One place where those shot during the Great Terror were buried in the Tyumen Region was the wooded area near Borki village in the Ishimsky district, the territory of the former military firing range. The exact numbers shot and buried here is not known. In the town of Ishim alone, 893 people were executed in 1937-1938.
The burials were found thanks to the eyewitness testimony of G.A. Malyshkin. In 1989 the site was explored, and human remains from two of the burial pits were exhumed: a further three mass graves were identified by subsidence in the forest not far away, but they were not opened. After forensic examination the remains were reinterred in the same location. In 1993 thanks to the efforts of Bishop Eutychios (Kurochkin), incumbent of the cathedral church in Ishim, a metal memorial cross was erected next to the reburial site.
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 or elsewhere (4,169).
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
Ishimsky district administration
|
District officials, Memorial Society, relatives of the victims, clergy, schoolchildren
|
Annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
Subsidence over the burials
|
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
V.G. Istomin, “The lessons of history must not be forgotten”, Ishimskaya pravda, 29 October 2002
G.A. Kramor, “Ishim, one of the stations of the cross”, Korkina sloboda, 2003, Issue 56
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Reply by the Ishim town administration (№ 3824 of 13 May 2014) to a formal enquiry by 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)
