“We believe they were finished off with a control shot to the temple”

Archaeologists from the Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg unearthed 15 burial pits with the remains of victims of political repressions in the 1930s-1950s. In total, about 49 grave pits were recorded on the 12th km of the Moscow tract, where, according to preliminary data, there may be about 2 thousand remains. Nearly all of the skulls found have bullet holes, and the pits themselves contain personal items dating back to the 1930s. According to archaeologists, this proves that they established an NKVD firing range. Information about the finds will be transferred to the Investigative Committee of Russia for investigative measures.

The memorial to the victims of political repressions is located on the 12th km of the Moskovsky tract in Yekaterinburg on the territory of the former Kvashninsky iron mine. During the Soviet period, part of the mine was cordoned off with a fence, turning it into the so-called NKVD testing ground. According to archival data (including the NKVD itself in the Sverdlovsk region), during the years of terror, about 22 thousand people were killed here.

In 1990, the Sverdlovsk city executive committee decided to recognize the place as “an official cemetery where a monument to the victims of political repression will be erected.” In 1991, the regional prosecutor’s office conducted a selective exhumation of the bodies. Then the remains of 31 people were found here, they were reburied. In 1996, the first stage of the memorial was opened on this territory, and in 2017 the “Masks of Sorrow” by the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny were installed.

In 2019-2020, the Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg involved archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov in the work on the territory of the memorial. He singled out two zones of mass graves – North and South. The second is located around the current memorial, where, according to Mr. Pogorelov, pits for mass graves are located. In August-September of this year, it was explored by archaeologists.

And about. Igor Pushkarev, director of the Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg, told Kommersant that the work was carried out, among other things, on a grant from the governor “Special Purpose Zone Twelfth Kilometer. Manifestation”. The money was received by the autonomous non-profit organization Volunteer Society of the Sverdlovsk Region, which entered into an agreement with the museum.

The main goal of the work is to establish and prove the fact of mass graves around the memorial.

The second goal is to delineate this territory. The third was to determine, as accurately as possible, the type and number of grave pits in which the executed were buried.

As Mr. Pushkarev said, during the work, the perimeter of the NKVD test site was recorded and mapped for the first time: “Its area was 198 hectares. Part of the barbed wire fence, by the way, has been preserved and is still in use.” Archaeologists managed to fix at least 49 grave pits, 15 of them were opened by pits. There, at a depth of about 1.6–1.9 m, the bodies of the executed were recorded.

“Typologically, pits with mass graves are divided into two main types. Trenches 2.5–3 m wide, up to 5–6 m long and about 2 m deep. And square pits from 2×2 m to about 4×4 m and 2 m deep. In addition, we believe that executions were also carried out in summer, both during the demi-season and in winter. This is proved by the clothes found in the pits,” says Igor Pushkarev.

The fact that the found remains really belong to the victims of repression is evidenced by the nature of the injuries.

According to Igor Pushkarev, almost all found skulls in the back of the head have entrance holes from bullet wounds: “In addition, on some skulls there are traces of two or three shots. We believe that the man was shot at, he fell into the pit, but for some reason the bullets from the revolver did not cause him instant death. We believe that in these cases they were finished off with a control shot and, as it seems to us, this happened in the temporal part.

Separate pits, according to archaeologists, did not contain the remains of people, but were filled with household items: mugs, teapots, as well as personal belongings of the executed. “We believe that somewhere they cleaned up the territory and threw things into separate pits,” says Mr. Pushkarev.

Now the museum intends to notify the investigative department for the Sverdlovsk region about the discovery of the remains, since less than 100 years have passed since their death.

“Then the investigators should go to the place, possibly, initiate a criminal case. It seems to us that they should exhume the remains, establish the cause, time of death, and then the question of reburial of the remains should be raised. As it was in 1992,” added the director of the museum. Ideally, Mr. Pushkarev believes, the remains should be identified by selecting their DNA and comparing them with the relatives of the executed. “Of course, this is all at the request of relatives. The regional NKVD has lists of the executed. The names of a certain number of people could be restored. This is the noblest goal,” he says.

Now the Museum of the History of Yekaterinburg is discussing with representatives of the Gulag Museum the possibility of continuing research on the territory. We are talking about lidar and geophysical surveys. “This will help to see if we missed something and if there are still potential places in the large area around the memorial that would be worth double-checking,” he said.

At the same time, Igor Pushkarev clarified that with a high degree of probability, the biathlon complex with ski-roller tracks located in the Northern zone does not fall into the burial zone. Just like the project of the biathlon complex named after Anton Shipulin, which are planning build nearby. “The grave pits are located southwest of the existing ski-roller tracks, they are separated by hundreds of meters. The territory was checked three times, and so far there are no results that would allow us to say that there is something there. Our collective opinion is that it is worth stopping disputes over this territory, ”he concluded.

Tatiana Drogaeva, Yekaterinburg