-Caveat Lector- Big Stalin Killing Field Apparently Uncovered
By Peter Baker Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, September 24, 2002; Page A16 MOSCOW, Sept. 23 -- After years of fruitless searching, investigators for a prominent human rights organization have uncovered what they believe to be one of the major killing fields of Joseph Stalin's Great Terror of the 1930s at a military firing range outside St. Petersburg. Volunteers digging at the site discovered human bones last month and have since turned up more than 50 burial pits, each believed to contain dozens of bodies. Human rights workers said the initial discoveries might validate their long-held suspicion that the Rzhevsk artillery range was turned into a mass grave containing the bodies of some 30,000 men, women and children. "Children of the people who were executed have been trying to find out about the fate of their relatives for more than 60 years," said Irina Flige, director of the research center at the St. Petersburg chapter of the human rights group Memorial, which was founded to commemorate victims of repression. "It was a monstrous crime by the Communist regime that is still being obscured at an official level." Mass graves have turned up periodically in various places around the former Soviet Union since it collapsed in 1991. Just this summer, a Ukrainian chapter of Memorial announced the discovery of 225 bodies of people apparently killed by Soviet secret police in a monastery near the western city of Lviv. These burial sites usually are found by accident or from the efforts of private groups such as Memorial, not by any organized attempt by the government to confront crimes of the past. In the most recent case, the discovery owed to the determination of Flige and her husband, Venyamin Yofe. About 7,000 people in the region around what was then known as Leningrad disappeared in Stalin's purges from 1930 to 1936 and nearly 40,000 more were killed from August to November 1937, the peak of the terror, according to Memorial. Thousands were buried in a cemetery discovered a decade ago in the village of Levashevo, but relatives of victims had long believed that Stalin's executioners took most of the political prisoners to the Rzhevsk army range in Toksovo, just north of Leningrad, where they were shot and buried. In 1998, Yofe, a former dissident who spent three years in a prison camp in the 1960s, narrowed down the search to a section of the wedge-shaped range that stretches about 40 miles in length. Four years of searching failed to yield anything, and Yofe died this year unable to prove his assertion. Flige continued his work until the first bones were found in August. Investigators plan to conduct tests to determine the age of the remains and intend to continue digging until winter freezes the ground. Ultimately, a memorial will be constructed at the site. "The legacy of the gulags has not been overcome in the 21st century," Flige said. "The victims have remained unknown and unmourned." © 2002 The Washington Post Company --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Related Links Full Europe Coverage Latest World News <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
