Мемориалное Кладбище «Пивовариха»
In the 1970s, private initiatives unsuccessfully searched for this site. It was not until September 29, 1989 that the mass graves were located through a joint initiative between the Irkutsk oblast KGB and the human rights organization “Memorial”. On October 24, 1989, the Committee of the Regional Council of People’s Deputies officially recognized the site as a cemetery of the repressed, the first such recognition of this type in the Soviet Union. The site was deemed an area of local cultural significance in 1997 and throughout the 2000s, various dedicatory plaques and individual memorials have been placed at the site. The site is currently maintained by the city as well as private individuals.
When visiting this site, the first thing that becomes apparent is its isolated location outside of the city. There are no signs in the city or on the way to the site indicating its location. Additionally, the dirt roads to the site are poorly maintained and impassable after rain. The barbed wire barrier at the east end of the runway for the Irkutsk airport is visible from the parking area outside of the memorial and planes roared above us as we visited the memorial. Our immediate question upon arriving at the site was: How many citizens in Irkutsk know this site exists? Following the research portion of the project and after questioning several acquaintances form Irkutsk, there was a general impression that knowledge of this site was rare and those who did know about it were older than 40 years old and had lived in the area for that duration.
In the interview with Alexei Viktorovich, the topic of the Memorial Cemetery at Pivovarikha was also addressed. He was not surprised that many people we talked to had not heard of the site because public discussion of the site in Irkutsk largely did not exist. He did not seem uneasy speaking about this topic, but he conveyed that public discussions and open forums about things like the Purges and the city’s connection at Pivovarikha had become much more difficult to have over the past 15-17 years. The positive points of the Soviet Union have taken priority in the discussion of the past and as such, these topics have fallen out of public thought. Alexei Viktorovich did not recognize this as merely a local phenomenon, but tied it to the rhetoric of Moscow that was echoed throughout the country by regional officials.
Regarding local knowledge of the site, Alexei Vikotorvich acknowledged that because it isn’t openly discussed, there are many Irkutians who do not know about the site just 15 minutes outside of the city center. October 30th, the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Oppression, is the one day a year in which buses run from the city center to take people, largely relatives of those buried in the graves, to the memorial cemetery.