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.