In 1937–38, the Soviet authorities killed hundreds of thousands of people—more than one in every two hundred inhabitants of the USSR. They were killed without a trial, without any guilt, without the possibility of justifying or defending themselves. Across the country, Chekists seized people, secretly executed them by firing squad, and tortured them during interrogations. Their actions were dictated by one thing only— they wanted to fulfill (and overfulfill!) the plan for enemies given to them by Stalin and his closest associates.
Sandarmokh, August 2012. Photo: Dmitry Tsvibel (from currenttime.tv)
This mass murder was accompanied by calls from Soviet propaganda to expose imaginary spies, wreckers, and enemies of the state. Eighty years have passed. How does society remember this trauma? A great many prefer not to remember. And if they do remember, they accompany it with the words: “What’s past is past.” Pitying the victims, but not condemning the perpetrators. For the perpetrators were the authorities, and how can one condemn them? It might even be dangerous. There is also an impulse to justify the executioners. “There must have been a reason for it,” “most of them were criminals anyway,” “how else could they have brought order to the country?”—all these are phrases that help to separate oneself from the victims, to create the illusion that if you were in that time, the “troika” would have spared you, or you would not have been tried at all. By distancing ourselves from the victims, we not only justify their executioners but even begin to love them. We admire Stalin as a harsh and strict father who, if he beats, does so “for a reason.” Just as victims of domestic violence justify their tormentors, until they break out of the vicious circle. If they break out…
Yury Dmitriev is one of those who have spent their entire lives trying to break this vicious circle, to launch a process of genuinely working through the trauma of state violence received by the Soviet people and passed on to subsequent generations. One can live with this trauma, but for moral healing, it is necessary to tell the truth about state terror, to restore the names and fates of the repressed, to open their mass burial sites and erect monuments there, to name all the executioners. And to compel the state to strictly observe the fundamental rights and freedoms of its citizens.
In the early 1990s, local activists Ivan Chukhin and Yury Dmitriev succeeded in gaining access to study the archival-investigative case files of the repressed and the documents on executions during the Great Terror, held in the archives of the State Security Directorate of Karelia.
Based on their research, two Books of Remembrance, crucial for the new Russia, were published in Petrozavodsk in 1999:
• I. I. Chukhin [1]. “Karelia-37: The Ideology and Practice of Terror.” Petrozavodsk, 1999.
• Y. Dmitriev. “The Sandarmokh Execution Site.” Petrozavodsk, 1999.
Ivan Chukhin’s book, for the first time, named the numbers of those repressed in Karelia in 1937–38 by decision of extrajudicial bodies [2]: more than 12,000 people, of whom more than 10,500 were shot. For the first time in Russia, the local (regional) executioners were named: both the members of the extrajudicial bodies and the executors of their unjust sentences [3].
Dmitriev’s book published, for the first time, a complete list of the names of those executed at a specific NKVD special facility.
Yury Dmitriev on the Day of Remembrance in Sandarmokh, 2016.
Photo: Nadezhda Kiseleva (from currenttime.tv)
After the tragic death of Ivan Chukhin, Yury Dmitriev continued the work of restoring the names of all those repressed in Karelia. He compiled the data he obtained into an electronic spreadsheet. Thus, the “Yury Dmitriev List” came into being—a list of those repressed in Karelia in 1937–1938 in the format of a digital database.
The list is unique in its completeness—Dmitriev included the names of all residents of Karelia who fell victim to the Great Terror: those who were rehabilitated and those who were not; those repressed by decisions of both judicial and extrajudicial bodies of Karelia, as well as by extrajudicial bodies of neighboring regions—the special troikas of the UNKVD of the Leningrad and Murmansk regions. The list contained data on more than 13,000 residents of Karelia.
The Yury Dmitriev List became an important tool for working with inquiries from relatives. With such a database, it is easy to search for information and verify various data—given the lack of information from state bodies.
In 2002, Yury Dmitriev, on the basis of the “List” and other data collected with Chukhin, published the Book of Remembrance “Memorial Lists of Karelia, 1937–1938” [4]. It included biographical entries for more than 13,000 repressed citizens. In 2004, Yury Dmitriev transferred the “List” to the Scientific-Information and Educational Center “Memorial” in Moscow. All data from this list were entered into the general searchable database of the repressed of the International Memorial.
Yury Dmitriev constantly updated, edited, and improved his database and was preparing it for separate publication on the internet. This publication would have given all interested researchers the opportunity to independently work on the history of the Great Terror in Karelia, to analyze the social groups subjected to repression, and to study the course of the mass operations conducted by the Chekists against the civilian population.
The arrest of Yury Dmitriev in December 2016 on absurd charges prevented him from completing his plan.
What “picture” of the 1937–38 repressions in Karelia can be obtained from a quick analysis of the “Yury Dmitriev List”?
The “Yury Dmitriev List” includes the following data: full name; year and place of birth; sex; nationality; party affiliation; district of residence before arrest (as well as village council and village); position held before arrest; date of arrest, charges brought; date of conviction; convicting body; sentence; date and place of execution; subsequent fate of those sent to the GULAG camps, date and body of rehabilitation. It contains 13,046 entries. The “List” names 13,023 repressed individuals by surname. The surnames of 23 people who refused to identify themselves during the “expedited and simplified” investigation are unknown:
• 15 labor-settler nuns, executed by decision of the NKVD Troika of the Karelian ASSR in September 1937 at the Nizhne-Vygsky camp point;
• 8 believing prisoners of the BelBaltLag, executed by decision of the NKVD Troika of the Karelian ASSR in Sandarmokh.
Among the repressed are 12,492 men and 554 women. They are distributed by age as follows: over 70 years old – 31 people; from 60 to 70 – 339 people; from 50 to 60 – 1,748; from 40 to 50 – 3,237; from 30 to 40 – 4,190; from 20 to 30 – 3,069; under 20 – 366; no data for 66.
By nationality [5]: Russians – 4,658; Karelians – 3,136; Finns – 3,011; Ukrainians – 727; Poles – 335; Germans – 264; Belarusians – 160; Jews – 117; Latvians – 72; Estonians – 50, Tatars – 48; Georgians – 32; Chechens – 31; Roma – 28; Veps – 27; Azerbaijanis – 23; Armenians – 22; Ingush – 18; Turks – 17; Chinese – 16; Chuvash – 12; Lithuanians – 11; Moldovans – 11; Mordvins – 11; Swedes – 9; Koreans – 8; Bashkirs – 5; Udmurts – 5; Czechs – 5; Bulgarians – 4; Greeks – 4; Mari – 4; Hungarians – 3; Lezghins – 3; Norwegians – 3; Persians – 3; Turkmens – 3; Abkhazians – 2; Iranians – 2; Adjarian – 1; Assyrian – 1; Votyak – 1; Izhorian – 1; Italian – 1; Kabardian – 1; Kazakh – 1; Kalmyk – 1; Karachay – 1; Komi – 1; Kumyk – 1; Kurd – 1; Magyar – 1; Mongol – 1; Romanian – 1; Slovene – 1; Tajik – 1; Turk – 1; Uzbek – 1; Circassian – 1. No information on 126 others).
Non-party members – 11,651; members of the VKP(b) [6] – 971; members of the Komsomol (VLKSM) – 108. For 316 – no information.
All these people were convicted by: extrajudicial bodies [7] – 12,836 people; judicial bodies [8] – 204 people. For 6 citizens – no information about the convicting body.
Sentences: To be shot – 11,276 people. To various terms in the GULAG camps (ITL) – 1,727 people (the names of others sent to the camps have not yet been established). Died before sentencing – 19 people, released after investigation – 2 people. One person sentenced to expulsion from the USSR [9]. For 21 people – no information about conviction [10].
Of the 13,046 repressed – 10,119 people were rehabilitated as of 2004. For the rest, no information could be found: whether they were rehabilitated, partially rehabilitated, not rehabilitated, or denied rehabilitation.
Let’s pause on this fact: 10,119 people out of 13,046 repressed have been rehabilitated. The prosecutor’s office and the courts have studied their archival-investigative case files and found no guilt, no facts or evidence of the crimes of which they were accused.
Of the 12,836 citizens repressed by extrajudicial bodies, 11,241 were shot. Of the 11,241 shot, 8,867 had been rehabilitated by the early 2000s. That is 78.9%. And in all likelihood, the figure is higher, since the remainder are not those who were denied rehabilitation, but those for whom we have no data on rehabilitation. The “guilt” attributed to the non-rehabilitated is, as a rule, found only in their earlier sentences. During the Great Terror, they were arrested again and shot or sent to the camps simply to make up the numbers, according to the plan.
Here are the questions that arise from a preliminary analysis of the “Yury Dmitriev List”:
1) What were these “mass operations” that the authorities carried out against the people? Almost 80% rehabilitated is not “when you chop wood, chips fly” or “local excesses.” What we have here is the mass and premeditated murder of innocent citizens.
2) Who was held accountable for this? The organizer of the crime was Stalin. Has he been named a criminal? The perpetrators of the crime were the NKVD bodies. Have they been named a criminal organization?
Eighty years have passed. Everyone—executioners, repressed, and witnesses—has already passed away. But the memory of it remains. And it is no longer the departed victims, but the memory of the living that demands justice. The names of all who flouted the law, who participated in the crimes, must be named. And mass repressions not for specific acts, the mass murder of innocents, must be recognized as a crime.
The mass burial sites of those shot during the Great Terror [11] have, over the past thirty years, become not only memorial cemeteries (places of remembrance for specific repressed individuals) but also places of memory of state terror.
In Karelia, thanks to Ivan Chukhin and Yury Dmitriev, not only are all the places where executions were carried out in 1937–38 known, but practically all the people who lie in these Mass Graves of the Great Terror have been identified by name.
Of the 11,276 executed who are listed in the “Dmitriev List,” 508 were executed not in Karelia—in Leningrad, Moscow, or other places, or their places of execution are unknown. The rest were executed in Karelia in the following places:
|
Execution sites in Karelia during the Great Terror [12] |
Number of executed residents of Karelia, special settlers, and BelBaltLag prisoners from the “YD List” |
|
Near Medvezhya Gora station (now the “Sandarmokh” memorial) |
5130 |
|
near Petrozavodsk (burials of the executed discovered in a quarry on the territory of the village of Besovets and not far from the bypass road in the Sulazhgora microdistrict; the discovered remains were reburied at the Zaretskoye cemetery in Petrozavodsk; “Krasny Bor” memorial) |
3778 |
|
near the village of Pudozh (“Chornaya Rechka” memorial) |
377 |
|
in the vicinity of Kem (a mass burial site was discovered in the outskirts of the city of Kem on the 8th kilometer of the Kem-Kalevala highway; the found remains were reburied at the entrance to the Old City Cemetery) |
347 |
|
at Vodorazdel (VII-VIII lock of the BBK) (not found) |
245 |
|
near Segezha station (not found) |
211 |
|
near the village of Rugozero (not found) |
182 |
|
near the village of Olonets (the execution site in Olonets was the Cathedral of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God on Mariam Island; the executed were buried there; some of the remains were reburied in 1995 at the city’s Kunelitskoye cemetery, 2 km from the city of Olonets) |
158 |
|
near Kandalaksha [13] (not found) |
141 |
|
on the territory of the Belomorsky district (not found) |
62 |
|
near Sosnovets station (not found) |
54 |
|
near the village of Reboly (not found) |
41 |
|
at the Nizhne-Vygsky camp point (not found) |
26 |
|
near Urosozero station (not found) |
16 |
In addition to the victims of the “mass operations,” 1,111 prisoners from the Solovki prison were also executed in Sandarmokh from October 27 to November 4, 1937. These names are not in the “Dmitriev List” or the book “Memorial Lists of Karelia” [14]. Yury Dmitriev constantly worked to clarify the data on the repressed of Karelia, re-checking and adding information. Shortly before his arrest, he handed over the latest version of the “List” with updated data to the Iofe Foundation (St. Petersburg).
In 2016, the Iofe Foundation, using materials from the “Solovki Archive” of the Scientific-Information Center “Memorial” (St. Petersburg) and based on the “Yury Dmitriev List,” created the website “Sandormokh Memorial Cemetery,” which lists the names and brief information about all the people executed in Sandarmokh.
As of now (summer 2019), this site contains information on 5,130 residents of Karelia, special settlers, and BelBaltLag prisoners, as well as 1,111 prisoners of the Solovki prison, all executed in Sandarmokh. Thus, we currently attribute 6,241 names of the executed to Sandarmokh.
Anatoly Razumov, head of the “Returned Names” center at the National Library of Russia (St. Petersburg), a friend and colleague of Yury Dmitriev, is currently preparing, together with him, a new book, “Sandarmokh, a Place of Memory.” More than half of the biographical entries on the executed have been clarified or supplemented for this book [15]. A book by the head of the “Memorial” Research and Information Center (St. Petersburg), Irina Flige, “Sandormokh: A Dramaturgy of Meanings” (St. Petersburg, 2019), has just been published (at the end of July 2019), which tells the story of the discovery of Sandarmokh, as well as the more than twenty-year history of the memorial cemetery itself, which has become a place of overt and covert clashes of different concepts for understanding the Soviet past.
Such attention to Sandarmokh is justified. The memorial at “Sandarmokh” has not only become a place of memory of state terror for all of Karelia but has also acquired an international character. Sandarmokh is the largest burial site in Karelia of victims of the Great Terror of 1937–1938 who were executed. Only those executed by decision of extrajudicial bodies are buried in Sandarmokh.
Analyzing [16] the “Dmitriev List” by place of birth, we see that among the executed residents of Karelia, special settlers, and BelBaltLag prisoners, there are natives of 65 other regions of Russia [17], as well as 31 other countries of the world [18].
The names of the executioners must be named, and their crimes must be officially condemned.
July 2019
The author thanks Anatoly Razumov, head of the “Returned Names” center at the National Library of Russia (St. Petersburg), for his valuable comments.
[1] Ivan Chukhin, in the 1990s, was chairman of the Karelian “Memorial” Society and a deputy of the State Duma of the 1st convocation; he tragically died in 1997. The book was published after I. Chukhin’s death by his friends and colleagues.
[2] By decision of the Troika and special troika of the NKVD of the Karelian ASSR, the so-called “dvoika”—the Commission of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor’s Office, the Border Troika of the NKVD of the Karelian ASSR.
[3] The composition of the NKVD troika of the Karelian ASSR – Appendix 9 (pp. 146–147), the composition of the Special Troika of the NKVD of the Karelian ASSR – Appendix 10 (p. 148), executors of sentences – Appendices 15–17 (pp. 153–159) of the said edition.
[4] “Memorial Lists of Karelia. 1937–1938.” Comp. by Chukhin I. I., Dmitriev Y. A. – Petrozavodsk, 2002.
[5] Nationality is indicated without regard to gender; nationality is taken from the arrestee’s questionnaire from the archival-investigative case file.
[6] In the count, former members of the VKP(b) (at the time of arrest) are counted as members of the VKP(b).
[7] Extrajudicial bodies: Troika and special troika of the NKVD of the Karelian ASSR, Commission of the NKVD and the USSR Prosecutor’s Office; Border Troika of the NKVD of the Karelian ASSR; OSO of the NKVD of the USSR; Troika and special troika of the UNKVD for the Leningrad region; Troika and special troika of the UNKVD for the Murmansk region.
[8] Judicial bodies: Supreme Court of the USSR; Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR; Visiting Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR; Supreme Court of the RSFSR; Supreme Court of the Karelian ASSR; Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Karelian ASSR; Leningrad Regional Court; Murmansk Regional Court; People’s Court of Petrozavodsk; Linear Court of the Murmansk Railway; Linear Court of the Kirov Railway, as well as the Military Tribunals of the Leningrad Military District, the Northern Fleet, and various units and formations.
[9] Fischer, Rudolf Adolfovich, born in 1884 in Smolensk, German, no information on party affiliation, worked as an accountant in Kandalaksha, arrested on 07/29/1937, sentenced to expulsion from the USSR by decision of the OSO of the NKVD of the USSR, rehabilitated in 1989.
[10] But there is information about their arrest.
[11] Many of which remain unknown to this day.
[12] Information on the specific burial sites of the executed is taken from the Necropolis of Terror website.
[13] Until the summer of 1938, the Kandalaksha district was part of Karelia.
[14] See Yury Dmitriev’s book “The Sandarmokh Execution Site,” as well as the “Leningrad Martyrology,” volumes 2, 3, 4, 6, 8.
[15] Yury Dmitriev is working on the book while in the SIZO (pre-trial detention center) in Petrozavodsk and participating in the so-called “second trial.” The new edition will also include an essay on the Solovki transports, the investigation “To Rewrite Sandarmokh,” memoirs, and essays about the executed.
[16] Excluding the data of the 1,111 prisoners of the Solovki prison.
[17] Complete list: Altai Krai; Amur Oblast; Arkhangelsk Oblast; Astrakhan Oblast; Bashkortostan; Belgorod Oblast; Bryansk Oblast; Vladimir Oblast; Volgograd Oblast; Vologda Oblast; Voronezh Oblast; Dagestan; Zabaykalsky Krai; Ivanovo Oblast; Ingushetia; Irkutsk Oblast; Kabardino-Balkaria; Kaluga Oblast; Karachay-Cherkessia; Karelia; Kirov Oblast; Komi; Kostroma Oblast; Krasnodar Krai; Krasnoyarsk Krai; Kursk Oblast; Leningrad Oblast; Lipetsk Oblast; Mari-El; Mordovia; Moscow; Moscow Oblast; Murmansk Oblast; Nizhny Novgorod Oblast; Novgorod Oblast; Novosibirsk Oblast; Omsk Oblast; Orenburg Oblast; Oryol Oblast; Penza Oblast; Perm Krai; Primorsky Krai; Pskov Oblast; Rostov Oblast; Ryazan Oblast; Samara Oblast; Saint Petersburg; Saratov Oblast; Sverdlovsk Oblast; North Ossetia; Smolensk Oblast; Stavropol Krai; Tambov Oblast; Tatarstan; Tver Oblast; Tomsk Oblast; Tula Oblast; Tyumen Oblast; Udmurtia; Ulyanovsk Oblast; Khabarovsk Krai; Chelyabinsk Oblast; Chechnya; Chuvashia; Yaroslavl Oblast.
[18] Complete list: Austria; Azerbaijan; Armenia; Belarus; Belgium; Hungary; Germany; Georgia; Iran; Italy; Kazakhstan; Canada; Kyrgyzstan; China, Korea; Latvia; Lithuania; Moldova; Poland; Romania; Slovakia; USA; Turkmenistan; Turkey; Uzbekistan; Ukraine; Finland; France; Czechia, Sweden; Estonia.