Great Terror returns to haunt Russia as 34 skeletons discovered in cellar
Pastor Dale Morgan
Great Terror returns to haunt Russia as 34 skeletons discovered in cellar*
· Remains may be victims of Stalin's purges, say police
· Rusty pistol also unearthed in aristocratic mansion
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Friday October 5, 2007
The Guardian
The skeletons of 34 people have been found along with a rusty pistol in
a Moscow basement, which appears to be the site of a massacre carried
out during the Great Terror, the political purge orchestrated by Stalin
in the 1930s.
The remains were found by builders on Wednesday as they worked on a
renovation at 8/1 Nikolskaya Street, a 19th-century mansion halfway
between Red Square and the Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the
dreaded KGB.
The building, which is being converted into an entertainment complex and
cinema, was immediately sealed off and prosecutors opened an investigation.
Moscow police said yesterday that skull fragments found at the scene had
bullet marks that showed the people had been shot in the head at close
range.
"Forensic examinations will be needed but according to the specialists'
initial conclusions these people were killed in the 1930s," a spokesman
told news agencies. "Most likely they were victims of political
repression who were executed on the same spot where the remains were found."
The site of the discovery has an illustrious past as the home of several
aristocratic families. In the 19th century it belonged to a merchant
called Chizhyov whose friend, the writer Nikolai Gogol, visited him there.
Moscow's cultural heritage commission suggested the remains could be
part of a 17th-century cathedral graveyard that was once located on the
site.
But Sergei Boluchevsky, head of the investigative department of
Tverskaya district prosecutor's office, told the Guardian it was
certainly not a cemetery.
"There were no clothes or shoes on the people and no traces of coffins,"
he said.
A 1903 Browning pistol was discovered next to the bodies, which workers
found as they enlarged a basement. Tests could take up to a month to
establish when the victims died, Mr Boluchevsky added.
Up to 1 million opponents of Soviet power were executed during the Great
Terror. The killing reaching its zenith in 1937 when the NKVD secret
police sent an average of 1,000 people a day to their deaths. Victims
were from all levels of society including leading Bolsheviks, party
officials, army officers, "dangerous ethnic elements" and wealthy peasants.
In Moscow there are several well-known burial sites of purge victims,
including the Butovo shooting range where an estimated 20,000 people
were killed.
Bodies are occasionally found outside these zones and architectural
historian Aleksei Klimenko said the location of the new discovery
indicated they were victims of state terror.
"After the revolution it became a Red Army dormitory and then it was
owned by the Lubyanka," he said. "The NKVD preferred not to carry out
sentences on its own premises but this was conveniently close." The
remains of victims had previously been found nearby, at 21 Nikolskaya
Street, he added.
Nikolai Petrov, a researcher with Memorial, the organisation dedicated
to exposing Soviet political repression, said the military board of the
supreme court - which condemned people to death - had also been located
nearby.
Russia has struggled to come to terms with the legacy of the Great
Terror, a problem worsened by the fact that, for many Russians, Stalin
remains a patriotic and heroic figure who was either unaware of the
killing around him or supported it for the greater good.
President Vladimir Putin said in June that Russians should not have a
cult of guilt about the Stalin era because "in other countries even
worse things happened". Other politicians have joined him in lauding the
Soviet leader.
Mr Petrov said the discovery of the bodies was a "pointed hello from the
past". "At a time when Stalin is being rehabilitated and held up as a
hero, this reminds us of the true horror of those days," he said.