In the 1930s one place of burial for inhabitants of Tyumen and the Tyumen Region who were shot or died in prison, before and during the Great Terror, was the city’s Zatyumenskoe cemetery. Burials were made in various parts of the cemetery, mainly in its western section. The exact numbers interred are not known. The cemetery was closed, and the burials were destroyed. After 1949 a building of the asphalt factory (closed in 1999) was located here.
During construction in the 1950s and 1960s the remains of those executed were repeatedly uncovered. Not exhumation took place. In 1996 a memorial to the victims of political repression was placed on the green area next to Polevaya Street: it is an artistic composition created from historical artefacts, the brick building of the NKVD and the bars of a cell window. Above there is an inscription in Russian, Tatar and Latin [nunquam retrorsum]: “Never again!” In the niche of the memorial there is a container holding a list of executed inhabitants of the Tyumen Region: it was added on 5 May 1998 by the rector of Tyumen University G.F. Kutsev and the head of the city administration S.M. Kirichuk.
A Book of Those Shot: A Martyrology of People Slain by the NKVD during the Great Terror: Tyumen Region (3 vols. 1999-2004) includes 7,700 biographical entries on those shot in 1937-1938.
The Memorial online database (2025) includes 38,874 victims in the Tyumen Region (BR 7,673). The database lists 7,642 who were shot, 6,847 during the Great Terror. Two police sources add only a few who were held in the camps.
They name 407 who” died in captivity” but almost all were living in special settlements. 6,198 were deported to and from the Region as members of “dekulakised” families (3,990) and later by reason of their “nationality” (1,922). A great many others (25,002) were, according to local police records, either sent from different parts of the USSR to special settlements within the Tyumen Region (20,361) or were born there (4,169).
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
Tyumen Region administration
|
Regional officials, Memorial Society, relatives of the victims, clergy, schoolchildren
|
Annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
have not survived
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
… those who perished at the hands of the NKVD during the Great Terror in the Tyumen Region, in two volumes. Vol. 1 (compiler R.S. Goldenberg), Tyumen, 1999
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Reply by Tyumen City Administration (№ 03-06-1421/4 of 14 May 2014) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
Reply by the deputy governor of Tyumen Region (№ 21/6195n/14-3463 of 19 May 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
