September 11: In memory of political prisoners executed in the Medvedev Forest near Orel
On September 11, 1941, in the Medvedev forest near Eagle According to Beria's personal list, NKVD officers executed 157 political prisoners. Among them were the leader of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, Maria Spiridonova, Trotsky's sister, and Bulat Okudzhava's aunt.
Apply the highest measure of punishment - execution.
(Chairman of the State Defense Committee I. Stalin)
Why weren't the "politicals" evacuated from Orel?
Due to the active advance of German troops, Oryol was on the verge of surrender. The Soviet Party leadership was afraid to leave behind political prisoners from the Oryol Central Prison—prominent oppositionists, revolutionaries, party members, and academics—behind Nazi lines. As the Germans approached Oryol, all repeat offenders were transferred to camps further inland, but the "political" prisoners were retained.
Beria called those on the execution list "the most embittered portion" of those incarcerated in Oryol Prison. All had been convicted at various times of terrorist, espionage, sabotage, and counterrevolutionary activities.
They are conducting defeatist propaganda and trying to prepare escapes for the resumption of subversive work.
(from Beria's letter)
A hastily compiled list
The secret decree of the State Defense Committee was signed personally by Stalin on the same day he saw the list of 170 people, September 6.
Two days later, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced 161 people to death by firing squad. The remaining nine people on the list, it turned out, had either died or been released by that time—the NKVD had compiled the list in a hurry.
When the sentence was carried out, four more "extra" people were discovered—some had been transferred to other places of detention; some had never been held at the Oryol Central Prison (they would be executed between September 13 and 18).
Who was shot in Medvedev Forest?
The remaining list included political opponents of the government and “enemies of the people” – the former head of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR and a close associate of Trotsky Christian Rakovsky, leader of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, an ideological opponent of Lenin Maria Spiridonova (accused of attempting to assassinate Voroshilov) and her husband Ilya Mayorov, head of the Kuzbass mines Valentin Arnold (accused of attempting to assassinate Molotov), and also Olga Okudzhava (Bulat Okudzhava's aunt), Trotsky's sister and Kamenev's wife Olga Bronstein (Kameneva).
Among the engineers and scientists is a professor of Roman law at the University of Kyiv Vladimir Karpenko, the "red professor" and the Bukharinite Alexander Aikhenvald, Soviet economist Ilya Rubin, diplomat Sergey Bessonov, the doctor who treated Lenin Dmitry Pletnev (accused as an accomplice in the murder of Gorky).
Among the foreigners is a German mathematician Fritz Noether, for whose release he petitioned the USSR authorities Albert Einstein.
How the execution took place
The order to execute the prisoners arrived at the Oryol Central Prison at the height of the German bombing raids, when some prisoners had already begun to be evacuated. They had to act quickly and secretly.
Approximately 200 convicts remained in the cells with those scheduled for execution. This was done to disguise the upcoming execution [they were evacuated the day after the execution].
(former head of the NKVD Directorate for the Oryol Region, Kondraty Firsanov)
Before leaving for the execution site, each condemned man was gagged with a cloth and tied with a rag, and only then was the death sentence read. Afterward, they were led by the arms into the prison yard, loaded into a bulletproof car, and driven into the forest.
According to the former head of the regional NKVD, trees from the burial sites of those executed were first dug up along with their roots, and then replanted after the burial.
Three weeks later, Oryol was captured by the Germans. During this time, NKVD officers visited Medvedev Forest disguised as mushroom pickers to conduct inspections—according to their reports, "the security situation was not disturbed."
Rehabilitation without guilt
The executed men were rehabilitated in 1990. The military prosecutor's office concluded that the decision of the members of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court was not criminal, since it was made on the basis of a resolution of the USSR State Defense Committee—the highest state authority at the time.
The executors of the sentence were found not guilty, since they “could not have known that this court decision was illegal.”
