The Secret of Chon-Tash. June 12, 1991

The Mystery of Chon-Tash.

In the summer of '91, in the suburbs of the capital of Kyrgyzstan – Bishkek, near the village of Chon-Tash, a mass grave of human remains was discovered. A series of articles about the mysteries of the Chon-Tash area (translated from Kyrgyz as Big Stone), published in the republican newspaper “Slovo Kyrgyzstana,” sparked widespread public interest. The residents of the republic finally learned the truth about the tragic fate of their fathers, husbands, brothers, people of various nationalities who became victims of unprecedented terror.

On the hill stood single monuments made of granite, erected in memory of the deceased former residents of the village. No one could have imagined what was actually hidden at this site.

CHON-TASH, JUNE 12, 1991

The skull looked at us with empty eye sockets. Small holes were clearly visible in the occipital bone and in the right jawbone. The second skull had only one mark, in the left temple. The bullet remained inside.

Carefully, layer by layer, archaeologist Mikhail Ivanovich Moskalev and KGB officer Bolot Abdrakhmanov removed the earth. It was Büyüra Kydyralieva, a resident of the village of Chon-Tash (translated from Kyrgyz as Big Stone), who told him the story she had heard from her father.

Before his death, he, a former guard of the NKVD rest house (which existed in these places in the forties), decided to tell his daughter that he had seen how bodies were brought here and dumped.

Eighteen more years passed.

And in the spring of ninety-one, when the snow melted, the elderly woman decided to show the place where, according to her, there had been a brick firing workshop before the war.

... With each shovel stroke, the traces of brick production became more noticeable. The upper part of the walls of a small room, three by three and a half, was also revealed.

On the first day of excavations, KGB, prosecutor's office, and forensic experts managed to discover the remains of seven people. Apparently, people were literally lined up against the wall. Half-decayed galoshes (one of them clearly shows the stamp of the "Krasny Bogatyr" factory), soles (one from a car tire), two enameled mugs, even the colors were preserved - brown and green, the bottom, apparently, of one of them, with the inscription "Rostov n/D," remnants of a button, a piece of clothing. All this was carefully collected and placed in plastic bags. Forensic experts and medical examiners had a lot of work ahead of them. As Ruslan Chukin, head of the physical and technical department of the Republican Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, said, he and his colleagues had never dealt with mass graves of such scale before.

Shovels passed from hand to hand.

And the hole in the ground became wider and wider. Video and photo recordings were made of each fragment found in the ground, as investigators say. KGB officers, prosecutors, journalists, representatives of the public organizations of the Democratic Movement "Kyrgyzstan" and "Memorial" became the first witnesses of the initial steps to restore the truth, which some still wish to leave buried forever, and to bury even deeper, as deep as possible.

Colonel Alyk Orozov, head of the KGB department of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan:

- The search for mass graves of victims of repression on the territory of the republic is associated with a number of serious difficulties. First of all, there is a lack of witnesses and eyewitnesses to the crimes. Such people were usually eliminated. There are also no archival data on these actions. They were, of course, not publicized.

In accordance with the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 16, 1989, on additional measures to restore justice for the victims of repression of the 30s, 40s, and early 50s, the State Security Committee of the republic is conducting ongoing work. An investigation is being conducted to find people who may know about the locations of mass graves of the repressed. The approximate locations of possible mass graves have been established. One of them is in the Alamudun district, not far from the village of Chon-Tash.

We informed the government of the republic about this. The prosecutor's office has opened a criminal case regarding the discovery of the burial site. Its nature and size will be determined by the examination. Test excavations provide grounds to suspect the presence of a mass grave here. Our task is to gather as much information as possible about those tragic events. We rely on the help of everyone who has any information about the sites of mass shootings and burials of victims of Stalinist arbitrariness.

... In the car we arrived in, the phone rings. A few minutes later, Orozov reports: a government commission has been established to investigate all circumstances related to the burial near Chon-Tash, headed by the state secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers of the republic, Chyngyshov.

• What happened in the suburbs of Frunze decades ago?
• When exactly did the tragedy unfold here?
• Whose lives were abruptly ended here by the pull of a trigger?
• How many people found their final resting place in these hills?

Although it is impossible to call what we saw in the first hours of the excavations a grave in the generally accepted, civilized sense of the word: some of the preserved skeletons were found... in a vertical position.

They did not bury here.

They destroyed here.

Time takes everything. Even memory. But today we can still prevent it from consuming our recent history forever. Covered in darkness, veiled by the forced silence, the truth about decades of unprecedented arbitrariness and cruelty.

Today, while witnesses and survivors, children and grandchildren of the deceased are still alive, we can answer many questions.

Today we still have time.

To try to unravel the sinister mystery of other mass graves of victims of repression. Even seemingly insignificant details related to the events of those years can help establish the truth.

We must know HOW IT WAS.

... After the first hours of excavations, I returned to the city. It lived its own life: hurried, exchanged coupons, hid in the shade of still brightly green trees that had not yet turned gray.

The city did not care about what was happening under the scorching sun near the village of Chon-Tash at that moment.

Excerpt from the book "The Mystery of Chon-Tash." published with the permission of the author Regina Khelimskaya.