Luzhniki 1982: the tragedy the USSR silenced

On 20 October 1982, Spartak Moscow hosted HFC Haarlem, from the Netherlands, in the first leg of the second round of the 1982-83 UEFA Cup, the round of 32. The match was played at the Central Lenin Stadium, today's Luzhniki, which two years earlier had been the main venue of the Moscow Olympic Games. The city was living through an early winter: it had snowed, the stands were covered in snow and by night the temperature had dropped to around ten degrees below zero.

The cold kept people away. In a stadium with room for about 82,000, there were only around 16,000 spectators, and most of them sat in the east stand, Stand C, the one closest to the metro station. According to several witnesses, only one passage was opened for leaving, which made police control easier but forced thousands of people down through the same place.

Spartak went ahead in the 16th minute with a goal by Edgar Gess. The 1-0 held until the end, and many fans began to leave before the final whistle to escape the cold. With about twenty seconds to go, Sergei Shvetsov scored to make it 2-0. Years later, the striker would say he wished he had never scored that goal.

The tragedy happened on staircase number 1 of Stand C, where the people coming down were trapped in a narrow section. The railings gave way under the pressure and many people fell. The most widespread account says the roar of the second goal made some fans try to go back to the stands, where they collided with those leaving; the official investigation, however, spoke of a fall on the last steps that stopped those coming behind. Other witnesses blamed the way the police organised the exit. Even today there is no single account.

The official figure is 66 dead and 61 injured, and many of the victims were teenagers and young people. Over time, much higher estimates appeared: in 1989 a figure of 340 dead was mentioned, a number based on relatives' testimonies that could never be verified and should be taken only as an estimate.

For years, the tragedy barely existed in public. The next day, the newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva published only a brief note about an accident, with no figures, and the sports reports on the match did not mention it. The players of both teams left the stadium without knowing what had happened. The funerals took place under surveillance, and in the following years matches in October at that stadium were avoided, to prevent tributes.

In February 1983, a Moscow court tried the case. The stadium's director, Viktor Kokryshev, and its chief commandant, Yuri Panchikhin, were sentenced to three years for negligence; the first was granted an amnesty and the second served only part of the sentence, in corrective labour. The full story began to come out with the openness of glasnost: on 8 July 1989, the newspaper Sovetsky Sport published the report "The Dark Secret of Luzhniki". That same year, Aleksandr Shpeyer, the investigator who had handled the case, confirmed the official figure of 66 dead in Izvestia.

In 1992, on the tenth anniversary, the monument "To Those Who Died at the Stadiums of the World" was unveiled at Luzhniki, promoted by Spartak fans; it also remembers cities where supporters died in other tragedies. On 20 October 2007, Spartak and Haarlem veterans played a tribute match at Luzhniki that ended 2-2. Every 20 October, fans, relatives and club representatives lay flowers at the monument. To remember that night is to remember that behind every shirt there is a stand, and in that stand there were people.