Press Release, 28.10.2016

Memorial cemetery Dubovka is located in Voronezh in the bottom-land of the Usmanka river. Residents of Voronezh, shot during in the prison of the city NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) during the Great Terror announced by Joseph Stain in 1937-1938, were buried here.

Burial places were located close to the training camps of the NKVD regiment in the village of Dubovka.

People were buried in the pits, the area was not fenced or guarded. The total number of burial pits and the number of buried has not been determined yet (according to historians, it can be 10,000 people).

In the early 1950’s a pine forest was planted there. Eyewitnesses of the events reported about the place of burial in the late 1980s.

The Voronezh Memorial society (headed by Vyacheslav Bityutsky) initiated the works on determination of the place of burial.

The first burial was found on 6 September, 1989. Voronezh prosecutors confirmed that these were the remains of victims of the Great Terror.

The burial still does not have an official status, although there is an actual consent of the Forestry Department of the Voronezh region which the pine tree belongs to, on the transfer of land in perpetuity under a memorial. However, the boundaries are not established and the area is not fenced. There are only memorial signs – collective and personal – on the site.

Every year on 30 October, the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Reprisals, commemorative ceremonies are held. The Voronezh branch of YABLOKO participates in the action every year.

Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chair of the Party, visited the place of burial on the threashold of the tragic anniversary.