In the Commune near Moscow there was a summer residence of Heinrich Yagoda, who for a long time served as chairman of the OGPU and the people's commissar of the NKVD. After that, this place became a special facility where people who were subjected to repression were shot and buried. Kommunarka - a firing range that was not previously available, but is now open to visitors. Now there is a cemetery with a small memorial complex and a man’s monastery with vigilant prayers for the souls of all those who died in the dungeons. Finding the exact place where the Kommunarka (firing range) is located to bow to the ashes of the victims is easy. This is the fourth kilometer of the Kaluga highway. Lists of facility workers are declassified gradually, and lists of victims have already been published. And not all were rehabilitated after the death of Stalin.
Who is there?
The tortured remains of members of the Politburo and candidate members fell into the ground under Kommunarka, the seven Union republics lost their first secretaries of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the members of the Central Executive Committee, Council of People's Commissars, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, many secretaries of regional committees, the Comintern ... Surnames are all bright and loud: Bubnov, Bukharin, Rykov, Rudzutak, Krestinsky, Pyatnitsky, Berzin, Kun. These are far from all the sonorous surnames that Kommunarka made to forget. The firing range, the photo of which is presented in the article, buried many, many.
Here is the main general cemetery (Dybenko, Kuybyshev, Kireev) and the writer's (Pilnyak, Artyom Vesely, Gastev, Shakhovskaya), here are the chief editors of Ogonyok, Krasnaya Zvezda, Literaturnaya Gazeta, and Truda. As well as brilliant scientists, prominent figures of art and culture. More than a thousand clergy and Orthodox believers buried Kommunarka. The firing range and cottage of the former Commissar are now given to St. Catherine’s Monastery.
State secret
All the shooting places and burial places of political prisoners were strictly guarded, and only the state security itself knew about them. Even not all employees of such facilities were aware of what they were guarding, only the curators of firing special facilities knew something, but their duties were limited to ensuring the safety of territories and preventing strangers from entering the facility. Here, from time to time, they brought in land to pour it into the settled pits - that’s all the information that there was a firing range. “Kommunarka” to this day has not revealed all its secrets.
Disclosure of secrets
Now the secret cover is gradually removed, archives are opened, the testimonies of local residents are recorded (although what can they know?). Historians study the hit lists that the FSB declassifies. The burial sites themselves are also examined: pits were counted, measured, traces of bullets in the trees were found. Traces of barbed wire made it possible to determine the size of the firing zone.
All this work began only in the nineties of the last century. The Moscow government has subsidized memorial projects at Kommunarka and at the Butovo training ground. However, the projects were not implemented, since the whole territory since 1999 has been under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Documents
Only some burial places of repressed citizens have been documented: Yauza hospital (center of Moscow), Vagankovskoye cemetery, Donskoy crematorium. Regarding the special facilities “Kommunarka firing range” and “Butovo firing range”, there is only false evidence of eyewitnesses, and testimony was given by the commandant of the AHU NKVD Sadovsky in 1937.
Partial excavations in Butovo confirm the decision to consider these places burials after executions. For a long time, even the locals did not suspect that next to them was the Kommunarka firing range. The USSR lived a measured, full of accomplishments life.
Elite town
The firing range "Kommunarka" and the same in Butovo had different owners and therefore were significantly different from each other. The latter was controlled by the metropolitan administration of the NKVD, and Kommunarka - state security, the central office. That is, in Butovo they shot down spies, saboteurs and terrorists from the bottom, and in Kommunarka - the top of the conspiracies.
They all lived in the Kremlin. The deputy chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A. Rykov, who signed the order on the Solovetsky camp, whose special purpose everyone knows today. People's Commissar of Education A. Bubnov, who also distinguished himself: on his orders, brothers and sisters — repressed children — were separated and sent to different orphanages. Y. Rudzutak and I. Unshlikht, in a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, advocated the creation of northern camps and detailed their arrangement. Everything worked out for them. And then they themselves were sheltered by the Kommunarka firing range (Moscow region).
For the execution in “Butovo” there was enough “troika” and even “deuce” of the NKVD or the police, and the “Kommunarka” contained convicts by the Supreme Court of the USSR, its military collegium, and this is the highest body of justice in the country. The lists of people who died here, for the most part, have notes made by the hand of Stalin himself. The Kommunarka firing range in new Moscow is a landmark, difficult place, where the air itself stores the suffering of the slain, and the earth is deeply nourished by their blood.
Relatives
Stalin's death lists contain 44.5 thousand names, of which 38 thousand were shot. A total of 383 lists were preserved relative to the period from February 1937 to October 1938, where in addition to the Stalinist one there are signatures of Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Yezhov and Kosior.
Most of the people on the lists were not subjected to trial or investigation before being shot. These are the NKVD employees and relatives of these employees. For example, Yagoda pulled along fifteen people who were close and not very related to him: this was his wife (and Sverdlov’s relative) I. Averbakh, his two sisters, and so on. Of course, among the executed there could not be completely random and innocent people.
Country house
The one-story wooden house of the People's Commissar Berries was built in 1928. The left half consisted of six or seven bright and spacious rooms, while the right half contained utility rooms and service rooms. The hosts did not come here to relax in a hammock or in beds. This cottage was primarily a residence for meetings and secret work, and in the second - for the celebration of all kinds of anniversaries and solemn dates.
Almost all those who remained forever in the land of Kommunarka first visited this cottage as welcome guests. It is not in vain said that the revolution devours all its children. When the guests arrived, the service staff was kept in the back room under the castle. The cooks and other staff of the cottage owners brought with them until they opened the Kommunarka firing range. The date of occurrence is considered from the time of the first mass execution - September 2, 1937. And previously, Berry himself was arrested - in March.
Addresses and appearances
There are many burials in our country, and the Kommunarka special facility is very different from them. Here lies the elite - the government of the USSR and the republics, members of the Central Committee of the party, people's commissars and ministers with their deputies, there are ministers of even foreign states, many directors of commanders, trusts, factories and factories, a lot of military men - legendary, about whom songs are composed, and films filmed: divisional commanders, admirals, military specialists. People were privileged, influential, and revered by the people.
The addresses of the victims speak for themselves. Many residents of the Kremlin have rested here - Bukharin, Krestinsky, Rudzutak and other favorites of the people. DPR - Government House, renamed by comedians in the house of pre-trial detention - on the street Serafimovich. The most famous house of Yuri Trifonov with a light hand was on the embankment, where there were only 507 apartments, and 787 of its residents were arrested, of which 338 were shot and 164 in Kommunarka. There was also a guarded house on Granovsky, some beautiful houses on Gorky and expensive hotels, where dignitaries lived on a permanent basis.
Scouts or spies?
If a person kills other people, someday other people will kill him. It always happens. Here, in Kommunarka, lie diplomats, embassy advisers, and military attaches. Here, all ten departments of the intelligence department left their leaders. And counterintelligence here, and intelligence agents, renamed spies. As Marina Tsvetaeva wrote about her husband S. Efron in a letter to Beria, this is a person who is extremely responsible, sacrificial and pure, and she has never met a better person in her life.
Is this a former White Guard with absolute rejection of Soviet power, who suddenly entered the secret service in the NKVD? But what about the EMRO, its chairman Kutepov, who was abducted by Efron? Which of them is more pure and sacrificial? And there was abducted General Miller, killed Reiss ... When it became crowded in Paris (police wanted), in 1937 Efron returned to the Soviet Union, where in 1939 he was suspected of working for foreign intelligence and arrested, but shot in "Kommunarke" only in 1941. So long have been looking for evidence. Although they could immediately. After all, everyone now says that they just shot.
Gift to the KGB
About the KGB - especially. Many data say that it was the “Iron Felix” comrade-in-arms who were targeted at the Kommunarka firing range. The address of the cottage of the already repressed Berry was attached - a note by Yezhov, who consulted with Stalin. It was at first. The first three burials, executed on September 2, 20 and October 8, are purely KGB. Then they stopped sorting.
Only 254 security officers fell into this land: the People's Commissar of Mordovia, the entire leadership of Dalstroy, the head of the Solovki prison, the head of the NKVD of Ukraine and many, many others. Two Dzerzhinsky’s deputies, even his closest friend and comrade-in-arms J. Peters, as well as the initiator of the Red Terror M. Latsis, all of them were shot in Kommunarka and dumped into the pits that they dug for others.