Bykivnia

Bykivnia graves
Ukrainian: Биківнянські могили
Bykivnia central monument
Map of Bykivnia grave site
50°28′N 30°42′E / 50.467°N 30.700°E / 50.467; 30.700Coordinates: 50°28′N 30°42′E / 50.467°N 30.700°E / 50.467; 30.700
Location	Kiev, Ukraine
Founded	April 30, 1994 (as a complex).
Purpose	"To commemorate the victims of political repressions".
Architects	M.Kysly, R.Kukharenko, V.Chepelyk (sculptor).
Designation	Historic complex of Ukraine
Established	April 30, 1994.
Type	Memorial site
Prescribed	May 22, 2001.
Declared	National monument, May 17, 2006.

The Bykivnia graves (Ukrainian: Биківнянські могили) is a National Historic Memorial on the site of the former village of Bykivnia (Ukrainian: Биківня, Russian: Быковня, Polish: Bykownia) on the outskirts of Kiev. During the Stalinist period in the Soviet Union, it was one of the unmarked mass grave sites where the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, disposed of thousands of executed "enemies of the Soviet state".

The number of dead bodies buried there is estimated between "dozens of thousand," to 30,000, to 100,000 and up to 120,000, though some estimates place the number as high as 200,000 or even 225,000.

From the early 1920s until late 1940s throughout the Stalinist purges, the Soviet government hauled the bodies of tortured and killed political prisoners to the pine forests outside the village of Bykivnia and buried them in a grave that spanned 15,000 square metres (160,000 sq ft). So far, 210 separate mass graves have been identified by Polish and Ukrainian archaeologists working at the site. During the Soviet retreat in the early stages of the Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army troops levelled the village to the ground. The mass grave site was discovered by the Germans along with many other such sites throughout the Soviet Union. However, following the discovery of the Katyn massacre, the burial sites of Bykivnya was no longer part of German propaganda. After the Soviet recapture of the area in the course of the Second Battle of Kiev in 1943, the site was yet again classified by the NKVD. In the 1950s the village was reconstructed as a suburb of Kiev. In the 1970s the Soviet authorities planned to construct a large bus station on the mass grave site, but the plan was abandoned.