During the Second World War deported Lithuanians were buried in the Machishchenskoe graveyard in Biisk. In 1945-1947, Japanese POWs were buried there. The graveyard was closed to further interments in 1962. In the early 1970s, the Japanese burials were partially destroyed during building work.
In 1990, a Lithuanian delegation of former deportees erected a Lithuanian commemorative cross in the graveyard and in 1998 they added a monument. The inscription in Russian and Lithuanian reads: “To the citizens of Lithuania who perished in exile in the Altai, 1941-1945”.
Research on the Genocide of the Lithuanian People (Lietuvos gyventoju Genocidas; 3 vols. 1999-2009) contains about 130,000 biographical entries (in Lithuanian) and see Deportation of Lithuanians, 1941-1951 for the 28 other burial grounds and commemorative sites on the Map of Memory.
The 2025 Memorial database lists 46,525 (BR 45,668) victims in the Altai Region (Krai) but does not refer to Lithuanian deportees.
15,028 were shot, most during the Great Terror (12,509). Charges were dropped in 3,219 cases, 194 having died in custody. Мore than 24,000 were held in the camps, where 425 died; about 2,400 were deported, including the families of over seven hundred men shot or sent to the camps. In addition, the database includes 857 names from police records with very little information.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries |
|---|---|---|
|
have not survived
|
not established
|
not delineated
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
Materials of an expedition to the Altai Krai (2011) – archive of RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
V. Popov, “A small island of the mournful archipelago”, Nash Biisk: gorodskaya obshchestvenno-politicheskaya gazeta, 30 August 2013
“Machishchenskoe graveyard in Biisk”, Virtual Museum of the Gulag [retrieved, 27 May 2022; no longer accessible]
