In the 1920s and 1930s, citizens shot in the cellars of the Smolensk Region NKVD building (13, Dzerzhinsky Street) and the city’s inner prison (16, Gagarin Avenue) were buried at the Bratskoe Cemetery. It is one of the four places where such burials of those shot in the city’s prisons were made (and see “The Great Terror in Smolensk, 1937-1938”).
This was confirmed by the Smolensk Region FSK (FSB) when they published their conclusions on 31 January 1995, after verifying archival information, about mass burials of the victims of political repression in the region. The exact numbers of those buried here are unknown. The burials of those shot were not restricted to one place. Today no more burials are being made in the cemetery.
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression: the Smolensk Martyrology (7 vols. 2001-2008) contains biographical entries on 26,300 who were shot or sent to the Gulag.
The Memorial online database (2021) names 35,279 victims in the Smolensk Region: 7,772 who were shot (7,013 during the Great Terror); 18,000 sent to the camps; and 2,000 of those deported during collectivisation. The cases against 943 were discontinued, 71 having died in custody. A further 3,376 were brought to the Region, according to police records: the majority (3,076) arrived during collectivisation or were born in the special settlements.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries | Other sites in same area |
|---|---|---|---|
|
have not survived
|
not established
|
not delineated
|
Two mass graves of Soviet soldiers killed during 1941-1944 in fighting near Smolensk; graves of the city's noted inhabitants
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[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
“Conclusions of Smolensk Region FSK on verifying mass burials of the victims of political repression …, 31 January 1995”, Herald of the Katyn memorial, (No 7) 2007
The Smolensk Necropolis website [retrieved, 17 January 2025]
