In 1937-1938, one place where the bodies of the executed or of those who died, in the NKVD prison in Kuibyshev (formerly Spassk-Tatarsky) were buried was the wasteland near the prison. Their exact number is unknown. Researchers believe that 240 people were shot at the prison during the Great Terror.
Subsequently, the wasteland was transferred to a teacher training college and an apple orchard was planted there. After the partial flooding of the town and the resettlement of its inhabitants the burial area found itself located on an island in the Kuibyshev Reservoir, known as the Old Town (Stary gorod). Today it forms of the Spassky Nature reserve created in 2001.
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression: The Republic of Tatarstan (18 vols. 2000-2007) includes biographical entries on 52,000 individuals who were shot or sent to the Gulag.
The Memorial online database (2025) lists 50,506 individuals from the Tatarstan Book of Remembrance: 5,706 were shot, many during the Great Terror (4,272); 28,000 were sent to the camps; and charges against 10,000 were dropped (131 of them died while in detention).
The Book of Remembrance claims that over 3,000 died in prison or the camps.
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
?local administration
|
victims of political repression, head of Stary gorod administration, schoolchildren, general public
|
annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries | Other sites in same area |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Have not survived
|
not defined
|
not delineated
|
Part of the Spassky State Nature Reserve
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
“The inmates of Prison No 7”, website of Nikolai Maryanin [retrieved, 26 May 2022]
Reply by Spassky district administration (No 337 of 16 April 2014) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
