Новая граница массовых захоронений репрессированных 1930-х — 1950-х гг. в районе Мемориального комплекса на 12-м километре Московского тракта в городе Екатеринбурге

Abstract

The article presents the results of archaeological search work undertaken in 2017–2022 to clarify the boundaries of the distribution of mass graves of the 1930–1950s repressed people in the area of the Memorial complex on the 12th kilometer of the Ekaterinburg — Perm motorway (Moscow highway). The functional purpose of the site was established in 1990 during a partial exhumation by the prosecutor’s office. The question of the distribution of human burials was raised during additional engineering-geological and geophysical surveys in 1992, carried out by the UralTISIZ enterprise. However, no further work was undertaken for a quarter of a century. The question of the boundaries of the necropolis remained open. Moreover, during the construction of the Memorial Complex to the Victims of Political Repression in 1996 and during its subsequent reconstruction, part of the site with mass graves entered the development zone without proper research and exhumation procedures. During the 2017–2022 research work, for the first time the border of the NKVD testing ground has been established, within which death sentences were carried out and the bodies of the repressed were buried. The boundaries of the necropolis — the so-called Southern zone of mass graves — were determined. The mass graves of the repressed, untouched as a result of subsequent anthropogenic impact, were counted and described. Methodological approaches to further examination of the NKVD test site of the 1930-1950s on the 12th kilometer of the Ekaterinburg — Perm motorway (Moscow highway) were formed.