Timeline (1), 1997-2008

11 December 202018 August 2025 / editors (JC)

In early July 1997, DMITRIEV together with Irina Flige and the late Veniamin Joffe discovered a huge killing field of the Great Terror near Medvezhegorsk in Karelia. Subsequently it became known as Sandarmokh. Weeks later, in early September, he and Sergei Chugunkov identify the Krasny Bor killing field and burial ground not far from Petrozavodsk, … Continue reading Timeline (1), 1997-2008

A concentration camp for Karelia’s children

19 November 202014 December 2020 / editors (JC)

(see 24 November update, below) “Putin has given the children of Karelia not a summer camp or a sanatorium (none remain in the republic), nor a polyclinic for children -- not one has been built during the past 20 years -- but a concentration camp,” writes Emilia Slabunova, Yabloko deputy in the Karelian republic’s legislative … Continue reading A concentration camp for Karelia’s children

“The Mysteries of Sandarmokh”, A book review

12 March 202013 December 2020 / editors (JC)

Even before Yury DMITRIEV was arrested in December 2016, an alternative explanation of the mass burials at Sandormokh had appeared (see below, Appendix). Promoted by two historians at Petrozavodsk University, Sergei Verigin and Yury Kilin, it suggested that among those executed and buried in the forest near Medvezhegorsk were not only victims of Stalin's Great … Continue reading “The Mysteries of Sandarmokh”, A book review

The Search for Sandormokh

2 October 201913 December 2020 / editors (JC) / 4 Comments

“Twenty years ago, it seemed to us that Sandormokh as a place and these acts of remembrance divided the present from the past,” said Irina FLIGE in August 2017, at the Day of Remembrance at Sandormokh. “Today, unfortunately, we must recognise that memories of the Great Terror have not become part of our [shared] memory … Continue reading The Search for Sandormokh

Finnish archive rejects Russia’s “new hypothesis”

31 August 201915 August 2025 / editors (JC)

Soviet prisoners of war were not buried in Sandarmokh, according to information held by Finland’s National Archive. Recently it has been asserted in Russia that hundreds of Soviet POWs, executed by the Finns during the Continuation War (1941-1944), were buried at Sandarmokh in eastern Karelia (the Republic of Karelia in the Russian Federation). The Russian … Continue reading Finnish archive rejects Russia’s “new hypothesis”