In 1932 a special settlement was organised at the Toporok rail station for dekulakised peasant families. It was here that hospital No. 1 of Taishetlag camp outpost 4 was located from 1937 onwards. In 1940 dekulakised 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.
The 2025 Memorial database lists 25,729 victims in the Irkutsk Region. See Pivovarikha (which does not include ‘outsiders’ sent to the Region’s special settlements or camps).
From other sources the database names 4,420 sent to the Region, 2,788 in 1930-1 alone. Over 3,000 were deported to special settlements, and 1,609 “dekulakised”. It also lists 387 sent to Taishetlag. 226 of them were arrested in 1937-8 and 21 are recorded as dying there (almost all in 1938) by the Karelian Commemorative Lists. (See Petrozavodsk.)
| 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
