Remains may be from Stalin era
Workers rebuilding a 19th century Moscow house unearthed the remains of nearly three dozen people apparently dating back nearly 70 years to the era of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s political purges, police said Thursday.
Police also found a rusted pistol on the estate where the remains of an estimated 34 people were found, some of which bore gunshots to the head, said police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev.
The remains were found Wednesday under a basement of one of the estate’s buildings, and more could be there, he said.
The buildings, which once were the property of a well-known czarist-era noble family, are located several hundred yards from the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB where many political prisoners were interrogated and executed.
Political killings and purges of the government and Communist Party orchestrated by Stalin’s secret police, what came to be known as the Great Terror, reached their apex in 1937.
An estimated 1.7 million people were arrested during the years 1937 and 1938 by the security services alone, and at least 818,000 of them were shot.
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