In 1930 “special settlers”, for the most part dekulakized peasant families, were sent to build the Apatite combine and the town of Khibinogorsk (pop. 10,000 in 1930; renamed Kirovsk in 1934). In the early 1930s the death rate among the exiles was high. They were buried in a plot next to the Apatity-Kirovsk highway at the 16th kilometre. Subsequently, the site became the city cemetery. Burials from the early 1930s have been partially preserved. The total number buried there has not been established; the names on surviving grave-markers are preserved in lists of forced settlers.

In 1989, the Khibin branch of Memorial erected a wooden cross in memory of the victims of political repression at the graveyard. In 2005, a stone monument was erected next to the cross on 30 October by Memorial in memory of the forced settlers who died in avalanches in 1935 and 1938. Both memorials form part of the same commemorative area.

The monument bears an epigraph from Paley Kovalevsky’s Letter from a forced settler: “A day shall come when I’m no longer here / that people will remember and pity us, / innocent labourers.” 

NOTE By 1989, Kirovsk had a population of 43,526. It has since declined [2011?] to 28,625.