On 25 November 1941, as German forces drew near the Ryazhsky district, NKVD officers from Ryazan and police from Ryazhsk shot 36 prisoners [62-11] held in the Ryazhsk transit prison. Eleven were women. This atrocity was preceded by the summary execution in the Oryol Region of 157 prisoners on 11 September 1941 (see the Medvedevsky Woods site [57-03]).
A letter from NKVD boss Lavrenty Beria to Stalin on 11 November 1941 [Document 12] did not restrict itself, however, to western areas of the USSR then in danger of falling into German hands. It listed no less than 10,645 prisoners throughout the Soviet Union who had been condemned to death and were awaiting confirmation of their sentence from the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court. Given wartime conditions, Beria suggested, the NKVD should itself be permitted to carry out the sentence without waiting for confirmation from above, especially for counter-revolutionary offences (Articles 58 & 59).
Source: The Ryazan Martyrology archive. Item 6, The Shuvalov Woods
Those shot in Ryazhsk (25 November 1941)
Name Surname Age Occupation / activity
Vladimir Abrashkin (26) military conscript
Alexandra Aksyonova 26 True Orthodox Church
Pyotr Ananyev (36) military conscript
Alexander Araushkin (26) prisoner
Ivan Bondarev (25) military conscript
Pavel Bondarev (35) military conscript
Yevgenia Chesnakova (61) True Orthodox Church
Nikolai Chudakov (39) worker
Nikolai Danilov (24) military conscript
Sergei Denisov (20) military conscript
Stepan Dugov (29) religious activist
Anna Georgievskaya (59) schoolteacher
Maria Golubykh (41) True Orthodox Church
Victor Grichuk (40) military conscript
Ivan Ivanov (34) military conscript
Alexander Khilenko (29) military conscript
Varvara Kopytina (51) True Orthodox Church
Afanasy Koshkarov (27) military conscript
Stepan Kuzmichev (27) military conscript
Nikolai Medvedkov (27) prisoner
A.E. ?MESHKOV Ryazhsk district police officer
Darya Naumova (55) True Orthodox Church
Tatyana Neveikina (58) True Orthodox Church
Vasily Panov (47) military conscript
Nina Pashinina (26) True Orthodox Church
Fyodor Posrednikov (21) military conscript
David Saurmilikh (28) forced settler
Marfa Sherstneva (46) True Orthodox Church
Pyotr Sibko (28) military conscript
Alexander Skotnikov (47) peasant
Solomon Tolstov (33) military conscript
Ilya Tomin (39) worker
Grigory Vilyanovich (36) military conscript
Nikolai Volkov (27) worker
Pyotr Volodin (29) military conscript
Natalya Yeliseyeva (57) member of religious congregation
Maria Zhdanova (33) member of religious congregation
2018 memorial
