Memorial complex Butovo polygon. Publications

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. The next batch was sprinkled with a thin layer of earth, and the next day everything was repeated," and the filled ditches themselves are clearly visible in the photograph 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 ones 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 special, 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 put before the joint board of the Government of Moscow and the Moscow Region. If we talk about the fact that we are now 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 outbuilding of the estate. We intended to organize a museum in this building. Funds are also 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 Yauzskaya 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 orders and acts on the execution of sentences for executions of 20,675 people were found in the period from August 8, 1937 to October 19, 1938.

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: he 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 the 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 gassed (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 basements 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 necessarily 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 dig 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 shell casings, 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 were the 149 people discovered 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 1938, so there are enough names for more than one training ground.

In the meantime, the following theory seems to me the most likely: 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.

: both the Russian Church (Orthodox of various jurisdictional affiliations), and other confessions.

The overwhelming majority of those executed at the Butovo training ground were sentenced to death by extrajudicial bodies - the troika of the USSR NKVD in the Moscow Region, as well as a special commission of the NKVD of the USSR and the USSR prosecutor.

Not far from the Butovsky training ground there are two other former special facilities: the Kommunarka training ground (the former personal dacha of Henry Yagoda, later - the place of mass executions), and the Sukhanovskaya special security prison (on the territory of the monastery Catherine's male hermitage).

Burials

From the results of documentary research carried out by the Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Moscow Government for the Restoration of the Rights of Victims of Political Repressions, the circumstances of the executions at the Butovo training ground for the period from August 8, 1937 to October 19, 1938 were clarified. In total, 20,765 people were shot during this period, more than 3,000 people were identified by name. There is no documentary information about later burials. As of 2003, 19,595 people remain unrehabilitated (93% of the total number of those shot), convicted under purely criminal or mixed articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, who, according to Russian laws, are not subject to rehabilitation.

Burials were made without notifying relatives and without a church or civil memorial service. Relatives of the executed began to receive certificates indicating the exact date and cause of death only in 1989.

On October 30, 2007, on the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repressions, the Butovo test site was visited by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia.

Story

At the end of the 19th century, on the site of the Butovo test site, there was the Kosmodamianskoye-Drozhzhino estate (in honor of the unmercenary saints Cosmas and Damian). For the first time, the village of Drozhzhino was mentioned in 1568, when the estate of the zemstvo boyar Fyodor Mikhailovich Drozhzhin (who fell out of favor with Ivan the Terrible and executed by order of the tsar) was located here. In 1889, the owner of the estate, N. M. Solovyov, founded a stud farm, a hippodrome with spectator stands was set up near the forest. The owner of the Butovo estate, I. I. Zimin, shortly after the October Revolution, without waiting for the confiscation, gave everything to the state and left with his family abroad. The stud farm supplied horses to the Red Army.

On May 15, 2004, the laying of the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia took place, built in the style of ancient Russian tent churches. The great consecration took place on May 19, 2007.

Circumstances of the executions. Statistical data

Death sentences to victims of repression were handed down without adversarial judicial review, with the sanctions of extrajudicial criminal prosecution bodies - the NKVD troika for the Moscow Region, the special commission of the NKVD of the USSR, the prosecutor of the USSR, and also the special collegium of the Moscow Regional Court.

374 church and clergymen of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) were shot and buried in Butovo: from Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) to dozens of deacons, sexton and readers.

Famous people shot at the Butovo firing range

Ambartsumov, Vladimir Ambartsumovich (-) - clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church, inventor.
Auslender, Sergei Abramovich (-) - writer of the "silver age".
Gelman, Hans (-) - German and Soviet physicist.
Delectorsky Nikita Petrovich (-) - Bishop of Nizhny Tagil, Orekhovo-Zuevsky. (Russian Orthodox Church).
Dzhunkovsky, Vladimir Fedorovich (-) - former mayor of Moscow.
Drevin, Alexander Davydovich (-) - artist
Golovin, Fedor Alexandrovich (-) - Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Empire of the II convocation.
Klutsis, Gustav Gustavovich (-) - avant-garde artist.
Leiko, Maria Karlovna (-) - actress.
Olsufiev, Yuri Alexandrovich (-) - art critic and restorer.
Proferansov, Vladimir Aleksandrovich (-) - priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, archpriest, canonized as a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.
Semashkevich, Roman Matveyevich (-) - artist.
Seraphim (Chichagov) (-) - Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan of St. Petersburg.
Trubachev, Zosima Vasilyevich (-) - Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, canonized as a holy martyr in 2000
Tikhomirov, Ivan Petrovich (-) - clergyman.
Chenykaev, Nikolai Sergeevich (-) - former governor of Kaluga (1915-1917).
Yagodin, Vasily Alexandrovich (-) - archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church, canonized as a holy martyr in 2000 for general church veneration.

Memorial complex on the territory of the polygon

Due to the fact that the wooden church, built on the territory of the landfill in 1995-1996 and consecrated on December 11, 1996, on the day of memory of Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), could not accommodate all parishioners, in 2007 a large stone Orthodox church was erected and consecrated Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo.

Stands with a list of 935 executed ministers and other members of the Russian Orthodox Church are placed on the territory of the Butovo training ground.

Using the stands and other information-bearing structures (memorial stones, etc.) of the memorial complex of the Butovo test site, visitors will not be able to find out some important information, such as the number of those rehabilitated, the degree and nature of the guilt of a particular person or group of persons, nationality, gender, age composition of those executed.

The complex is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays. The order of excursions is made additionally, by prior arrangement with the guide.

Butovo landfill. Main sign.jpg

The main information stand on the territory of the Butovo test site (at the entrance)

Butovo landfill. Right side of the main sign. Butovo polygon.jpg

Fragment of the right side of the main information stand on the territory of the Butovo test site (at the entrance)

Butovo landfill. The middle part of the main sign. Butovo polygon.jpg

Photos of some of the executed, taken from their investigation files. Data on the number of those shot at the Butovo training ground by day from August 1937 to October 1938. (Fragment of the middle part of the main information stand on the territory of the Butovo test site (at the entrance))

Butovo landfill. The left side of the main sign. Scheme of the main burials of the historical monument "Butovo polygon".jpg

Scheme of the main burials of the historical monument "Butovo landfill" (Fragment of the left side of the main information stand on the territory of the Butovo landfill (at the entrance))

Butovo landfill. Temple.jpg

Temple on the territory of the Butovo training ground

Driving to the landfill

Directions to the Butovo landfill - from the Butovo railway station from the Kursky railway station, then on foot through Varshavskoye highway, or by bus number 18 from the metro station "Dmitry Donskoy Boulevard" to the final stop "Butovo landfill" (also makes a stop at Butovo station in both directions).

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Notes

// patriarchia.ru (February 11, 2007)
// archive.martyr.ru
// memo.ru
// ekaterinamon.ru
// temples.ru
Series "Butovo polygon". 1937-1938. Book of memory of victims of political repressions. Issue. 1-7", M., 1997-2003. Publication of the society "Memorial"
Valentina Oberemko.// Arguments and Facts . - 2011. - No. 30 for July 27. - S. 30 .
L. A. Golovkova. // archive.martyr.ru (April 12, 2006)
Vladimir Kuzmin. Rossiyskaya Gazeta // rg.ru (federal issue No. 4506 of 10/31/2007)
Alexander Latyshev, Bogdan Stepovoy. Izvestia newspaper // izvestia.ru (November 2, 2007)
// alexanderyakovlev.org
Martyrology of the executed and buried at the NKVD training ground "Butovo Object", 08/08/1937 - 10/19/1938 / Church of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo. A group to perpetuate the memory of the victims of polit. repression. - M .: Publishing House "Zachatievsky Monastery", 1997. - 418 p., 1 sheet. tab.
// patriarchia.ru (May 19, 2007)
// sedmitza.ru (May 18, 2007)
// martyr.ru

Literature

Bakirov E. A., Shantsev V. P. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: Book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression; Moscow Anti-Fascist Center. Release the first. - Moscow: Institute of Experimental Sociology, 1997. - 364 p. - ISBN 5-87637-005-3. - ISBN 978-5-87637-005-1.
Bakirov E. A. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: Book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression; Moscow Anti-Fascist Center. Issue two. - Moscow: Panorama, 1998. - 362 p. - ISBN 5-85895-052-3.
Bakirov E. A., Shantsev V. P. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: a book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression. Issue 4. - Moscow: Alzo, 2000. - 362 p. - List of abbreviations: pp. 360-362. - ISBN 5-93547-003-9.
Bakirov E. A., Shantsev V. P. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: a book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression. Issue 5. - Moscow: Publishing House of Panorama LLC, 2001. - 360 p. : ill. - List of abbreviations: P.358-360. - ISBN 5-93547-004-7.
Bakirov E. A., Shantsev V. P. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: a book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression. Issue 6. - Moscow: Publishing House of Panorama LLC, 2002. - 320 p. - ISBN 5-93547-004-7.
Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: a book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression. Issue 7. - Moscow: Alzo, 2003. - 367 p. : ill. - Index of names for seven volumes of the book of memory "Butovo polygon": pp. 145-299. - ISBN 5-93547-006-3. - ISBN 978-5-93547-006-7.
Lyubimova K. F. Butovsky polygon, 1937-1938: a book of memory of the victims of political repression / Permanent Interdepartmental Commission of the Government of Moscow for the restoration of the rights of rehabilitated victims of political repression. Issue 8. - Moscow: Alzo, 2003. - 395 p. - ISBN 5-93547-007-1. ISBN 978-5-93547-007-4.
Golovkova L. A.// Orthodox Encyclopedia. Volume VI. - M .: Church-Scientific Center "Orthodox Encyclopedia", 2003. - S. 393-396. - 752 p. - 39,000 copies. - ISBN 5-89572-010-2

An excerpt characterizing the Butovo test site

“Well, now, papa, I will say decisively - and mother too, as you wish, - I will say decisively that you let me go into military service, because I can’t ... that’s all ...
The countess raised her eyes to heaven in horror, clasped her hands and angrily turned to her husband.
- That's the deal! - she said.
But the count recovered from his excitement at the same moment.
“Well, well,” he said. "Here's another warrior!" Leave the nonsense: you need to study.
“It’s not nonsense, daddy. Obolensky Fedya is younger than me and also goes, and most importantly, anyway, I can’t learn anything now, when ... - Petya stopped, blushed to a sweat and said the same: - when the fatherland is in danger.
- Full, full, nonsense ...
“But you yourself said that we would sacrifice everything.
“Petya, I’m telling you, shut up,” the count shouted, looking back at his wife, who, turning pale, looked with fixed eyes at her younger son.
- I'm telling you. So Pyotr Kirillovich will say ...
- I'm telling you - it's nonsense, the milk has not dried up yet, but he wants to serve in the military! Well, well, I'm telling you, - and the count, taking the papers with him, probably to read it again in the study before resting, left the room.
- Pyotr Kirillovich, well, let's go for a smoke ...
Pierre was confused and indecisive. Natasha's unusually brilliant and lively eyes incessantly, more than affectionately addressed to him, brought him to this state.
- No, I think I'm going home ...
- Like home, but you wanted to have an evening with us ... And then they rarely began to visit. And this one is mine ... - the count said good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, - it’s only cheerful with you ...
“Yes, I forgot ... I definitely need to go home ... Things ...” Pierre said hastily.
“Well, goodbye,” said the count, leaving the room completely.
- Why are you leaving? Why are you upset? Why? .. - Natasha asked Pierre, defiantly looking into his eyes.
"Because I love you! he wanted to say, but he did not say it, blushed to tears and lowered his eyes.
“Because it’s better for me to visit you less often ... Because ... no, I just have business to do.”
- From what? no, tell me, - Natasha began decisively and suddenly fell silent. They both looked at each other in fear and embarrassment. He tried to smile, but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently kissed her hand and went out.
Pierre decided not to visit the Rostovs with himself anymore.

Petya, after receiving a decisive refusal, went to his room and there, locking himself away from everyone, wept bitterly. Everyone did as if they had not noticed anything when he came to tea silent and gloomy, with tearful eyes.
The next day the Emperor arrived. Several of the Rostovs' servants asked to go and see the tsar. That morning, Petya spent a long time dressing, combing his hair and arranging his collars like the big ones. He frowned in front of the mirror, made gestures, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without telling anyone, put on his cap and left the house from the back porch, trying not to be noticed. Petya decided to go straight to the place where the sovereign was, and directly explain to some chamberlain (it seemed to Petya that the sovereign was always surrounded by chamberlains) that he, Count Rostov, despite his youth, wants to serve the fatherland, that youth cannot be an obstacle for devotion and that he is ready ... Petya, while he was getting ready, prepared many beautiful words that he would say to the chamberlain.
Petya counted on the success of his presentation to the sovereign precisely because he was a child (Petya even thought how surprised everyone would be at his youth), and at the same time, in the arrangement of his collars, in his hairstyle and in a sedate, slow gait, he wanted to present himself as an old man. But the farther he went, the more he entertained himself with the people arriving and arriving at the Kremlin, the more he forgot to observe the degree and slowness characteristic of adults. Approaching the Kremlin, he already began to take care that he was not pushed, and resolutely, with a menacing look, put his elbows on his sides. But at the Trinity Gates, despite all his determination, people who probably did not know for what patriotic purpose he was going to the Kremlin pressed him against the wall so that he had to submit and stop, while at the gate with a buzzing under the arches the sound of carriages passing by. Near Petya stood a woman with a footman, two merchants and a retired soldier. After standing for some time at the gate, Petya, without waiting for all the carriages to pass, wanted to move on before the others and began to work decisively with his elbows; but the woman standing opposite him, on whom he first directed his elbows, angrily shouted at him:
- What, barchuk, pushing, you see - everyone is standing. Why climb then!
“That’s how everyone will climb,” said the footman, and, also beginning to work with his elbows, squeezed Petya into the stinking corner of the gate.
Petya wiped away the sweat that covered his face with his hands and straightened his collars, soaked with sweat, which he arranged as well as the big ones at home.
Petya felt that he had an unpresentable appearance, and was afraid that if he presented himself to the chamberlains like that, he would not be allowed to see the sovereign. But there was no way to recover and go to another place because of the tightness. One of the passing generals was an acquaintance of the Rostovs. Petya wanted to ask for his help, but considered that it would be contrary to courage. When all the carriages had passed, the crowd poured in and carried Petya out to the square, which was all occupied by people. Not only in the area, but on the slopes, on the roofs, there were people everywhere. As soon as Petya found himself on the square, he clearly heard the sounds of bells and joyful folk talk that filled the entire Kremlin.
At one time it was more spacious on the square, but suddenly all the heads opened, everything rushed somewhere forward. Petya was squeezed so that he could not breathe, and everyone shouted: “Hurrah! hooray! hurrah! Petya stood on tiptoe, pushed, pinched, but could see nothing but the people around him.
On all faces there was one common expression of tenderness and delight. One merchant's wife, who was standing near Petya, was sobbing, and tears flowed from her eyes.
- Father, angel, father! she said, wiping her tears with her finger.
- Hooray! shouted from all sides. For a minute the crowd stood in one place; but then she rushed forward again.
Petya, beside himself, clenched his teeth and rolled his eyes brutally, rushed forward, working with his elbows and shouting "Hurray!", as if he was ready to kill himself and everyone at that moment, but exactly the same brutal faces climbed from his sides with the same cries of "Hurrah!".
"So that's what a sovereign is! thought Petya. – No, I can’t apply to him myself, it’s too bold! but at that moment the crowd staggered back (from the front the policemen were pushing those who had advanced too close to the procession; the sovereign was passing from the palace to the Assumption Cathedral), and Petya unexpectedly received such a blow to the ribs in the side and was so crushed that suddenly everything became dim in his eyes and he lost consciousness. When he came to, some kind of clergyman, with a tuft of graying hair behind him, in a shabby blue cassock, probably a sexton, held him under the arm with one hand, and guarded him from the oncoming crowd with the other.
- Barchonka crushed! - said the deacon. - Well, so! .. easier ... crushed, crushed!
The sovereign went to the Assumption Cathedral. The crowd leveled off again, and the deacon led Petya, pale and not breathing, to the Tsar Cannon. Several people took pity on Petya, and suddenly the whole crowd turned to him, and there was already a stampede around him. Those who stood closer served him, unbuttoned his frock coat, seated cannons on a dais and reproached someone - those who crushed him.
- That way you can crush to death. What is this! Murder to do! Look, my heart, it has become white as a tablecloth, - said the voices.
Petya soon came to his senses, the color returned to his face, the pain disappeared, and for this temporary inconvenience he received a place on the cannon, with which he hoped to see the sovereign who was due to go back. Petya no longer thought about filing a petition. If only he could see him - and then he would consider himself happy!
During the service in the Assumption Cathedral - a joint prayer service on the occasion of the arrival of the sovereign and a prayer of thanksgiving for making peace with the Turks - the crowd spread; sellers of kvass, gingerbread, poppy seeds, which Petya was especially fond of, appeared shouting, and ordinary conversations were heard. One merchant's wife showed her torn shawl and reported how expensive it was bought; another said that nowadays all silk fabrics have become expensive. The sexton, Petya's savior, was talking to the official about who and who is serving with the bishop today. The sexton repeated the word soborne several times, which Petya did not understand. Two young tradesmen were joking with yard girls gnawing nuts. All these conversations, especially jokes with girls, which for Petya at his age had a special attraction, all these conversations now did not interest Petya; ou sat on his cannon dais, still agitated at the thought of the sovereign and of his love for him. The coincidence of the feeling of pain and fear, when he was squeezed, with the feeling of delight, further strengthened in him the consciousness of the importance of this moment.
Suddenly, cannon shots were heard from the embankment (these were fired in commemoration of peace with the Turks), and the crowd quickly rushed to the embankment - to watch how they were shooting. Petya also wanted to run there, but the deacon, who took the barchon under his protection, did not let him go. Shots were still going on when officers, generals, chamberlains ran out of the Assumption Cathedral, then others came out more slowly, their hats were again taken off their heads, and those who had run away to look at the guns ran back. Finally, four more men in uniforms and ribbons came out of the doors of the cathedral. "Hooray! Hooray! the crowd shouted again.
- Which the? Which the? Petya asked around him in a weeping voice, but no one answered him; everyone was too carried away, and Petya, choosing one of these four faces, whom he could not clearly see because of the tears that came out of his eyes with joy, focused all his delight on him, although it was not the sovereign, shouted “Hurrah! in a frantic voice and decided that tomorrow, no matter what it cost him, he would be a military man.
The crowd ran after the sovereign, escorted him to the palace and began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya hadn't eaten anything, and the sweat was pouring down from him; but he did not go home, and together with a smaller, but still rather large crowd, stood in front of the palace, during the emperor’s dinner, looking into the windows of the palace, expecting something else and envying the dignitaries who drove up to the porch - for the emperor’s dinner, and the lackeys of the chambers who served at the table and flashed through the windows.
At dinner, the sovereign Valuev said, looking out the window:
“The people still hope to see Your Majesty.
Dinner was already over, the emperor got up and, finishing his biscuit, went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya in the middle, rushed to the balcony.
"Angel, father!" Hurray, father! .. - the people and Petya shouted, and again the women and some weaker men, including Petya, wept with happiness. A rather large piece of biscuit, which the sovereign held in his hand, broke off and fell on the railing of the balcony, from the railing to the ground. The coachman in the coat, who was standing nearest, rushed to this piece of biscuit and grabbed it. Some of the crowd rushed to the coachman. Noticing this, the sovereign ordered a plate of biscuits to be served to him and began to throw biscuits from the balcony. Petya's eyes were filled with blood, the danger of being crushed excited him even more, he threw himself on the biscuits. He did not know why, but it was necessary to take one biscuit from the hands of the king, and it was necessary not to succumb. He rushed and knocked down an old woman who was catching a biscuit. But the old woman did not consider herself defeated, although she lay on the ground (the old woman caught biscuits and did not hit with her hands). Petya knocked her hand away with his knee, grabbed the biscuit and, as if afraid of being late, again shouted "Hurrah!", in a hoarse voice.
The sovereign left, and after that most of the people began to disperse.
“So I said that we still have to wait - and it happened,” the people said joyfully from different sides.
Happy as Petya was, he was still sad to go home and know that all the enjoyment of that day was over. From the Kremlin, Petya did not go home, but to his comrade Obolensky, who was fifteen years old and who also entered the regiment. Returning home, he resolutely and firmly announced that if they did not let him in, he would run away. And the next day, although not yet completely surrendered, Count Ilya Andreich went to find out how to put Petya somewhere safer.

On the morning of the 15th, on the third day after that, an innumerable number of carriages stood at the Sloboda Palace.
The halls were full. In the first there were nobles in uniforms, in the second, merchants with medals, in beards and blue caftans. There was a buzz and movement in the hall of the Nobility Assembly. At one large table, under the portrait of the sovereign, the most important nobles were sitting on chairs with high backs; but most of the nobles walked about the hall.
All the nobles, the same ones that Pierre saw every day either in the club or in their houses, were all in uniforms, some in Catherine’s, some in Pavlov’s, some in new Alexander’s, some in a general noble one, and this general character of the uniform gave something strange and fantastic to these old and young, the most diverse and familiar faces. Especially striking were the old people, blind, toothless, bald, swollen with yellow fat or shriveled, thin. For the most part they sat in their places and were silent, and if they walked and talked, they would attach themselves to someone younger. Just as on the faces of the crowd that Petya saw on the square, on all these faces there was a striking feature of the opposite: a common expectation of something solemn and ordinary, yesterday - the Boston party, Petrushka the cook, the health of Zinaida Dmitrievna, etc.
Pierre, from early morning pulled together in an awkward, narrow noble uniform that had become him, was in the halls. He was in a state of agitation: the extraordinary assembly not only of the nobility, but also of the merchants - the estates, etats generaux - evoked in him a whole series of thoughts long abandoned, but deeply embedded in his soul, about the Contrat social [Social contract] and the French revolution. The words he noticed in the appeal, that the sovereign would arrive in the capital for a conference with his people, confirmed him in this look. And he, believing that in this sense something important was approaching, something that he had been waiting for a long time, he walked, looked closely, listened to the conversation, but nowhere did he find an expression of those thoughts that occupied him.
The sovereign's manifesto was read, which caused delight, and then everyone dispersed, talking. In addition to the usual interests, Pierre heard rumors about where the leaders should stand at the time the sovereign entered, when to give the sovereign a ball, whether to be divided into districts or the entire province ... etc.; but as soon as the matter concerned the war and what the nobility was gathered for, the rumors were indecisive and indefinite. They were more willing to listen than to speak.
One middle-aged man, courageous, handsome, in a retired naval uniform, was talking in one of the halls, and people crowded around him. Pierre went up to the circle formed near the talker and began to listen. Count Ilya Andreevich, in his Catherine’s voivodship caftan, walking with a pleasant smile among the crowd, familiar with everyone, also approached this group and began to listen with his kind smile, as he always listened, nodding his head approvingly in agreement with the speaker. The retired sailor spoke very boldly; this was evident from the expressions of the faces listening to him, and from the fact that Pierre, known for being the most submissive and quiet people, disapprovingly departed from him or contradicted him. Pierre pushed his way into the middle of the circle, listened, and became convinced that the speaker was really a liberal, but in a completely different sense than Pierre thought. The sailor spoke in that especially sonorous, melodious, noble baritone, with pleasant grazing and contraction of consonants, in that voice with which they shout: “Cheak, pipe!”, And the like. He spoke with a habit of revelry and power in his voice.
- Well, that the Smolensk people offered the militias to the gosuai. Is it a decree for us Smolensk? If the bourgeois nobility of the Moscow province finds it necessary, they can show their devotion to the Emperor by other means. Have we forgotten the militia in the seventh year! Caterers and robber thieves have just made a profit...
Count Ilya Andreich, smiling sweetly, nodded his head approvingly.
- And what, did our militias make a benefit to the state? No! only ruined our farms. Better still a set ... otherwise neither a soldier nor a peasant will return to you, and only one debauchery. The nobles do not spare their lives, we ourselves will go without exception, we will take another recruit, and all of us just call the goose (he pronounced the sovereign so), we will all die for him, - the orator added, animated.
Ilya Andreich swallowed his saliva with pleasure and pushed Pierre, but Pierre also wanted to speak. He moved forward, feeling animated, not knowing what else and not knowing what he would say. He had just opened his mouth to speak, when one senator, completely without teeth, with an intelligent and angry face, standing close to the speaker, interrupted Pierre. With a visible habit of debating and holding questions, he spoke quietly, but audibly:
“I believe, my dear sir,” said the senator, mumbling his toothless mouth, “that we are not called here to discuss what is more convenient for the state at the present moment - recruitment or militia. We are called to respond to the proclamation with which the Sovereign Emperor honored us. And to judge what is more convenient - a recruitment or a militia, we will leave to judge the highest authority ...
Pierre suddenly found an outlet for his animation. He became hardened against the senator, who introduced this correctness and narrowness of views into the upcoming classes of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and stopped him. He himself did not know what he was going to say, but he began animatedly, occasionally breaking through in French and expressing himself bookishly in Russian.
“Excuse me, Your Excellency,” he began (Pierre was well acquainted with this senator, but considered it necessary to address him officially here), “although I do not agree with the lord ... (Pierre faltered. He wanted to say mon tres honorable preopinant), [my esteemed opponent,] - with the lord ... que je n "ai pas L" honneur de connaitre; [whom I do not have the honor to know] but I believe that the estate of the nobility, in addition to expressing their sympathy and delight, is also called upon to discuss and discuss those measures by which we can help the fatherland. I believe, - he said, inspired, - that the sovereign himself would be dissatisfied if he found in us only the owners of the peasants whom we give him, and ... chair a canon [meat for cannons], which we make of ourselves, but would not have found co-co-counsel in us.
Many moved away from the circle, noticing the contemptuous smile of the senator and the fact that Pierre speaks freely; only Ilya Andreich was pleased with Pierre's speech, as he was pleased with the speech of the sailor, the senator, and in general always with the speech that he had last heard.
“I believe that before discussing these issues,” Pierre continued, “we should ask the sovereign, most respectfully ask His Majesty to communicate to us how many troops we have, what is the position of our troops and armies, and then ...
But Pierre did not have time to finish these words, when they suddenly attacked him from three sides. The Boston player Stepan Stepanovich Apraksin, who had long been known to him and was always well disposed towards him, attacked him most strongly. Stepan Stepanovich was in a uniform, and, whether from a uniform or from other reasons, Pierre saw a completely different person in front of him. Stepan Stepanovich, with suddenly manifested senile anger on his face, shouted at Pierre:
- Firstly, I will tell you that we have no right to ask the sovereign about this, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had such a right, then the sovereign cannot answer us. The troops move in accordance with the movements of the enemy - the troops decrease and arrive ...
Another voice of a man of medium height, about forty years old, whom Pierre had seen in former times among the gypsies and knew for a bad card player and who, also changed in uniform, moved closer to Pierre, interrupted Apraksin.

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

(dDoctor 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.

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.

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).

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 "

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 "".

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."

I would like to clarify.

Purely for myself. For now.

By the way, about the 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 dig 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?

1937 Valery Chkalov makes the first non-stop flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Mikhail Romm releases the film “Lenin in October” on the screens of the Soviet Union, Vera Mukhina creates the sculpture “Worker and Collective Farm Woman” for the World Exhibition in Paris, and the metropolitan metro receives a new Kyiv ring station .

Late in the evening, cars with the inscription “Bread” often pass by the former Danilov Monastery (where a special detention center for children of “enemies of the people” was equipped) along the old Warsaw road. If one of the Muscovites, surprised by such a concentration of grain carriers, managed to trace their route, it would turn out that the path starts from the prisons - Butyrskaya, Taganskaya, Matrosskaya Tishina, Lubyanka. And then it is not difficult to guess that these cars were paddy wagons. But curiosity in those years was too dangerous a quality, bread is bread.

"Bread carriers" brought the prisoners to the territory of the special zone of the economic department of the NKVD, located between the forest surrounded by barbed wire and the remains of the Drozhzhino estate. This place was called the Butovo shooting range. From the cars, the prisoners were led to a long barracks, where they held a roll call, then they checked the people with the documents brought with them from the prisons and announced the verdict: the death penalty. In order to avoid escape attempts and riots, sentences were not announced in prisons, and on the way people thought that they were being transported to another prison or to a transit camp. And only in the barracks at the training ground did they learn the truth.

On some days, several dozen, on others, several hundred people waited here for dawn and death. How they spent these last hours, what sounds came from behind the wooden barracks walls - no one will ever know this secret. After sunrise, the firing squad, consisting of several people, began to work. The suicide bombers were taken out of the barracks in small groups, placed on the edge of a ditch dug in advance with the help of an excavator, and killed in turn by shots in the back of the head with a pistol.

The executioner saw every person who was first taken out of the barracks and then shot. Then the firing squad received a bucket of alcohol, and in the evening the driver drove them to the NKVD hostel in a semi-conscious state, so that in a few days everything would happen again.

In total, 20,761 people were shot at the Butovo training ground from August 1937 to October 1938. Their grave was 13 ditches dug by local residents with a bulldozer, with a total length of 900 meters. Each ditch was 4–5 meters wide and about 4 meters deep. Mass executions here began after the NKVD issued Decree No. 00447 on July 31, 1937 "On the operation to repress former kulaks, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements." "Anti-Soviet elements" were, among other things, the so-called "churchmen" - Orthodox priests and laity.

In the Butovo ditches lie 935 people who were shot for confessing the Orthodox faith. But most of all, ordinary workers, employees of Soviet institutions and peasants are buried here. In the investigative files, it is written like this: "farmers" and "grain growers." The age of those killed ranged from 15-16-year-old teenagers to gray-haired old men over 80. It is known, for example, that the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), who was shot for "involvement in a counter-revolutionary monarchist organization", who was 81 years old, was brought to the training ground on a stretcher.

Some were shot by entire families: husband, wife and adult children. Others - villages: for example, from the village of Petrovo, Ryazan region, 18 people were shot in Butovo. Some were arrested only on a national basis. So, in Moscow, since pre-revolutionary times, there was a Chinese community that kept laundries. The “Chinese laundresses” who remained in Moscow after the Bolsheviks came to power, mostly men, were in great demand until 1937, when almost all of them were shot in Butovo.

Someone was "awarded" by firing squad for outstanding work. So, Baron von Grevenets, a native of a well-known family of Russian Germans, was a talented engineer. He was sought out in the camps to design a unique mechanism for the spire at the River Station in Moscow: this spire could rise and fall. After the completion of the work, von Grevenets, like many other prisoners of Dmitlag, was sent to the Butovo training ground.

After the executions

After 1938, when mass executions ceased, the landfill and the surrounding area continued to be used for burials of those executed in Moscow prisons. And the building of the commandant's office, located 100 meters from the burial ditches, became a "weekend rest house" for senior officers of the NKVD. Here they had barbecues in the park of the Drozhzhino estate, took a steam bath, and swam in the pond. Lavrenty Beria himself liked to rest here and often came. There is evidence from local residents who worked as servants that the style of relaxation is not malso married in the first years of the war.

After the war, on the territory of the special zone, in the center of which there was a firing range, several buildings of the training center for special services officers were built. Specialists from the Warsaw Pact countries were also trained here. A garden was laid out at the landfill, an apple alley and strawberry beds were planted. The staff of the center and their wards walked through this garden after classes, unaware (or perhaps suspecting) that there were thousands of human bodies under them.

In the 1950s, employees of the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Internal Affairs began to distribute the land of the former special zone for summer cottages. The plots adjoined close to the landfill, and when summer residents began to arbitrarily cut their own land, they began to stumble upon not completely decomposed human remains. And although the footage was verified and did not chat too much, some families retained memories of the terrible finds. Therefore, in the late 1960s, an area of approximately seven hectares, covering all the burial ditches, was fenced with barbed wire. Gradually, it overgrown with shrubs and cow parsnip, turned into a wild wasteland. In the former building of the commandant's office, a pioneer camp was set up for the children of the Chekists, which later became a children's sports camp and existed until the early 1990s.

The Butovo training ground as a place of mass executions was not mentioned either during the “Beria rehabilitation” (after the death of Stalin, for a short period, Beria became the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and carried out a number of reforms, including releasing illegally convicted from the camps), nor during the time of Khrushchev. When in 1988 the Council of People's Deputies of the USSR decided to rehabilitate those convicted under Article 58 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, hundreds of thousands of people across the country were posthumously rehabilitated. In the Moscow Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a rehabilitation group was created, one of whose members, a colonel of state security, lived in a childhood village near the Butovo training ground and heard about burials. But documentary evidence could not be found.

In 1991, the so-called “execution books” were found in the archives of the Moscow Department of the MB - bound orders for execution and acts on the execution of the sentence. But even there, not a word was said about exactly where these twenty thousand people were shot. A confrontation began within the walls of the Ministry of Security: a group of employees tried to establish the truth and find a firing range, others resisted them. Even in the personal files of the executioners, the place where exactly they shot and buried the convicts was not indicated.

Finally, the state security officers managed to reach the commandant of the administrative and economic department of the NKVD, who worked in the special zone in 1937-1938. In conversations with him, the word “Butovo” was heard for the first time. Then other witnesses were found - drivers and local residents, who not only confirmed the information about the Butovo training ground, but also pointed to another special facility ten kilometers from Butovo - Kommunarka, where tens of thousands of people were also shot and buried.

Further, researchers and members of the public group for perpetuating the memory of victims of repression under the Moscow Soviet, led by former political prisoner Mikhail Mindlin, took up the matter, who worked in the archives, compiled a card index and biographical information for the Book of Memory "Butovo polygon". For each person who died in the archives of the FSB, archival and investigative files with photographs were found.

Community

In 1993, when the first relatives of the dead stepped onto the land of the Butovo training ground, it was an overgrown wasteland surrounded by a fence, which was patrolled daily with dogs. There were no buildings here anymore, bushes and hogweed stood taller than human growth.

For relatives - and these were not only children and grandchildren, then the husbands, wives, brothers and sisters of the executed were alive - the information that their loved ones were shot in 1937 in the Moscow region was a shocking surprise. Most were sure that they died in the camps, because the sentence read "ten years without the right to correspond." And suddenly it turned out that there was no Kolyma, no Magadan in their life, that they met their death not far from famous summer cottages.

One of the first who came to the landfill in 1994 was the family of the priest Vladimir Ambartsumov, who was shot here on November 5, 1937. The spiritual son of Vladimir's father, Gleb Kaleda, after the war, married his daughter Lydia Ambartsumova. He became a prominent Soviet scientist, doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences, and in 1972 he was secretly ordained a priest. For more than 18 years, no one, except for those closest to him, knew that Father Gleb served divine services in his usual apartment in a block nine-story building on the outskirts of Moscow. So many children of the repressed became their successors: the children of priests were ordained, the children of the intelligentsia cherished a sense of inner freedom and continued to live in search of meaning.

After his entry into open service in 1990, Archpriest Gleb Kaleda served in churches in Moscow, revived the church in Butyrskaya prison, baptized and confessed suicide bombers awaiting execution. For 57 years, the Ambartsumov-Kaled family did not know anything about the place, date and circumstances of the death of their father, grandfather, father-in-law. At first they hoped that in 10 years he would return from the camp, then, like everyone else, they thought that he died there.

And in 1994, Kirill Glebovich Kaleda, the grandson of Vladimir's father, learns from the daughter of a man arrested with Ambartsumov in the same case that his grandfather was most likely shot in Butovo.

“I came home and told my parents that I found the place where my grandfather suffered,” says Archpriest Kirill Kaleda, rector of the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo. “My parents in unison asked me to take them there. It was the first time dad left the house after the operation. The territory of the burial place then belonged to the GB, and it was possible to enter inside only on weekends, and we arrived on Tuesday. Just was Radonitsa. And dad served the first memorial service in Butovo near the fence on an overgrown path among the bushes, turning his face to the burial ground.

Archpriest Gleb Kaleda died shortly after he found the resting place of his spiritual father and father-in-law, but his children, along with other children of the victims, created the first parish community at the training ground. In the same 1994, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, a bow cross designed by Dmitry Shakhovsky was erected at the training ground. This successful artist and sculptor, the author of the famous clock on the building of the puppet theater. S. Obraztsov, turned out to be the son of Archpriest Mikhail Shik, who was shot in Butovo.

Several families of the victims united for the improvement of the landfill, registration of its legal status and joint worship. Then the decision came to build a temple on the site of the executions. Kirill Glebovich Kaleda, by that time a researcher at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was chosen as the construction superintendent. His older brother, Sergei Glebovich, had a construction company that was recruited to work.

In 1995–1996, a small wooden church was being built, which became the first home of the Butovo community. It was made in Soligalich, brought to the landfill, and the interior decoration was designed by Dmitry Shakhovskoy in the style of Russian northern architecture. When the question arose of a priest for the newly built church, Archbishop Arseny (Epifanov) suggested that Kirill Glebovich Kaleda continue the family tradition (and by that time one of his brothers, John, was already a priest, and sister Juliana was a nun, abbess of the Zachatievsky monastery). Since then, Archpriest Kirill has been serving at the Butovo training ground, the place where his grandfather died.

Monument run by the Church

The fact that the Butovo test site was handed over to the Church is a unique combination of circumstances. In the 1990s, no one needed the places of executions: the authorities did not know what to do with them, these objects were transferred from the balance of the FSB to the budget of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. That is, the Butovo test site was to be transferred to the Moscow region. But the Moscow region did not seek to increase the burden on its budget. At the same time, a public religious organization appeared - a group of active lay people who built the temple. At the same time, the FSB officers understood that this place could not become a park for festivities, that someone had to invest effort and money in maintaining the landfill.

In 1995, a decision was made to build a new microdistrict on the territory of the former special zone and dachas. The burial place itself, limited by the fence, although it had not yet been declared a historical monument, could not be touched, because from numerous publications in the press, people knew what exactly was located here. But along the perimeter, the landfill could be surrounded by nine-story buildings. This would have made further memorialization of the site impossible. Then the Butovo church community, the relatives of the victims and the Memorial society decided to prevent construction at all costs. The Kaled family applied for intercession to Patriarch Alexy II, who, in turn, turned to the Moscow Government.

And the almost impossible happened: construction was stopped at the stage of construction of the basement, the foundations of which still stick out of the ground.

Thanks to the personal intervention of Yuri Luzhkov and the Moscow government, a highway was laid here and regular bus No. 18 was launched. to the balance sheet of the parish of the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia (part is owned, part is leased, part is in gratuitous use). In 1997, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexy II, archaeological excavations were carried out in one of the burial ditches, these excavations confirmed the presence of execution burials.

On May 27, 2000, Patriarch Alexy II served for the first time an open-air liturgy at the Butovo training ground. Almost the entire Moscow clergy (8 bishops, about 200 clergy) and 3,500 laity served and prayed with him. Since then, the Patriarchal Liturgy at the Butovo training ground on the fourth Sunday after Easter has become a Moscow church tradition.

In 2001, the Butovo landfill was declared a historical monument of regional importance, which made it possible to avoid further attempts to build on the land adjacent to the burial site.

In 2006, the land was recultivated and the exact boundaries of each burial ditch were established. Today, the parish of the New Martyrs spends only about 3 million rubles a year on the maintenance of the site and protection, which makes it impossible to finance additional projects, including those related to memorial work. Sponsors or additional budget money are sometimes used for one-time events: every year, the access road is repaired for the arrival of the Patriarch, and a belfry was recently built. But in order to open an alley of memory or make good memorial plaques, you already have to look for additional funds that are not yet available.

Among those who rest at the Butovo test site, there are quite a few people of other faiths and religions and not believers at all. The issue is resolved very delicately: the symbolic space of the polygon is divided. In addition to the temple and the worship cross, there is a platform with a stele, next to which benches are placed and blue spruces grow - a small memorial in secular traditions. Civil memorial services are held here, wreaths are laid at the stele, relatives can rest on the benches and remember their loved ones. The Old Believers have recently taken the initiative and found a compromise option: an Old Believer cross-mednitsa was embedded and consecrated in the center of the worship cross, and now memorial services are held here according to the Old Russian rite. Catholics, Lutherans, Muslims and Jews have the opportunity to come to Butovo and pray according to their own rules. Landscaping is being done for everyone.

Memory rescue

Igor Garkavy, director of the Butovo Polygon Memorial and Educational Center, believes that “state memorials always run the risk of becoming official projects of officials into which it is impossible to breathe life into. And we see the Butovo memorial alive and developing.”

However, the museum complex still exists only in the form of several small expositions in the lower part of the stone temple. The Center has a small room in the parish house, where relatives of the victims still come to clarify information about their loved ones or, conversely, to provide new information, to donate personal belongings to the museum.

Since 2006, by law, only relatives have the right to work with investigative files in state archives. The employees of the Center advise them, tell them in which archive to look for the case, and ask them to copy the materials for research work.

In 2007, a new large white stone church was consecrated next to the landfill. It was designed by architect Mikhail Kesler in the tradition of Russian hipped temples. In its lower part, the altar of which is consecrated in honor of the Sovereign Icon of the Mother of God, everything is dedicated to the New Martyrs of Butovo. 51 icons hang along the perimeter of the walls - according to the number of days of executions. Each icon depicts saints shot together on the same day. There is a small exposition in the narthex: in the showcase there are things of the executed, removed from the excavations in 1997 - shoes, fragments of clothing, bundles, shell casings. In other showcases there are personal belongings of some New Martyrs that served them during their lifetime: priestly vestments, books and notebooks, a violin, a shawl… This exhibition is the basis of the future museum.

“Our charter has a goal – to perpetuate the memory of the victims by preserving as much as possible the values that they chose in life as guidelines,” says Igor Garkavy. - This is not only the perpetuation of the name, but also a story about the world, for belonging to which a person was shot. We want to achieve a dialogue between the living here and those who have been destroyed here. So that they return to us through their images, their photographs, through their creations, if they are creative people.” Therefore, the things that the dead used during their lifetime, the books they read, their letters are so important.

Nothing will ever be known about the majority of those shot: how they lived, what they thought, whom they loved. All that remains of them are lines in investigative files. Their inner world, their view of things can be represented through historical reconstruction. The idea of Garkavy is to recreate in the museum space the world of the peasant, the world of Russian Germans, the world of the intelligentsia, and so on. On the very territory of the landfill, it is planned to create an alley of memory. Execution lists will be immortalized on stone slabs: the names of the dead will be grouped according to the dates of execution. And to facilitate the search for the desired name, special electronic navigators may be used.

The Memorial and Educational Center is also engaged in the study and recreation of Russian memorial culture. The tradition of temples on the blood, the establishment of memorial crosses, mass graves - all this has been in Russia for centuries. An example of a museum-necropolis from a relatively recent time is the cemetery in memory of all those who died in the First World War in Vsekhsvyatsky (the current Sokol district), which was destroyed during the Soviet era and is hardly restored today. But the developments of its creators, on which you can rely, have been preserved.

Igor Garkavy, who often leads tours of the Butovo range, says that “it’s hard to be here without an idea of Easter. For many secular people, the arrival at the Butovo training ground is torture: “I am standing, and thousands of bodies are under me.” The believer also feels this, but he also knows that martyrs lie here. Christ is resurrected, and all who suffered with Him and for Him will also be resurrected, and you understand that behind this terrible earthly death, Eternal Life was revealed to them, the reflection of the radiance of which also falls on this place.

The article was published in 2012 in the journal "Bulletin of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation".

In preparing the text, the book "Butovo polygon" was used, ed. L.A. Golovkova, M., 2004

The former special objects of the NKVD, which served as places of extrajudicial executions, torture, executions and burials during the period of mass repressions of the 30s of the last century, remain unhealed scars on the land of the Moscow Region.

The largest such place in Moscow and the Moscow region - the Butovo training ground or the Butovo special zone of the NKVD - is located on the land of the former ancient estate of Drozhzhino, known since the 16th century. Its last owner was the industrialist Ivan Ivanovich Zimin, the brother of the famous Sergei Ivanovich Zimin, the owner of the Moscow Private Opera. At the Zimin stud farm, which wore in the 1920s. name of Kamenev, the former manager of the estate, the nephew of its recent owner, Ivan Leontievich Zimin, worked as the head. He lived here with his wife, the famous opera singer (later a professor at the Conservatory) S.I. Druzyakina. A wooden two-story house with carved cornices and architraves, with a wide staircase and a small alley of blue fir trees stood in front of it on the territory of the future special zone.

Around 1934, the land of the Drozhzhino estate passed into the possession of the OGPU. The horse depot was closed, the residents were evicted. In the middle of 1930s. On the eve of mass executions, the Economic Department of the NKVD took care of finding places for burials. Three such facilities were identified near Moscow: in the vicinity of the village of Butovo, on the territory of the Kommunarka state farm, and near the city of Lyubertsy. (This third zone was kept as a reserve; it was not used.) A shooting range was equipped on the territory of the Butovo estate on an area of about 6 hectares (the total area of \u200b\u200bthe special zone was then more than 2 sq. km). Local residents were informed that practice shootings would be carried out near their villages. After the infamous order of N. I. Yezhov No. 00447 of July 30, 1937, mass executions began here. In total, from August 8, 1937 to October 19, 1938, 20,761 people were killed at the training ground. The first execution on these orders was carried out here on August 8, 1937. On this day, 91 people were killed.

Since the executions were carried out according to the plan defined in the "limits", the Chekists used a certain technology for executions and burial of the remains. The Butovo training ground, as one of the central objects of the NKVD KHOZU, was well technically equipped. 13 ditches for the burial of those executed were dug in advance by an excavator. Their depth is 4-4.5 m, width 4.5-5 m. The total length of the ditches is more than 900 m.

Those sentenced to death were brought from Moscow prisons at night, placed in a common barracks and checked against documents (the presence of a photograph was categorically obligatory). In the morning, the firing squad began its “work”, which came from Moscow and was located in a house specially designated for it. The prisoners were taken out in small batches and shot at close range on the edge of the ditch. The bodies were dumped into a ditch and possibly stacked (rubber gloves were found during excavations).

The most numerous executions in Butovo occurred in December 1937 and February 1938: on December 8, 474 people were shot, on February 17 - 502 and on February 28 - 562 people. Among the victims of Butov, according to available documents, the largest number are Muscovites, residents of the Moscow region and neighboring regions, which were then wholly or partly part of the Moscow region. But there are also quite a few representatives of the republics of the former USSR, persons of foreign origin and citizenship, whose only fault was the “inappropriate” nationality or place of birth. In terms of numbers, after the Russians, Latvians, Poles, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians predominate; there are representatives of France, USA, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan, India, China; In total, there are more than sixty nationalities. Most of all, ordinary peasants, often semi-literate or completely illiterate, are buried in Butovo. Sometimes they were shot by whole families - five to seven people each. The next largest victims of Butov are workers and employees of various Soviet institutions. More than a third of the total number of those shot were prisoners of Dmitlag, this real state within a state; the composition of the Dmilagovites or, as they were called, “Canalarmists” - from world-famous scientists, builders, poets, clergymen, teachers - to recidivist criminals who have not been rehabilitated and are not subject to rehabilitation.

In the Butovo ditches lie the remains of prominent statesmen of pre-revolutionary Russia: Chairman of the 2nd State Duma F. A. Golovin, Moscow governor, later chief of gendarmes - V. F. Dzhunkovsky, his adjutant and friend - General V. S. Gadon, great-grandson of Kutuzov and at the same time a relative of Tukhachevsky, professor of church singing M. N. Khitrovo-Kramskoy, great-granddaughter of Saltykov-Shchedrin T. N. Gladyrevskaya; this is also one of the first Russian pilots N. N. Danilevsky and a Czech by nationality, a member of the expedition of O. Yu. Schmidt - Ya. V. Brezin, representatives of Russian noble families: the Rostopchins, the Tuchkovs, the Gagarins, the Shakhovskys, the Obolenskys, the Bibikovs, the Golitsyns; these are brilliant engineers, these are artists whose miraculously saved works now adorn the best museums and galleries in the world - Alexander Drevin, Roman Semashkevich, other artists: there are more than eighty of them here - painters, graphic artists, decorators, designers. Among the executed were also poor robbers - carters who delivered stone and gravel to the construction sites of the country. Former policemen or, as they were also called, guards - about forty people. There are representatives of the lower, middle and higher police ranks here, there is even a royal executioner. Numerous employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway and simply born in Harbin or in the service area of the CER; along with relatives. Disabled people represent a special group of those shot in Butovo. In fact, invalids unable to work (blind, deaf-mute, without arms or legs, or simply seriously ill) were shot as “unloading” prisons, since they, convicted, as a rule, for begging or vagrancy, were refused to be accepted in the camps.

Among the “contingents subject to repression”, Yezhov’s Order No. 00447 specifically singles out “churchmen”. First of all, clergymen, monastics and active laity of the Russian Orthodox Church, more than 940 people were identified on the execution lists of the Butovo firing range.

In 1937, a new all-out attack on the Church and believers began. That year, 8,000 churches were closed, 70 dioceses and vicariates were liquidated, and about 60 bishops were shot. Seven of them were shot at the Butovo training ground. This is schmch. Seraphim (Chichagov) (glorified at the Bishops' Council in 1997), these are schmchch., canonized at the Jubilee Bishops' Council in 2000: Dimitri (Dobroserdov), Nikolai (Dobronravov), Nikita (Delektorsky), schmchch.: Iona (Lazarev), Arkady (Ostalsky). Butovo's list of as yet uncanonized clergy is headed by the assassinated Bishop Arseniy (Zhadanovsky). Everyone involved in church affairs was charged with the standard charge under Article 58 of the Criminal Code: anti-Soviet agitation, counter-revolutionary activities. But the reasons for the accusation could be very different, for example: “preserving the church and planting secret monasticism”, “non-information” (“I knew about the fugitive priest and did not inform”), helping exiles, sheltering homeless clergy, keeping an icon or prayer. Among the executed clergy there are many well-known and deeply revered priests: Archimandrite Kronid (Lubimov), the last 79-year-old rector of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, was martyred on December 10, 1937; ten people who were with him on the same case were also shot at the Butovo training ground. In December, January and February 1937-1938. died in Butovo 27 hieromonks of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, shortly before returning from prison; most of them were assigned to the parishes of the Zagorsk region by Archimandrite Kronid. Day of death ssmch. Kronida and those who suffered with him became especially revered for the monks of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, who visit Butovo on this day and perform a memorial service at the place of execution at the large Poklonny Cross. Among the Orthodox, the names of the now glorified schmchch were widely known and revered. Sergius (Makhaev) - a priest of the Iberian community on Bolshaya Polyanka, Fr. Zosima (Trubachev), who took care of the priests and nuns exiled to Maloyaroslavets and arrested there, Fr. Vladimir (Medvedyuk). To date, 332 new martyrs have been glorified among the victims in Butovo.

In 1962, the Butovo test site was surrounded by a high wooden fence. This territory was strictly guarded until 1995. However, already in 1990, acts on the execution of sentences in Moscow and the Moscow region were found and declassified. An internal investigation by the state security agencies made it possible to establish that 20,761 people were shot in Butovo. Relatives of the executed began to come to this place of mourning, and in 1993, with the assistance of the Moscow Government, the first memorial sign was installed here. In the difficult economic and political situation that developed in the country in the 1990s, neither the state nor any other political force was ready to take responsibility for turning the place of executions into a place of memory. Therefore, the further fate of this "special object" was connected with the initiative public group, which was formed in 1993-1995. predominantly from relatives of the victims. Already in 1994, a group of believers, according to the sketch of D. M. Shakhovsky, built the Poklonny Cross, at the same time, the first liturgy was served in the camp tent church on the territory of the training ground. In 1995, the land of the Butovo test site was transferred to the parish of the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, which was under construction. The parish community was headed by the grandson of the Holy Martyr Vladimir Ambartsumov, who was shot at the Butovo training ground, Archpriest Kirill Kaleda, a former geologist, the son of a well-known scientist, a secret priest (from 1972 to 1990) and a church writer, Archpriest. Gleb Kaleda. The labors of Fr. Cyril and members of the church community, work began on the improvement of the territory of mass graves. According to the sketch of D. M. Shakhovsky, whose father was also shot in Butovo, the construction of a wooden church began, in which regular services began already in 1996. In August 1997, with the blessing of His Holiness the Patriarch, archaeological excavations were carried out on a small area of the site. A section of the burial moat with an area of 12.5 m2 was opened. The remains of 59 people were found on the open surface of the burial. In total, 13 ditches have now been identified, with a total length of almost 900 meters. On August 9, 2001, by a decree of the Government of the Moscow Region, the Butovo polygon was declared a monument of history and culture of local significance. Together with the protected zones, the total area of the historical monument was about 3 square meters. kilometers. In 2005-2006, the territory was landscaped and mounds were made over the burial ditches. The Butovo test site is intended to become a historical and landscape memorial complex, an open-air museum, and a "Garden of Memory" will be created on its territory, where the names of all the victims will be immortalized. Thus, the Butovo test site has become a unique church and public memorial of national importance.

On May 7, 2000, on the fourth Saturday after Easter, the first open-air service was held at the Butovo training ground, led by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia. Since then, this annual patriarchal liturgy on the day of the Council of the Butovo New Martyrs has become an important event in the spiritual life of the entire Russian Church.

After the patriarchal service on May 15, 2004, Patriarch Alexy and the head of the Russian Church Abroad, Metropolitan Laurus, laid the foundation stone for a new stone church. The first draft design of the church belongs to A. S. Tutunov. The architectural design of the temple was developed by M. Yu. Koestler, under the auspices of the firm "ARKHRAM", the grandfather of the head of which A. N. Obolensky was also shot in Butovo.

The upper church was consecrated on May 19, 2007, three days after the signing of the act of reunification of the Russian Church Abroad. It is dedicated to the glorification of the feat of the New Martyrs, the "Church Triumphant". If the lower temple symbolizes Holy Week, then the upper temple symbolizes Easter. Patriarch Alexy gave his blessing to consecrate the central chapel of the upper church in honor of the Resurrection of Christ. The right aisle was consecrated in the name of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, the left - in the name of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, as the head of the Cathedral of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

In 2007, on the 70th anniversary of Yezhovshchina, a unique religious procession was held from Solovki to Butovo. The Big Worship Cross made in the Solovetsky Cross Carving Workshop of G. Kozhokar, one of the largest wooden carved crosses in the world, was delivered to Butovo in a procession. In the same year, on the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions on October 30, President of Russia V.V. Putin visited the Butovo test site.

In 2002, on the initiative of the parishioners of the church and the relatives of the victims, with the blessing of His Holiness the Patriarch, in order to coordinate the efforts of state, religious and public organizations to create a memorial complex, the Butovo Memorial Scientific and Educational Center was created. Its main statutory goal is “to restore historical justice through the maximum possible preservation for future generations of spiritual, scientific and aesthetic values created by people who died during the years of mass repressions.” Through the joint efforts of the Center and the Parish, the Museum of the Memory of the Victims is being created, for which the building of the former commandant's office of the Butovo special zone of the NKVD was restored by the parish.

At present, together with the Parish, the Memorial Center is also working on the creation of a database of victims at the Butovo training ground in 1937-1938. It is based on the execution lists of the NKVD, covering the names of 20,761 people, published in the Books of Memory "Butovo polygon". Gradually, disparate documents and evidence are united around this list, the analysis of which can only be carried out when a database is created.

It can be stated that the monument of history Butovo polygon is developing as a unique church and public memorial of national importance and known throughout the world.

Garkavy I. V., Golovkova L. A.

Portal for the student. Self-training

Memorial complex Butovo polygon. Publications

Burials

Story

Circumstances of the executions. Statistical data

Famous people shot at the Butovo firing range

Memorial complex on the territory of the polygon

Driving to the landfill

see also

Write a review on the article "Butovo polygon"

Notes

Literature

Links

An excerpt characterizing the Butovo test site

After the executions

Community

Monument run by the Church

Memory rescue

Portal for the student. Self-training

Burials

Story

Circumstances of the executions. Statistical data

Famous people shot at the Butovo firing range

Memorial complex on the territory of the polygon

Driving to the landfill

see also

Write a review on the article "Butovo polygon"

Notes

Literature

Links

An excerpt characterizing the Butovo test site

After the executions

Community

Monument run by the Church

Memory rescue

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