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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first Orthodox the clergy shot at the B. p. were the holy martyrs Archpriests Alexy Vorobyov, Alexy Kasimov and schmch. deac. Elisha Stolder († 20 Aug. 1937). Most of the clergy suffered in Sept.-Dec. 1937 and in February-March 1938 (February 17, 1938, 502 people were shot, 75 of them clergymen and monks). Almost everyone involved in church affairs was charged under Article 58. Criminal Code of the RSFSR, the reasons for the accusation could be different: “preserving the church and planting secret monasticism”, “worship services at home”, “non-information”, “helping the exiled clergy”, shelter for homeless clergy or, for example, such an absurd accusation: “slandered, that churches are being closed, priests are being arrested.” Most of those under investigation, tortured or deceived by investigators eventually pleaded guilty in whole or in part to “anti-Soviet agitation”, “counter-revolutionary activities”, but in matters of faith the church people showed themselves to be fearless. Neither torture nor threats of death could force believers to renounce God, to blaspheme the Church; not uncommon is the “no compromised persons in the case”, i.e. the absence of new names needed by investigators for new arrests.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L. A. Golovkova

The former special objects of the NKVD that served during the period of mass repressions of the 30s of the last century as places of extrajudicial reprisals, torture, executions and burials remain permanent 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 industrialist Ivan Ivanovich Zimin, brother famous Sergei Ivanovich Zimin - 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 Leontyevich 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 Butov's victims, according to available documents, nai more 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 many representatives of the republics former USSR, persons of foreign origin and nationality, 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 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 Chinese Eastern railway and simply born in Harbin or in the service area of ​​the CER; along with relatives. special group those shot in Butovo are represented by invalids. In fact, invalids unable to work (blind, deaf and dumb, 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, the clergy, monastics and active laity of the Russian Orthodox Church, more than 940 people were found 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 (Delectorsky), schmchch.: Jonah (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 report it”), 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 that difficult economic and political situation that took shape 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. So further fate of this "special facility" was associated with an initiative public group 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 firing range, 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. On the open surface burials were found the remains of 59 people. In total, 13 ditches have now been identified, total length almost 900 meters. On August 9, 2001, by the Decree of the Government of the Moscow Region, the "Butovo polygon" was declared a monument of history and culture of local significance. Together with protected areas 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 New Martyrs of Butovo has become 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. procession in Butovo, a large bow cross was delivered, made in the Solovetsky Cross-cutting workshop of G. Kozhokar, one of the largest wooden carved crosses in the world. 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, at the initiative of the parishioners of the temple and 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 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 repression. 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 combined around this list, the analysis of which can only be carried out when creating a database.

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.

October 2nd, 2013 , 11:58 am

If it were possible to imagine the landscape in some kind of visible retrospective, for example, in the cinema, then a huge number of corners of our homeland have changed so much and so many times over the past 100 years that it would be difficult to believe that it is one and the same landscape. We are certainly not talking about cases where the changes are caused by something natural: the growth of the city, the construction of a dam, and the like. It's about when there are no special changes, but over time, the landscape becomes completely different from itself. Self-impossible. First of all, in spirit. This, of course, is connected with the drama of our history, for the same Solovetsky Monastery is something completely opposite to the Solovetsky camp. special purpose located within its own walls. There are hundreds of such "reincarnations" throughout the country. There is no need to travel far to see this. But one place is especially shocking - this is the Butovo training ground, seven kilometers south of the modern Moscow ring road.

Here is a beautiful place in terms of its landscape possibilities, it was not by chance that it found itself in the crown of estates that once surrounded old Moscow. This estate was called Drozhzhino. Park, ponds, manor house, stud farm, hippodrome. Her owner, I.I. Zimin was a horse breeder. The estate was managed by his nephew, Ivan Leontievich, whose wife, S.I. Druzyakina, was an opera singer and at one time was considered one of the best performers of the part of Tatyana Larina. Homestead spirit! The spirit of the park, the garden: greenhouses, yellow sand, white-pink daisies, especially beloved in estates near Moscow, and, of course, fun. Elephant, let into the park for the entertainment of guests, monkeys, pony horses from the menagerie of the landowner N.O. Sushkin, who lived in the nearby Shcherbinka. Constant arrivals of guests from Sukhanovo (the estate of the Volkonskys), from Astafyevo, boating, fireworks, dancing of trained horses in a round meadow ...

Well, and then - as if the film had shrunken and burned out, and - the image fades, fades, until suddenly some kind of dejected village, an untidy park, people in caps appear ...

The manor's house has already disappeared, but something else is recognizable: here is the stable, horses... And then again - a failure, shrinking of the film, because the metamorphosis is not final - the former estate of the Zimins was destined to become not even an agricultural colony of the OGPU, but creepy place, where every spirit of life is etched, where death triumphs in all its bare inexorability: secret, nowhere, in any archives, the Butovo firing range does not appear.

Shots in the woods

In 1934, convicts were brought to Drozhzhino on ten wagons from the Ekaterininsky Hermitage, shortly before that turned into a prison (later known as Sukhanovka - a secret political prison of the NKVD).

Almost all of the inhabitants of the village that once adjoined the estate were evicted to the village of Possibility, serving the Sukhanovo House of Architects, located on the Volkonsky estate. Well, the zeks surrounded two hectares of forest with barbed wire and inside, on the spot where there used to be an apple orchard and a piece of the park, they made another fence: then there was no fence, nothing - the wire was still led through the trees, it is in two places, having dug into the bark, it has survived to this day. The remaining residents of Drozhzhino and nearby Butovo were announced that there would be an NKVD shooting range here. Well, the landfill - and okay. The time was not for questions. Especially for such an organization.

And since the end of 1935, shots began to be heard at the training ground. Then - the entire 36th, 37th, 38th ... It used to be fired for many hours in a row. Sometimes it seemed like screams were heard, once even a woman’s: “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” At dawn... Parents, letting their children go to school, forbade them to pass by the landfill, saying that it was a "bad place." Of course, they guessed something, and how not to guess: almost everyone worked in the NKVD - some in the dining room, some as a cab driver, some as a stoker, some as a driver. There was a man there, in Drozhzhino, whose house, before everyone was surrounded by thorns, stood right on the territory of the training ground. So he worked in the special zone, in the evenings ...

And everyone called him Fedka the executioner. Although he was not an executioner. He worked on an excavator. And he certainly knew why this place is “bad”. Because hundreds of people were shot here every day. And he sprinkled them with earth with the help of a bulldozer knife, which was equipped with his Komsomolets excavator. Well, he dug new ditches - a depth of 3 meters, a width of 4, and a length of at least 100. So, compared to what others knew, saw once or twice, briefly, returning from a night train, “funnel” rushing past, covered "paddy wagons" - one might say he knew almost everything. But he didn't say a word to anyone...

oblivion herb

Now everyone has died - both witnesses and performers. Therefore, it was so difficult to find this “execution zone”, so difficult to restore the lists of those who died there ... After Stalin's death, the training ground was closed. The inner zone was fenced with a deaf fence with wire, guards with machine guns and a dog were planted, and for many years, as it were, locked up. Before that, however, in order to make the dips in the place of the ditches not so visible, garbage was brought there from the city dumps - they were leveled. The village of Drozhzhino, which, of course, has nothing in common with the former Zimin estate, gradually "disconnected" from the zone, healed its own own life. Those who knew were silent... Some were silent because they had swallowed the fear that forever closed their mouths. And others, in Moscow, at the Lubyanka, were silent because they also knew something else: it takes time for the memory to die. A lot of time.

Then a dacha settlement of the NKVD grew up around the zone, in which, however, at first they were not allowed to build houses above one floor and with basements. But then this was also forgotten, mansions grew along the edges of the village, strawberries went, currants, garages, pressing issues- and gradually closed territory behind the fence, through the cracks of which only trees and deaf grass were visible, ceased to interest people.

It is characteristic that during the years of Khrushchev's "thaw" a lot was revealed. Everything, of course, could not be revealed - then Khrushchev himself and the majority of those in power would have been tied up in a common bloody affair. But a lot has come up. People came out of the camps who told terrible truth about the Gulag. However, the name "Butovo" has never flashed anywhere ...

Of all those who, by mistake or due to a formal oversight in the preparation of his “case”, were not shot on the same night they brought him here, only one person actually escaped execution. It is almost impossible to believe that he survived, but it is a fact. And the grass of oblivion turned out to be weed grass - hogweed, which has grown so violently in restricted area that public figures from the commission for the unjustifiably repressed, who first set foot on its territory (and this happened only in July 1993), found themselves literally in the jungle: several old trees reminded that once there was a park here, and the ground under their feet was strangely bumpy . This land was not originally laid by the Lord. At that time, almost no one knew anything about this place.

"Special objects" of the NKVD

The declassification of the Butovo test site was not without a journalist: it turned out to be A.A. Milchakov, son of the repressed first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee A.I. Milchakova. He began research on mass graves long before the KGB officially took up the same issue. He did not build conjectures, but proceeded from the very logic of what was happening: since 1918, people were continuously shot in Moscow. But if at first the Donskoy crematorium and the outskirts of Moscow cemeteries were somehow enough to bury these unfortunates, then during the years of mass terror generated by Yezhov’s decrees of 1937, the “cemetery economy of Moscow”, as they say, could no longer cope with the incoming number of corpses. . So, there should have been special cemeteries or places of executions, where people were buried right on the spot.

Milchakov "groped" south of Moscow triangle Sukhanovka - "Kommunarka" (the former dacha of the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yagoda, later - the place of mass executions and burials) - Butovo. And in his TV report he even called this “zone” the Butovo firing range. It can be seen that at that time there were still alive witnesses who let slip at least about the name. And although the gates, of course, were not opened for him and he had to remove, in fact, only the fence, the report played an important role. Because at the same time, rehabilitation groups were also created in the security agencies, which were engaged in the search for places of mass graves of the 1930-1940s. Using the deductive method, the workers of the rehabilitation group also agreed on the expediency of "working out" the southern direction - namely, Butovo and Kommunarka. And they even went to places to survey the population. But what is surprising is that they could not find any traces in the depths of their department for a very long time. Not a single document, not a single order, even indirectly confirming the existence of the Butovo special facility! 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. The documents were signed by the head of the NKVD department for Moscow and the Moscow region I.D. Berg (shot on March 7, 1938) and his deputy M.I. Semenov (shot on September 25, 1939).

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. In "Kommunarka" they buried the political "top", party oppositionists, old Bolsheviks, leaders of the Comintern and fraternal parties, members of the government, and so on. In Butovo, they shot and dumped into the ditches the “lower class” sentenced by the “troikas” to be shot. People…

mass grave

Everyone lies in Butovo land: people different ages, of different nationalities and religions, different activities- from brilliant scientists and theologians to handicraftsmen and apprentices. Former employees of the NKVD here side by side with peasants who were dispossessed of kulaks three times and finally shot. Here lie and Latvian Riflemen- Lenin's support in 1918 - completely exterminated in the late 30s, and romantic communists who came to "build socialism" from somewhere in Germany or South Africa. Here are thousands of former “canal army men” who realized the grandiose project of connecting the Moscow River with the Volga and were destroyed immediately after the canal was built and the million-strong population of Dmitlag became unnecessary for the country. Here are all the "former" entrepreneurs, officers, and in general, so to speak, the "privileged classes." But here are the workers. Here are the artists. It's hard to believe - there are 100 artists alone! Here people are quite simple and comprehensively gifted, the true color of Russia. Let's say Chairman 2nd State Duma F. Golovin, Moscow Governor-General V.F. Dzhunkovsky, the owner of seven highest military awards, General B.I. Stolbin, spiritual composer M.N. Khitrovo-Kramskoy, icon painter Count V.A. Komarovsky, Metropolitan of Leningrad Seraphim (Chichagov), whose face even in the last, prison, photograph is striking in its spiritual strength, here is the bright church thinker Bishop Arseniy Zhadanovsky, representatives of the noble families of the Tuchkovs, Gagarins, Shakhovskys, Obolenskys, Olsufievs, Bibikovs ... And there is also a myriad of very simple people, with surnames far from literary, who have turned up in the machine of terror due to various life circumstances. Let's say Petrov Vitaly Alexandrovich. He worked as a civilian on the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, was arrested at the age of 36 because, being 20 years old, he tried to escape through the Chinese border with a friend to Harbin, and from there to America ... The attempt to escape failed, a Chinese acquaintance escorted them back across the border. He got married, began to work... Could he have known that in 17 years he would be overtaken by Article 58-10 (“espionage”) and that he and his friend Nikolai Bukhvalov would be convicted and shot in Butovo? Of course he couldn't. Like most of those shot here.

The Presnov family from the village of Krylatskoye near Moscow in full strength (6 people) was shot because their house, and the surroundings on the picturesque banks of the Moskva River, liked the German Ernst Schule, who worked at the German Embassy, ​​who rented part of their house as a summer residence.

In Pirochi, near Kolomna, the matter was already more serious: here a conspiracy was opened up. The village has long been considered one of the richest in the area. Some of its inhabitants had already been "dispossessed" in the early 1930s and had even left the exile. Naturally, the peasants had a corresponding attitude towards the Soviet government. The chairman of the Piroch village council was summoned to the Kolomna regional department of the NKVD and interrogated with "passion". For 2 days they were interrogated 5 times, threatened with a revolver. As a result, the chairman gave evidence against ten fellow villagers. Those, in general, did not hide their moods: “Collective farmers are the same serfs, they work not for themselves, but for their uncle, they work a lot, but they don’t get anything to receive, they sit hungry and cold” (from the protocol of interrogation of a peasant I.M. Minaeva). “Collective farms are the same corvée.... The peasants will see relief only when there are no Bolsheviks and Soviet power” (from the record of the interrogation of the peasant E.V. Simakov). The case of the counter-revolutionary peasant group in the village of Pirochi was "done" instantly. 20 days after the first arrests, the case was heard by a troika of the Moscow Department of the NKVD. All ten were to be shot. The sentence was carried out the very next day after the meeting of the "troika" ...

A.F. Borodina, a former nun of the All Saints Monastery, was a housekeeper in a family of doctors who worked on the construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal. She began to attend church, which her mistress did not like. She wrote a denunciation against her, asking the police to notify her in advance of decision so that she "could immediately take on another worker for herself in advance." During interrogations, Borodina admitted that she was a religious person, but categorically denied counter-revolutionary agitation. She was shot in Butovo on September 14, 1937.
A compositor's mistake, which became a textbook plot of literature and cinema, cost the life of a compositor of the 1st Exemplary Printing House D.G. Laryukov. “In February In 1937, he made a gross mistake, in the factory newspaper he typed: "to cleanse the Soviet Union of Soviet evil spirits" instead of "Trotskyist evil spirits." Shot in Butovo on November 25, 1937.
Even the highest ranks and the most needed by the country knowledge did not save man. Climbers were shot in Butovo, especially those who had contacts with foreign instructors. Including: a participant in the Pamir campaign of 1936 G. Rosenzweig (doctor, climber), A. Glanzberg, military engineer of the 2nd rank, head of the mountaineering school of the Red Army, M. Frinovsky, commander of the 1st rank, deputy people's commissar of internal affairs - one of organizers of army mountaineering ...

Dance of death

The artist Roman Semashkevich was arrested on the eve of his solo exhibition, and the framed paintings, prepared for hanging, disappeared forever with him. His wife searched for them all her life, but she never found them. And now finding a painting by Semashkevich is a great success. But here are some of his notes, including letters to his wife, remained. In one he writes: “On the road, a fairy tale village. A million landscapes! House, people, and everyone has a pair of clean, completely transparent eyes. (...) There are no words to express what I see. I squeezed the paints onto a plate (no palette). Unfortunate, they lie, waiting for incarnation and disappearance. I live. (...) We, the artists, are knights.”

And here is an excerpt from the autobiography of his friend, Alexander Drevin, who was also shot in Butovo: “What can be more necessary for an artist than to feel that you draw strength from two great sources: a strong life and strong nature... "Even from a couple of lines you can see which knights of art fell under bullets ... But no matter how you live, no matter what you feel - to be a famous artist or to remain a completely invisible being - it did not matter. The terror of 1937-1938 did not leave a single person on the territory of the USSR out of possible accusation. Except maybe one...

In general, speaking of the terror of the 1930s, it is probably time to abandon the term "political repression": it went far beyond politics and it has long needed to find another definition. Some researchers speak of a "self-accelerating machine" of terror. Indeed, at first, in the work of the NKVD, there are even some comforting features of mechanicalness. Still, the machine obeys the man. She has a profile-task, has its own efficiency, power, production rates, results of work. But when it is no longer a question of cubic meters of earth, nor of tons of gold, but only of the number of signatures - "execution", "execution", "execution", then it is already a matter of evil, as such, world evil that has escaped from under control. Unfortunately, in human history, such volcanic eruptions happen ...

And if we continue about the Butovo training ground - what, they say, was there? It is difficult to give an answer, because there are few places where death would dance its hellish dance with such passion. And on the other hand - and "interesting", I beg your pardon - nothing, because evil, it is fruitless. Creativity, genius, self-sacrifice - that's the mystery. And here - what? The barracks where the prisoners were brought. The house where the condemned waited in the wings. Moats. Thirteen ditches filled to the brim with mud dead people. Excavator. In general, the length is a kilometer of ditches. You can calculate the volume and number of corpses, "necessary" to fill this volume. There are also some holes in the forest.

Of course, there are not 21,000 people lying here. We just know about them. As for everyone else, no. Silence. Hiding documents, weapons, people, any truth - everything. And then all these “deuces”, “triples”, monkey imitation of justice and the most painstaking verification of personality before being shot: was it really that they brought him? “Avtozaki”, into which 50 people were stuffed and on the way they were poisoned with exhaust gas so that they would not even think of fluttering (this was apparently invented by I.D. Berg, evidence of this kind was in his case, but now they have disappeared). Or just beaten. There was such a specially trained bastard, whose profession was to beat people before execution, so that they would not think of running away. And then suddenly sentenced to death - run away? In the North, the head of the convoy nervous ground He drank for 5 days, and then personally shot the entire stage - 1,110 people.

Executors are a special diabolical breed: they were all officers, tested since the Civil. They always had vodka. They will drink - and forward - personally from their revolver to the back of the head ...

Four of them worked in Butovo. But let's say, on February 28, 1938, 562 people were shot at the firing range. It is hard to imagine that each of them, “in the back of the head”, killed more than 140 people. So, either there was help, or machine guns. Now it turns out that there were only 12 permanent executioners in all of Moscow. All of them did not live, in fact, to old age. Mostly asleep. One hanged himself. One went crazy. And only one - nothing. Worked, retired. He looked like a rural teacher, almost good-natured: glasses, mustaches ... They say that over the years of work he personally shot 10,000 people ...
However, numbers are such a thing - in the end, they cease to convince and even frighten.

Sunday

Now in Drozhzhino, in the former intelligence school of the KGB, a Sunday school has been opened in honor of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, where a small center operates to perpetuate the memory of all the people who were shot in the Butovo "zone". 6 books of memory have been published, where each of the 21,000 executed was given as complete information as possible, collected as a result of many years and hard archival work. All this is headed by Father Kirill, who once came to Butovo as a young geologist to see where his grandfather, priest Vladimir Ambartsumov, was buried, and as a result he himself became the rector of the temple. And, in general, the activities of all the people involved in Butovo - whether it be the archival work of Lidia Alekseevna Golovkova or the "computer workshop" of Alexander Nazarikov, which summarizes a huge array of collected materials, turned out to be somehow connected with the church. Because without faith in life after death, without the separation of Good and Evil, and without faith that Good will eventually triumph, all this work is largely meaningless. Because then both these books and the Internet site will be just a huge register of dead people.

Lidia Alekseevna Golovkova is the author of a very interesting articles along Butovo - former artist. During the conversation, I asked how it happened that she left her beloved job and became an archivist, an employee of the theological institute, and what is the meaning of her work in general - historical or religious?

She considered.
Do you remember the philosopher Nikolai Fedorov? He had a strange idefix: to achieve human strength resurrection of the dead. Itself. And while reading it, I kept thinking: what a horror this will turn out to be ... And now I look at Sasha Nazarikov, listen to how he talks about Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) as if he were alive and shows him photographs - here he is still in the army, and now changed his uniform for a church vestment ... And he wants me to imbue him, fall in love with him - both in the grandeur of earthly glory, and deprived of everything, in Butyrka prison, but not broken - and I understand that this is the human resurrection in Fedorov's way .

And the church prays not only for the Resurrection to eternal life, but for the Resurrection to the light of the souls of the lost and perishing, tempted by evil. And about the Resurrection in people's memory the feat of strong and bright souls, tested by evil and even tormented, but not broken, holy souls. Without this, the darkness will not dissipate over the Butovo test site and the landscape will not brighten up.

From the biography of the Hieromartyr Metropolitan Seraphim

Metropolitan Seraphim, who was shot at the age of 81, came from an old noble family closely connected with the history of the Russian fleet. His great-grandfather is the famous admiral V.Ya. Chichagov, one of the first explorers of the Arctic Ocean, grandfather - the Minister of Marine of Russia P.V. Chichagov, a prominent participant in the war of 1812. Initially, the future of the descendant of the illustrious family born in 1856 was associated with military career. He was educated in the Corps of Pages and the Artillery Academy, returned as a Cavalier of St. George from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and began his literary career, first as a military historian. By this time, he met Archpriest John of Kronstadt, in whose spiritual obedience he was for 30 years. The internal transformation caused by this acquaintance led to the fact that in 1891 Colonel Leonid Mikhailovich Chichagov did the incredible: he resigned and announced his desire to become a priest. This decision shocked all his relatives, including his wife, but he did not back down from his decision. His preparation for taking the priesthood was combined with a passionate desire to help others. He began to learn medical science(herbal treatment) and even expounded his doctrine of health in "Medical Conversations", published in 2 books. In 1893 L.M. Chichagov was ordained a priest and began serving in the church of St. Nicholas on Stary Vagankovo. Two years later, his beloved wife died, and he, having joined the monastery brotherhood of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, was tonsured into the mantle with the name Seraphim. He began his literary work in the field church history: the life of the elder Seraphim of Sarov, written by him, had a decisive influence on the canonization of the elder as a saint. His sermons were so heartfelt that even at that time they were recorded: in Chisinau in 1911, a collection of his sermons was published - conversations and speeches, which set out his understanding of human freedom and Divine grace - a bold and wise example of Orthodox thought. After Local Council In the Russian Orthodox Church of 1917-1918, Bishop Seraphim was elevated to the rank of metropolitan, but the ministry assigned to him in Warsaw could not be fulfilled due to the beginning revolutionary events. He remained in Moscow and served in various churches. Contemporaries noted the kindness of his heart, his constant readiness to respond to the needs of his neighbors. He composed church music, never parted with the harmonium, drew well, was engaged in icon painting: in the Moscow church in the name of the Prophet of God Elijah, in 2nd Obydensky Lane, you can see a wonderful image of the Savior in a white chiton and the image of St. Seraphim praying on a stone written by him. In 1922, his first arrest followed and he was deported for 4 years to live in Arkhangelsk. In 1927, Vladyka Seraphim recognized the authority of Metropolitan Sergius (Stargorodsky) and a year later was appointed to the Leningrad cathedra. For five years he had to resist the "renovation activity" encouraged by the party and fight for the true church. In 1933, Metropolitan Seraphim was retired. In November 1937, he was arrested at a dacha near Moscow and on December 11 he was shot and buried in one of the thirteen Butovo "ditches".

From the biography of the holy martyr Father Vladimir Ambartsumov

Vladimir Ambartsumovich Ambartsumov graduated from Moscow University in 1917, which was fatal for Russia. He was a talented physicist, and a brilliant career could await him both abroad and in what was then Russia. However, he decided to leave scientific activity and began to earn a living by private lessons, and he, along with his wife, completely went into the activities of a student Christian circle. An abandoned house was found in Krechetnikovsky Lane, which the students put in order, where Vladimir Ambartsumov and his family and the most active members of the circle settled. There were classes with young people on the study of the Gospel. In the early 1920s, the student Christian movement gained momentum in many Russian cities. Ambartsumov, who himself founded several circles in different cities, became chairman of the Central Committee of Russian Christian student circles. In 1925, circles were banned and the ban was immediately followed by repression. Once Ambartsumov spent the night in the house of N.E. Pestov, where officers of the OGPU came with a search and arrest warrant. The Chekist who conducted the search did not know that he was looking at the chairman of the student movement; he kept him all night and released him early in the morning, arresting only the owner of the apartment. Vladimir Ambartsumovich went around Moscow from one friend to another, but at that early hour all the lights were on—there were searches. Passing through the city before the opening of barbershops, he shaved off his beard, mustache, cut his hair, and then changed his pince-nez to regular glasses. After this incident, he completely switched to an illegal position - he quit his job. civil service and did not have a permanent place of residence ...

In 1927, in the city of Glazov, he was ordained a priest, and in 1929 he was appointed rector of the Moscow Prince Vladimir Church in Starosadsky Lane. But the time of his open ministry to the church, "non-underground" life and happy communication with his children was short-lived. Arrest and prolonged persecution followed in 1932. Only in 1934 did he return to Moscow and get a job at the Institute of Climatology in the village of Kuchino.

On the night of September 8-9, 1937, they came for him. The children gathered some things for their father and put them in a pillowcase. When he left the house, the daughter who accompanied him picked an apple in the garden and gave it to her father. “No need,” the OGPU officer snapped. He apparently knew that this time they were not taking him away in order to let him go. On November 5, 1937, Father Vladimir Ambartsumov was shot in Butovo.

Father Kirill: “Butovo should become a place of memory”

“...After the Church learned that many clergy had died at the Butovo training ground - this was in the spring of 1994 - it became necessary to build a church on this site. Not because we knew that many who died here for their faith would later be glorified as saints, but because this is generally in the traditions of Orthodoxy. Moreover, this idea was expressed both by His Holiness and the Mayor of Moscow. But at that time, both His Holiness and Y. Luzhkov were engaged in the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior - it was clear that they would not be enough for one more church. And then the relatives of the victims at the training ground asked the Patriarch for permission to create a community in order to build the temple themselves. The community was established at the end of 1994. I was elected chairman of the parish council, or, simply, the headman. At our request, His Holiness turned to the FSK (now the FSB) with a request to allocate a plot of land in Butovo for the construction of a temple. No one thought that they would give us the landfill, and even more so the central part, so the wording was just that. Unexpectedly, quickly, the Patriarchate received a call from the administration of the Moscow Region and offered to discuss this issue. The negotiations were conducted by Vladyka Arseniy, the current archbishop. I attended. Two officials from the administration of the Moscow region asked: why do you need this? When it was explained to them that many clergymen and many well-known people in general suffered here, one of them said: “Then take Kommunarka better, there is such a good forest...” Vladyka Arseniy said: “No. Specific people suffered here, whose relatives are still alive ... "

Unexpectedly, these issues were quickly resolved. At the same time, it was decided that a temple would be opened in Butovo, where people would be able to come to pray, because here the land was sanctified by the blood of the holy martyrs. As soon as the territory was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church, it became open to everyone. For even when the Chekists admitted that this was a zone of mass graves, they allowed access here only on weekends. Then a temple was built according to the design of the architect Dmitry Shakhovsky, whose grandfather, priest Mikhail Shikt, was also shot here.

In 1997, at the expense of the Moscow government in Drozhzhino, the road from the Warsaw highway was practically rebuilt. A bus was launched here, a scheduled service was established. This bus was organized specifically for people to come to the burial place, and now everyone uses this bus, although its schedule is timed to coincide with the schedule of worship. One way or another, this place became achievable, accessible. At the beginning of 1997, with the blessing of His Holiness, one of the ditches was opened and it was directly proved that this was a place of mass graves of the executed. And in 2000-2001, again at the expense of the Moscow government, design and survey work was carried out in order to accurately locate the ditches. Thirteen have been found. After that, in fact, the idea arose to preserve this entire territory as a monument. To begin with, it was necessary to stop the construction here, in Drozhzhino, of a microdistrict of several multi-storey buildings, the communications of which were generally planned to be laid through the southern moat. After the plan was cancelled, it was decided to preserve this place as a historical monument.

By 2007, the Orthodox Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in Butovo was built and consecrated.

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

Butovo should become a place of memory not only for those who were shot here, but also for all those who were innocently killed, repressed, and died in camps on the territory of the former USSR. For for people whose relatives were in Kolymlag or in Kazakhstan, it is unrealistic to go there. And this place near Moscow will be able to visit a lot of people from all over Russia. Therefore, Butovo could become a place of memory for all the victims. There must be some commemorative signs... What they will be - this already applies to the in-depth development of the project of the Museum of Memory. Perhaps it will find a spontaneous form for embodiment. So we will not now think about the final form of the Butovo memorial. What it will be like, time will tell... But everything that happens here is not only in the Orthodox, but also in very Russian traditions...”

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

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

13 to 82

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

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

"Black Raven" - a car for transporting prisoners

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

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

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

Hieromartyr Seraphim (Chichagov)

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

At the place of execution - strawberry beds

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

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

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

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

Scheme of the main burials

humble veneration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repentance is a comparative analysis

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

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

How to get to the Butovo training ground

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

The bigger the lie, the more people believe in her

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 had never heard anything about the range before either, and this historical period has always interested me, therefore, having heard it out of the corner of my ear, I decided to climb the net in more detail and see.

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 was sentenced for the period from 1935 to 1953 to highest measure punishment of 27,508 people"), everywhere it is said that for the burial of so many people with a bulldozer (in some places - with an excavator, and in one place even a certain hybrid "bulldozer-excavator" is described, even its name is given - "Komsomolets" (which is already 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 on the next day everything was repeated, "and the filled-in ditches themselves are clearly visible in the aerial photographs.

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 the 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. Special Squad, according to the driver of the NKVD motor depot, consisted of 12 people. Let's say that the maximum number of performers was involved - 12 people. This means that each of them managed to kill 46-47 people. The sentenced 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 out of the barracks in twos, directly shooting, returning to the barracks for new ones doomed to death? Let's take a minimum time of 10 minutes. So, the performer spent 470 minutes on the execution of 46-47 sentenced - 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 is hard to believe, of course, - to turn off the water for a whole working day, and even at the same time, all this time, it is deftly managed and co small arms and with a sober prisoner, 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 training ground. more than 140 people, "because whoever wants to believe will believe:" So, either there was help, or machine guns.

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

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

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

In general, although “Not a word was said about Butovo, as a place of mass executions and burials, either during the “Beria rehabilitation”, or during the “Khrushchev thaw”, and also nowhere was “not a single document, not a single order, at least indirectly confirming the existence of the Butovo special facility "but some information stuffing all the same, it happened, and now information is spread from it using the method of a damaged phone. Question - sorry for the rhyme - where is the stuffing from? And why? Isn't it enough, and so it was in the thirties? Why and to whom it became necessary to aggravate?

So, “In the Central Archive of the FSB there is a fund No. 7 containing acts on the enforcement of sentences, which no one looked into until 1991. It was there that the Mozokhin Group found documents indicating that in 1921-1928 the burials of the victims repressions were carried out in the very center of Moscow on the territory of the Yauza hospital, from 1926 to 1936 - at the Vagankovsky cemetery, and from 1935 to 1953 - partly burials, partly cremation of the executed were carried out in the Moscow crematorium at the Donskoy cemetery.These documents contained clear instructions commandants of cemeteries (who, 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 community group under the leadership of 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, previously unknown, unregistered 18 volumes of cases with orders and acts execution of execution sentences for 20,675 people 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: it turned out to be A.A. Milchakov, the son of the repressed first secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee A.I. on the territory of the Donskoy you can’t lay everyone down, somewhere it was necessary to bury the executed.

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

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

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

That's all the documents. In Word format. And most of the references (who are not too lazy to google on their own will see for themselves) are to the words of unnamed "locals" 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: 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. great job ditches were discovered in the summer of 2002. Experts identified and mapped 13 burial ditches. But the research is not finished, 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 conducted excavations on twelve square meters discovered the remains of 149 people."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In general, to the point, I’m all this to 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 the purest water. Everything folds too neatly official version and too many unanswered 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; this is still the outskirts, 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 is three hours round trip, plus gasoline, plus depreciation). The sentences were carried out in the cellars and courtyards of prisons, there are tons of documentary evidence of this, and the corpses were taken to the nearest special cemeteries - it is possible that Butovo was one of them, and prisoners were actually buried there for thirty years, but between the mass grave and mass shooting there is still a difference, 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-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 war and the approach German troops to the capital were reinforced and converted for combat operations already as a line of defense. After the war, they were apparently partly covered up over time, and partly used as rubbish bins (hence the rubbish 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. On the mass grave in Katyn, for example, there are entire libraries, photo libraries and even video libraries, but on 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 area? How many crows should hang over the landfill, how many dogs and wild animals should come to rip up graves, what hordes of rats should settle at the feast, what smell should be for kilometers around, and how quickly the plague will grow in the global grave, spread by groundwater- and all this is near 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 to prevent epidemics during mass graves ( mass graves) during the war, at least 100 grams of bleach should be poured per kilogram of cadaveric weight, and near settlements- half a kilo. Let's calculate the volume of chlorine delivery to Butovo?

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

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

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

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

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

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