims, Merciful Hearts”, depicting a heap of people and concrete blocks.
The inscription on the stone slab nearby in Russian and Armenian reads:
“At 11:41 a.m. on December 7, on a foggy and gloomy December day in 1988, the mountains shuddered and the earth shook with great force.
Cities, villages, schools, kindergartens and industrial enterprises were instantly destroyed. More than a million people were left homeless.
During this tragic hour, 25,000 people died, 140,000 became disabled, and 16,000 were pulled out from under the rubble.
And the living ones were looking for their loved ones among those buried under the ruins.
And the children called their parents, and the parents called their children.
And there were thousands with merciful hearts with them in this grief.
And all the republics of the USSR and many countries of the world extended a helping hand to the Armenian people.
Deep people's grief for the innocent victims of the Spitak earthquake.
May the Lord rest their souls.
Eternal memory to them!
Along the square, tombstones were erected for the dead. 
In front of the church you can see the collapsed dome.
One of the interesting acquaintances happened at a gas station on the outskirts of the city towards Yerevan. I was surprised by a very strange way, when refueling, they counted not liters, but kilograms of gas. First, the guy refueled the balloon, which was on the scales, then poured it from the balloon into the car. This whole procedure took about half an hour. During this time, we managed to talk with him about the earthquake. At that time he was about 10 years old, but he remembers these events very well as a bad dream. Then he told how many people from the fraternal republics came and helped rebuild the city, then they were given a new apartment. He spoke with great warmth about the USSR and was very sorry that this country no longer exists.
More than twenty-six years ago (December 7, 1988) Armenia was shaken by a strong earthquake in the city of Spitak, which was completely destroyed in half an hour, and with it 58 surrounding villages. The settlements of Gyumri, Vanadzor, Stepanavan suffered. Minor destruction affected 20 cities and over 200 villages located at some distance from the epicenter.
The strength of the earthquake
At the same place, earthquakes have happened before - in 1679, 1840 and 1931, but they did not even reach 4 points. And in 1988, already in the summer, seismographs recorded fluctuations in the Spitak region and its environs at 3.5 points on the Richter scale.
The very same earthquake in Spitak, which occurred on December 7, had a force of 10 points at the epicenter (the highest mark of 12 points). Most of the republic was subject to shocks with a power of up to 6 points. Echoes of tremors were felt in Yerevan and Tbilisi.
Experts who assessed the scale of the catastrophe report that the amount of energy released from the earth's crust is equal to ten atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. It is noteworthy that the blast wave that bypassed the Earth was recorded on several continents. Data in the report "Earthquake. Spitak, 1988" report that the total surface break was equal to 37 kilometers, and its displacement amplitudes were almost up to 170 cm.
Scale of the catastrophe
What are the official data characterizing this earthquake? Spitak-1988 is almost 30 thousand dead and more than 140 thousand disabled. The destruction that has affected industry and infrastructure is also disappointing. Among them there are 600 km of roads, 230 industrial enterprises, 410 medical institutions. Work has been stopped
The earthquake in Spitak caused great damage. The financiers of the world estimated it at almost 15 billion dollars, and the number of victims exceeded all the average global indicators of those affected by natural disasters. The Armenian authorities at that time were not able to independently eliminate the consequences of the tragedy, and all the republics of the USSR and many foreign states immediately got involved in the work.
Elimination of consequences: friendship of peoples and political motives
On December 7, surgeons who could work in military field conditions and rescuers from Russia flew to the crash site. In addition to them, doctors from the USA, Great Britain, Switzerland and France worked at the crash site. Donor blood and medicines were supplied by China, Japan and Italy, and came from more than 100 countries.
On December 10, the head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, flew to the site of the tragedy (now it was ruins instead of a prosperous city). For the sake of helping people and monitoring the rescue process, he interrupted his visit to the United States.
Two days before Gorbachev's arrival, humanitarian aid arrived from Sochi. The helicopter carried everything necessary to save the lives of the victims and ... coffins. The last ones were missing.
The stadiums of the Spitak schools became heliports, hospitals, evacuation points and mortuaries at the same time.
Causes of the tragedy and ways out
Experts name the untimely and incomplete assessment of seismic vibrations in the region, shortcomings in the preparation of regulatory documents and the poor quality of construction work and medical care as the reasons that caused large-scale destruction due to such a phenomenon as an earthquake in Spitak.
Remarkably, the Union threw all its resources, money and labor, to help the victims of the disaster in Spitak: more than 45,000 volunteers came from the republics alone. Tens of thousands of parcels from all over the Soviet Union arrived in the city and surrounding settlements as humanitarian aid.
But even more interesting is the fact that in 1987-1988, Azerbaijanis, Russians and Muslims were expelled from Armenian lands literally at gunpoint. People were cut off their heads, they were crushed by cars, beaten to death and walled up in chimneys, sparing neither women nor children. In the book of the writer Sanubar Saralla “The Stolen History. Genocide” provides eyewitness accounts of those events. The writer says that the Armenians themselves call the tragedy in Spitak God's punishment for their misdeeds.
Residents of Azerbaijan also participated in the elimination of the consequences of the disaster, supplying gasoline, equipment and medicine to Spitak and the surrounding cities. However, Armenia refused their help.
Spitak, in which the earthquake became an indicator of the international relations of that time, in fact confirmed the fraternal USSR.
View after 1988
The earthquake in Spitak gave the first impetus to the creation of an organization for the prediction, prevention and elimination of natural origin. So, twelve months later, in 1989, the start of the work of the State Commission for Emergency Situations, known since 1991 as the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, was officially announced.
Spitak after the earthquake is a controversial and at the same time painful phenomenon for the country. Almost 27 years have passed since the tragedy, but decades later, Armenia is still recovering. In 2005, there were almost 9 thousand families who lived in barracks without amenities.
In memory of the dead
Date December 7 - Day of mourning for those killed in the disaster, announced by the government. For Armenia, this is a black day. In December 1989, the Mint of the Union issued a three-ruble coin in memory of the Spitak earthquake. After 20 years, in 2008, a monument erected by the public was unveiled in the small town of Gyumri. It was called "Innocent Victims, Merciful Hearts" and was dedicated to all the victims who suffered in Spitak on 12/07/1988.
