One of the places of burial for the executed and those who died in Kazan’s prisons between 1918 and the 1940s was the Arkhangelskoe cemetery. Their exact number is unknown.
In 1998, thanks to a proposal by the Memorial Society in Kazan, a memorial complex was created in a free area of the cemetery by the city’s administration. The complex includes a boulder bearing a commemorative plaque with the words, in both Russian and Tatar: “Never forget those shot during the years of political repression!” Nearby stand ten marble pillars with the names of 2,760 people executed between 1929 and 1942 (see The Great Terror in Kazan, 1937-1938).
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression, The Republic of Tatarstan (18 vols. 2000-2007) includes biographical entries on 52,000 individuals shot or sent to the Gulag.
The Memorial online database (2025) lists 101,127 victims in Tatarstan (BR 50,506).
Under 2,000-3,000 are listed as born in the Republic or resident there. 5,706 were shot, many during the Great Terror (4,272); charges against almost 10,000 were dropped – 131 of them died while in detention. 28,000 were sent to the camps and over 4,000 were deported. Police records name another 50,000, most of whom were expelled from the Republic in 1930-1933, to the Chelyabinsk Region (20,000) in the Urals, the Perm or Chita Regions (4,098), or who were born (7,003) in exile.
The Tatarstan Book of Remembrance (MDB 2025) claims that over 3,000 died in captivity, almost all in the camps.
| Date | Nature of ceremonies | Organiser or responsible person | Participants | Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
30 October
|
Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression
|
Kazan City Administration
|
City officials, members of Kazan Memorial Society, participants from Muslim, Orthodox and Cathoic confessions;and school children
|
Annual event
|
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
Have not survived
|
not defined
|
not delineated
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
A. Stepanov, A quota for execution: From the history of political repression in the Tatar ASSR during the “Yezhovshchina”, Kazan: Novoe znanie, 1999
Reply by Tatarstan ministry of internal affairs (No 5/3566 of 14 July 2004) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
Reply by the deputy prime minister of Tatarstan (No 20-56/4267 of 29 April 2014) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
Reply by the Republic of Tatarstan FSB (No 8/7617 of 21 June 2014) to a formal enquiry from RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
