In 1932 a special settlement was organised at the Toporok rail station for dekulakized peasant families. It was here that hospital No. 1 of Taishetlag camp outpost 4 was located from 1937 onwards. In 1940 dekulakized peasants from western Ukraine and Belorussia were relocated here. Those forced settlers and prisoners who died were buried in the woods.
In 1991 the burial ground was studied by a group of local historians with the participation of Ye.S. Seleznyov from Taishet. In 2004-2005 members of Biryusa Memorial Society cleared and tidied the burial ground. In 2006 Biryusa Memorial and pupils from Taishet school No. 85 erected a memorial there.
Information about Taishetlag prisoners, where it survives, can be found in Memorial’s Victims of Political Terror database with its 3 million entries, or in the Open List database (“Victims of Political Repression in the USSR, 1917-1991”).
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
A few grave-markers, burial mounds and characteristic subsidence; grave-markers on forced settlers graves have not survived
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
Ye.S. Seleznyov, “Ascending the Golden Hill”, Biryusinskaya dolina website
