The Svyato-Troitskoe monastery in Solikamsk was closed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. After 1938 its buildings housed the transit prison of Usollag, a camp complex in the area run by the NKVD. The interior of the monastery church was divided into cells on two stories and the windows were half bricked up. The crypt was turned into punishment cells. From 1938 and throughout the 1940s Usollag prisoners and inhabitants of the Perm Region were shot there and buried in the grounds of the former monastery. Their exact numbers are unknown.
Subsequently, up until 1988, the buildings were used by the city’s police as a special detention centre. In 1998 the monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. On 6 May 2012 during work in the courtyard remains of the executed were found. On 9 May that year they were buried in a shared coffin in the monastery grounds and a wooden commemorative cross was raised over them.
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The monastery remains a site of federal importance but the official entry in the Unified Register (2023) makes no reference to the reburial of the executed on its territory, see below Ownership & Responsibility.
Years of Terror: A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, Perm (13 vols. 1998-2010) includes 35,000 biographical entries for those shot and sent to the camps.
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
nk
|
Commemorative Services
|
Holy Trinity Monastery
|
clergy, congregation
|
From time to time
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries | Other sites in same area |
|---|---|---|---|
|
reburial is in good condition
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
Part of the Troitskoe monastery architectural ensemble
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
“Terrible discoveries in the Svyato-Troitskoe monastery in Solikamsk”, website of the ‘Orthodox north of the Urals’
A. Skorlupin, “The interment of human remains found in the grounds of a Solikamsk monastery”, website of the ‘Orthodox north of the Urals’
“Remains of the inmates of Stalinist Usollag have been interred in Solikamsk’s Holy Trinity monastery”, Pravoslavie.ru, 14 May 2012 [retrieved, 28 May 2022]
