“They made a road to Koirankangas from Rzhevka. From our hill we could see clearly: a vehicle went there and then it stopped. A minute passed, perhaps, and then shots were heard. We avoided going that way. Everyone knew they were shooting people there. Murdered people were found there.”

Anni Arikainen (b. 1918), Kuivozi, Vsevolozhsky district,
Leningrad Region (recorded in 1990).

“A place of execution”
(photo, Sergei Strukov)

“We children found a man in the woods. He was lying on the ground; it was clear he couldn’t walk. He saw us and said something, but we couldn’t understand. We didn’t know what to do. We weren’t strong enough to drag him anywhere – and where we would take him? We made him a shelter of branches, brought him something to drink and, from what we could find, food to eat. We told our parents nothing. The next day we returned, and he was there. The third day we came, and he was gone. Either he got away or they had found him.”

Mikko Vanganen (b. 1921), Kuivozi,
Leningrad Region (recorded in 1994).

It’s long been known that somewhere between Toksovo and Vsevolozhsk there is a terrible place called Koirankangas, where mass executions were carried out in the 1920s and 1930s. Vague rumours surfaced in the late 1980s when Memorial was trying to find where people were buried. However, there were no official records then and they have still not been found. Therefore, Koirankangas, unlike Levashovo near Petersburg, does not have the official status of a memorial graveyard. Nor is it known how many lie buried there.

To this day, the killing field is on the edge of an artillery firing range and access is only granted with a special pass from the local military.

Sergei Glezerov, Around Petersburg (excerpt)

Delo Dmitrieva, Supporters page
Facebook, October 2018