According to media reports, the prosecutor’s office of the Moscow Region is checking on possible plans for commercial construction on a site in the village of Pavlovskaya Sloboda, Istra district, where the mass grave of Soviet soldiers who died in the battle for Moscow in 1941 is located.

“During the prosecutor’s audit, a legal assessment of the actions of those responsible will be given. In the event that violations of the law are established, appropriate response measures will be immediately taken, ”the agency said in an official statement.

It is specified that the prosecutor of the region Sergey Zabaturin personally monitors the progress of the audit.

The fact that the land on which about a thousand Soviet soldiers were buried during the Great Patriotic War is in private hands and can be used for the construction of commercial facilities, it became known thanks to the staff of the private Museum of Russian Military History, located in the village of Padikovo, not far from the village Pavlovskaya Sloboda, where the mass grave is located.

Padikovo was the last frontierdefense of Moscow in 1941 - according to the deputy director of the museum Vasily Zabolotny, in November-December 1941, about two thousand Soviet soldiers died here.

Studying the course of the battles and the losses of the Soviet side, the museum historians came to the conclusion that in the vicinity of the village there is a mass grave of soldiers who died in battles for Moscow.

“There were small scattered graves of 10-12 people each, but examining the old passports for the graves of the Ministry of Defense, we found out that there is a mass grave for a thousand people. In her search, we came across a grove in front of which stood an obelisk. To put it mildly, this grove was not well-groomed, ”said RT Zabolotny.

Private owner

Representatives of the museum turned to the local administration with a request to carry out work on the improvement of the burial: paint the monument and the fence, remove dead wood from the grove. However, it turned out that according to the documents, the administration has only a small area around the obelisk and the path leading to it. The whole grove, in which, according to museum staff, and a thousand soldiers are buried, is in private hands.

“It turned out that as early as the beginning of the 2000s this grove was successfully privatized. Apparently, this was possible because the burial passport, where about a thousand Soviet soldiers were buried, indicated the burial size: 8x9 meters. It is clear to any sane person that it is impossible to bury a thousand people at such a site. But, obviously, the administration did not deal with this, ”Zabolotny believes.

According to representatives of the museum, when they turned to the Istra administration with a request to clarify why the site with the mass grave of the Great Patriotic War, possibly located on it, is in private hands, local officials said that the burial passport was lost.

RT was unable to obtain an operational comment from the administration of the Istra city district on this issue.

However, museum staff also sought clarification from the Russian Ministry of Defense, and Andrei Taranov, chairman of the commission to perpetuate the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland, confirmed that there is information about the burial place, including his passport, at the Ministry of Defense.

The document says that about a thousand soldiers are actually buried in a mass grave in Pavlovskaya Sloboda, but the area of ​​the burial site is only 8x9 square meters.

Two graves

The site in Pavlovskaya Sloboda acquired its current owner in 2013 - now the land surrounding the obelisk in memory of the dead defenders of Moscow belongs to businessman Yuri Yakubov. In 2016, he attracted search engines to research the land for unburied remains. About this RT said the representative and business partner of Yakubov Viktor Kaloshin.

“We turned to the search movement in Russia, they provided us with one of their members to conduct search operations. Search engines discovered the remains of 43 fighters, one of which was identified. They were reburied at the mass grave in Pavlovskaya Sloboda, ”said Kaloshin.

Representatives of the Museum of Russian Military History insist that search engines worked only in the immediate vicinity of the obelisk and found not all soldiers buried in the area. They even managed to find an eyewitness to the events of 1941, which confirmed these fears. It turned out that a local resident Anatoly Chistov, as a boy, ended up in a funeral team engaged in the burial of those who died in battles for Moscow.

“He is completely in his right mind and firm memory, he tells everything very clearly and in all details. He even recalled the names of classmates, with whom they buried these soldiers in 1941, ”assures Vasily Zabolotny.

Museum staff brought Anatoly Chistov to the soldiers' burial place, and the man remembered that there were two pits where the dead were put. In one grave, according to an eyewitness, about fifty people were buried - these words are confirmed by the find of search engines. But in the second, large grave, there were much more buried people, says Chistov.

“Grandfather said that there was another pit, a big one,” Zabolotny explained. “How many soldiers were buried there exactly, he couldn’t say because he didn’t count - but he’s sure there are more than a hundred people. It is clear that he, as a child, and in those conditions could not accurately calculate. But he remembers that the next summer after the burial, the grave began to swell, because it was buried at a shallow depth, and the bodies, decomposing, raised the ground. "

Will there be a construction site?

The Museum of Russian Military History in Padikov insists that land owned by businessman Yakubov should be protected by the state. According to Vasily Zabolotny, now the owner has the right to legally carry out construction on this land, including commercial facilities.

At the same time, the representative of the owner of the land, businessman Viktor Kaloshin, emphasizes that the media are now “misinforming” about plans to build a hotel and a private school on a site in Pavlovskaya Sloboda. According to him, the construction of such real estate on this land was not planned and, in principle, impossible.

“No one was going to build there a hotel or a school. In fact, these are words taken out of context that simply became an official occasion for all this scandal. This is agricultural land. How is it possible to build capital real estate on agricultural land? Let someone say and give a clear explanation for this, ”Kaloshin said in an interview with RT.

The Museum of Russian Military History, however, believes that businessmen are heartbreaking - according to Zabolotny, this is evidenced by the fact that during the time Yakubov owned the site, the status of the land was officially changed: “Now you can build anything on it - right up to to the store or car service. " 

The USRN extract on the site adjacent to the obelisk at the mass grave in Pavlovskaya Sloboda (available to RT) does indicate that the land is allowed to be used for the construction of "public services, shops, catering, and motor vehicle services."

The museum admits that now no construction work is being carried out on the site belonging to Yakubov. However, after excavations in 2016, when the remains of 43 Soviet soldiers were discovered, the grove around the obelisk in memory of the defenders of Moscow remained dug up.

“Suppose the monument itself is landscaped, but in the grove to the left of it begins the“ moon landscape ”. Due to excavations on the site, there are now huge gaping holes. Such lands should have the status of objects under state protection. Clear boundaries must be observed: yes, there is already an open grave here, but there may be one more - and this is important to fix officially, so that in ten years, and in general, no one would ever want something there to build, ”concluded Zabolotny.