Butovsky Firing Range, A Religious Response to the Past

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A small wooden structure built at the center of the Butovsky Firing Range, the Russian Orthodox church focuses on commemorating fallen religious martyrs under Stalin’s Terror.

Located at the southern edge of Moscow’s suburbs, the Butovsky Firing range is the site of Moscow’s closest mass shooting grounds reportedly killing over 20,000 during Stalin’s purges (1). In August 1937, the head of NKVD built a barbed fence around the perimeter and heavily controlled the area, secretly murdering thousands of diverse Russian inhabitants. The state planted apple trees over the mass burial land to cover up the bones underneath and area of final stage killings was kept a political secret by the KBG until 1995.  What has been highlighted about this execution site, however, was the high proportion of Russian Orthodox Christians that were brought into the location. In fact, the Butovsky site is seen as a reflection of the deeper underlying issues between Stalin’s atheistic regime and the religious Russian society during the Grand Terror (2). Over 1,000 of the sites murdered victims were Russian Orthodox, and in response, the Russian Orthodox church decided to canonize the fallen victims as religious martyrs. A small wooden church was erected in 1995 as both a religious and commemoration site for the victims. Individual personal items found in the graveyard and icons of the new martyrs are kept inside the church, while the outside boasts a long row of grey plaques with victim names. Victim photographs lining the grounds eliminate the secrecy of the site, bringing to light the thousands who were buried and forgotten underneath (3).

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A main feature of the Butovsky memorial site are the photographs of victims buried underneath the site.

The construction of the modern day Butovo Church of New Martyrs and Confessors was entirely financed by the Russian Orthodox church and grass-roots donations “to fill the void left by the state”(4). The site has raised several criticisms for its narrow focus on Orthodox causalities, yet it is a remarkable example of a religious historical narrative of the mass terror that swept the country. By focusing on the victims as martyrs and their connection to the Church, the narrative instantly separates itself from the secular terror it faced during the political prosecution. By focusing on its Orthodox victims, it stands as a defiant rejection of the Bolsheviks attempt to eliminate their faith: it gives the secular narrative that harmed its community no place to interject. Choosing to tell their historical narrative their own way in itself is a shift the religious power dynamics of the city. 

 

  1. Kishkovsky, Sophia. “Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin’s Victims.” The New York Times, 08. Jun. 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/world/europe/08butovo.html?_r=0.
  2. Ibid.
  3. Annin, Alexander. “Mass Grave in Moscow Suburbs is Among Russia’s Holiest Sites.” The Moscow Times, 06. May 2014. https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/mass-grave-in-moscow-suburbs-is-among-russias-holiest-sites-35106.
  4. Kishkovsky, Sophia. “Former Killing Ground Becomes Shrine to Stalin’s Victims.” The New York Times, 08. Jun. 2007. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/world/europe/08butovo.html?_r=0.