Paul Goble
Staunton,
January 4 – One of the most powerful and prophetic images in Russian history
was the disaster at Khodynka field in Moscow on the day of the coronation of
Nicholas II when the authorities lost control of the situation, many Russians were
killed and wounded, and the new tsar concluded he had been born under an
unhappy star.
Now,
Irina Mishina of Novyye izvestiya has
invoked this image when she describes the way in which Moscow police yesterday
sought to control mass crowds in the capital’s center and di so in a way that
almost led to “a new Khodynka” (newizv.ru/news/politics/03-01-2019/gnali-kak-stado-v-tsentre-moskvy-edva-ne-sluchilas-novaya-hodynka).
The problems arose because the
Moscow city government invited people to come downtown to celebrate its “Trip
to Christmas” program for which it opened numerous squares but failed to take
into account problems in the city’s transportation system or the need for more
police to provide crowd control.
As a result, people were pushed from
one place to another, Mishina says, with many children being almost crushed as
a result. There were long delays because of closures at some metro stations,
and long waits at others because of the overflow from those which had closed.
Muscovites walked from one to another, often in tightly packed crowds.
The situation did not descend to the
disastrousness of the Khodynka fields, the commentator admits; but what did
happen serves as reminder of just how stretched the city’s transportation network
is and how difficult it will be for the siloviki to control the situation if
extraordinarily large numbers of people all try to come to the same place.
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