Lesnaya Polyana. Burials of No 11 colony prisoners | Russia's Necropolis of Terror and the Gulag

Lesnaya Polyana. Burials of No 11 colony prisoners

Card

№73-05

Date of burial
1936-1964
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Address
Ulyanovsk Region, Staromainsky district, Lesnaya Polyana settlement
Access outside a populated area
Private or specialised transport
On foot
Comments
One km from the settlement
Visiting Hours or Restrictions
Unrestricted
Type of burial
Camp (prison) burial ground
Current use
Unused
Presence of memorials, etc.
No
Protected status
Not protected
Background

Corrective-labour colony No. 11 was based at Lesozavod (Timber mill) settlement from 1936 to 1964. The prisoners were employed felling trees and building a narrow-gauge railway. Those who died were buried in the graveyards of the nearest villages, Bolshie and Malye Kandaly, and in the woods one kilometre to the west of Lesozavod.

Old inhabitants recall that prisoners were first buried in common graves at the Bolshekandaly graveyard; then their graves were moved to an unpopulated area. Local historians estimate that several thousand were interred on the outskirts of the former colony. Today only the traces of a few camp burials survive. In August 2010 the area was studied by journalists from the online magazine, “Ulyanovsk, a City of News”, and they interviewed the inhabitants of neighbouring villages.

Books of Remembrance

A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression: Ulyanovsk Region (2 vols. 1996 & 2001) contains 13,600 biographical entries for those shot or sent to the Gulag; vol. 2 includes 2,500 entries on Soviet German forced settlers in the region.

Nature of area requiring preservation
State of burialsAreaBoundaries
characteristic subsidence
not determined
not delineated
Administrative responsibility and ownership, informal responsibility for the site
On land under the control of the Staromainsky district administration
Sources and bibliography

[ Original texts & hyperlinks ]

A. Pavlov, “The Gulag in the forests of the Ulyanovsk Region”, Ulyanovsk, City of News, 3 August 2010 [retrieved, 29 May 2022]

“The Lesnaya Polyana settlement; the Kandalinskoe rural settlement”, Staromainsky municipal district

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