Sandarmokh (; ) is a forest massif from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. Their number is unknown, but is estimated to be in the thousands. More than 58 nationalities were shot and buried there by the NKVD in 236 communal pits over a 14-month period in 1937 and 1938.
At least 1,000 victims were from the Solovki special prison on an island in the White Sea. It was long thought that the barges carrying them were deliberately sunk on the way to the mainland, drowning all the prisoners on board. Others were rounded up during the Great Terror in Karelia,"The Great Terror in Karelia: A Chronology" . dmitrievaffair.com. Accessed 16 June 2023. in accordance with quotas for prisoners, 'enemies of the regime', and a variety of "national operations". According to available documentation at least 6,000 were shot and buried at Sandarmokh."Half those shot in 1937–1938 ..." . dmitrievaffair.com. Accessed 16 June 2023.
Today Sandarmokh is a memorial to the crimes of Stalin and his regime and since 1998 has been the focus of an international Day of Remembrance on 5 August every year."Sandarmoh, 1937–1938" heninen.net. Accessed 16 June 2023.Text about Sandarmokh, translated from "Virtual Museum of the Gulag" dmitrievaffair.wordpress.com. Accessed 16 June 2023.
Discovery and remembrance On 27 October 1937, 1,116 prisoners were loaded onto three barges and taken from Solovki to the mainland for their sentences at Sandarmokh.
Only in 1996, thanks to the efforts of (1938–2002), co-chairman of the Memorial research centre in St Petersburg, documents were found in the archives of the Arkhangelsk department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) throwing light on the subsequent fate of the "first Solovki transport". These included the lists of those men and women who were to be shot. One died before he could be executed; four more were sent to other parts of the Gulag.
After years of work on the ground in Karelia by Yuri Dmitriev, this documentary evidence pointed the way to the identification on 1 July 1997 of the Solovki prisoners' last resting place and that of another 5,000 executed individuals. By the suggestion of Ioffe, the location would subsequently be given the local (Karelian) name "Sandarmokh" (sometimes spelled "Sandormokh"), by the name of an abandoned khutor (small settlement) shown in old maps of the area.Флиге И. А. Сандормох: драматургия смыслов , 2019, The story of that search and discovery was told in 2017 by Irina Flige, head of the Memorial Education and Information Centre in St Petersburg.Anna Yarovaya, "The Dmitriev Affair" , Rights in Russia, 20 March 2017 and The Russian Reader , 1 March 2017. Russian original published on 7 x 7 website, February 2017. In 2015 Dmitriev recounted how he, Flige and the late Veniamin Ioffe had found the burial site.Yury Dmitriev, "We must be able to find something", My Path to Golgotha, pt 3 , dmitrievaffair.com, 14 February 2018 According to documents found in the FSB archives in Arkhangelsk, there were people of 58 nationalities among those shot at Sandarmokh.
Three hundred personal plaques and memorials have been erected around the site since 1997 to commemorate the many victims of this killing field, both individually and as representatives of particular nations and cultures,"Pictorial essay: Death trenches bear witness to Stalin's purges" CNN, 17 July 1997Урочище Сандармох. Захоронение жертв массовых репрессий (1937–1938 гг.) monuments.karelia.ru and an international Day of Remembrance has been held there every 5 August since 1998. In 2010, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church led the mass for the slain victims of Stalin at Sandarmokh, just as he and his predecessor Alexy II have done, every year since 2007, at the Butovo killing field near Moscow.The Butovo Firing Range: a Russian Golgotha www.martyr.ru .
Today, thanks to the Memorial Society, to Veniamin Ioffe and Yury Dmitriev, over 5,000 of the dead of Sandarmokh can again be named and remembered individually, at the place where they lie buried.John Crowfoot, "Who is Yury Dmitriev?" Rights in Russia, 19 June 2017.
Ukraine declared 2012 as "Sandarmokh List Year" in reference to several hundred Ukrainian language writers and poets from the Executed Renaissance who were arrested, shot, and buried at Sandarmokh after the Great Turn, when new Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin decided, as a preliminary to the Holodomor – the devastating man-made famine in Ukraine – to reverse the Post-1917 policies of Korenizatsiya and Ukrainianization. These otherwise Pro-Soviet writers refused to submit to Stalin's return to the House of Romanov's policy of the coercive Russification of Ukraine and were shot, according to the Ukrainian Government, because they inspired the people of Ukraine with their own national culture, filling them "with pride and strength". Den online newspaper, 24 January 2012 (Accessed 7 August 2017).
Those shot at Sandarmokh, 1937–1938
The thousands executed over 14 months from October 1937 to December 1938 fall into three broad groups. Many were from Karelia, a total of 2,344 free inhabitants of the republic. A smaller number (624) were forced "settlers" (i.e. peasants exiled to the North after the collectivisation of agriculture). A great many of those shot (1,988) were already prisoners of the Belbaltlag (White Sea–Baltic Canal) camp system. A smaller group of 1,111 prisoners were brought there from Solovki prison camp. Together they made up almost half of those shot during the Great Terror in Karelia."The Great Terrir in Karelia" dmitrievaffair.com
"Alongside hard-working peasants, fishermen and hunters from nearby villages", wrote Yury Dmitriev,Anatoly Razumov (n.d.), "The Solovki transports, 1937–1938", Returning the Names website . "there were writers and poets, scientists and scholars, military leaders, doctors, teachers, engineers, clergy of all confessions and statesmen who found their final resting place here." Among the last named group were prominent members of the intelligentsia from the many national and ethnic cultures of the USSRfor example, Finns, Karelians, and Volga Germans. Ukraine was especially singled out, losing 289 of its writers, dramatists and other public figures, the "Executed Renaissance", in a single day.
The following 25 individuals illustrate this variety. They are listed by surname in alphabetical order:
Prince , Imperial Russian Army officer, actor and theatre director: shot 27 October 1937, aged 44 Nikolai Durnovo, Russian linguist, shot 27 October 1937, aged 60 , organiser of an underground Catholic group in Moscow: shot 27 October 1937, aged 45 Shio Batmanishvili, a Georgian Hieromonk, the Superior of the Servites of the Immaculate Conception, and both the Apostolic Administrator and Exarch of the Georgian Greek Catholic Church, shot 1 November 1937 Kuzebay Gerd, Udmurt writer and public figure: shot 1 November 1937, aged 39 Hryhorii Epik, Ukrainian writer: shot 3 November 1937, aged 36 Myroslav Irchan, Ukrainian writer, journalist, and playwright: shot 3 November 1937, aged 40 Mykola Kulish, Ukrainian writer, educator, journalist, and playwright: shot 3 November 1937, aged 40 Les Kurbas, Ukrainian theater director: shot 3 November 1937, aged 50 Valerian Pidmohylny, a Ukrainian writer: shot 3 November 1937, aged 37 Mykhailo Poloz, a Ukrainian politician, diplomat, statesman, and participant of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: shot 3 November 1937, aged 45 , Ukrainian military leader: shot 3 November 1937, aged 50 Archbishop of Kursk and Oboyan, Russian Orthodox Church: shot 3 November 1937, aged 64 Father , Volga German Roman Catholic priest:Pavel Chichikov, "Modern Martyrdoms" , Catholic Exchange website, 9 February 2003 (retrieved 7 August 2017). shot 3 November 1937, aged 45 Mykhailo Yalovy, Ukrainian writer, publicist, playwright: shot 3 November 1937, aged 42 Mykola Zerov, Ukrainian poet: shot 3 November 1937, aged 47 , literary critic: shot 4 November 1937, aged 32 , Soviet diplomat, ex-Bolshevik: shot 4 November 1937, aged 62 Vasily Helmersen, Russian librarian and artist: shot 9 December 1937, aged 64 , Finnish journalist: shot 28 December 1937, aged 41 , a Karelian writer:"Natsionalnyje pisateli Karelii: finskaja emigratsija i politicheskije Repressii 1930h godov: biobibliograficheski ukazatel" (National Library of Karelia, Finnish emigration and the 1930 policy of retaliation: a bio-bibliographical index), Petrozavodsk, 2005, pp. 40–41. shot 8 January 1938, aged 39 Anton Yablotsky, Polish "special settler" from Ukraine:Anton P. Yablotsky, Sandomorkh memorial graveyard , Iofe Foundation, sand.mapofmemory.org shot 21 January 1938, aged 37 Kalle Toppinen, Finn, carpenter, Karelia:Kalle P. Toppinen, Sandomorkh memorial graveyard , Iofe Foundation, sand.mapofmemory.org shot 5 March 1938, aged 45 Alexei Kostin, member of collective farm, Karelia:Alexei Kostin, Sandomorkh memorial graveyard , Iofe Foundation, sand.mapofmemory.org shot 9 March 1938, aged 39 Nikita Remnev, carpenter, Karelia:Nikita F. Remnev, Sandomorkh memorial graveyard , Iofe Foundation, sand.mapofmemory.org. shot 3 April 1938, aged 37 Fyodor Bagrov, head of collective farm, Karelia:Fyodor P. Bagrov, Sandomorkh memorial graveyard , Iofe Foundation, sand.mapofmemory.org shot 22 April 1938, aged 42
Members of the Finnish diaspora who emigrated to the USSR during the Great Depression and who were later arrested and shot at Sandarmokh as a part of the Finnish Operation of the NKVD, are listed by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in their study In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (2003). They included 141 Finnish Americans,John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage, 2003, , Appendix: "The Invisible Dead: American Communists and Radicals Executed by Soviet Political Police and Buried at Sandarmokh" , p. 235. and 127 Finnish Canadians.John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage, Encounter Books, 2003. p. 117.
Victims and executioners
It is often said or assumed of Soviet mass executions that they were carried out by firing squad. For the Soviet regime and, later, the Third Reich, this method of execution was the exception, not the rule.See, for instance, John le Carré, Smiley's People, 1980, where a Soviet character's execution is "by firing squad".
From early days onwards, the preferred Soviet method of quick despatch was to dig a trench and then, the executioner standing immediately behind the upright or kneeling victim, shoot the victims at point blank range in the back of the head. This was the infamous "nine grammes of lead". The victims tumbled into the trench and were buried; sometimes another, control shot (контрольный выстрел, kontrolnyi vystrel) was fired into the victim's head to make sure he or she was dead, sometimes only one shot was used. (A rare, extended description by a former executioner of how such mass killings were organised can be found in Lev Razgon's 1988 memoirs.)Chapter Two, "Niyazov", Lev Razgon, True StoriesMemoirs of a Survivor, Souvenir Press: London, 1997, pp. 21–34. Published in Russian in 1988.
This was the method used at Sandarmokh, Krasny Bor and Svirlag in the late 1930s, as the skulls found at these sites amply testify. Cross-examined while under arrest in 1939, the chief executioner Mikhail Matveyev said he made the victims lie face down in the prepared trench and then shot them.Nikita Petrov, "The butchers of Sandarmokh", Novaya gazeta, No. 84, 4 August 2017 , pp. 8–9 www.novayagazeta.ru .