The fire in Elbarusovo became one of the worst tragedies of the USSR. What is known

A fire at a school in the Chuvash village of Elbarusovo on November 5, 1961, claimed the lives of 110 people, including 106 children. During the festive event, the fire engulfed the wooden building, and the students who were inside could not get out because of the blocked exits and the crush. The tragedy remained virtually unknown outside the region for many years. All the details are in the Izvestia article.

A holiday at a rural school

The Elbarusovskaya secondary school celebrated the 44th anniversary of the October Revolution. More than 200 people gathered in the building — children from the village and neighboring settlements, preschoolers, teachers and parents. For the concert, the partition between the two classrooms was removed, and the desks were pushed back to the windows and stacked on top of each other.

The wooden school building was built before the revolution and was not intended for events with so many participants. According to data published on the basis of archival materials, the room, designed for about 130 people, accommodated about 230. Other sources indicate that the hall was designed for 115 people.

At that time, a gasoline generator was being repaired in the neighboring physics room, which was used for school needs. Due to a malfunction of the fuel tank, gasoline was drained into the tank. To heat up the soldering iron for repairs, physics teacher Mikhail Iritkov decided to melt the furnace. The firewood turned out to be damp, and he added gasoline to the furnace. There was an outbreak, the fuel spilled over the floor and began to spread rapidly through the room and the corridor. The fire spread to the concert hall.

Fire and rescue attempts

When the room filled with smoke, the people inside rushed to the exits and windows. However, evacuation proved to be almost impossible. The emergency exit was locked and littered with school property, and the windows opened inwards and were blocked by desks. Only two windows near the stage remained free.

A stampede began. The older students tried to get out through the windows, helping each other, but it was more difficult for the younger children to make their way through the crowd. Many suffocated from the smoke and lost consciousness.

Sixth-grader Tamara Mikhailova, who managed to escape, later said that the accordion player broke the window with the accordion, after which she was able to get out. According to her recollections, almost immediately after her, flames burst out of the windows, engulfing the entire school. The roof of the building soon collapsed. It was difficult for fire trucks to reach the village because of the thick fog. By the time help arrived, the school was almost completely burned out.

A total of 110 people died: 106 children and four teachers. Among the dead were 20 preschoolers. Another 69 people received severe and less severe injuries and burns — this figure is given in the published materials of the court case.

The aftermath of the tragedy and the burial of the dead

After the fire, the bodies of the victims were taken out of the building and placed in rows on the school playground. Relatives tried to identify the children, but not everyone was able to do so due to severe burns. The local authorities decided to hold the funeral on November 6, the day after the tragedy. The coffins were delivered from Cheboksary, and the dead were buried in a common mass grave. The territory was cordoned off by police officers, many residents were not allowed to the burial site.

According to the memoirs of teacher and local historian Polina Ivanova, the coffins with the children were laid in two rows, and the ground was filled in and leveled with a bulldozer in the light of car headlights. The mothers of the dead ran up to the grave and drove pegs into the ground to memorize the burial sites of their children.

Investigation and trial

Iritkov and school principal Samuil Yarukin were accused of investigating the tragedy. The physics teacher, according to the case file, committed a gross violation of the rules for handling gasoline. The director, in turn, organized a mass event in a building that did not meet fire safety requirements and did not provide proper conditions for evacuation.

According to published archival materials, Iritkov was sentenced to ten years in prison, and Yarukin to eight years. At the same time, the circumstances of the investigation caused discontent among residents. In the correspondence of the party leadership, it was noted that out of 105 recognized victims, only 15 people spoke during the interrogation. Some of the witnesses stated that they were unable to give exhaustive testimony due to their severe emotional state.

Silencing the tragedy in the USSR

Despite the scale of the tragedy, the fire was not reported in the Soviet media. Documents about the incident were classified for a long time, and the details were preserved mainly in the memories of relatives and villagers. Some information about the fire was distributed through foreign radio stations.

Residents began to publicly recall the tragedy only in the early 1990s. The first public memorial service was held in 1991, and on November 12, 1994, a memorial was unveiled on the site of the burned-down school. It depicts a child engulfed in flames, with swifts flying over him.

Memory of the dead

The Elbarus tragedy remains one of the most difficult pages in the history of Chuvashia. Every year on November 5, residents remember the dead and hold commemorative events at the memorial. In 2026, on the 65th anniversary of the tragedy, representatives of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Chuvashia visited the village, laid flowers at the memorial sites and met with Arkady Gavrilov, who survived the fire. In October, the department's staff also carried out work on the improvement of the mass grave.