TOBOLSK [C]** Burials of those shot in the NKVD prison | Russia's Necropolis of Terror and the Gulag

TOBOLSK [C]** Burials of those shot in the NKVD prison

Card

№72-10

Date of burial
1937-1938
Show Map
Address
Tyumen Region, Tobolsk, 5 Red Square (krasnaya ploshchad)
Access in a populated area
Public transport
On foot
Visiting Hours or Restrictions
Visiting hours
Comments
When the museum is open
Type of burial
Secret interment of executed
Current use
Cultural and/or educational purposes
Excursions
Ceremonial events
Presence of memorials, etc.
Yes
Protected status
National (Russian Federation)
Фотография 2014. Источник: http://www.e1.ru/articles/travel/page_5/011/026/article_11026.html
Фотография 2014. Источник: http://www.e1.ru/articles/travel/page_5/011/026/article_11026.html
Background

During the Great Terror (1937-1938) those inhabitants of Tobolsk and the surrounding districts of the Tyumen Region who were sentenced to death were shot and buried in the grounds of the NKVD Prison (the Tobolsk prison fortress). The numbers buried there have not been established. According to the documents that have been located burials were made in various parts of the prison.

The prison closed in 1989. In the 1990s the building was transferred to the Tobolsk Historical and Architectural Museum Ensemble. In 1991 thanks to the Tobolsk Memorial Society a commemorative plaque was fixed to the wall of the inner courtyard of the detainees block No. 1: “A place of mass executions and burials during the years of Stalinist repression”. Subsequently the plaque was replaced, and the text of the new inscription was amended to read: “A site of mass executions and burials, 1937-1938”.

In 2012 a memorial stone was placed by the west wall of the old prison in memory of the victims of Stalinist repression and the plaque was moved from the wall to the new memorial. That year there was an exhibition in the buildings about the history of the former Tsarist hard-labour prison.

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Four buildings that make up Tobolsk Prison, built between 1849 and 1938, are today listed as monuments of federal significance. Their description refers to their 19th century origin but neither to their years as part of the NKVD prison nor to the memorial.

Books of Remembrance

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.

Ceremonies
DateNature of ceremoniesOrganiser or responsible personParticipantsFrequency
30 October
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
Tobolsk City culture committee
City officials, Memorial Society, relatives of the victims, clergy, schoolchildren
Annual event
Nature of area requiring preservation
State of burialsAreaBoundaries
have not survive
not determined
not delineated
Administrative responsibility and ownership, informal responsibility for the site
Forms part of the Tobolsk historico-architectural ensemble. Designated a site of cultural heritage of national (federal) importance by presidential edict No. 176 of 20 February 1995. [An order from the Ministry of Culture, date 6 July 2023, includes four buildings as part of the city's 19-20th century heritage, 722310236200066.]
Sources and bibliography

[ original texts and hyperlinks ]

… those killed by 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 № 01-02/04/2540 (dated 14 May 2014) by the head of the Tobolsk City Administration 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)

PDF icon Reply by the head of the Tobolsk City Administration
PDF icon Reply by the deputy governor of Tyumen Region

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