One place where the executed inhabitants of Achinsk and nearby districts of the Krasnoyarsk Krai were buried in the 1930s was the area along the Irkutsk-Chita Highway. There are also reports that the execution of those condemned to death took place here during the Great Terror (1937-1938).
When the landing strips of Kirensk airport were rebuilt and enlarged in 1976 many human remains and items dating from the 1930s were found. The bones and other objects were pushed into nearby ravines by bulldozers and covered with earth.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Memorial Society gathered evidence from eyewitnesses in Achinsk about the places where the victims of political repression were buried [24-15], including the area near the airport.
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression in the Krasnoyarsk Krai (13 vols. 2004-2014) includes biographical entries for 45,400 who were shot or sent to the camps.
The Memorial online database (2021) includes 55,742 names of victims in the Krasnoyarsk Krai (Region).
16,652 were shot, most during the Great Terror (15,032). Charges were dropped against another 8,568 individuals; 550 of them died in captivity. 22,000 were held in the camps: over 8,000 of them were arrested in 1937-1938. 8,000 were deported to special settlements in other parts of the USSR.
The Open List database names 843 who were shot in Achinsk during the Terror.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
have not survived
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]
L. Zapolskaya, L. Orlovsky, “Runways where the ‘Yak-42’ take off”, website of the Krasnoyarsk Memorial Society
P. Lopatin, “The fate of the country in the life of one family”, Krasnoyarsky rabochy, 30 October 2009
*
Reply by the Achinsk City administration (27 June 2014) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial; Appendix: witness depositions (RIC Memorial archive, St Petersburg)
