10 DARKEST SOVIET UNION SECRETS
10) World War Three Plans
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis
of 1962, the Soviet Union hatched a secret
plan to launch 131 nuclear missiles to destroy
political and communication centers across
Europe.
The plan outlined that after the nuclear fallout,
Soviet troops were expected to invade Nuremburg,
Stuttgart, Munich, and Lyon, before dying
from the nuclear radiation.
The plan was signed by the Czech defense minister
and remained an option until 1990, when Czech
president Václav Havel [Vart-slarv Ha-vel
(lean on the vell)] scrapped it.
However, the colossal plan wasn’t revealed
until 2007, when historian Petr Lunak [Peter
Loo-nak] stumbled on the 17-page plan while
sifting through declassified communist-era
documents.
Source: Telegraph
9) Secret Cities
During The Cold War, the USSR closed over
100 cities across the state and wiped them
off the map.
The cities were home to the state’s most
advanced military and nuclear developments,
so were kept secret to hide their location
from the enemy.
The 1.2 million citizens of these cities were
forbidden to leave and barred from the outside
world by barbed wire and heavily armed guards.
At the collapse of the Soviet State, most
of these cities were opened, freeing their
citizens into the outside world.
However, to this day, over 40 cities still
remain closed.
Source: The Telegraph
8) Small Pox Accident
In 1971 a fatal accident occurred at the Soviet
Union’s top-secret bio-weapons lab, and
it was hidden for over thirty years.
While developing a weapon designed to cause
an outbreak of smallpox in open air, the deadly
virus was accidentally released, killing one
woman and two children.
The Soviet Union hid the accident to protect
information about their bio-weapons from their
neighboring enemy countries.
It wasn’t until 2002, when the Monterey
Institute of International Studies researched
into Soviet documents, that the accident was
made known.
However, to this day, Moscow denies the event.
Source: New York Times
7) Balaklava Submarine Base
In 1957 the Soviet Union built a secret submarine
base in the city of Balaklava.
It had underwater access, so submarines could
come and go freely without leaving a trace.
The base was kept secret to prevent military
knowledge leaking to enemies in Europe.
This included one of its programs that trained
dolphins to attach explosives and tracking
devices to enemy ships and submarines.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union in
the early 1990s, all submarines, torpedoes,
and warheads were from the base, revealing
the Soviet’s underground secret.
Source: Business Insider
6) Cosmonaut death
In 1961, Cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko [Valenteen]
was killed in a failed training exercise,
after being trapped in a low-pressure altitude
chamber that caught fire.
It left him with fatal third-degree burns
all over his body.
The Soviet Union founded a policy, which stated
that space programs would only be made public
if successful, and so Bondarenko’s death
was kept a secret.
The Soviet government airbrushed Bondarenko’s
image out of public photographs of the cosmonauts
to conceal his death.
It wasn’t until journalist Yaroslav Golovanov
published his research on Russia’s secret
space program in 1986 that Bondarenko’s
death came to light.
Source: Discovery News
5) Human Experiments
During the Cold War, Soviet Secret Services
established laboratories for human experimentation
on Gulag prisoners.
The aim was to find a tasteless, odorless,
deadly poison that couldn’t be detected
in a post mortem.
Research was conducted by disguising potential
poisons in the medication or food and drink
of the prisoners.
According to historian Dr. Vadim J. Birstein,
[Bur-stine], a poison named C-2 was successfully
created, killing any victim in fifteen minutes.
The laboratories were kept a secret to hide
plans to poison prominent figures of enemy
countries.
It wasn’t until the dissolution of the Soviet
Union that the disturbing experiments were
revealed.
Source: Biohazard: The Chilling True Story
of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons,
Ken Alibek, Stephen Handelman
4) Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster [Cush-tim (as
in cushion)]
One of the worst nuclear disasters ever recorded
was hidden by the Soviet Union for almost
two decades.
On 29th September 1957, the cooling systems
of a secret nuclear plant in Russia failed,
resulting in a chemical explosion.
10,000 people were exposed to toxic radiation,
causing approximately 6,000 deaths from radiation-related
diseases.
To avoid public backlash against building
nuclear weapons, the Soviet regime kept the
accident a secret by telling evacuated locals
that the contaminated area was to become a
nature preserve.
It wasn’t until 1976, when Soviet researcher
Zhores Medvedev [jh-or-ez med-vay-dev] published
a book about his findings, that the disaster
was brought to light.
Source: BBC
3) Nedelin Disaster [Ned-ay-lin (lean on the
ay)]
On October 24th 1960, the launch of a top-secret
Soviet rocket missile ended in disaster, after
a leak of nitric acid caused a huge explosion.
Over 100 people were killed, some instantly.
Others died while attempting to flee, after
they got stuck in tarmac that had been melted
in the explosion.
The Soviet regime hid the disaster from the
public to prevent exposing the development
of their weapons to the enemy.
As a result, news publications stated that
victims had died in a plane crash.
It wasn’t until thirty years later, in a
report published by Russian magazine Ogoniok
[og-on-yok], that the truth was publicly revealed.
Source: NASA
2) The Katyn Massacre
The 1940 Katyn massacre was one of the Soviet
Union’s darkest secrets.
Stalin ordered the Soviet secret police to
execute over 22,000 Polish prisoners of war,
whom he believed were a threat to the communist
movement.
Handcuffed prisoners were taken into soundproof
cells and shot in the back of their heads.
The bodies were then piled into a mass grave.
The Soviets denied responsibility for the
massacre until 1990, when Soviet Union President
Gorbachev publicly acknowledged the crimes.
Source: BBC
1) The Holodomor Famine
In 1932 a secret famine killed 8 million Ukrainians.
New Soviet policy at the time hindered crop
growth and transportation, leaving peasants
starving.
These were the very people who Stalin thought
were a threat to the Soviet regime.
Knowing they were at risk of damaging their
international reputation, the Soviet Union
kept the famine a closely guarded secret for
half a century.
They hired journalists to write that reports
of a famine were merely anti-Soviet propaganda,
and they implemented laws that made speaking
up about the famine punishable by 5 years
in prison.
The famine was not made public knowledge until
an investigation conducted by the World Congress
of Free Ukrainians in the post-Soviet era.
Source: The Guardian
