During the Great Terror almost 11,000 men and women were executed in Karelia. In his database Yury DMITRIEV followed NKVD reports and noted that during those months the death sentence was carried out 4,975 times “at the Medvezhya gora rail station”. Sandarmokh monument as originally designed with Guardian Angel This is not surprising. The headquarters … Continue reading Half those shot in 1937-1938 … lie buried at Sandarmokh?
executions*
Destination unknown
More than one thousand prisoners were shipped from the island prison of Solovki in October 1937. For their relatives they disappeared even earlier when letters remained unanswered, but they were not forgotten. Their families tried to discover their fate. Many years would pass before it was learned that they had been shot. For decades, relatives … Continue reading Destination unknown
First Discoveries, 1988-1991
The first time Yury DMITRIEV came across the unmarked remains of those shot during the Great Terror was in 1988, as he describes in My Path to Golgotha (pt 2). The immediate reaction since the 1950s was to cover up these bones and skulls with their tell-tale bullet holes. Now activists and relatives of those … Continue reading First Discoveries, 1988-1991
Remembrance (4), “No smoke without fire?”
The OGPU investigation of the Pokrovsky brothers in summer 1932 helps us put faces to four names. Ivan was executed in Moscow, one death in the maelstrom unleashed by the forced industrialisation of the USSR and the dekulakisation of the countryside. Alexander was shot four years later at Sandarmokh, a victim of the Great Terror. … Continue reading Remembrance (4), “No smoke without fire?”
Remembrance (3): Four brothers
Alexander Pokrovsky and his three brothers were born in a village in what today is Russia's Oryol Region. By the early 1930s, they had moved to Moscow. Ivan (1904-1933), Simeon (b. 1911), and Sergei (b. 1915) There in summer 1932 the OGPU (predecessor of the NKVD) arrested them and by October that year all four … Continue reading Remembrance (3): Four brothers
The Dmitriev Affair 