The Koirankangas landmark on the Rzhevk artillery firing range was the main location for the execution and burial of those shot in the Leningrad Region from the late 1920s to the 1930s on the orders of the NKVD and its predecessors. Local witnesses testify to the events, including those who inhabited the former Finnish villages in its vicinity.

In 2002 an exploratory group from St Petersburg Memorial found one of the burials. More than 50 pits containing the remains of those shot were discovered, with bodies laid in 2-3 layers to a depth of 2.5 metres, in a square kilometre of woodland in the northern part of the firing range. Further investigation was prohibited by the firing range administration in 2003.

In 2008 a memorial cross was erected over the burials. The inscription on the nameboard reads: “Here at Koirankangas in the 1920s and 1930s many thousands of our compatriots were shot by Stalin’s butchers. To their radiant memory”. Two years later the range administration agreed to permit annual Services for the Dead to be held at the cross.

(For earlier use of another part of the firing range for executions, see Kovalyovsky Woods [47-01].)