The appeal procedures before execution, the comparison with the existing photographs and the weeding out process in Butovo, in the course of which various questions and misunderstandings would arise – all of that cost many hours. According to the commandant’s report, there were people who carried out the executions in strict isolation in a little stone house not far away. They had nothing to do with checking the documents. They had other tasks and they waited until their moment had come.
The condemned were led out from the barracks one by one. The executioners then appeared in order to receive them and lead them to the rear – each man with his victim – to the trench on the shooting range. Having arrived at the edge of the trench they shot them in the back of the head from close up. They then threw the bodies into the trench and covered the bottom of the deep trench. There were members of the NKVD specially assigned to ‘clearing away’ the corpses.
The number of people shot every day was rarely less than 100. On some days it was 300 or 400 and even 500 . . . the executioners used their own weapons, which they had mainly come by in the Civil War. This was usually a Nagant revolver, which they regarded as the most accurate, the easiest to use and the least likely to malfunction. Doctors and a state prosecutor were supposed to be in attendance at shootings, but, as we know from the confessions of the enforcement officers, this regulation was not always adhered to. On shooting days a bucket with vodka was made available for every executioner, and he could drink as much of it as he wanted (and, indeed, how could anyone do such work without stupefying himself?!). To one side there was also a container with eau de cologne, since the executioners reeked of blood and gunpowder from far off. According to their own statements, ‘even dogs shrank from them in terror’.
Afterwards, there was still some bureaucratic paperwork to be done.
In the commandant’s headquarters the enforcement officers had to fill in the forms by hand and add their signature to the document authorizing the execution. Once the necessary formalities had been completed, there was lunch, and after that the executioners, who were usually hellishly drunk by then, were driven back to Moscow. In the evening, local workmen would bring up a bulldozer which stood in readiness at the shooting range and cover the bodies with a thin layer of earth. The following day, the shootings would be resumed. Needless to say, over a period of months the execution procedures were not always exactly the same, and may even have varied from day to day. The shootings could also be carried out inside buildings that had been erected for the purpose at the shooting range. Nor should we forget that the bodies of people who had been shot in Moscow prisons were also brought to Butovo. Even though it was categorically forbidden to disclose the location of the places of execution, it was evident from a number of the files that the condemned had been shot in Butyrka prison, and other files revealed that shootings had also taken place in Taganska prison.22
It would seem that the number of NKVD personnel involved in executions was quite small. Usually, the so-called execution squad consisted of four ‘special duties officers’. Their numbers were increased on days when mass shootings took place. On occasion, senior staff also took part in executions, and they did so voluntarily. According to a driver who had worked for the NKVD, the entire Moscow complement of ‘special duties officers’ consisted of twelve men, who were also responsible for executions in Kommunarka, the Moscow gaols and Varsonof'evskii Lane. During the mass operations, these ‘special duties officers’ were also seconded to other towns and regions to carry out executions there. The NKVD drivers attached to garage No. 1 learned about this from members of the unit, since they often met them in the courtyard of the building in Varsonof'evskii Lane for a game of draughts or dominos. By chance, a photograph has survived showing them all together during a break.23
Sociology of the mass grave
Kolia Remisov, a young worker employed as a driver at a district hospital, wrote to his uncle after learning of his father’s death in exile in Siberia:
Dear Uncle Vasia, I have some very sad news for you. Our family has lost my father and you have lost a brother – he has just died . . . Farewell, Father! You have died far away from your house and home . . . Who condemned you to this slow, painful death? How much of your strength has gone felling trees in the impenetrable forests, and how many trains have you helped to build! Your skulls have been used to lay the floors of the canals you have had to excavate. We are raising our imagined socialism on your heaped-up bones. And all of this is being hidden behind a wall of lies . . . The truth has everywhere been stifled, but the time will come when a man will come who will be brave enough to help the truth to prevail and the truth will be terrible in its starkness – and those who are responsible for these terrors will turn their faces away and be speechless.24
Kolia’s letter was intercepted; he was arrested and shot on 14 September 1937 in Butovo. Since the young worker was sentenced under Article 58 – anti-Soviet activities – and subsequently rehabilitated as a ‘political prisoner’, we know his history, and in this respect his fate differs from that of the 5,658 people who were condemned and killed as ‘criminals’ under the Penal Code, but have never been rehabilitated.25
The graves of Butovo contain the bodies of a cross-section of the Soviet population. Of those who were shot, most – 11,300 – came from Moscow and the Moscow region. Even so, the dead came from all over the Soviet Union: 2,652 victims came from every region of the USSR – European Russia, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East; 331 came from Ukraine, 98 from Belorussia, 150 from the Baltic regions, Moldavia, the Caucasus republics, Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Over 100 victims came from the prisons and corrective labour camps. In around 300 cases there is no information at all. Because their files were not accessible, it has not been possible to give a breakdown of the figures in the huge number of cases of the 5,658 victims who were condemned as ‘criminals’. It is an international mass grave. The corpses buried here include victims from Germany, Poland, France, the United States, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Japan, India, China and many other countries, as well as many refugees and stateless persons. Around 70 per cent of those buried here are Russians. There is a disproportionate number of Latvians, Poles and Jews, followed by Ukrainians, Germans and Belorussians. Overall, the graves contain members of over sixty nationalities. Their arrests and murders were carried out at an astonishing pace. The cases that were processed fastest were those of ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’; the most difficult ones were those involving ‘spying’ or ‘terrorist activity’. The overwhelming majority of those shot – 80 to 85 per cent – had no political affiliation, and only one half had higher education. In a word, the victims were predominantly people who had no connection with politics or the nomenklatura. All age groups were represented among the dead. Those executed range from fifteen- to sixteen-year-old youths to old men of eighty. The inhabitants of entire settlements were dispatched to the mass graves of Butovo. On occasion, ten or thirty people from a single village or settlement would be killed in Butovo at one time. ‘Thus 10 people were shot in Butovo from the little village of Vozmishche in the Volokamsk Region, 13 from Krasnyi Stroitel' District, and 31 from the village of Golitsyno on the Belorusskii Railway. The same number was executed from the village of Bobrovo in Kolomenskoe Region, 26 from Nemutsinovka, 46 from the village of Vishniaka in Ukhtomsk Region, etc.’26 Married couples were shot – there are over forty couples buried here, parents with grown-up children, brothers and sisters – sometimes as many as five, six or eight members of the same family. Family members living in different towns and regions were brought to Moscow and then shot there. Death in Butovo had a masculine face: 19,093 men were shot and 858 women. Every class and stratum was represented in the mass graves. The overwhelming majority of the victims were workers who had until recently been peasants. Next came white-collar workers in Soviet institutions, and then peasants proper. Peasants who could neither read nor write and who put a cross under the record of their int
errogation instead of a signature were accused of ‘Trotskyism’ or ‘counter-revolutionary activities’ – words that simply did not feature in their vocabulary. Many of them died without ever having understood of what crimes they had been suspected and accused. Peasant families were accused collectively of spying. The peasants included the navvies (grabari) who were joined together in cooperative arteli and who mainly did the really heavy work on the big construction sites, in factories, in quarries and building the railways, roads and canals. They frequently had no fixed address and their horse was their only means of support – some 60 grabari are buried in Butovo. Many of the labourers on the building sites, lumberjacks and peat-cutters were former peasants who had fled the villages and taken refuge in such jobs. All professions were represented in Butovo: cabinet-makers, doctors, confectioners, removal men, drivers, firemen, postmen, electricians, packers, porters, salesgirls, stove-fitters, bakers, buffet-serving women, smiths, hairdressers, carpenters, street-sweepers, priests and monks. You could find there the entire panoply of the handicrafts of the Russian village, but also teachers, engineers, doctors, judges and artists.
Numerically, the peasants were followed by the faithful. Clergy and laymen of the Orthodox Church were especially well represented. In a space of fifteen months 973 people were shot for the crime of being believers.27 Even earlier, in the first two decades after 1917, the Orthodox Church had been exposed to harsh persecution. But in 1937 a new general assault began on the Church and its faithful. In 1937 around 8,000 churches were closed down, seventy dioceses and parishes were dissolved, and sixty bishops were shot. The first clergy were shot in Butovo on 20 August 1937. They were an especially large proportion of those murdered in autumn 1937 and winter 1937–8. On 21 October 1937, the Feast of the Icon of the Holy Mother of God, forty-eight priests and laymen were shot; on 10 December forty-nine priests were executed, among them Archbishop Nikolai of Vladimir (Dobronravov) and the last abbot of the Trinity Monastery at Sergiev Posad, Kronid (Liubimov). Seven bishops, one metropolitan and two archbishops were killed in Butovo, together with a large number of archimandrites, abbots, priests, cantors, vergers and ordinary lay members of the congregation. The majority were accused of ‘anti-Soviet agitation’ and ‘counter-revolutionary activities’, which could have meant anything at all – expressing their concern for the maintenance of church buildings, helping exiles or granting shelter to homeless priests. Those murdered included elderly, frail and highly respected church leaders. The oldest among them was Serafim, the metropolitan of Leningrad, a scholar who was also active as a writer, musician and painter. The archbishop of Mozhaisk, Dmitrii, was seventy-three when he was arrested for ‘counterrevolutionary activities’ and shot on 21 October 1937. The last abbot of the Chudov Monastery, which was in the Kremlin but had been dismantled in 1929, had asserted under interrogation that the Soviets would be overthrown by the people. He was shot on 27 September 1937.28
But it was not only the Orthodox Church that was decimated in this way. The victims also extended to other religious faiths: the Old Believers (at least fifty murdered), Baptists (with around 160 martyrs), Lutherans, Protestants and Catholics (for the most part, Poles and Austrians), one mullah, two rabbis and a cantor, as well as the members of numerous sects.
Countless ‘people with no fixed occupation’ (LBOS – Litsa bez opredelennogo zaniatiia) as well as those ‘without a fixed occupation or place of residence’ (BOMZh – Bez opredelennogo mesta zhitel'stva) also died in Butovo. This could refer to workers who had been dismissed, members of the pre-revolutionary educated classes, or émigrés who had returned from Harbin but who had failed to establish themselves in Soviet society. Following the completion of the Moscow–Volga Canal, a large group of 2,500 canal army workers (kanaloarmeitsy) who had not had the good fortune to be among those to be awarded medals and released ended up in Butovo. These inmates of Dmitlag were peasants and workers, but there were also engineers – such as Baron von Graevenitz, who had built the railway bridge in Khlebnikovskii Province and who had been sentenced to death on 3 December 1937 together with other members of his family.29
Death in Butovo came to workers and employees from the transport sector, trade, the administration of factories and combines, craft workers and the members of cooperatives and brigades. Thirty-nine workers from a single brigade of invalids called ‘technochemists’ (tekhnokhimik) were shot. Fifty owners of the Chinese laundries that had long been traditional in Moscow found their deaths in Butovo.
Fifty-four members of the militia were shot, including leading regional officials and well-known and popular police detectives and investigators. Members of the fire brigade were murdered, and so were municipal officials, doctors, professors, teachers at academies, dance schools, and the ethnic schools for Poles, Latvians and Germans, as well as their pupils and students.
In Butovo seventy-one members of the Bolshevo Labour Commune and twenty-two members of the Liubertsy Commune were executed – that is to say, members of institutions founded in the twenties at the initiative of Felix Dzerzhinsky in order to provide orphans and homeless and neglected children and youths with a way back into ordinary life. Thousands of young people had passed through these labour communes of the NKVD, which soon gained a legendary reputation, until the arrest of Genrikh Iagoda, their patron in chief, led the labour communes themselves to become the targets of persecution. Educationists, heads of workshops and reformed criminals were accused of having recruited ‘terrorist fighting groups’ from the ranks of out-and-out bandits, robbers and White Guards.30
Butovo became a graveyard for a large group of artists. Almost all the arts were represented – musicians, composers, singers, pianists, violinists, actors, circus performers and music-hall artists. Among them were around a hundred painters, illustrators and sculptors of every conceivable variety, from the avant garde and socialist realism, but also icon painters, textile makers, designers and porcelain painters. They included many Latvians, such as Gustav Klutsis, the pioneer of the Soviet agitprop posters, Aleksandr Drevin, whose pictures now hang in the Tretiakov Gallery, Vladimir Timirev, the son of a general, and Vladimir Komarovskii, a painter of aristocratic origins and editor of the magazine Russkaia Ikona. He was arrested five times before finally being executed on 5 November 1937. And, lastly, there was Count Yurii Olsuf'ev, a specialist in Old Russian art, who was shot in March 1938.
Butovo became a necropolis for members of the pre-revolutionary political elite. Among those executed we find Fedor Golovin, the chairman of the second Imperial Russian Duma, Count A. Bibikov, the court marshal of the Tula Region, a chamberlain at the court of Nicholas II and tutor to the children of the last tsar, and many other names from the oldest families of the Russian nobility – the Rostopchins, Chegodaevs, Gagarins and Obolenskiis.31 On 26 February 1938 the former governor of Moscow, Vladimir Dzhunkovskii, was shot, a man widely known as an experienced official and generous benefactor, who had devoted his entire life to the development of the city of Moscow and who had continued to work on behalf of the city even after the Revolution. He managed to survive for a time as a church warden, as a French teacher, and even as an adviser on the new passport system until his arrest in December 1937.32
It will surprise no one to learn that the names of those executed include many members of the tsarist and White armies – nine former generals of the tsarist army whose great age – they were all between seventy and eighty – did not protect them from accusations of ‘anti-Soviet agitation’, or ‘espionage’, and execution, any more than did the distinctions they had been awarded for their war service. The mortal remains of a grandson of General Kutuzov lie in Butovo, as well as those of the relatives of the Red Army Marshal Tukhachevskii.
One astonishing fact is the large number of mountaineers and Alpinists executed in Butovo, a number of whom had given their names to mountains in the Tien-Shan range, which they had been the first to conquer. Mountaineers roamed in frontier territories, had international contacts, and took part
in mixed expeditions so that the accusation of espionage frequently arose, as did the charge that they belonged to ‘counter-revolutionary terrorist organizations’. The elite of Soviet Alpinism lies in Butovo and Kommunarka, but so do their patrons and fans in the Soviet leadership: the deputy head of the NKVD, Mikhail Frinovskii, the People’s Commissar for Justice, Nikolai Krylenko, or the secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Gorbunov, all of whom were passionate mountaineers. Ten aviators, the pioneers of Russian and Soviet aerospace and a number of the Zeppelin builders all lie in Butovo.33
Turning to the vast group of 5,658 people who were executed in Butovo as ‘criminals’ and a ‘social menace’, it is difficult to determine how many of them were really criminals – murderers, robbers or rapists – because they have not been rehabilitated and so their files have never been re-examined. Those murdered include people who had been arrested in raids on railway stations, suburban trains, dosshouses and pubs, repeat offenders, the homeless and vagrants without permanent jobs or addresses, youths with horrifying life experiences, people whose lives were destroyed because of the theft of a bicycle, a pair of galoshes, a loaf of bread, a mouth-organ or a piece of soap, or simply because they had been caught selling apples in the station (‘speculating’). Fortune-tellers, prostitutes, gypsies, ‘Aisory’ – descendants of Assyrians who from time immemorial had dominated the shoeshine trade in Moscow – were all liquidated.
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