The memorial complex was established on the site where inhabitants of the Sverdlovsk, Perm and Tomsk Regions were shot during the Great Terror (1937-1938) after being sentenced to death by the Sverdlovsk Region NKVD troika.

The location of the burials became widely known in 1989. The following year there was a partial exhumation of the remains and forensic examination confirmed their origin. In 1992 the remains were reburied in a common grave next to the place where they had been found. The proposal to create a memorial complex was made by the regional Association of the Victims of Political Repression and Yekaterinburg Memorial Society; funds were provided by the city administration. In 1996 the first part of the complex was formally opened, followed in 1999 and 2000 by the second and third parts. It includes 46 pillars with memorial plaques and individual memorials. The exact numbers buried there are unknown. The names of 18,475 people shot during the Great Terror in Sverdlovsk are inscribed on the plaques. The lists of names were compiled from documents held in the Sverdlovsk Region state archive and the archives of the regional FSB.

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On 20 November 2017 the “Mask of Sorrow” monument by Ernst Neizvestny was unveiled at the memorial complex. Discussions about the monument began in 1988 when a contract was drawn up between Neizvestny, the Sverdlovsk Memorial Society and the city council. Thereafter work halted.

In 2013 the governor of the Sverdlovsk Region ordered that work resume. The monument was cast in I. Dubrovin’s workshop. (The first such sculpture was erected in the Far East in 1996, on the Krutaya Hill outside Magadan.)