Between 1935 and 1953 the NKVD / MGB Department for the Kalinin (Tver) Region was accommodated at 4 Sovetskaya Street. The organisation’s inner prison was also located there, and it has been established that mass executions took place in the basement. According to figures provided by V.A. Basayev, sub-department head of the Tver Region FSB, approximately 5,000 death sentences were carried out there during the Great Terror (1937-1938).
A little later, more than 6,000 Polish POWs, brought in groups from the Ostashkovo camp, were shot in the inner prison between 5 April and 21 May 1940. The bodies were then transported for burial near the village of Mednoe [69-04] and in the Volynskoe graveyard [69-02]. About one hundred of those executed were buried in the building itself. From the mid-1950s to the present, the building has been the main block of the Tver State Medical Academy. During the construction of a new block in the 1970s, human remains were uncovered. Their subsequent fate is unknown.
In 1991, in response to a proposal from the Tver branch of Memorial Society, the city administration paid for a memorial plaque to be attached to the façade of the building. The inscription reads, “In memory of the tormented …” In 1992, the Polish Katyn society added a second memorial plaque in memory of the Polish POWs shot in Kalinin (Tver) in April-May 1940.
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In 2020, the plaques dedicated to “Soviet citizens held and tortured by the NKVD in the 1930s-1950s” and to “Polish POWs executed in the building in 1940” were removed. First attached to the building in 1991-1992, to one side of the main entrance, they can be clearly seen in the 2012 photo of the building’s facade (above).
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression of the Kalinin Region (4 vols. 2000-2015) includes biographical entries on 9,400 Soviet citizens who were shot or sent to the camps.
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2 September
|
Day of Remembrance and Sorrow (commemorating Soviet citizens and Polish POWs shot in 1930s and 1940s)
|
Tver City administration and delegation of Polish Ministry of Defence
|
inhabitants of Tver, city officials, delegation of Polish Ministry of Defence
|
Annual event
|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
Tver City administration
|
Inhabitants of Tver, city officials
|
Annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
have not survived
|
not determined
|
limited to the courtyard between 4 Soviet Street and 1 Ivan Sedykh Street
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
“Findings of the work by Tver Region FSK and the regional prosecutor’s office to locate mass burials of the victims of political repression (Tver Region FSB archive, 9 February 1995)”, From the Cheka to the FSB: A collection of documents and materials on the history of the State security services in the Tver region, Tver, 1998
Katyn, March 1940-September 2000 – Shooting, The fate of the living, The echo of Katyn: Documents, N.S. Lebedeva (compiler), Moscow, 2001 (688 pp)
V.A. Basayev, “Everyone needs to remember the unjustly executed”, Book of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression in the Kalinin [Tver] Region, Vol. 1, 2001
Along the Paths of Memory: A guide to places in Tver and the Tver Region linked with repressive political measures in the 1930s and 1940s, Tver, 2009 (28 pp)
“4 Soviet Street, high school [gymnasium] for boys”, The streets of Tver
“The memorial plaque ‘In memory of the tortured …’ at the Kalinin Region NKVD-MGB building in Tver“, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 29 May 2022]
“The former Kalinin Region NKVD building in Tver”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 29 May 2022]
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Reply by the Tver City Administration (№ 02/2730 of 21 May 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
“In Tver commemorative plaques have been removed”, Radio Liberty, 7 May 2020 [retrieved 27 October 2023]
