Левашовская пустошь

What secrets lie beneath the silent earth? We stand before Levashovskaya Pustosh, the Levashovo Memorial Cemetery. It’s a place haunted by whispers of the past, a chilling testament to a dark chapter in Saint Petersburg’s history. Levashovo Memorial Cemetery isn’t your typical cemetery. For over 50 years, it was a secret, concealed by the KGB. This place holds the remains of approximately 45,000 victims of Stalin’s political repression, executed without trial between 1937 and 1954. Imagine the trucks arriving, mostly at night, carrying the bodies of those deemed enemies of the state. The NKVD had quotas to fill: thousands to be imprisoned, thousands more to be shot. Among the victims were those accused of aiding German fascism: Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Finns, Estonians. Others were labeled spies and saboteurs, often based on flimsy evidence like family ties abroad or simply knowing a foreign language. In 1937 and 1938 alone, over 40,000 people were executed in Leningrad. Levashovo Memorial Cemetery, then known as the “Levashovskaya Wasteland,” became their final resting place. The secret services continued to use this grim location into the 1950s. The land was fenced off, the forest grew thick, and guards poured sand over the shallow graves, trying to erase the evidence of their crimes. It wasn’t until 1989, during the era of Perestroika and Glasnost, that the truth about Levashovo began to emerge. The cemetery was declassified and transferred to the city. Now, a bell tower stands here, along with numerous memorials. These monuments commemorate the diverse groups targeted by the Great Terror. There are memorials to Assyrians, Jews, Norwegians, energy workers, even the deaf and dumb and Seventh Day Adventists. Individual monuments and gravestones, placed by families of the victims, dot the landscape, a poignant reminder of the lives lost. Levashovo Memorial Cemetery is a place of profound sadness. It’s also a place of remembrance, a stark reminder of the importance of vigilance and the fight for justice.