Zaretskoe cemetery is an old cemetery surrounding the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the historical part of Petrozavodsk. In the early 1990s the remains of those executed in the city during the Great Purge were reburied here, a total of ca. 400 people. The reburial was done in three steps: on 30 October 1991, 29 February 1992 and 30 October 1993. The bodies had been found in the late 1980s during construction works in Besovets, near Petrozavodsk boundaries (on the military unit premises), and in Sulazhgora, a Petrozavodsk district. Yury Dmitriev, at the time aide to People’s Deputy, initiated their excavation and reburial.
Karelia Memorial, founded in 1989 (Dmitriev becoming its member soon afterwards), took part in the initiative. The first reburial, in 1991, was a huge memorial event, with a public funeral service at the National Theatre of Karelia followed by a procession along the city’s main streets. The memorial gravestone was installed in 1992. Dmitriev succeeded in identifying a female victim by a signed item found in the execution pit. It was Aino Forsten, a Finnish Communist and social activist, who fled to the USSR in 1918 and was shot in 1937. The people shot together with Aino were identified based on the execution list, and their names were inscribed on a separate stone. The majority of the victims reburied here remain nameless.
Негізгі бет Zaretskoye Cemetery. Petrozavodsk, Russia. August 2023 (ENG SUBS)
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