In the 1930s, the bodies of those who had been shot in Kalinin Region NKVD building [69-01] in Kalinin (Tver) were buried in the northern section of the city’s Volynskoe graveyard. Some sources suggested that executions and burials were also carried out in the graveyard in the post-war years: this information is based on testimony by many of the city’s inhabitants and of former NKVD employees.
In 1989 and 1990, members of the Tver branch of Memorial, aided by the city commission for rehabilitation, searched in vain for the location of such mass burials. Subsequently, in 2005, the remains of 70 individuals with bullet holes in their skulls were discovered when the church of the Blessed Seraphim of Sarov was being built next to a suspected mass burial. Expert assessment confirmed the date and origin of the remains and on 30 October 2005 they were reburied in the south wall of the church and a memorial plaque was affixed there. An Orthodox cross was erected over the place where the burials were found.
A Book in Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression of the Kalinin Region (4 vols. 2000-2015) includes biographical entries on 9,400 who were shot or sent to the camps.
The Memorial online database (2025) lists 15,980 victims from the Tver Region (BR 10,099).
The Kalinin Region Book of Remembrance names 4,225 who were shot, most during the Great Terror (3,665). Charges against another 1,286 were dropped; 92 of them died in custody. 2606 were sent to the camps where 63 deaths are recorded. Familes and individuals (total 1,261) were deported from the Region, mainly to Kazakhstan (510) and the Northern Region (447).
Police records add many more local families and individuals (total 5,881), almost all of whom were “dekulakised”: three quarters were deported to other parts of the country in 1930-1931.
| State of burials | Area | Boundaries | Other sites in same area |
|---|---|---|---|
|
reburial in good condition and marked by a memorial
|
not determined
|
not delineated
|
Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov
|
[ original texts and hyperlinks ]
S.N. Pogorelov, The varied fates of Volyn in the Tver Region, Tver, 2009, 75 pp.
Along the Paths of Memory: Visits to places in Tver and the Tver Region linked to repressive political measures from 1930 to the 1940s: A Guide, Tver, 2009, 28 pp.
Official website of the Church of the Blessed Seraphim of Sarov
*
Reply by the Tver City Administration (№ 02/2730 of 21 May 2014) to a formal enquiry by RIC Memorial (St Petersburg)
