(currently within the boundaries of Moscow), a place of mass graves of victims of repressions of the 30s - early. 50s 20th century In present time known approx. thousands of people shot at the B. p. for confessing Orthodoxy. faith, by the summer of 2003, 255 of them were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. There is no other place on the territory of Russia where the relics of such a numerous Cathedral of Saints would rest.

B. p. is located on the land of the former. the estate of Drozhzhino, known since the 16th century. The last owner of the estate was I. I. Zimin, the elder brother of the owner of the Moscow private opera S. I. Zimin. After the October Revolution, the estate and the stud farm under him were confiscated in favor of the state, the plant supplied horses to the internal troops. Until ser. 30s in Butovo was located the agricultural colony of the OGPU. In 1934, almost everyone was evicted from these places, in the end. 1935 - early 1936 on the territory of the former. The Zimin estates equipped the Butovo shooting range, where executions and burials of repressed persons immediately began. From Aug. 1937 to Oct. In 1938, 20,765 people were shot and buried here.

Mass executions 1937-1938 became a consequence of the decisions of the Politburo of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 2, 1937 and the orders of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs N.I. about the fight against "enemies of the people", including "churchmen". Executions at the B.P. were carried out according to the decisions of extrajudicial bodies: the "troika" of the Moscow UNKVD, less often - a commission consisting of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor of the USSR - the "two". Orders for executions were signed by the head of the UNKVD of the Moscow region. (State Security Commissioner of the 1st rank S. F. Redens (July 15, 1934 - January 20, 1938), State Security Commissioner of the 1st rank L. M. Zakovsky (January 20 - March 28, 1938), Senior Major of State Security V. E Tsesarsky (May 28 - September 15, 1938)). The execution of sentences was led by the commandant and the head of the administrative and economic department of the UNKVD for the Moscow region. I. D. Berg and his deputy. and at the same time the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Militia M. I. Semyonov.

Convicts were brought to the B.P. from Moscow prisons: Taganskaya, Sretenskaya, Butyrskaya, as well as from district prisons of the Moscow Region. and from Dmitlag - a huge camp association intended for the construction of the Moscow-Volga canal (prisoners of Dmitlag also built the Dynamo stadium, the South and North (Khimki) ports of Moscow, residential complexes, and much more). After arriving at the B. p., the convicts were taken to the barracks, ostensibly for sanitation. Immediately before the execution, the verdict was announced, the data and the presence of the photograph were verified. It happened that the execution was postponed because of K.-l. discrepancies in the documents, and sometimes (in isolated cases) even canceled. The execution of the sentence was carried out by one of the "firing squads" - a group of 3-4 officers of the special detachment, as a rule, people with experience who had served in the OGPU-NKVD since the civil war, who had government awards; on the days of especially mass executions, the number of performers obviously increased. One by one was taken out of the barracks for execution, each executioner led his victim to the edge of the ditch, shot in the back of the head from a distance of no more than a meter and dumped the body into the trench. Not always a doctor and a prosecutor were present at the same time. At first, the executed were buried in small burial pits, which were dug by hand; from Aug. In 1937, when executions in Butovo took on a scale unprecedented in world history, quarry-type excavators dug trenches 3 m wide and deep, from 150 m long for this purpose. Less than 100 people were rarely shot per day in Butovo, there were days e.g. 28 Feb. 1938, when 562 people were executed. Sometimes, apparently, the condemned were shot in Moscow prisons, and they were brought to the B.P. only for burial.

Most of those shot at the B.P. are peasants and workers of Moscow and the Moscow region, who were often arrested and executed by their families, including teenagers and the elderly. The vast majority of the victims were non-partisan, that is, people far from politics, who had a lower education or were illiterate. Approximately a quarter of the total number of those executed at the B. p. are criminals, the vast majority of them were shot for past convictions, according to which they had already served their sentence before. The categories of “socially dangerous” and “socially harmful elements” convicted and shot at the B.P. included a variety of people: relatives of those previously convicted, former. tsarist ministers, beggars, street vendors, fortune-tellers, gamblers. In Jan. In 1938, with the sanction of the authorities, a secret massacre of the disabled began: in February-March of the same year, 1,160 disabled people were shot. Most of those executed at the B.P. were Russians (more than 60%), followed by Latvians, Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Germans, Belarusians - in total over 60 nationalities, including citizens of other states: Germany, Poland, France, USA, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Japan, India, China, etc.

Among those buried at B. p. are people who left a mark in Russian. history: Chairman of the 2nd State. Duma F. A. Golovin, former. Moscow governor-general V.F. Dzhunkovsky, one of the first Russian. pilots N. N. Danilevsky, a member of the expedition of O. Yu. Schmidt flight engineer Ya. V. Brezin, great-grandson of M. I. Kutuzov prof. church singing and composer M. N. Khitrovo-Kramskoy, artist. A.D. Drevin, athletes who laid the foundations of Soviet mountaineering. In the land of Butovo lie representatives of the Russian. noble families: Rostopchin, Tuchkov, Gagarin, Shakhovsky, Obolensky, Olsufiev, Bibikov, a large group of former. tsarist generals (Lieutenant General E. I. Martynov, Major General M. F. Krieger, holder of 7 military military awards, General B. I. Stolbin, etc.).

739 clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church were martyred at the B. p.: 1 metropolitan, 2 archbishops, 4 bishops, 15 archimandrites, 118 archpriests, 14 abbots, 52 hieromonks, 363 priests, 60 deacons (including 4 protodeacons and 1 archdeacon), 10 monks, 58 nuns (including 3 schema nuns), 14 novices and novices, 8 clergy (no rank specified). 219 laymen (psalm readers, readers, choir directors, choristers, church elders, icon painters, members of church councils, church cleaners, church watchmen) were shot for their faith in B. p. Among the “churchmen” executed in Butovo were 59 Old Believers, 9 renovationists, more than 60 Baptists, whips, “anti-military soldiers”, evangelists, sectarians (without specifying which sect they belonged to; sometimes investigators called representatives of the “catacomb” church or true- Orthodox Christians), as well as 4 mullahs and 1 rabbi.

The first Orthodox the clergy shot at the B. p. were the holy martyrs Archpriests Alexy Vorobyov, Alexy Kasimov and schmch. deac. Elisha Stolder († 20 Aug. 1937). Most of the clergy suffered in Sept.-Dec. 1937 and in February-March 1938 (February 17, 1938, 502 people were shot, 75 of them clergymen and monks). Almost everyone involved in church affairs was charged under Article 58. Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the reasons for the accusation could be different: “preserving the church and planting secret monasticism”, “worship services at home”, “non-information”, “helping the exiled clergy”, shelter for homeless clergy or, for example, such an absurd accusation: “slandered, that churches are being closed, priests are being arrested.” Most of those under investigation, tortured or deceived by the investigators eventually pleaded guilty in whole or in part to “anti-Soviet agitation”, “counter-revolutionary activities”, but in matters of faith, the church people showed themselves to be fearless. Neither torture nor threats of death could force believers to renounce God, to blaspheme the Church; not uncommon is the "lack of compromised persons in the case", i.e. the absence of new names needed by investigators for new arrests.

From the middle of the Great Patriotic War in Butovo there was a camp for prisoners of war who worked on the construction of the Simferopol highway and at a brick factory. In 1949 - early. In 1950, a settlement of 3 houses was built near the test site, NKVD officers settled in 2 of them, and a special school for officers of the internal services of the countries of the East was located in the 3rd. Europe. All R. 50s "special zone" was eliminated. The landfill itself, where the bulk of the burials were located, was surrounded by a deaf wooden fence with barbed wire stretched over it. Along the edges of the "zone" a dacha settlement of the NKVD arose, in which it was allowed to build only light one-story dachas without foundations and cellars. In the beginning. 70s in the east Parts of the B.P. planted an apple orchard and renovated the dilapidated fence around. Until 1995, the territory was under the jurisdiction of the FSK-FSB and was carefully guarded.

Beginning in 1992, the Moscow Public Group for Perpetuating the Memory of Victims of Political Repressions (M. B. Mindlin’s group), with the help of FSK-FSB officers, began to work with investigative cases of those shot at the B. p., brief biographical information was compiled for bud. "Books of Memory". In the spring of 1993, the test site was first visited by relatives of the victims, in the autumn of the same year in its south. part, a granite memorial slab was installed. Since 1997, complex work has been carried out at the B. P. in order to determine the location of the burial ditches, and historical, archaeological, geobotanical, and geomorphological studies have been carried out. In 1997, one of the burial ditches was opened: on an area of ​​12 square meters. m, burials were found in 5 layers, where the remains of 149 people were buried. In 2001-2002 experts have identified and mapped 13 burial ditches.

In the spring of 1994, the Big Poklonny Cross was installed on the B. p. (consecrated on May 8, 1994), built according to the project of the sculptor D. M. Shakhovsky, whose father, Fr. Mikhail Shik, was shot in Butovo. On June 25, 1995, in Butovo, in the camp tent church of All Saints Who Resplendent in the Russian Land, the first liturgy was served, led by the rector of the institute, Fr. Vladimir Vorobyov. Beginning in 1994, the granddaughter of the ssmch who was shot here took an ardent part in perpetuating the memory of the victims in Butovo. Seraphim (Chichagova) hegum. Seraphim (Black). In 1995, the B.P. was transferred to the Moscow Patriarchy. According to the project of Shakhovsky, a wooden church named after the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia was erected (consecrated in 1996), the rector of which was the grandson of the schmch who was shot here. arch. Priest Vladimir Ambartsumov Cyril Kaleda.

On May 27, 2000, a grand open-air service was held at the B. p., which was led by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia. A Divine Liturgy and a memorial service were performed for the murdered - the last before their glorification at the Bishops' Jubilee Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. At the jubilee Council, 120 people were canonized, shot at the B. p., over the following years, the number of canonized Butovo New Martyrs doubled. The Cathedral of the New Martyrs of Butovo is headed by 6 bishops: Metropolitan of Leningrad and Gdov. ssmch. Seraphim (Chichagov), Mozhaisk archbishop. ssmch. Dimitri (Dobroserdov), Archbishop of Vladimir and Suzdal. ssmch. Nikolay (Dobronravov), Bishop of Bezhetsk ssmch. Arkady (Ostalsky), Bishop of Nizhny Tagil ssmch. Nikita (Delectorsky), Bishop of Velizh ssmch. Jonah (Lazarev). Many revered priest-martyrs were executed at the B. p.: brothers Agafonnikov - Alexander, Vasily and Nikolai, Vladimir Ambartsumov, Vladimir Medvedyuk, Zosima Trubachev, John Artobolevsky, Sergiy Lebedev, Sergiy Makhaev, Pyotr Petrikov and many others. etc. The celebration of the Cathedral of the New Martyrs, who suffered in Butovo, was established on one of the Easter Saturdays. Every year, a solemn divine service is performed over the burial moats of Butovo, headed by His Holiness the Patriarch, in which dozens of bishops and hundreds of clergymen of Moscow and the Moscow region take part, thousands of pilgrims flock.

Documents of the state security archives testify to the existence in Moscow and the Moscow region of several. large graves of victims of repression. From 1921 to the end. 20s the executed were buried in the center of Moscow - on the territory of the Yauza hospital subordinate to the OGPU, in 1926-1936 - at the Vagankovsky cemetery, from 1936 - at the Donskoy cemetery or were cremated in the Donskoy crematorium; there is evidence of individual burials at the Kalitnikovsky, Golyanovsky and Rogozhsky cemeteries, a mass grave was found near the walls of the Novospassky Monastery. Very large, second only to B. p., is a burial on the territory of the former. dacha G. G. Berries, near the state farm "Kommunarka" in the Moscow region. (more than 6.5 thousand people were shot there). In present time on this territory is the skete of Catherine's husband. monastery in the town of Vidnoe-2 (in 1939-1953, the buildings of the monastery housed the secret political prison of central subordination "Sukhanovka"), a church was consecrated in honor of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Arch.: TsGAMO. F. 5739. Op. 1. D. 358. L. 108 v. - 109; GARF. F. 10035. D. P-50068; D. P-59458; D. P-60406; D. P-62115; D. P-67528; P-72934; Op. 1. D. 22817; Archive of the Scientific and Educational Society "Memorial". [Photocopy of investigations. cases of Semenov]; Special Special Fund Inform. Center of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of the Moscow Region. F. 189. D. SO-40179.

Lit .: Golovkova L . BUT . Special object "Butovo landfill": History, documents, resurrection. // Butovo polygon. Issue. 1. S. 12-30; she is. Moscow executions // East. vestn. 2001: (Materials of the scientific section "Church-Historical Local History of the 9th International Christmas Educational Readings" (Moscow, January 27, 2001)). No. 4 (15). pp. 79-92; Kaleda K ., Priest ., Alekseev S . N ., Razumov, A . Ya ., Golovkova L . BUT . Recent studies at the Butovo test site // Butovo test site. Issue. 4. S. 5-16; Petrov N . V ., Skorkin K . AT . Who led the NKVD? 1934-1941: Ref. M., 1999; Roginsky A . B . Afterword // Execution Lists: Moscow, 1937-1941: Kommunarka, Butovo: Book. memory of the victims of polit. repression. M., 2000. S. 490-493.

L. A. Golovkova

I visited the Butovo training ground for the first time in my life. To be honest, I did not understand what could be interesting in walking between the graves. Now - after a walk around the training ground - I think otherwise. It seems to me that every Russian person should visit Butovo, so that, in the apt expression of the rector of the Butovo church, "not to step on the same rake again."

Misha Shamonin was shot at the Butovo training ground at the age of 13

13 to 82

The youngest, Misha, was 13 years old. Homeless boy who stole 2 loaves of bread. It was possible to shoot only from 15, so the date of birth was corrected for him. And they shot. They were shot for less, for example, for Stalin's tattoo on his leg. Sometimes people were killed by whole families of 5-9 people.

Paddy wagons (vans for transporting prisoners), which could hold about 30 people, drove up to the training ground from the Varshavskoe highway at about one in the morning. The zone was fenced with barbed wire, next to the place of unloading people, a guard tower was set up right on the tree. People were taken to the barracks, ostensibly for “sanitation”.

"Black Raven" - a car for transporting prisoners

Immediately before the execution, their faces were compared with the photograph in the file and the verdict was announced. The procedure continued until dawn. The performers at that time were drinking vodka in a stone house nearby. The condemned were taken out to them one by one. Each performer accepted his victim and led her into the depths of the polygon, in the direction of the moat. Ditches three meters deep, 100 meters or more long were specially dug by bulldozers during the intensification of repression, so as not to waste time digging individual graves. People were placed on the edge of the ditch and fired, mostly from service weapons, aiming at the back of the head. The dead fell into the ditch, covering the bottom of the trench. In the evening, the bulldozer covered the bodies with a thin layer of soil, and the performers, usually completely drunk, were taken to Moscow. The next day it all happened again. Less than 300 people were rarely shot in a day. Unfortunately, the names of all those shot and buried at the firing range are still unknown. Accurate information is available only for a short period from August 37 to October 38. During this period, 20 thousand 761 people were shot.

In the excavation area of ​​12 m2, experts found the remains of 149 people

Most of those killed lived in Moscow or the Moscow region, but there are also representatives of other regions, countries and even continents who, of their good, naive will, came to the Union to build communism. Like, for example, a certain John from South Africa. Representatives of absolutely all estates and classes lie here, from peasants and workers to well-known people in the past. The former governor-general of Moscow Dzhunkovsky, the chairman of the second Duma Golovin, several tsarist generals, as well as a significant number of representatives of the clergy, primarily Orthodox - according to current information, more than a thousand people, including active lay people who suffered for the profession of the Orthodox faith. Of these, 330 are glorified as saints. “It is clear that the Grace of God is not measured by numbers, but, nevertheless, in the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, there have not yet been places where a greater number of saints of God would rest in the relics,” says the rector of the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia Archpriest Kirill Kaleda.

Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov)

Metropolitan of St. Petersburg Seraphim (Chichagov) heads the assembly of the Butovo New Martyrs. A man from an ancient aristocratic family, who gave the fatherland several polar explorers and admirals. Combat officer, for the courage shown in the Russian-Turkish war during the assault on Plevna, awarded a golden weapon with a dedicatory inscription from the Emperor. Subsequently, he became a spiritual child of St. rights. John of Kronstadt, with his blessing he took the rank and became a simple parish priest. The future Metropolitan Seraphim is also known for writing the Seraphim-Diveevo Chronicle, thanks to which St. Seraphim of Sarov was glorified. In gratitude for writing the chronicle, Metropolitan Seraphim was honored with the appearance of St. Seraphim. In 1937, when he was shot, Metropolitan Seraphim was 82 years old. To take him to prison, I had to call an ambulance and use a stretcher - Metropolitan Seraphim could no longer walk on his own. This is the oldest in rank and age of those shot at the Butovo firing range. According to testimonies, the burials of those who were shot and died in Moscow prisons were carried out at the training ground until the early 1950s.

At the place of execution - strawberry beds

In the late 80s, several acts were issued to restore the memory of those who died during the years of repression, including the decision of the Supreme Council. It stated that local councils of people's deputies and amateur bodies should help the relatives of the victims in the restoration, protection and maintenance of burial sites. Based on the acts and the law on rehabilitation, in the early nineties, measures were taken in different regions to restore the memory of the repressed. The activities included archival research, the search for burial sites, and putting them in order. But the financing mechanism was not provided for by the acts, so in different regions the law was implemented (or not implemented) in different ways.

In 1992, a public group was created in Moscow to perpetuate the memory of victims of political repression under the leadership of Mikhail Mindlin. He spent a total of more than 15 years in prisons and camps, and only thanks to his remarkable health and strong character remained alive. At the end of his life (he was already over 80), he decided to perpetuate the memory of the victims of terror.

Photographs of some of the executed, taken from their investigation files, and data on the number of those executed at the Butovo training ground by day (from August 1937 to October 1938).

Thanks to Mindlin's appeals, 11 folders with acts on the execution of sentences were found in the KGB archive. The information is quite brief - last name, first name, patronymic, year and place of birth, date of execution. The place of execution was not indicated in the acts, however, the sheets had the signatures of the responsible executors. By order of the head of the KGB department for Moscow and the Moscow region, Yevgeny Savostyanov, an investigation was carried out in order to find the burial sites. At that moment, several NKVD pensioners who worked in the late 30s were still alive. Including the commandant of the economic department of the NKVD in Moscow and the Moscow region. The commandant confirmed that the Butovo firing range was the main place of execution, and burials were also made there. According to the signatures of the performers, he determined that they worked in Butovo. Thus, it was possible to bind the lists to the polygon. The burial area (about 5.6 hectares in the central part of the landfill) at that time belonged to the Federal Grid Company (FSB) and was under round-the-clock security. The site was fenced with barbed wire and guarded, several strawberry beds and an apple orchard were planted inside. Around the former training ground there is a dacha settlement of the NKVD. At the initiative of Mikhail Mindlin, with the help of the Moscow government, a stone monument was erected on the territory of the test site.

Scheme of the main burials

humble veneration

In the spring of 1994, the group passed information about the existence of the test site to the Church. Information was reported through the granddaughter of Metropolitan Seraphim Varvara Vasilievna. In Soviet times, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Varvara Chernaya (Chichagova) worked on space suits. It was she who created the material for the spacesuit in which Yuri Gagarin flew into space. Subsequently, Varvara Vasilievna took the tonsure with the name of Seraphim, and became the first abbess of the newly opened Novodevichy Convent.

After reading the report about Butovo, Patriarch Alexy II placed his resolution on the construction of a church-chapel there. On May 8, 1994, a memorial cross was consecrated at the firing range and the first memorial service for the dead was performed. Soon, the relatives of the victims in Butovo turned to Patriarch Alexy II with a request to bless them to create a community and start building a temple. In 1995, the burial place was transferred to the Church.

Now there are two temples - wooden and stone. “In 1989, when we learned that my grandfather had been shot (it was previously believed that he had died during the war in the camp), it never occurred to us that we would be able to build a temple on his grave and pray in it,” tells about . Cyril Kaleda. “The fact that this place was transferred to the Church is, undoubtedly, the grace of God, which was given to us for the feat accomplished by the new martyrs.” Since 2000, patriarchal services have been held at the open-air training ground, which attracts several thousand worshipers. This takes place on the fourth Saturday after Easter, on the day of the memory of the New Martyrs who suffered in Butovo.

The stone temple is also part of the memorial complex. The interior space includes a reliquary, which contains the personal belongings of the dead: clothes, prayer books, letters. And in the basement of the temple there is a museum: dying photographs of the victims in Butovo and things found in the burial ditch. Shoes, separate pieces of clothing, rubber gloves, cartridge cases and bullets - all of this, of course, is in a dilapidated state. But the photos speak volumes. Behind the cold numbers it is difficult to see real life. But when you look into the eyes of these, still living people, at this moment the story becomes personal from the abstract. More than 20,000 such personal stories lie at the test site.

The descendants of KGB officers and employees of the Butovo firing range live in a dacha settlement next to the place of execution. Summer residents call members of the Butovo church community invaders.

About 10 thousand people visit Butovo every year as part of pilgrimage groups. To this we can add a small number of individual visitors. In general, the figure is very modest. “If you compare it with a million people who annually visit one French village burned by the Germans, you can draw a disappointing conclusion,” says Archpriest Kirill Kaleda. - We did not repent and did not realize the lesson of history, which, by the grace of God, she gave us in the twentieth century. And this lesson was very clear.

A worship cross brought by water from Solovki and installed in 2007 at the Butovo training ground near the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Repentance is a comparative analysis

“Probably the biggest tragedy that happened to Russia in the 20th century is not even a great terror. This is the destruction of the peasantry in the course of collectivization, says Fr. Kirill. - The Tambov uprising, during the suppression of which people were poisoned with chemical weapons, famines, mass evictions to the North, where the living conditions of the peasants were worse than the living conditions of prisoners in the camps. If in the camps located in the same place, the prisoners were given at least a bundle of firewood and let the gruel, but still hot, then they did not give anything. They were thrown away just like that - live as you want. But somehow we don’t think at all that these peasants, who were subjected to inhuman extermination, received land, to put it mildly, not in a completely honest way. The land they worked on in the late twenties belonged 15 years earlier to completely different people who were killed, mauled, or fled the country. We can discuss whether the distribution of land in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was fair. This is a different issue. But the fact that the peasants received land through robbery and murder is a historical fact. And after 15-20 years it was their turn to fall victim. We are talking now not in political terms, but in moral and spiritual terms. I think the vast majority of people today consider the distribution of property that is taking place in Russia to be unfair. And we just don't want to think about what's ahead of us. That's what repentance is all about - realizing what we're doing and confronting the lessons we've been given."

That is, the suffering to which the peasantry was subjected is connected with the illegal acquisition of land?
- I did not say that.
- But they can be related?
- Can be. And the new martyrs realized this. In archival and investigative cases, it is recorded that to the question “your attitude towards the Soviet government,” many people answered: “Soviet power was sent to our people for their sins.”
- And today we risk getting something similar?
- We pray that our fatherland would live peacefully and in prosperity. But I am surprised by the spiritual blindness of the people. It's very frustrating to step on the same rake twice.

How to get to the Butovo training ground

The landfill can be reached from the metro station "Dmitry Donskoy Boulevard". Bus number 18 reaches the landfill directly. This bus runs from 6-20, with an interval of exactly one hour. The last bus leaves from the metro at 20-20. Alternatively, you can get from the metro by any minibus that goes along the Warsaw highway. You will need to get off at the turn to the landfill (the reference point is the flyover over Varshavka), go underground to the opposite side of the highway, and then walk along Berezovaya Alley for about 800 meters.

The Butovo training ground is called the Russian Golgotha. It was here in the 1930s-1950s. tens of thousands of people were innocently killed. Only during the period of the so-called great terror, from August 1937 to October 1938, more than 20,000 people were shot here. Thousands of clergy died in Butovo, from simple deacons to hierarchs of the Church. One of the most famous Butovo martyrs was Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) of Petrograd. Shortly before his last arrest, he prophetically said: “The Orthodox Church is now going through a time of trials. Whoever remains faithful to her will be saved. Many are now departing from the Church because of persecution, while others are betraying it. It is well known from history that there were persecutions before, but they all ended with the triumph of Christianity. So it will be this time. Orthodoxy will triumph again. Now many are suffering for the faith, but this gold is refined in the spiritual crucible of trials. After that, there will be as many holy martyrs who suffered for the faith of Christ as the history of Christianity itself does not remember.”

1568 The first mention of the village of Drozhzhino. Its owner was Fyodor Mikhailovich Drozhzhin, a representative of the zemstvo boyars, who, under Ivan the Terrible, "was executed in the oprichnina." Subsequently, the village, and then the village was called Kosmodemyansky - after the wooden church that stood on the churchyard on the banks of the Gvozdnya River (now Gvozdyanka).

Second half of the 19th century The village of Butovo, which was located on the 18th verst of the old Warsaw tract and one verst north of the village of Kosmodemyanskoye, gives the name of the railway station and the dacha village adjacent to it.

1880s On the site of the future Butovo training ground, the city estate of the hereditary honorary citizen Nikolai Makarovich Solovyov is being built (the estate was called Kosmodemyanskoye Drozhzhino). The main manor house was a one-story stone building with columns along the façade. Ponds under Solovyov were cleaned, mirror carps were bred in them. On one of the ponds there was a swimming pool and a mooring for boats.

1889 In the estate of N.M. Solovyov founded a stud farm: an excellent horse yard was built, a hippodrome with spectator stands and two towers for judges was arranged near the forest. In different years, from 80 to 150 horses were kept here. At the stud farm, they were mainly engaged in breeding Oryol trotters.

1909 Ivan Ivanovich Zimin, a representative of a well-known family of merchants engaged in the textile industry, becomes the new owner of the stud farm, and then of the entire estate, renamed Butovo. Solid wooden houses for workers were built, food was arranged, a laundry and a bathhouse worked.

1914 I.I. Zimin and his nephew, manager I.L. Zimin - go to the fronts of the First World War. In 1915, after being wounded, both were demobilized, returned to Butovo and continued to conduct horse breeding activities until the October Revolution of 1917.

1917–1918 The owner of the Butovsky estate I.I. Zimin, without waiting for the confiscation, gives it to the state and leaves with his family abroad.

1920 The stud farm in Butovo is handed over to the Red Army. Former manager I.L. Zimin serves at the stud farm as a rider and intermittently continues to live in Butovo until 1934.

Late 1920s The Butovo estate houses an agricultural colony of the OGPU-NKVD. At the beginning of March 1934, prisoners were brought to Butovo on ten carts from the former Ekaterininsky Hermitage, where a prison had been located since 1931 (the future secret political prison Sukhanovka). The arrivals were placed in empty stables, which were hastily converted into prison facilities. Soon, some of the prisoners were transferred to the neighboring Shcherbinka, where a “special facility” was also equipped in the former Sushkin estate. Shcherbinka prisoners were employed in agricultural work; some had the right to leave the zone and went 4 km to Butovo to draw up documents for the export of products: cars loaded with cabbage, potatoes, beets, all kinds of berries and fruits went from Butovo to Moscow to Lubyanka.

1935–1936 Most of the residents who occupied the former estate of the Zimins are evicted to the village of Chudny, better known in these parts under the name "Partnership", serving the rest house of architects "Sukhanovo". On the territory of the former estate "Butovo" the shooting range of the NKVD was equipped. There was a fence made of barbed wire, posts with sentries. Often shots were heard, sometimes the shooting continued for many hours in a row.

1937–1938 The ancient estate of I.I. Zimina turns into a place of mass executions - the Butovo training ground. The best known about the executions carried out by order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Yezhov No. 00447. They began in Butovo on August 8, 1937. In 14 months, 20,760 people were shot here. According to the testimony of local residents, the cries of people were sometimes heard from the landfill.

1938–1945 According to unverified information, the burial sites of prisoners who were shot and died in Moscow prisons are carried out at the site.

1943–1945 Near the Butovo training ground there is a camp of German prisoners of war working on the construction of the Simferopol highway and at a brick factory.

1946–1953 In the village of Butovsky training ground there is a closed school for the secret services of the friendly countries of the Warsaw Pact. The current buildings of Butov are mostly left over from that time.

1955–1956 Part of the outlying territories of the Butovo test site is transferred for the construction of dachas to the highest officers of the Ministry of State Security with a strict order - do not dig cellars under the houses.

1960s Fruit trees are planted between summer cottages behind a typical wooden army fence with barbed wire, and the sagging plots of land are covered with household garbage and soil.

1970s The dilapidated fence around the landfill is being renovated, and an apple orchard is being planted in the eastern part. The territory was still under the jurisdiction of the KGB and was strictly guarded until 1995.

1991 Lists of those executed in 1937-1938 are found in the archives. The search for the place of executions begins.

1993. It was established that the place of executions of 20,760 people convicted by the “troikas” of the UNKVD in the Moscow region was the Butovo firing range. On the territory of the graves, the public of Moscow erected a memorial stone in memory of the victims of political repressions.

May 1994. A Poklonny Cross was erected and consecrated on the territory of burial places at the Butovo training ground in memory of Orthodox clerics, monastics, laity and all those who suffered. An Orthodox community begins to form, which includes relatives and friends of the victims in Butovo and other places in Russia and the former USSR.

June 25, 1995 The priesthood of the Orthodox St. Tikhon's Theological Institute served the first Divine Liturgy at the Butovo training ground in the camp altar-tent.

1996 A wooden one-altar church of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo, built in the Russian style, was erected and consecrated (architect Dmitry Mikhailovich Shakhovskoy, son of Hieromartyr Mikhail Shik, who was shot in Butovo).

1997 With the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, archaeological research is carried out on the burial grounds. The facts of executions and burials on the territory of the Butovo firing range of victims of repressions have been confirmed. The picture of the functioning of the landfill was restored: the bodies of people were dumped into the ditches dug by the Komsomolets excavator (ditch width about 5 m and depth about 4 m), which were then covered with garbage and earth. The total length of 13 burial ditches is more than 900 m. An approximate calculation based on the number of human remains in the ditches where archaeologists and forensic scientists worked showed that the number of people buried in Butovo land could exceed 40,000 people. Priest Kirill Kaleda, the grandson of Hieromartyr Vladimir Ambartsumov, who was murdered in Butovo, has been appointed rector of the church at the Butovo training ground.

May 27, 2000 His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia blesses and personally leads the Patriarchal service in the open air at the Butovo training ground. In the same year, the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified more than 100 new martyrs who suffered in Butovo. Since 2000, the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy in memory of the Cathedral of Butovo Saints at the Butovo training ground has become a tradition and takes place annually on the fourth Saturday after Easter.

2001 The Butovo test site is declared a historical monument of regional significance by a decree of the government of the Moscow Region. The state recognized the memorial and significance of this place for the history of Moscow, the Moscow region and the country.

2004 His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia lays the stone Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ and the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo in the immediate vicinity of the burial site. Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York (ROCOR) took part in the laying. The governments of Moscow and the Moscow region, public organizations have begun work on the improvement and beautification of the burial sites at the Butovo landfill. The territory took on a form corresponding to the holiness and significance of this place.

2006 Construction of a six-altar, two-story cathedral church in memory and glorification of the feat of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia was completed (architectural workshop "ARCHKHRAM", architects A.N. Obolensky and M.Yu. Kesler).

May 19, 2007 The new cathedral was consecrated by His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia together with the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia Metropolitan Laurus as part of the celebrations dedicated to the restoration of canonical communion within the Russian Orthodox Church. The central altar of the upper church was consecrated in honor of the Resurrection of Christ, the right aisle of the upper church was consecrated in the name of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the left aisle of the upper church was consecrated in the name of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, as head of the Cathedral of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
The central throne of the lower church, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II, is dedicated to the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God.
The right and left aisles of the lower temple have not yet been consecrated. It is assumed that they will be dedicated to ssmch. Seraphim (Chichagov), Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, who suffered in Butovo, and St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco, a prayer book for all Russian Orthodox Christians scattered across different countries during the years of hard times.
In the lower church on the walls are placed icons of the New Martyrs Butovsky on the days of their memory - the so-called "Butovo Menaion". Nearby is a small reliquary museum, which displays personal items and shrines, St. New Martyrs Butovsky, documents and photographs of the first half of the 20th century.

August 8, 2007 By water procession from the walls of the Solovetsky Transfiguration Monastery of the Savior, the Solovetsky Cross was brought to Butovo and consecrated. A procession of the cross was made past large and small cities of Russia along the White Sea-Baltic and other canals built by the hands of innocent martyrs.

October 30, 2007 On the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions, President of Russia V.V. Putin. His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II performed a litia for those who died in those years. The First Hierarch and the President of the Russian Federation toured the territory of the burial places, laid flowers at the Poklonnye crosses.

May 31, 2008 On the day of the Synod of the New Martyrs in Butovo, which is celebrated every year on the fourth Saturday after Easter, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, concelebrated by the clergy of Moscow and the Moscow Region, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Butovo training ground.

May 23, 2009 His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia celebrates the Divine Liturgy at the Butovo training ground.

May 1, 2010 His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia leads an open-air Divine Liturgy service at the Butovo training ground near the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

2011 In the churches of the Butovo training ground, prayers continue to be offered to the holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia, to honor the memory of all those who suffered during the years of godless persecution. Today, the Cathedral of the Butovo Saints includes 329 people.

Prepared by Innokenty Kulakov.

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Goebbels

There is a lot of talk about this place now.

The term "Russian Calvary" has already been put into circulation, anyone can google and find a million links on this issue, from dry documentaries to yellowness of various levels.

I hadn’t heard anything about the range before either, but I was always interested in this historical period, so, having heard it out of the corner of my ear, I decided to climb the net in more detail and look.

Well, I worked through a sufficient amount of material to see that they were all written off as a carbon copy: everywhere it is repeated that "Only according to official data, from August 1937 to October 1938, 20,765 people were shot here" (although according to other sources , by the way, lying on the site dedicated to Butov - "in Moscow and the Moscow region, 27,508 people were sentenced to capital punishment for the period from 1935 to 1953"), it is everywhere said that in order to bury such a number of people with a bulldozer (in some places - an excavator, and in one place even a certain hybrid “bulldozer-excavator” is described, even its name is given - “Komsomolets” (which is already an obvious fiction - there were no such models, and they certainly didn’t give proper names to excavators), special ditches were dug out, everywhere it is reported that “200, 300, 500 people were shot a day. The ditches were filled gradually. fiyah aerial photography.

The same facts, the same figures, in general, the source is clearly the same, most likely, this is the book "Butovo polygon. 1937-1938". M., Institute of Experimental Sociology, 1997.

Although some (in general, without doubting either the figures or the facts), nevertheless notice inconsistencies and try to calculate (pure mathematics): "The execution in Butovo was carried out by one of the so-called firing squads. According to the acting commandant, it included 3-4 people, and on the days of especially mass executions the number of performers increased. The special detachment, according to the driver of the NKVD motor depot, consisted of 12 people. Let's assume that the maximum number of performers was involved - 12 people. of them, 46-47 people were killed. The condemned were not "mowed down" by bursts, no: they were each individually shot in the back of the head. How long could this procedure take - taking two out of the barracks, directly shooting, returning to the barracks for new doomed to death "Let's take the minimum time of 10 minutes. So, the execution of 46-47 sentenced executioners spent 470 minutes - that's almost 8 hours of continuous killings!"

This is explained simply - they drank vodka in liters, so they shot so accurately for eight hours in a row. It’s hard to believe, of course, - to jam the vodyaru all day long, and even at the same time deftly manage both small arms and a sober prisoner all this time, yes. Not to mention alcohol intoxication and delirium tremens - apparently, only Yezhov's NKVD officers could function smoothly in this mode for a whole year.

In general, many people doubt the numbers, but then they correct themselves: “There were four executioners working in Butovo. But, let’s say, on February 28, 1938, 562 people were shot at the firing range. more than 140 people, "because whoever wants to believe will believe:" So, either there was help, or machine guns.

I’m not a specialist, I could be mistaken, but as far as I know, machine guns as such have only appeared in service with the Red Army since 1941, the Shpagin submachine gun (PPSh) - in 1941-1942, and before that the NKVD could only use Fedorov’s automatic rifle, but, again, as far as I know, it was not produced from the USSR, only "pistols (Mausers)" were in service with the NKVD, and "The operational staff of the NKVD, the operational and command staff of the police should have been armed with a three-line rifle, a pistol and 2 hand grenades. The rank and file was armed with a three-line rifle and 2 hand grenades. "

And, of course, appetites are growing: "The list of 20,000 is considered incomplete, they say that hundreds of thousands were shot here, says the director of the Butovo Memorial Scientific and Educational Center Igor Garkavy" - and in some publications they already boldly say that there are hundreds of thousands of people shot.

Well, you can understand Garkavy, now Butovo is his job, he quite skillfully squeezes money from the budget for this business: “For a start, we had to stop the construction here, in Drozhzhino, of a microdistrict of several multi-storey buildings ... a decision was made to save this place as a historical monument ... a project for the improvement and landscaping of the Butovo polygon monument is ready ... it will be necessary to resolve the issue of financing the improvement work. This issue has been raised before the joint board of the Government of Moscow and the Moscow Region. If we talk about the fact that we are already could really do it if funds were available, then it would be possible to seriously begin to improve the territory... We need money to repair, and in fact restore, the preserved wing of the estate. We intended to organize a museum in this building. Funds are needed for our archival work, current work, because we need consumables, equipment, and at least some salaries for people ... The deeper we We are working on this project, the more problems arise so far. And mostly purely domestic. It is necessary to solve the issue of communications: first of all, electricity. We need to supply gas, everything needs to be changed."

In general, although “Not a word was said about Butovo, as a place of mass executions and burials, either during the “Beria rehabilitation”, or during the “Khrushchev thaw”, and also nowhere was “not a single document, not a single order, at least indirectly confirming the existence of the Butovo special facility, "but some kind of information stuffing nevertheless happened, and now information is being distributed from it using the method of a damaged phone. The question is - sorry for the rhyme - where did the stuffing come from? And why? in the thirties? Why and to whom did it become necessary to aggravate?

So, “In the Central Archive of the FSB there is a fund No. 7 containing acts on the enforcement of sentences, which no one looked into until 1991. It was there that the Mozokhin Group found documents indicating that in 1921-1928 the burials of the victims repressions were carried out in the very center of Moscow on the territory of the Yauza hospital, from 1926 to 1936 - at the Vagankovsky cemetery, and from 1935 to 1953 - partly burials, partly cremation of the executed were carried out in the Moscow crematorium at the Donskoy cemetery.These documents contained clear instructions commandants of cemeteries (which, among many other public services, were then part of the NKVD system.) The picture was as follows: for each fact of burial or cremation, there was a memorandum in which they asked to take so many corpses (about 10-20 per day) with a listing surnames".

Is it clear now. Accounting and control. However, the volumes are not the same. Little bloodthirsty. And then "In 1991, through the efforts of a public group led by M. Mindlin, execution lists of those sentenced to death with marks on the execution of sentences were discovered." Or so: At the end of 1991, in the archives of the Moscow Department of the MB, previously unknown, unregistered 18 volumes of files with instructions and acts on the execution of sentences for executions of 20,675 people from August 8, 1937 to October 19, 1938 were found.

Elsewhere: “And only at the end of 1991, previously unknown and nowhere registered materials were discovered in the archives of the Moscow KGB department. More precisely, 18 volumes of cases with orders and acts on the execution of sentences for executions of 20,675 people from August 1937 to October 1938 ... One of the "veterans" of the NKVD, whose name the powerful department did not want to reveal, certified their signatures and confirmed the presence of "special facilities" in Butovo and Kommunarka."

"The declassification of the Butovo test site was not without a journalist: it turned out to be A.A. Milchakov, the son of the repressed first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee A.I. on the territory of the Donskoy you can’t lay everyone down, somewhere it was necessary to bury the executed.

And here is Yagoda's dacha in Butovo, as well as the NKVD rest house, as well as the NKVD shooting range - that's it, everything grows together.

Well, Milchakov made a TV report (when is not clear, but I think it was also in 1991, whoever remembers the then wave will understand everything - a spoon is expensive for dinner).

As I understand it (18 volumes), no one has seen the documents except for a group of researchers, although the lists of the executed are posted online, or here (not scans, though, but in Word format).

That's all the documents. In Word format. And most of the references (who are not too lazy to google on their own will see for themselves) - to the words of unnamed "local residents" and to what the group was told by a certain "Employee of the Center for Public Relations of the FSB, formerly Deputy Head of the Rehabilitation Group, FSB Colonel M. E Kirillin" (the speeches of this colonel generally wander from publication to publication? I wonder if this is a real person at all, and if so, where is he now - is he not in America or Britain, like his colleagues Suvorov and Kalugin).

Journalists, as usual, paint: "Hundreds of people ... silently wander along the narrow paths between thirteen filled-in ditches, which stand out noticeably against the background of the earth. Twenty thousand mute skulls under this earth, twenty thousand restless souls among these rare trees ...". ..

On the other hand, it is known that "In 1997, partial archaeological research was carried out: one of the burial ditches was opened. Burials in five layers were found on an area of ​​​​only 12 square meters; experts counted the remains of 149 people here. ditches were made in the summer of 2002. Experts identified and mapped 13 burial ditches, but the research is not completed, and answers to many questions have not yet been found."

It would seem that these questions should be answered! It’s not all the same to refer to rumors, to the words of nameless “former NKVD drivers”, to 18 volumes of “previously unaccounted for archives”, which no one except for the “public group led by M. Mindlin”, as I understand it, have not seen, and which have already been published six-volume archive.

After all, if, as they say, up to half a thousand people were actually shot a day, then it is necessary to carry out exhumation, reburial, in general, provide the world with evidence, and the dead - a worthy rest.

After all - "Thirteen ditches, filled to the brim, like mud, with dead people."

Although no one is going to do this, as I understand it, they will immediately build a museum and a memorial complex, without really understanding what happened there.

Maybe because "

And were the remains of specific people found?
- Not. To do this, apparently, to conduct some very complex research. Judging by the excavation that was done in 1997, there are no solid remains of, say, a human skeleton. Everything is mixed up there ... They filled up the ditches with anything, garbage.".

Rubbish. From 20 to 100,000 victims were buried in garbage so that only 149 people were found. It is explained as follows: "it is simply impossible to identify individual remains now: the executed are so densely packed that archaeologists who recently carried out excavations on twelve square meters discovered the remains of 149 people."

We found 149 at 12 meters, then, as I understand it, we multiplied this figure by the approximate area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe ditches, and so the problem converged with the answer that was suggested by Mindlin's group. For some reason, I recall a case with the discovery of another mass grave site (I can’t find a link, but the story is known on the network, many should remember it), about which it was immediately announced - here it is, another evidence of the crimes of the NKVD (and there children’s remains were found , women, etc.) - in general, they were just about to erect another monument to the victims, as it turned out that this was a plague burial of the thirteenth century.

In Butovo, the Butovo Memorial Center has already been created, work is underway to “create a memorial complex on the site of the former special zone of the NKVD-FSB Butovo”, and they also write that “A database is being created“ Victims of mass terror shot at the Butovo NKVD training ground in 1937 -1938 With the support of the Russian Humanitarian Science Foundation (grant No. 06-01-12140v), unique software is being created. Work is underway to digitize documents and photographs. The publication of this database on the Internet is being prepared", but for some reason it seems to me that the word "grant" is the key here and it is not worth counting on the appearance on the network of digitized documents confirming mass executions in Butovo in such a volume.

Especially when, already knowing about the "unexpectedly found" 18 volumes, undocumented stories of unknown eyewitnesses and Colonel M.E. these issues were resolved", and then "at the expense of the Moscow government in Drozhzhino, the road from Varshavskoe shosse was practically rebuilt. it becomes clear that the case was sanctioned from the very top, the most striking evidence of which is not even the FSB, but the fact that Luzhkov backed away from building a residential microdistrict there.

Already "Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II laid a new stone temple in Butovo", and "Putin bowed to the victims of the" Russian Golgotha ​​"".

Somehow it seems that this whole terrible story with the training ground is another anti-Soviet myth, moreover, designed to more tightly tie the USSR and Nazi Germany. It is not for nothing that almost all publications mention such recognizable details as the ditches themselves, "gas chambers" in which prisoners were poisoned with gas (yes, we are told that the NKVD did this even before the war, before the Nazis), as well as such the facts that before the execution the prisoners were stripped naked and then plundered things - everything is like in fascist concentration camps, just put an equal sign, not to mention the fact that the whole essence of the carbon copy resembles the Katyn shooting case, about which many copies have already been broken.

After all, it's almost official: "The Butovo firing range is one of the largest sites in Europe for mass executions and burials of victims of political repressions."

And, of course, "Our short memory and lack of repentance for the sins of communism, as it was in post-fascist Germany, inevitably leads Russia to the new year 1937."

In general, to the point, I’m all about the fact that: does anyone have information on the landfill - except for that yellowness, rumors and the number 20,765, in general, what lies everywhere on the Internet and is distributed under a carbon copy from one and the same a dubious source? Someone already subjected the information to scientific analysis? I tried to critically comprehend it and, perhaps, check it (my text, of course, does not pretend to anything like that - I have neither time nor skills, I just got interested in the topic). If you have info, please share.

I have no doubt that in the thirties a harsh lawlessness was going on, I don’t want to underestimate the size of this tragedy in the slightest way, but I would like to know if this whole story with the landfill was a falsification.

I would like to clarify.

Purely for myself. For now.

On reflection, it seems to me more and more that the story of the landfill is Goebbelsism of the purest water. Everything is too neatly added up in the official version and too many unsolved questions remain on the merits.

I do not believe that four (and even 12) people could unleash such a massacre using revolvers alone. I do not believe that prisoners were taken to Butovo to be executed; even now it’s a suburb, and in 1937, when Moscow was five times smaller, and the roads were five times worse, no one would drive paddy wagons to such a distance every night (one road for three hours in two directions, plus gasoline, plus depreciation). The sentences were carried out in the cellars and courtyards of prisons, there are tons of documentary evidence of this, and the corpses were taken to the nearest special cemeteries - it is possible that Butovo was one of them, and prisoners were actually buried there for thirty years, but between the mass grave and There is still a difference between mass executions, right?

I don’t believe that these so often mentioned ditches were dug specifically for executions - Butovo was officially a shooting range, and at each equipped shooting range there are always fortification and trench networks for training soldiers in conditions close to combat. Tales that some new types of weapons are being tested at shooting ranges are all jaundice, although such tests do happen, in 99 percent of cases the shooting range serves for training firing and running soldiers. Hence the trench lines, which, as I think, with the onset of the war and the approach of German troops to the capital, were strengthened and converted for military operations already as lines of defense. After the war, they were apparently partly filled in over time, and partly used as garbage collectors (hence the garbage in the ditches). We must not forget that in the area of ​​​​the landfill there was previously a manor, and then - warehouses of the NKVD and a rest house of the NKVD, so some part of the filled-in ditches may simply be traces of laying communications - gas, water, sewerage. In general, until the remains with traces of bullets are presented, as well as some sane documents on the executions at Butovo, the story can be questioned. For mass graves in Katyn, for example, there are entire libraries, photo libraries and even video libraries, but for Butovo, as I understand it, there are no documents, except for the aforementioned collection "Butovo test site. 1937-1938."

By the way, about mass graves - did any of the journalists even try to think that a hecatomb of such a scale (and, as they say, sprinkled with a "thin layer of earth") is a guaranteed epidemic in the region? How many crows should hang over the landfill, how many dogs and wild animals should come to rip graves, what hordes of rats should settle for a feast, what smell should be for kilometers around, and how quickly a plague spread by groundwater will grow in a global grave - and all this is next to the capital? And how much bleach should be poured into the ditches in order to avoid this - what kind of "thin layer of earth" is there, according to the sanitary standards I read somewhere for preventing epidemics when performing mass graves (mass graves) during the war, per kilogram of cadaveric weight at least 100 grams of bleach should be poured, and near settlements - half a kilo. Let's calculate the volume of chlorine delivery to Butovo?

And so far there are no official results of the exhumation - with traces of bullet holes, carbon analysis of the remains (to make sure that the burial is not of the thirteenth, say, century, and also not a gangster cache of the nineties for the corpses of hostages), as well as shells, etc. - to check the weapons from which the shots were fired, because by and large, the Germans were also there, and there were hostilities, so who the 149 people discovered were and who killed them, it would still be necessary to establish) - in general, for now everything is based on such a shaky foundation, the whole story is a little trustworthy.

In fact, only the names given are documented (as well as, as they say, biographies and summaries of the sentences of the executed), and, I think, they are all real - only where and from what documents they are taken is not very clear yet - after all, according to For the period from 1935 to 1953, 27,508 people were sentenced to capital punishment in Moscow and the Moscow Region, and about 700,000 people throughout the country in the whole of 1938, so there will be enough names for more than one training ground.

In the meantime, the following theory seems to me the most probable: after the August putsch of 1991, in the wake of anti-Sovietism and the destruction of all the institutions of the USSR and its ideology, these "unexpectedly found 18 volumes" were thrown at "memorials", who are generally always used in the dark, as well as confirmations events made by unnamed individuals, as well as professional disinformers. This was inspired by the Yeltsin mafia in order to support the ideological justification of their terry anti-Sovietism, which, in turn, was the first step towards personal enrichment. However, at that stage, Yeltsin managed without Butov.

By 1993, the overall idea was clear. And the second wave of the Butovo story falls just at the time following the shooting of the Palace of Soviets and the appearance of the term "red-brown", Mark Deutsch then wrote articles that began with the words "as you know, fascism and communism are one and the same" (now he is already expressed more modestly), in general, the information that the executioners of the NKVD outdid the executioners of the SS came in handy.

Well, the Butovo epic received another renaissance by 1995, when Yeltsin was elected for a second term (who still remembers "vote with your heart"), and when the USSR was painted in such colors and with such Goebbels methods that it was even creepy. Why then there was no global stuffing of information that hecatombs of such a magnitude were found in the near Moscow region, I do not know - most likely, they simply did not have time to prepare the material so that it was perceived more holistically. After all, even now, after ten years of work, as we see, even a cursory glance makes us ask a lot of questions. Or maybe there were other, more effective methods, or the idea was simply abandoned for other reasons.

However, the fact that this project is not being promoted as it could be, but it is not being closed either (and we understand that Luzhkov would be happy to build a residential microdistrict there, regardless of how many people are buried there) suggests that he is being held back as a trump card for the future. Just in case. Moreover, time passes, people become stupid, it becomes easier to manipulate them, and in another five to ten years no one will even ask the slightest question whether there was a boy.