 | You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Russian.Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Medvedev Forest massacre" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
53°01′04″N36°09′48″E / 53.01778°N 36.16333°E /53.01778; 36.16333
TheMedvedev Forest massacre (Russian:Медведевский расстрел) orOrel massacre (Орловский расстрел) was a mass execution in theSoviet Union carried out by the Soviet secret policeNKVD on 11 September 1941.[1] Less than three months after theGerman invasion of the Soviet Union, 157 political prisoners incarcerated atOryol Prison were executed in Medvedev Forest, just outside the Russian city ofOryol, on the personal order ofJoseph Stalin.[2] This execution was one of the manymassacres of prisoners hastily committed by the NKVD in 1941 in the wake of Nazi Germany's invasion.
In 1941, theOryol Prison contained some five thousand political prisoners. On 5 September 1941, on the order ofLavrentiy Beria, the NKVD composed a list of 170 Oryol prisoners to be executed. Beria claimed they formed the "more angry part of the prisoners" and that they "performed defeatist agitation and attempted to organize escapes with the aim of renewing underground activities". The list was sent to Stalin, who approved it. On 8 September, judgesVasiliy Ulrikh (as chairman of the collegium), Dmitri Kandybin and Vasiliy Bukanov, without any litigation and without any kind of investigation, formally sentenced 161 persons to death. By the time of the execution, some in the list had already died or had been transferred while others had been released.
Many of those executed were foreign citizens, among them mathematicianFritz Noether, whose liberationAlbert Einstein had demanded. Other detainees executed that day includeChristian Rakovsky,Varvara Yakovleva,Maria Spiridonova,Olga Kameneva,Garegin Apresov,Dmitry Pletnyov andSergei Efron.[3]
The Medvedev Forest massacre came less than three months afterOperation Barbarossa, and less than four weeks before the German Nazis invaded the city of Oryol. The Nazis occupied Oryol from 7 October 1941 until 5 August 1943. TheSovietRed Army liberated Oryol on 5 August 1943, during theBattle of Kursk.
Among the prisoners of the Oryol prison sentenced to execution were several prominent political figures. Christian Rakovsky, a Bulgarian by nationality, a former member of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) since 1918 and chairman of theCouncil of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1938 as part of theThird Moscow Trial as an "English and Japanese spy". Maria Spiridonova, a well-known revolutionary, one of the leaders of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, who had withdrawn from political activity in the early 1920s, was also arrested and by the time of her execution had already been serving a sentence in Oryol for a long time on charges of preparing an assassination attempt onKliment Voroshilov. Spiridonova's fate was shared by her husband, also a former Socialist Revolutionary, I. A. Mayorov, who served time in the same prison, but at the same time knew nothing about his wife's fate: the inquiries sent by Mayorov to various authorities were not answered. In the same cell with Mayorov were the former member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party V. A. Chaikin, the Socialist Revolutionary A. A. Izmailovich and the professor of Roman law atKyiv University V. V. Karpeko.
In addition to the prisoners listed above, the following were shot in the Medvedev Forest: V. V. Arnold, who was once accused of attempting to assassinateVyacheslav Molotov, former engineer ofKuzbassugol M. S. Stroilov (he, along with Arnold, was accused of sabotage), former adviser to the USSR Plenipotentiary Mission in Germany S. A. Bessonov, famous physician and professor D. D. Pletnev, convicted of involvement in the murder ofMaxim Gorky,[4] “red professor” A. Yu. Aikhenwald,[5] and responsible employee of the Comintern V. D. Kasparova.[6]
The same fate befell the former People's Commissar of Finance, left communistVarvara Yakovleva. The relatives of several prominent figures were also killed, including the sister ofLeon Trotsky and first wife ofLev Kamenev,Olga Kameneva, Olga Okudzhava (sister of previously repressed Bolsheviks Mikhail, Shalva and Nikolai Okudzhava, wife of the poetGalaktion Tabidze, aunt of Bulat Okudzhava) and the youngest son ofGrigory Petrovsky, Pyotr, as well as the brother ofNikolai Yezhov, Sergei.[7]
A significant part of the execution list consisted of Asian names: one of them was Ashurbek Khusravbekov (a native of the village of Pish, Darmorakht village council, Shugnan district, Tajik SSR, Tajik, citizen of the USSR);[6] there were especially many Chinese among those sentenced.[4]
Many of the convicted had citizenship/nationality of foreign countries or were of foreign origin. The latter included, in particular, the German mathematicianFritz Noether, for whose releaseAlbert Einstein had petitioned the USSR authorities.[3]