The cemetery has existed since the early 1870s. In the 1920s - 1940s, the executed and dead in Leningrad prisons were secretly buried here. There were no markings on the burial sites. The burials became known from eyewitness accounts. Total population buried is not established, individual names are known.

Park of Culture and Leisure named after Yuri Gagarin is a park of culture and recreation in the city of Samara. Opened July 9, 1976. On the site of the Yura Gagarin Park, there used to be dachas that belonged to the NKVD. This was still in the distant 30s, when political repressions were just beginning.

Butovo landfill- the historical name of the tract, known as one of the places mass executions and burials of the victims Stalinist repressions near the village of Drozhzhino Leninsky district Moscow region, where, according to the results of research of archival and investigative documents, tens of thousands of people were shot in the 1930s-1950s. 20 thousand 762 people who were shot in August 1937 - October 1938 are known by name.

Contrary to the modern insane apologists for Stalinism, the victims of the mass repressions of the 30s were not only the top of the Bolshevik elite, but also millions of absolutely apolitical fellow citizens, whose lives turned into those very Stalinist chips that rotted not only in the logging sites of the GULAG, described in detail by Solzhenitsyn, but also in places of mass terror at the place of residence. In every regional center At that time, at least thousands of people were victims of unprecedented state repression. For the execution of death sentences and hasty burials, remote places on the outskirts of cities were specially assigned away from human eyes. However, it was absolutely impossible to completely hide these "secret objects", because the scale of the ongoing terror against civilian population surpassed all conceivable limits.

Who were these people who were so cruelly dealt with? The photographs clearly show the bullet holes on the skulls. They were often shot in the back of the head and after that opposite part skull gaped with a terrible torn hole. Many residents of the city, especially young people, no longer know that there were mass executions and burials on the territory of Arkhangelsk. There is practically no information about this anywhere, or it is in limited access.

We found her in 1988. But at first they did not give permission to visit her. At the last meeting of our commission, General Kurkov said: "Yes, you have found what you were looking for." And after the meeting, we went there for the first time, they gave us a bus, the members of the commission went to Levashovo. And when the gate was opened, and we went in, it was a terrible state. And with me was General Bleer, he was also a member of the commission. And I say: "What, is it here?" He: “Yes, it is here. Your father is here." Here is my state: after 50 years, I saw, found out where he was buried, where I can bring candles, flowers, and so on.

Butovo "strelny" range

Butovo, that was the name of the village located on the Warsaw highway, but later they began to call Butovo the nearby manor estate Drozhzhino, on the territory of which in the middle of the 20th century the special object of the NKVD "Butovo training ground" was located.

In 1935, an area of ​​about 2 sq. km. was surrounded by a blank fence, an NKVD shooting range was equipped and the territory was taken under round-the-clock armed guard

The Butovo training ground was under the protection of the state security troops until 1995. Then he was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church

Scheme of the main burials of the historical monument "Butovo polygon"

the blue longitudinal stripes in the diagram are not ponds, but ditches in which the bodies of the executed were dumped.

Worship cross at the Butovo training ground

Monument to the victims of repressions at the Butovo training ground

Burial ditch in place mass graves at the Butovo training ground

Wooden Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Butovo training ground. The village of Drozhzhino, Leninsky district, Moscow region.

Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Butovo training ground (new).

The shooting range "Kommunarka".

Firing ground "Kommunarka" - former dacha Chairman of the OGPU and People's Commissar of the NKVD Heinrich Yagoda, now a cemetery near the village of Kommunarka on the 24th kilometer Kaluga highway in Novomoskovsky administrative district Moscow.

Since September 2, 1937, this special object of the NKVD of the USSR has become a place mass destruction various high-ranking figures. Here, those sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR were executed. The execution took place on the day of the verdict.

Initially, one of the local residents dug the burial pits with a shovel, but soon the Komsomolets caterpillar excavator began to be used, which dug long trenches. After the nightly executions, the bodies in the trenches were covered with a thin layer of earth by a bulldozer.

Executions were also carried out at the Kommunarka training ground foreign citizens. The list of victims includes political and public figures Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the leaders of the Comintern, representing the communist movements in Germany, Romania, France, Turkey, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary.

The government of Mongolia was destroyed here in in full force on the same day July 10, 1941. A. Amar, who became the head of the government of Mongolia in 1936, was arrested in 1939 along with his 28 closest employees. All of them were taken to the USSR and on July 10, 1941 they were shot by the verdict of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

The ashes of 10,000 to 14,000 people lie at the Kommunarka training ground, of which less than 5,000 are known by name.

Worship cross at the entrance to the Kommunarka training ground

Memorial obelisk to the government of Mongolia destroyed at the training ground at the Kommunarka training ground

Memorial obelisk to the buried Yakut people at the Kommunarka training ground

Memorial Cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

The Levashov secret cemetery of the NKVD-KGB near St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) was used from August 1937 to 1954. for mass graves of people killed by Chekists. Until 1989, the burial ground, surrounded by a high wooden fence, was secret facility and was strictly guarded by the KGB.

About 45,000 victims are buried here. political repression

Memorial stele at the entrance to the territory of Levashovskaya Pustosha

Monument "Moloch of Totalitarianism" at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

The bell of memory at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Memorial cross "Innocently killed victims of repression from the inhabitants of the Novgorod region" at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Assyrians at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Italians at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

memorial cross repressed Belarusians and Lithuanians at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

memorial cross repressed Lithuanians at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Wasteland"

Monument to the repressed Latvians at the Levashovska Wasteland cemetery

Memorial cross to the Germans of Russia at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Norwegians at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Monument to the repressed Poles at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Ukrainians at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Finns - Ingrians at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Estonians at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Monument to the repressed deaf-mutes at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Worship cross to the executed nuns of the Goritsky monastery ( Vologda Region) at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Orthodox worship cross with the Image of the Savior "Eternal Memory" at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed Lutherans at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Monument to the repressed Jews of Russia at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Monument to the repressed Catholics at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to Christians - Adventists, martyred for religious beliefs during the years of Stalinist repressions at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery. The names of those killed are inscribed on each stone.

Monument to the repressed power engineers "LENENERGO" at the cemetery "Levashovskaya Pustosh"

Monument to the repressed power engineers at the Levashovskaya Pustosh cemetery

Memorial Complex in memory of the victims of political repressions "Pivovarikha". The tract "Pivovarikha" is a forest area in the vicinity of the village of Pivovarikha, Irkutsk region, Russia. In the early 1930s, the Pervoe Maya state farm subordinate to the Irkutsk UNKVD, employees' summer cottages and a pioneer camp for employees' children were organized on this territory. In 1937, a special zone was allocated inside the territory for the burial of the executed.

By the decision of the NKVD troika on Irkutsk region to highest measure 20,016 residents of Irkutsk and the Irkutsk region were sentenced to punishment. Most of sentences were carried out in the regional center in the basements of the NKVD (Litvinova St., 13) and in the inner prison of the NKVD (Barrikad St., 63). At night, the bodies were taken to trucks in the forest near Pivovarikha and in the Bolshaya Razvodnaya area (now in the flood zone of the Irkutsk reservoir).

About 15,000 people buried in Pivovarikha - victims Great terror.

Entrance to the Pivovarikha Memorial Complex

The main monument of the memorial "Pivovarikha"

monument on mass grave, in which the remains of the executed were reburied, removed from ditch No. 1 in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Signpost at the site of storage ditch No. 1 in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Signpost at the site of storage ditch No. 2 in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Signpost at the site of storage ditch No. 3 in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Signpost at the site of storage ditch No. 4 in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Wall of Sorrow in the tract "Pivovarikha"

Worship cross in the tract "Pivovarikha"

The tract "Sandarmokh" (Sandormokh).

The Sandarmokh tract is located 20 km from Povenets, Karelia. This is the place of mass graves of victims of political repressions of 1934-1939. In total, 236 execution pits were found on the territory. 3.5 thousand inhabitants of Karelia, more than 4.5 thousand prisoners of the White Sea-Baltic Canal and 1111 prisoners were killed here Solovetsky camp special purpose. Mass executions began in Sandarmokh on August 11, 1937 and continued in the strictest secrecy for 14 months.

Monument to victims of repressions in Sandarmokh

Memorial plate about 1111 executed prisoners of the Solovetsky prison in Sandarmokh

Memorial cross to Bishop Peter of Samara (N.N. Rudnev), who was shot in Sandarmokh

Commemorative Catholic cross in Sandarmokh with the inscription "To the 60th anniversary / to Solovetsky prisoners-Poles and priests who found a place of eternal rest on this earth"

Cossack Cross in Sandarmokh "To the Murdered Sons of Ukraine"

Monument to the innocent Chechens and Ingush in Sandarmokh

Monument to Russian Germans - Victims of Repressions in Sandarmokh

Monument to the dead Lithuanians in Sandarmokh

Monument to the dead Muslims in Sandarmokh

Monument to Jews shot in Sandarmokh

Monument to the Poles who were shot in Sandarmokh

Monument to the Estonians who were shot at Sandarmokh

St. George's Chapel at the Memorial Cemetery of the Victims of Repressions in the Sandarmokh Tract

"Execution camp" in Yagunovka.

"Execution camp" in the village. Yagunovsky (now a district of Kemerovo) - from October 1937 to May 1938 this was the place of executions and burials of the victims of the "great terror". According to eyewitnesses, the executed were buried in ditches, their clothes were burned (they heard shots, they saw ditches through the fence, shreds of burnt clothes flew around the village).

Monument-chapel on site mass executions and burials in Yagunovka

Memorial square of memory in Tomsk.

Executions in the cellars of the inner prison of the OGPU-NKVD in Tomsk on the street. Lenin were produced from 1923 to 1944. After the prison was closed, the building was used as a departmental residential building for employees of the NKVD - MGB - KGB, in the 1950s the fence was removed, and a city square was laid out in place of the courtyard. In the basement former prison there is a museum "Investigative prison of the NKVD".

The building of the former internal prison of the OGPU - NKVD in Tomsk

Monument "Stone of Sorrow" in the park of memory, Tomsk, Russia

Monument to the Poles - victims of Stalinist repressions in the park of memory, Tomsk, Russia

Monument to Latvians - victims of Stalinist repressions in the park of memory, Tomsk, Russia

Monument to Estonians - victims of Stalin's repressions in the square of memory, Tomsk, Russia

Memorial to victims of political repressions of 30-50s on the 12th kilometer of the Moscow highway of Yekaterinburg

The memorial is located twelve kilometers from Yekaterinburg. This is the place of mass burial of 20,000 Urals shot in 1937-1938. They were shot in the basements of the NKVD, brought here and thrown into ditches 45 m long, 4 m wide and 2 m deep. square meter the remains of 31 people were recovered.

"12 kilometer", Yekaterinburg

Memorial cross "12 kilometer", Yekaterinburg

To the nameless dead in prisons and camps of the GULAG, "Kilometer 12", Yekaterinburg

Religious stone, "12 kilometer", Yekaterinburg

The burial place of the executed and dead in the prisons of Orenburg

in the 1920s - 1950s.

Monument to the Victims of Repressions "To you, the great martyrs, who were innocently shot during the years of Stalinist repressions and buried here - everlasting memory"in Orenburg (Zauralnaya Grove), Russia

"Time will pass. The graves of the hated traitors will be overgrown with weeds and thistles, covered with the eternal contempt of honest Soviet people, Total Soviet people". So said the public prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky at the trial in the case of the anti-Soviet right-wing Trotskyist bloc in 1938. This is how he saw the future of the graves where the victims of terror lie. To the shame of his contemporaries, his words turned out to be prophetic in many ways. last decade the situation has changed in better side- hundreds of thousands of victims have been rehabilitated, books of memory and studies of historians on the problems of mass repressions are being published in Moscow and in the regions, the Memorial society and the public center "Peace, Progress, Human Rights" named after Andrei Sakharov have been created, commissions are operating to restore the rights of the rehabilitated, - the graves of the repressed are still covered with weeds and thistles, and they are trying to restrict access to them.

The two largest mass graves of victims of political repression in Moscow are the Butovo and Kommunarka special objects of the NKVD (for an article about the Butovo test site, see Itogi, November 2, 1999). "Kommunarka" is located on the 24th kilometer of the Kaluga highway. Only after more than sixty years did it become possible to open it to the public.

"Giving Berries to the Chekists"

The name of the special facility was borrowed from the neighboring state farm "Kommunarka" (former subsidiary farm OGPU), although the inhabitants of the surrounding villages call him "Vine". Perhaps the place is named after one of the owners of the estate, which was located here before the revolution. Sources testify that there used to be a Khoroshavka manor on the site of the special facility (a manor is a manor, which, unlike an ordinary estate, does not bring income to the owner and is intended for recreation and entertainment). Khoroshavka is mentioned in archival records of the 17th century; it was sold many times, given away, passed down by inheritance. In one of the books of the beginning of the century it is said that the manor was located "in a birch grove with a pond formed from the dammed river Ordynka" - this grove later became a mass grave site.

In the first post-revolutionary decades, the manor stood empty, the owners were evicted from there. According to the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia, in the late 20s - early 30s ( exact date unknown) the territory was allocated for the arrangement of a personal dacha for the chairman of the OGPU, later People's Commissar of the NKVD of the USSR G. Yagoda. On the site of the former manor house was built new house. locals they recall that the dacha was guarded very strictly - it was not allowed to graze cattle nearby, pick mushrooms, and even more so to approach the fence. Yagoda's niece V. Znamenskaya, in unpublished memoirs, says that the dacha was not intended for recreation and family meetings; it was the country residence of the people's commissar, where he held meetings with the leaders of the NKVD.

In April 1937, Yagoda was arrested, confiscated things were taken from the dacha, and for some time she remained ownerless. In the working notes of Yagoda Yezhov's successor, there is a laconic line: "I give Yagoda to the Chekists." By that time one firing range- Butovo - already worked in full force. But in 1937, the daily number of those shot began to number not in the tens, but in the hundreds, and it was necessary to open a new burial place.

The so-called hit lists, compiled in the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation based on archival and investigative files of victims of political repressions, contain more than four and a half thousand names (according to preliminary data, at least 6 thousand people were buried in Kommunarka). The main part of the executions - more than three and a half thousand - occurred in 1937, about a thousand were executed in 1938, in 1939 and during the war years. In the following decades, they were all found not guilty and rehabilitated posthumously. On the title pages The execution lists say that the burial places of the executed are "territories in the village of Butovo or the Kommunarka state farm."

It is very difficult to establish the exact burial place - this is due to the incompleteness archival documents accompanying the execution of the sentence. There is reason to believe that, according to the plan of the organizers of the Great Terror, it was in Kommunarka that the bodies of especially responsible workers of the party and the state should have been buried, although this is not reported in any source. It was they who "passed" through central office NKVD and through the most mobile terror " Judicial authority" - military collegium Supreme Court THE USSR. However, in addition to high-ranking, Kommunarka also included simple people. The lists include a handicraft shoemaker, a housewife, a carpenter in a metal toy factory, a general store agent, a policeman, a postman, etc. In addition to various "operational" considerations of the Chekists, this is explained by the fact that the central apparatus helped to "unload" Moscow administration The NKVD took over "ordinary" affairs.

Covert and overt

In the land of "Kommunarka" - the ashes of members and candidate members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks: A. Bubnov, N. Bukharin, A. Rykov, Y. Rudzutak, N. Krestinsky; First Secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks union republics; members of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, members of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, more than twenty secretaries of the regional party committees, chairmen of the governments of the Union and autonomous republics, executive committees of regions and cities, founders and leaders of the Comintern (O. Pyatnitsky, Ya. Berzin, Bela Kun). "Kommunarka" has also become the main "general's" cemetery: many commanders of military districts and fleets (P. Dybenko, N. Kuibyshev, G. Kireev and others) are buried here. The lists associated with Kommunarka contain more than two hundred names of NKVD officers who were shot in Moscow. Two of the brightest writers ended their journey in Kommunarka Soviet era- Boris Pilnyak and A. Vesely, scientist and poet A. Gastev, historian and literary critic D. Shakhovskoy, academic microbiologist G. Nadson, chief editors of Literaturnaya Gazeta, Krasnaya Zvezda, Trud, Ogonyok magazine.

The mass graves of the victims of political terror were one of the most heavily guarded state secrets. In the past, only a few state security officers knew about them. Security guards of special facilities did not always know what they were guarding. In the years following the mass repressions, a special position was introduced in the MGB-KGB as curators of execution facilities. As a rule, these proxies were in the rank of colonel, and their task was to ensure the safety of the territory and keep outsiders out. In Kommunarka, the settled pits were filled up, for which 50 earth trucks were brought here in the 70s.

Now the secret veils have been removed, but the historical reality does not open immediately. The collected information about the past of "Kommunarka" was first published in the newspaper of the "Memorial" society "October 30". Oral testimonies of many residents of the surrounding villages and towns are recorded. Historian Arseniy Roginsky studied in detail the so-called shooting documents stored in the 7th fund of the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia. The results of this study formed the basis for the concept of the recently published Book of Memory of the Victims of Political Repressions "Shoot Lists. Moscow, 1937 - 1941. Kommunarka, Butovo".

The first, incomplete, survey of one of the mass grave sites in Kommunarka was carried out - the pits were counted, their measurements were made, searches were made for traces of bullets on the trees, and access roads to the pits were determined. According to the pieces of barbed wire preserved on the trees, the execution zone was determined: after the last check, the condemned were brought here and shot at the edge of the pit.

The question of the future of the declassified special facilities, of the creation of memorials of memory there, arose before the public in the early 1990s. Moscow government allocated money for the creation of projects for memorials to victims of repression at the Butovo training ground and in Kommunarka. It was believed that the people's commissar's dacha, burial places and the entire territory should become a single museum complex. However, the projects were never implemented, and years later the Russian government decided to transfer the special facility - out of sight - to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 1999, Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov signed a corresponding decree.

The Patriarchate handed over the former special facility to St. Catherine's Monastery. "Kommunarka" became his farmstead, now several monks and hieromonks live in Yagoda's house. The experience of the Butovo test site, which was also handed over to the church, showed that the church community does not perpetuate memory and does not care about burials. The latest history of the St. Catherine's Monastery does not give hope that the memory of the executed will be immortalized: one of the most terrible NKVD torture prisons was located on the territory of this monastery in Vidnoye, but the memory of the dead was not immortalized there.

In the meantime, access to Kommunarka is limited. In order to get there, you need to get a special permit from the monastery. For example, the Kultura TV channel was never allowed to shoot there.

Leonid Novak - Researcher and educational center"Memorial"

The Stalin era was marked mass repression so-called "enemies of the people". Many of them were sentenced to be shot. As a rule, relatives in these cases were informed that the person was sentenced to "ten years without the right to correspond." The executed were buried in common graves. Such burials had the status of special objects. detailed information about them appeared only in recent decades.

Kommunarka

In the 1920s, a number of state farms and facilities under the jurisdiction of security agencies appeared in the Leninsky district of the Moscow region. One of them was located in the village of Kommunarka, on the territory where before the revolution there was a manor house, and later - the summer residence of the head of the Stalinist state security service, Heinrich Yagoda.

The special object was a plot of 20 hectares, surrounded by a high fence with barbed wire. Beginning in 1937, the bodies of those executed in the Lubyanka, Lefortovo, Butyrka and Sukhanovskaya prisons were brought here at night. There were rumors that from the pre-trial prison in Sukhanovka to Kommunarka they had specially dug underground tunnel to secretly deliver corpses to the special zone. According to one version, initially in Kommunarka it was supposed to bury those members of the OGPU who fell into the execution lists. By the way, Yagoda himself was among them. But later the territory was adapted for the burial of other "enemies of the people", who were executed in Moscow prisons according to the sentences of the "troikas".

According to the FSB, about 10-14 thousand convicts are buried here, but the names of most of them are unknown, only about 5 thousand people were identified. Among them are writers Boris Pilnyak, Artem Vesely, Bruno Yasensky, members of the Mongolian government, leaders of the Comintern…

Butovo

Unlike Kommunarka, where mostly representatives of the "elite" were buried, the Butovo landfill near the village of Butovo near Moscow, organized on the site of the former landowner's estate Drozhzhino and operating since 1935, was originally intended for mere mortals. Most of all, peasants from the surrounding villages near Moscow were buried here, often arrested on far-fetched reasons, under the article “Counter-revolutionary agitation”. Sometimes whole families were shot in order to fulfill the terrible “order-order plan”. Among the buried were also workers, employees and prisoners of Dmitlag (about a third of total number): scientists, clergymen, sectarians, recidivist thieves. Another category is the disabled. Because the blind, deaf, and crippled were seldom capable of physical labor, which means that they would have to spend the prison gruel in vain, after a formal medical examination they were simply sentenced to "the death penalty."

According to documentary sources, it was established that from August 1937 to October 19, 1938, 20,765 executions were committed on the territory of Butovo alone.

Levashovskaya wasteland

Today it is a memorial cemetery in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. From August 1937 to 1954, it was a special facility where mass burials of the executed were carried out: Leningraders, Novgorodians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and even foreigners - Poles, Germans, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians. In total, about 45 thousand people were buried in Levashovo during this period.

Today, here you can see monuments to the repressed of each individual nationality. And also - monuments to representatives of various religious denominations and even repressed deaf and dumb. The most famous objects of the memorial are the monument "Moloch of totalitarianism" and the "Bell of Remembrance".

Sandarmokh

This forest tract is located 20 kilometers from the Karelian town of Povenets. On this territory, those who were shot in 1934-1939 were buried. Their corpses were thrown into pits. In total, 236 such pits were subsequently discovered. It is estimated that about 3.5 thousand residents of Karelia, more than 4.5 thousand Belbaltlag prisoners and 1111 prisoners of the Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp were buried in Sandarmokh.

brewer

In the forest tract near the village of Pivovarikha near Irkutsk, in the early 1930s, the Pervoe Maya state farm subordinate to the Irkutsk UNKVD was organized. Dachas of UNKVD officers and a pioneer camp for their children were placed nearby. In 1937, a special zone was set up inside the state farm territory, where they began to bury the residents of Irkutsk and its environs, who had been shot according to the sentences of the “troikas”. Sentences were usually carried out in Irkutsk, in the basements of the UNKVD department on the street. Litvinova, 13, as well as in the internal prison of the NKVD (St. Barrikad, 63). At night, the corpses were taken out on trucks to Pivovarikha.