The following is a declassified Secret report filed by Vitaliy Fedorchuk, at the time the Chairman of the Ukrainian Committee for State Security, regarding the discovery of the now infamous mass grave site in Bykvinya, near Kyiv. Following up on the news that a number of juveniles had unearthed gold dental work and skeletal human remains from a forest, police found a site that was estimated to contain the remains of about 2,000 “apparently local residents” from the World War Two era.
We now know that this forest was the location where as many as 30,000 people, many branded as ‘enemies of the state’ by Stalin, were brought to be executed and buried, including ethnic Poles living in Ukraine, executed by the NKVD as early as 1937. Efforts are still being undertaken to fully exhume, identify, and give a proper reburial for the victims, but thus far, only 10,000 of the victims have been located and reinterred.
COMMITTEE OF STATE SECURITY
under the COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR
16 April 1971 No. 272-1 Kyiv
Secret
Copy No. 1
CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF UKRAINE
On 13 April 1971, police personnel took into custody three juveniles who, in a forest near the hamlet of Bykivnya in the Dniprovskyi District of Kyiv, approximately 2.5 km from the motorway to Brovary, unearthed a grave containing human remains and withdrew gold crownwork and teeth.
During an inspection of the site, 19 slightly exposed graves were discovered, from which the juveniles had extracted more than one hundred skeletal remains – skulls and bones. It was established that 16 juveniles partook in unearthing the graves; the juveniles are from among the residents of the village of Darnitskiy steam locomotive repair plant.
In the area near the opened graves, based on external signs (depressions), more than one hundred such graves were counted. On 15 April, a committee consisting of the district prosecutor, representatives of the MVD and KGB under the SM USSR, with the participation of a forensic medical examiner, exhumed one of the graves and withdrew from it 25 skeletal human remains.
The majority of the well-preserved skulls exhibit bullet holes, which indicates that those buried in the graves were executed.
Clothing and toilet articles were also removed from the grave: men’s and women’s footwear, toothbrushes, combs, and a small metal saucepan and mugs, plastic-rimmed eyeglasses, wallets, a wooden snuffbox, belts, and other items.
Some of the men’s and women’s footwear taken from the grave (rubber galoshes, boots), as well as the combs, toothbrushes, metal saucepan and mugs, are foreign-made. One of the graves also contained two glass half-liter bottles with a manufacture date of February 1939.
Based on the information gathered, the following tentative conclusions can be drawn:
– the events associated with the execution of the persons buried in these discovered graves date back to the Great Patriotic War;
– the dead, prior to their killing, weren’t in a prison, but in all likelihood were held in a camp;
– the number of those executed and buried in these graves number approximately two thousand;
– for the most part, the dead were apparently local residents.
The site of the discovered graves was secured by the Kyiv police.
The authorities of the prosecutor’s office, MVD, and KGB are making arrangements to establish the facts surrounding the mass execution.
CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE FOR STATE SECURITY
under the COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE UKRAINIAN SSR
V. FEDORCHUK
Translating History 