Stalin-Era Mass Graves So Ubiquitous Russian Officials Don’t Know What to Do with Them

Eurasia - New Series ^ | Feb 26 2019

[CondoleezzaProtege]

The millions of people the Stalin system killed did not disappear into thin air: they were buried typically in mass graves that Russia today has inherited but whose people and officials do not know what to do with them. As a result, they remain a continuing wound on the body of the country, Anastasiya Platonova of Takiye dela says.

The Soviet system has left behind “cemeteries of the victims of political repressions: mass burials of those shot as well as small cemeteries of the camps and special settlements,” she continues. Some have been studied, but most have not, despite the interests of relatives and society in dealing with this legacy.

Once people began to learn the details of the deaths of their ancestors, their first question in many cases she says was “where are they buried?” During the 1990s, some 120 mass graves were identified, Irina Fliga of Memorial says; but taking the next step of identifying individual victims was hampered by lack of records and the resistance of the authorities and the church.

Moreover, many cases – and Platonova documents some of these – officials had already constructed buildings or roads over the sites, making it even more difficult to treat the victims of Stalin with the respect that they deserve. And things have only gotten worse in recent years with the FSB and the Russian Orthodox Church throwing up roadblocks of various kinds.

Some other countries whose populations were victimized by Stalin’s system have shown that it is possible to address this problem more adequately, with Lithuania and Poland being two prominent examples where governments have taken active roles in protecting the graves and identifying as many of the bodies as possible, Platonova says.

Unfortunately, in Russia, one can count on one’s hands the few cases of professional exhumation and personal identification. But what may be even worse, Flige adds, is that “in Russia, there is still no public demand for the personal identification of those who were shot.” There is no agreement among Russians even that every victim should have the right to a grave.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

A simple search on Spain and mass graves will bring up plenty of information on the subject. A lot of the people involved are still alive so it’s a pretty sore subject here.

[cowboyusa]

Communism is far worse, it killed more in a far shorter amount of time.

[gundog]

And that sets the stage for continued conflict; atheism vs. a religion of death.

[otness_e]

That story sounds very similar to what Brigadier Louis Grignon and General Louis Marie Turreau ordered during the Vendee, if Les 12 Colonnes infernales de Turreau by Nicolas Delahaye et Pierre-Marie Gaborit and Vendée : du génocide au mémoricide by Reynald Secher are of anything to go by. Then again, Marxism itself was derived from the gory aspects of the French Revolution by Marx and Lenin's own admission. That last bit about your description of what the Soviets did with recaptured territory or, heck, especially when capturing German, Hungarian, or Romanian territory, also reminds me a lot of this sequence from Metroid Volume 1 when the Space Pirates at Ridley's urging "cut loose" on K-2L and slaughtered everyone. Guess that means Ridley's a Soviet officer/political commissar, the Space Pirates are a bunch of Soviet soldiery, and the populace of K-2L are a bunch of Hungarian/German/Romanian citizenry, especially Romanian citizenry considering they deserved what they got from the Soviets even LESS than the Germans and Hungarians did. Just all the more reason why Soviet horrors need to be exposed, even moreso than Nazi horrors. At least we've got a LOT of Nazi horrors exposed, while with Communist horrors we get a scarce amount.

[otness_e]

In case the images don’t display despite doing everything to display them, here are where the images came from:

Image 1: http://metroid.retropixel.net/features/comics/metroidmanga/chapter1/metroid_v1_ch1_21.jpg

Image 2: http://metroid.retropixel.net/features/comics/metroidmanga/chapter1/metroid_v1_ch1_22.jpg

Image 3: http://metroid.retropixel.net/features/comics/metroidmanga/chapter1/metroid_v1_ch1_23.jpg

Image 4: http://metroid.retropixel.net/features/comics/metroidmanga/chapter1/metroid_v1_ch1_24.jpg

Image 5: http://metroid.retropixel.net/features/comics/metroidmanga/chapter1/metroid_v1_ch1_25.jpg

[otness_e]

Trying again. So, yeah, as I said, the bits about Soviet soldiers cutting loose under the permission of officers and political commissars to demoralize enemies as well as being encouraged to loot pillage, rape, and massacre civilians in captured enemy territory reminded me of the above.

[Reily]

Stalin needed to eliminate a lot of those high ranking guys because they probably had the goods on him about working for the Okhrana prior to the revolution.

[blueunicorn6]

That is a total ripoff of Green Eggs And Ham.

[otness_e]

Green Eggs and Ham didn’t involve a wholesale slaughter of people for fuel and also to “cut loose”, last I checked. That just involved... well, a grouch being a picky eater against eating literal green eggs and similarly-colored ham. This isn’t even close to similar, let alone a ripoff.

And in any case, I only showed those images because what the guy mentioned above about how Soviets did World War II and the horrors of that just reminded me of those pages.