"Kommunarka" is a firing range in Moscow

In the Moscow suburb of Kommunarka there was a summer residence of Henry Yagoda, who for a long time served as chairman of the OGPU and People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. After this place became a special facility, where people were shot and buried, subjected to repression. "Kommunarka" is a firing range that was not previously available, but is now open for visits. Now there is a cemetery with a small memorial complex and a monastery with unsleeping prayers for the souls of all those who perished in the dungeons. Find the exact place where the "Kommunarka" (the shooting range) is located, to worship the dust of the victims, can be easily. This is the fourth kilometer of the Kaluga highway. Lists of employees of the facility are declassified gradually, and lists of victims have already been published. And not all were rehabilitated after Stalin's death.

Who is there?

In the ground under the "Commune" lay the tortured remains of members of the Politburo and candidates for membership, the seven Union republics lost their first secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.), Here were members of the CEC, Sovnarkom, VTsIK, many secretaries of regional committees, the Comintern ... The names are all bright And loud: Bubnov, Bukharin, Rykov, Rudzutak, Krestinsky, Pyatnitsky, Berzin, Kun. This is not all the sonorous surnames that made Kommunarka forget. The shooting range, the photo of which is presented in the article, buried many and many.

Here, and the main general cemetery (Dybenko, Kuibyshev, Kireev) and the writer's (Pilnyak, Artem Vesyoliy, Gastev, Shakhovskoy), the main editors of Ogonyok, Krasnaya Zvezda, Literaturnaya gazeta, Truda are here. And also brilliant scientists, prominent figures of art and culture. More than a thousand priests and Orthodox believers buried the Kommunarka. The shooting range and the dacha of the former People's Commissar are now given to St. Catherine's Monastery.

State secrets

All the executions and burial places of political prisoners were strictly guarded, and only the state security itself knew about such. Even not all employees of such facilities were aware of what they are guarding, only curators of the firing special objects knew something, but their duties were limited to ensuring the safety of the territories and preventing outsiders from entering the facility. Here, from time to time, they brought in the land to pour into the pits that were settled, - that's all the information that there was a shooting range here. "Kommunarka" and to this day has not given away all its secrets.

Disclosure of secrets

Now the cover is gradually removed, the archives are opened, the testimonies of the local residents are recorded (although what can they know?). Historians are studying the execution lists, which are declassified by the FSB. The graves themselves are also inspected: pits are counted, measured, traces of bullets on trees are found. Traces of barbed wire made it possible to determine the size of the shooting zone.

All this work began only in the nineties of the last century. The Moscow government subsidized projects of memorials in the Kommunarka and Butovo landfill. However, the projects were not implemented, since the entire territory since 1999 is under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Documentation

Documented only are some burial sites for repressed citizens: the Yauz Hospital (the center of Moscow), the Vagankovo Cemetery, the Don Crematorium. Regarding the special facilities "The Kommunarka shooting range" and the Butovo shooting range, there are only unreliable eyewitness accounts, and witness statements were given by the commandant of the NKVD Sadovsky in 1937.

Partial excavations in Butovo confirm the decision to consider these places as burials after the shootings. For a long time, even the local residents did not suspect that near them there was a firing range of Kommunarka. The USSR lived a measured life full of accomplishments.

Elite place

The shooting range of Kommunarka and the same in Butovo had different hosts and therefore differed significantly from each other. The latter was controlled by the NKVD metropolitan department, and Kommunarka by the state security, the central apparatus. That is, in "Butovo" they shot spies, saboteurs and terrorists from the bottoms, and in "Kommunarka" - the top of the conspiracies.

All of them lived in the Kremlin. Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars A. Rykov, who signed the order on the Solovki camp, whose special purpose everyone knows today. People's Commissar of Education A. Bubnov, also distinguished himself: he ordered to separate the brothers and sisters - the children of the repressed - and send them to different orphanages. J. Rudzutak and I. Unshlikht in the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee advocated the creation of northern camps and detailed their arrangement. All at them it has turned out. And then they themselves sheltered the firing range of "Kommunarka" (Moscow region).

For the shootings in Butovo, there were enough "troika" and even "deuces" of the NKVD or the police, and in "Kommunarka" they contained convicted by the Supreme Court of the USSR, its military collegium, and this is the highest judicial body in the country. Lists of people who died here, for the most part, have notes made by the hand of Stalin himself. The shooting range of Kommunarka in the new Moscow is a landmark place, heavy, where the air itself keeps the sufferings of the murdered, and the earth is deeply nourished with their blood.

Relatives

Stalin's executions lists contain 44.5 thousand names, of which 38 thousand were shot. A total of 383 lists were preserved with respect to the period from February 1937 to October 1938, in addition to Stalin's, there are signatures of Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, Yezhov and Kosior.

Most of the people listed on the lists were not subjected to execution or trial before the execution. These are NKVD officers and relatives of these employees. For example, Yagoda pulled fifteen people with him, who were close and not very related: his wife (and Sverdlov's relative) I. Averbakh, his two sisters, and so on. Of course, among those shot, there could not have been absolutely random and innocent people.

Country house

One-storey wooden house of People's Commissar Yagoda built in 1928. The left half consisted of six or seven bright and spacious rooms, and in the right there were utility rooms and rooms for servants. Do not rest in a hammock or in the beds came the hosts here. This dacha was primarily a residence for meetings and secret work, and the second - for the celebration of various jubilees and solemn dates.

Almost all those who remained forever in the land of Kommunarka first visited this dacha as their welcome guests. It is not vainly said that the revolution devours all its children. When visitors came, the servant was kept in the back room under lock and key. Cooks and other personnel owners of the dacha brought with them until they opened the Kommunarka shooting range. The date of origin is considered from the time of the first mass execution - September 2, 1937. And in advance, Yagoda himself was arrested - in March.

Addresses and appearances

There are a lot of burials in our country, and the special facility Kommunarka is very different from them. Here lies the elite - the government of the USSR and the republics, the members of the Central Committee of the party, the people's commissars and ministers with their deputies, there are ministers of even foreign countries, many directors of the heads, trusts, factories and factories, a lot of military men - the legendary ones about which the songs are composed and films Removed: the commanders, admirals, military experts. People were privileged, influential and revered by the people.

The addresses of the victims speak for themselves. A lot of people here settled down in the Kremlin - Bukharin, Krestinsky, Rudzutak and other favorites of the people. DOPR - Government House, renamed by people's humorists in the house of pre-trial detention - along Serafimovich Street. The most famous from the light hand of Yuri Trifonov is a house on the embankment, where there were only 507 apartments, and arrested 787 of its residents, 338 of them 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 does. Here, in the Kommunarka, lie diplomats, embassy advisors, and military attachés. Here, all ten divisions of the intelligence department left their leaders. Both counterintelligence agents here, and scouts, renamed spies. As Marina Tsvetayeva wrote in her letter to Beria about her husband S. Efron , this is a person in the highest measure responsible, sacrificial and pure, and she did not meet the best person in her life.

This is a former White Guard with an absolute rejection of Soviet power, suddenly entered the secret service in the NKVD? And what about the ROVS, its chairman Kutepov, who was abducted by Efron? Which of them is more pure and sacrificial? And there was the kidnapped General Miller, the murdered Reiss ... When in Paris it became tight (search for the police), in 1937 Efron returned to the Soviet Union, where in 1939 he was suspected of working for foreign intelligence and arrested, but shot in "Communards" only in 1941. So long sought the evidence. Although they could have done it right away. After all, everyone says now that they shot just like that.

Gift to security officers

About Chekists - especially. Many data say that it was the comrades of the "iron Felix" who targeted the shooting range of the Kommunarka. The address of the dacha of the already repressed Yagoda was attached-a note by Yezhov, who had conferred with Stalin. At first, it was so. The first three burials, executed on September 2, 20, and October 8, are purely Chekist. Then they stopped sorting.

A total of 254 Chekists fell into this land: the People's Commissar of Mordovia, the entire leadership of Dalstroi, the head of the prison in Solovki, the chief of the NKVD of Ukraine and many, many others. Two of Dzerzhinsky's deputies, even his closest friend and associate Y. Peters, as well as the pioneer of the "Red Terror" M. Latsis - all of them were shot in the Kommunarka and dropped into those pits dug for others.