The Peschanka special settlement was used to accommodate dekulakized peasant families from Northwest, South and Central Russia (Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Stalingrad (Volgograd) and Voronezh Regions). According to oral testimony, more than a thousand men, women and children died during the first three years. The cemetery was organised on the northern outskirts of Peschanka. The total number of forced settlers buried here is unknown.
Information about the deaths of particular individuals in the settlement is contained in a hand-written collection of memoirs by former inhabitants of Peschanka (the collection, assembled in 2003, is preserved in the Pechora museum of history and local studies). After the restrictions on the inhabitants were lifted in the mid-1950s, residents of the village were also buried in the same cemetery. Grave-markers from the 1930s-1950s are poorly preserved and no one is caring for the old graves.
Repentance: the Komi Republic Martyrology of the Victims of Mass Political Repression (11 vols. 1998-2016), includes entries on 65,000 individuals, from dekulakized peasant families and former Polish citizens to Soviet German forced labourers, who were deported to the area.
The Komi Book of Remembrance lists 1,638 individuals who were deported to Peschanka with their families from 1930 onwards or who were born there (see Memorial online database).
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
Subsidence over burials, grave mounds, several headboards have survived
|
About 4 hectares
|
Not delineated
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
“A Book of Remembrance of the Peschanka settlement: Recollections of former forced settlers / kulaks” (manuscript), Compilers T.G. Afanasyeva & G.M. Kaneva, 2003
“The cemetery of the Peschanka special settlement”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 26 May 2022]
Reply from Pechora urban district administration (No 01-14-6229 of 7 July 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
