The Levashovo memorial cemetery “Levashovskaya wasteland” is one of the largest fraternal cemeteries in St. Petersburg, the former NKVD special firing range. On its territory more than 40 thousand victims of repression of 1937-1953 are buried. What is this complex? Where is Levashovskaya wasteland located? What is her story? Who has found eternal peace here? How to get to Levashovskaya wasteland? It is about this cemetery that the article will be discussed.
Description of the memorial cemetery
The Levashovskaya wasteland is the secret object of the NKVD, where every piece of land is a grave moat in which victims of repression are secretly and barbarously buried.
The exact number of people buried is still unknown. At that time, lists of the buried were not kept, since the place of burial for the authorities did not matter.
At the entrance to the Levashovskaya wasteland a monument "Moloch totalitarianism." But here every tree is a living monument. The forest is very young, grew after the war. And after the object was declassified, relatives began to come to this mournful place. Nameplates with surnames and names began to be attached to the trees, thus living monuments and memorials began to appear.
The earth has been sagging for a long time due to the very large number of human bodies that it has received.
The number of victims of Stalinist terror
According to some official figures, in Leningrad over the period from 1937 to 1938, more than 40 thousand people were executed on political charges. In 1937 alone, about 19 thousand people were shot, in 1938 - 21 thousand innocent victims. For the burial of bodies, the NKVD received a site with an area of 11.5 hectares at Pargolovskaya cottage, the site was endowed with the status of a secret facility. Grave ditches cover an area of 6.5 hectares of this terrible land. Among those buried on this earth were residents of the Leningrad Region and Pskov.
According to official figures, out of 61 thousand repressed during the years of Stalinist terror, about 8 thousand are Pskovites. All the convicts were taken to Leningrad, where the sentence was carried out. Tens of thousands of unknown burials are located in Levashovo.
For about 15 years, the Pskov society Memorial has been organizing trips of relatives of victims of repression to the Levashovskaya wasteland.
In Russia, there are about 590 cemeteries where victims of repression are buried. Dozens of memorial necropolises arose at the site of the mass graves of the executed.
The history of the Levashovskaya wasteland
Once upon a time there was the estate of Count Levashov. The building of his former ancestral palace was preserved in the Aspen Grove area, is an architectural structure of the late XVIII century, erected in the style of Russian classicism.
In 1938, a territory of 11.5 hectares transferred to the NKVD department, on which the secret burial of executed prisoners began.
The cemetery remained a secret object of the KGB until 1989. A forest grew on the site of the wasteland; from time to time, the guards who subsided from the grave were covered with imported sand.
Secret Execution Orders
1937 is the year of terrible mass repressions in the USSR. It was an election year under the new constitution, propaganda of the triumph of freedom in the Soviet state was underway.
This is the period of the five-year period of the victory of socialism and the final elimination of the "remnants of capitalism." It was on this year, July 2, that the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks decided to conduct special operations to repress anti-Soviet elements, kulaks, and criminals. On August 5 of the same year, the same kind of order of the head of the NKVD N. Yezhov entered into force.
According to the last order, for 4 months it was planned to convict and sentence to death 76 thousand people, 193 thousand people were supposed to go to the camps.
In the Leningrad region, it was planned to sentence 4 thousand people to execution; 10 thousand people were supposed to go to camps.
How sentences were pronounced
The sentences were also called “trials of sentences”, since such a commission included three officials: the head of the NKVD, the prosecutor of the region, and the second secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU (b). They were submitted in absentia, without the presence of the accused, without participating in a meeting of the defense commission and the prosecution. And not subject to appeal.
Soon “two” sentences appeared, they were used in cases of national minorities. The commission on them consisted of the People's Commissar of the NKVD N. Yezhov and the country's prosecutor Vyshinsky A. Ya. They made decisions in "landscape order", sentences were passed for everyone who was on the list, at the end of which they put only two signatures.
The NKVD order was put into effect regarding the repression of wives and children of traitors to the motherland.
The composition of the Leningrad region included Murmansk, Novgorod, Pskov, part of Volgograd. It was on their territory that the operations of the Leningrad NKVD were unfolding.
In 1938, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Adopted a new resolution on anti-Soviet elements and an additional plan for the number of people subject to repression. In the Leningrad Region, another 3 thousand people were to be sentenced to death, another thousand people were sentenced to imprisonment in the camps. Moreover, the increase in the quota for executions took place regularly.
Local counter plans and local initiatives have begun. By the summer of 1938, as a result of the implementation of decisions 37-38, about 818 thousand people were convicted in the Soviet Union, the plan was exceeded by 365,000 people (almost 6 times!). For example, in the Leningrad Region alone, 40 thousand people were executed under political articles.
Place of execution
The Yezhovsky order ordered the execution sentence to be carried out while keeping the place and time of execution secret.
The main place of execution in the Leningrad region was the department of the Leningrad prison on Nizhny Novgorod street, house 39. People from all over the region were brought here. The sentences were executed by the NKVD commandant’s staff. People were shot daily.
The progress and results of the “operation” were reported every five days. These reports included only statistics on those executed and exiled to the camps; nothing was reported about the burial sites.
How to bury and where
The bodies were taken out at night in covered cars and dumped in huge pits in Levashovo. But this was not the only place of mass burial. Secretly buried at the Rzhev landfill, in Toksovo, Berngardovka.
However, burials on the territory of the Levashovo wasteland were the most massive. The secret of this tragic place has not yet been disclosed - of course, there is no official list of those buried.
All burials were carried out in a barbaric way: the bodies of the dead were dumped into huge pits from cars. Everything happened at night. So the cemetery under the cover of darkness took dozens, if not hundreds of bodies daily.
Currently, the boundaries of grave moats are not marked. Tracks rutted by deadly cars are no longer visible.
Late 80s
In 1989, the Politburo of TsKKPSS made a decision on the rehabilitation of victims of repression. In the same year, the KGB declassified the appointment of the Levashovskaya Heath cemetery and lists of those executed, but they did not provide information about the buried here, explaining that they did not have this kind of data.
In the summer of 1989, the Levashov graves were officially recognized as a memorial cemetery. The gates of the former secret facility were opened for everyone, and the relatives of the victims were able to visit this tragic and terrible place for the first time.
People's Museum of Political Repression
The People’s Museum is now located in the former guard building, the exposition of which presents letters, death certificates, execution protocols, cemetery schemes and many other documentary materials.
Relatives, as a rule, were not informed of the execution. In the death certificates it was written that the person died from an illness, the date of death was always indicated incorrectly. But in fact, the execution was carried out immediately after the sentencing. Families of the repressed people received 3-4 death certificates, which indicated different dates of death and causes.
The museum presents numerous official data declassified after 1989, for example, in one day in 1938, 1263 sentences were signed in the city of Leningrad, 27 people from this list went to camps for 10 years, the remaining 1236 were shot. And this is just one day of those terrible years of repression.
Memory
After the war, the territory of the wasteland was heavily overgrown with trees; after 1989, it was surveyed to establish the boundaries of burials. Paths were laid between the grave moats.
Relatives of the deceased began to hang signs and photographs on the trees. Commemorative signs and memorials were erected. A memorial stone was erected, at which funeral services began to be served, in 1993 a belfry was built in the Levashovo wasteland, and three years later, in 1996, a monument “Moloch totalitarianism” was erected.
Currently, there is a project to erect on the territory of the Levashovo wasteland a chapel-monument of All Saints who shone in the land of St. Petersburg.
But there was much debate on this issue. For example, the non-governmental organization Memorial opposed any construction on the territory of the cemetery, offering to erect a chapel outside it. Members of the society especially emphasized that this should be a chapel, and not for a long time an operating Orthodox church, arguing that people of various faiths and even unbelievers found eternal peace in the wasteland.
Nevertheless, on July 17, 2017, the laying of the first stone of the foundation of the future church in the Levashovskaya Heath took place and its consecration.
Groups of pilgrims come to the memorial cemetery more and more often, a memorial service for the dead is served here every week. The wasteland has become a real place of sorrow.
Commemorative crosses and stone, monuments and a church in the Levashovskaya wasteland are a tribute to all those innocently killed during the terrible and cruel terror.
Buried at the Levashovsky cemetery
There is no exact list of victims of repression buried in the cemetery, or it was destroyed. But the lists of the executed and the records of the executions were perfectly preserved, and since it was precisely at the Levashovsky cemetery that mass burials were carried out, it should be assumed that most of the bodies from the list of those executed were buried here.
According to the list of those sentenced to death, the youngest man was 18 years old, the oldest man was 85. The youngest woman was 18 years old, the oldest was 79.
Here lie the brightest minds, the glory and power of the people. Peasants, workers, military, scientists, engineers, students, teachers, clergy - they still remain nameless, and their rehabilitation was calm and very quiet.
List of executed
They were shot and, most likely, buried in the Levashovsky cemetery:
- clergy: Akulov I.A., Kandelyabrov V.V., Blagoveshchensky A.A., Cherepanov L., Pylaev V.A., Pavlinov V.A., Florensky P.A .;
- scientists: V. Beneshevich - historian, P. P. Bekhterey - inventor and engineer, M. P. Bronstein - physicist, B. P. P. Gerasimovich - director of the Pulkovo Observatory, S. A. Dubinsky - archaeologist and historian, Mikhelson N. G. - aircraft designer;
- poets, writers, writers and critics: Livshits B.K., Nevsky N.A., Oleinikov N.M., Stenich V.I., Kornilov B.P., Shchutsky Yu.K., Yurkin Yu. I;
- figures of the CPSU (b): Kuznetsov A.A., Lazutin P.G., Voznesensky P.S., Rodionov M.I.
In addition, the head of the SMERSH, the Minister of State Security of the USSR - V. Abakumov and the revolutionary M. M. Dobranitsky, are buried here.
It is here, in the Levashovo wasteland, in one grave that both the victims and their executioners met, who were executed by the following executioners.
Levashovskaya wasteland: how to get there
You can get to the memorial cemetery:
- by train from the Finland Station to the Levashovo station, from the station by bus number 84 or number 75 to the stop "City Highway";
- by bus number 75 from the metro station "Prospect of education";
- by car go to Vyborg highway, get off from it on Gorsk highway and go to the Levashovsky cemetery, there are signs and parking.
Instead of a conclusion
The Levashovskoye cemetery has truly become a popular place of sorrow and memory. Tree trunks are hung with portraits and plates with photographs of the executed. The forest turned into a living memorial, silently accepting the signs of memory. The story of the Levashovskaya wasteland is the story of the tragedy of those terrible years. Pogost is a spontaneous monument to the victims of terror, it is a huge fraternal burial.
Relatives coming here are talking, as if alive, with portraits of deceased relatives. Cry.
Levashovsky forest listens to this cry and, with the noise of its crowns, answers it instead of the dead.
This is how the tragic period of the country's history was reflected in this mournful place - the Levashovo wasteland.