Butovo firing range

Butovo on the southern outskirts of Moscow is one of the most important memorials to the victims of the Stalinist terror. Between August 1937 and October 1938 the NKVD shot more than 20,760 people here in just fourteen months, including clergy, peasants, scientists and diplomats from 73 nationalities. The execution pits inside a former apple orchard were systematically documented from 1995 onward. The site holds the small wooden Church of the New Martyrs and the larger Church of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, consecrated in 2007. A memorial wall listing the names of every documented victim runs alongside the mass graves. Listed as a regional heritage site, Butovo is among the most affecting political memorials in post-Soviet Russia.