searching for relatives among the victims of the
Vinnytsia massacre exhumed from a
mass grave in 1943. In the final years of the USSR and after its
dissolution in 1991, killing fields and burial sites were uncovered and memorialised across the countries of the former Soviet Union. Some dated back to the
Red Terror or to the intervening years when the secret police in all major Soviet cities regularly used unmarked graves in existing cemeteries to dispose of those they executed or killed during interrogation. Most came into existence during the Great Purge. Between 5 August 1937 and 17 November 1938 the scale of killing reached its apogee. In a series of 12
national operations the NKVD executed at least 680,000 men and women. That is the documented total: the real figure is almost certainly higher. In preparation for mass murder on such a scale the NKVD People's Commissar
Yezhov instructed his subordinates throughout the Soviet Union to identify areas not far from the major urban centres where thousands of bodies could be quickly concealed. This was described by the late
Arseny Roginsky “In July that year NKVD departments across the USSR had already begun to set aside special ‘zones’, areas for the mass burial of those they shot. For locals these usually became known, euphemistically, as army firing ranges. This was how the zones that we know today came into being: the Levashovo Wasteland near Leningrad, Kuropaty near Minsk, the Golden Hill near Chelyabinsk, Bykovnya on the outskirts of Kiev, and many others.” The widespread description of these sites as "firing ranges" has led to confusion between killing fields where the victims were both shot and buried, e.g.
Sandarmokh, and the many other sites where those being buried and concealed had already been executed elsewhere.
Ukraine site near
Kyiv, Ukraine •
Bykivnia Graves near Kyiv contain an estimated 30,000. • There are other mass graves in
Uman,
Bila Tserkva,
Cherkasy and
Zhytomyr. • 9,432 corpses were exhumed following the
Vinnytsia massacre. • As in Russia and elsewhere, these sites keep appearing, e.g. a mass grave found in 2002 under the floor of a Ukrainian monastery. •
Tatarka common graves Belarus near
Minsk, Belarus •
Kurapaty – At least 50,000 are thought to have been shot at this site near Minsk, with considerably higher estimates in the Soviet press.
Russian Federation Northwest Russia •
Krasny Bor Forest, Karelia •
Levashovo Memorial Cemetery in St Petersburg: 19,520 are thought to lie buried there. •
Toksovo, near
Saint Petersburg was discovered in 2002. It, perhaps, contains up to 30,000 bodies. •
Sandarmokh (Karelia), was discovered in July 1997. At least 6,067 victims lie there, half of all those shot in Karelia during the Great Terror.
In or near Moscow s of
Butovo firing range • The
Butovo firing range. The names of 20,702 victims are etched on the granite walls of the symbolic execution trenches in the Garden of Remembrance (opened September 2017). •
Donskoye Cemetery, the location of a secret crematorium and three secret mass graves, each consisting of tens of thousands of sets of ashes. •
Kommunarka. At its October 2018 opening 6,609 names were displayed on the Wall of Remembrance.
Siberia •
Kolpashevsky Yar in
Kolpashevo (Tomsk Region, west Siberia). Over 1,000 bodies discovered in 1979, were then disposed of on the instructions of the local Party chief. Up to 4,000 people were shot in Kolpashevo, Tomsk Memorial estimates today. • Pivovarikha (Irkutsk Region, east Siberia) near Irkutsk. A memorial area was established at Pivovarikha in 1989 but no accurate estimate has been made of the numbers buried there. The Memorial online database lists 10,609 who were shot throughout the Irkutsk Region during the Great Terror. The Open List database names 1,384 who were then shot in the city of Irkutsk. ==1940 onwards==