In 1991 the remains of 83 bodies were found at the former NKVD building [38-46] on Sovetskaya Street. A search had been carried out on the basis of testimony by a former NKVD employee in Kirensk who said that detainees had been shot in this building during the Great Terror.
After opening up the brick floor the investigators found human remains indicating they had met a violent death. Thanks to the particular climatic conditions clothes, footwear and documents of the dead had been well preserved. This enabled the identification of 26 of those sentenced to death by decision No. 30 (15 May 1938) by the Special Troika of the Irkutsk Region NKVD.
The Kirensk town executive committee set up a commission to organise the reburial of the victims. A list of names and short biographies of the 26 known victims was published in the Sovetskaya molodyozh newspaper. After specialist analysis was completed, the remains were reburied on 26 May 1991 in a common grave in the town (Khabarovskoe) cemetery. On the mound in the centre of the grave a wooden Orthodox cross was erected; below memorial plaques carried the names of the victims. A few individual memorials have been placed at the foot of the cross, presumably by relatives of the victims.
The incomplete Book of Remembrance, Victims of Political Repression in the Irkutsk Region: in Remembrance and as a Future Warning (8 vols. 1998-2006), includes 25,800 biographical entries on those shot or sent to the camps.
The Memorial database (2021) lists 10,609 who were shot in the Irkutsk Region during the Great Terror and 5,624 who were arrested in 1937-1938 and sent to the Gulag.
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
Kirensk town administration
|
town administration, inhabitants of Kirensk
|
Annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
The reburial site is in good condition
|
4 square metres
|
the burial area is surrounded by metal railing
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
B. Slepnev, O. Kontysheva and P. Migalev, “Kirensk, an island city in which it is not easy to live”, Kopeika (Irkutsk), 22 October 2004
A. Belevich and Yu. Shvanenberg, “The secret of the Lunar King’s Dacha”, Irkutsk University faculty of philology and journalism website
“The reburial in a mass grave of those shot in Kirensk”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 8 June 2022]
Reply from the Kirensk municipal district administration (29 April 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
