🏛 Butovo firing range and the Church of the New Martyrs

Московская обл., пос. Боброво, Юбилейная ул., 2

A site of mass executions in 1937–1938: more than 20,000 names on the steles of the Garden of Memory, with the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia next to it.

In the late 19th century there was the Kosmodamianskoye-Drozhzhino estate here, and in 1889 its owner N. M. Solovyov set up a horse stud with a racetrack.
In 1934 about 2 km² were fenced off with a solid fence and turned into an NKVD shooting range.
From 8 August 1937 to 19 October 1938, 20,765 people were shot here; the most on a single day — 562 people — on 28 February 1938.
The bodies were buried in 13 trenches with a total length of 900 meters.
Among those shot were Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov), the avant-garde artist Gustav Klutsis and the actress Maria Leiko.
Patriarch Alexy II called the Butovo firing range the "Russian Golgotha".
The tented Church of the New Martyrs was consecrated on 19 May 2007; 51 icons hang on its walls — one for each day of executions.

Part of these routes

Butovo: a park, remembrance and an estate