Sources say that those who died or were shot in the “special” NKVD prison in Vladimir were buried in the adjacent Prince Vladimir (Knyaz-Vladimirskoe) cemetery, and that a plot was set aside for their bodies along the prison wall. A former prison guard recalls that deceased political prisoners were buried at night in a common grave without any distinguishing markers. The numbers buried there have not been established. Lists are unavailable; only a few names are known. The cemetery closed in 1966. Most of the burials of prisoners have not survived, more graves were made on top of them. The remains of two prisoners of Vladimir Prison are known to have been exhumed, Saida Rizo Alizade in 1986 and K.I. Osmak in 2004.

The location of the burials was established by the Vladimir Region KGB as it re-examined the criminal cases against those repressed in the 1930s-1940s and the early 1950s. In the early 1990s a decree of the head of the Vladimir Region Administration (No. 5, 4 January 1992) on “The commemoration of Victims of Political Repression” led to a decision to erect a memorial in the city cemetery. (There is no information about its subsequent creation.) A number of individual memorial plaques were placed in the cemetery from the early 1990s onwards: Polish politician Jan Jankowski (1992), Estonian general and statesman Johan Laidoner (1999), Abbot Klimenty Sheptitsky of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine (2010) and a plaque of the Japanese Association of former POWs (2003).

In 2006 a memorial was built next to the prison wall [see photo] and all previously erected plaques of political prisoners were transferred to it. On 28 April 2012 a foundation stone was laid of a memorial to P.D. Dolgoruky and other victims of political repression. Since the mid-1990s researchers into the history of the Knyaz-Vladimirskoe cemetery have worked on the Vladimir Necropolis project and since 2004 this work has been continued by the local studies department of the city’s central library. As part of the preparation of a guide to the “Historic cemeteries of the city of Vladimir” a list has been compiled of those of the city’s inhabitants who suffered from political repression and were buried in the cemetery. It refers to more than 30 graves that have survived or disappeared.

[NOTE: Many post-Stalin political prisoners were held in Vladimir Prison.]

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On 22 October 2023, Radio Liberty reported that certain plaques commemorating victims of Stalinism (Sheptitsky and Jankowski among them) had disappeared from the cemetery and the 2006 brick memorial had been demolished. There was no official comment but in late August a pro-regime publication voiced criticism of the memorial to “enemies of our country”.