A burial of those shot by the NKVD, presumably in 1937-1938, was discovered in January 1989 on the southern outskirts of Gorno-Altaisk next to the former lacemaking factory.
Old inhabitants of the district testified that it was here that prisoners were shot at night during the Great Terror. The exact number of victims has not been established: some sources say 54, others say 57, and their names are unknown. The city authorities provided a site within the city limits, on the bluff opposite the old cemetery, not far from the protected Ulalinskaya palaeolithic dwelling. The ceremonial reburial of these remains took place on 20 July 1989. An eyewitness recalled (see the Gorno-Altaisk newspaper Listok, 2011) that 54 bags of remains were lowered into the pit.
A temporary memorial was erected over this mass grave, to be replaced in 1992 by a permanent marker. The inscription on the plaque reads “A burial of those executed in the 1930s and 1940s”. In 1990, about 20 metres from the grave, a cross was raised in memory of the exiled Lithuanians.
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, Gorno-Altaisk (3 vols. 1996-2003) contains 6,200 biographical entries of those shot or sent to the camps. The Memorial online database names 1,929 who were shot in the Altai Republic (1,525 of them during the Great Terror).
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries | Other sites in same area |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The reburial is preserved
|
A memorial area of 30 square metres
|
Delineated
|
A memorial cross to deported Lithuanians
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
A. Ivantsov, “Our ancestors’ remains”, Listok (Gorno-Altaisk), 2011. No 43, 26 October
Materials of an expedition to the Altai Republic (2011) by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
*
“Reburial of executed in the old graveyard, Gorno-Altaisk”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [partially retrieved, 4 June 2022]
Reply by the Gorno-Altaisk City administration (No 692 of 26 March 2014) to a formal enquiry of 19 February 2014 from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
