Inhabitants of the Chita Region condemned to death and shot during the Great Terror were buried in pine forest five kilometres from the village. The exact number then executed is unknown. Researchers estimate that about 8,000 people were executed at the time.

The burials were discovered in 1991 by the Chita Region KGB together with members of the public “Committee of Commemoration”. More than fifty common graves were identified and the remains of 51 people were exhumed from one of the burial pits and submitted to forensic examination. In 1992 a memorial was erected over the reburied remains, a cross of black stone and three intersecting white hemispheres with an inscription, “To the Victims of Political Repression”. Relatives and family of the executed placed dozens of personal memorials in the area.

In 2006 the cross was broken by unidentified vandals. In 2008 the memorial suffered in a forest fire. That year dozens of Chita inhabitants took part in its restoration. In September 2008 Bishop Yevstafy of Chita and the Zabakail Region consecrated a commemorative cross on the turn off the highway towards Smolenka.

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In an address (2017) to inhabitants of the region on 9 August, the date when the site and the remains of 2,500 executed victims were discovered, the governor and head of the legislative assembly referred to the Great Terror as the peak of repression and to the eight volumes of the Book of Remembrance. On 9 August 2023, gatherings were held in both Chita and at Smolenka.