Kovalevsky Forest (Russian: Ковалевский лес) is a forest near St Petersburg, Russia, where thousands of Soviet citizens were massacred and buried in the first half of the twentieth century as part of the Red Terror. The site was rediscovered by the human rights charity Memorial. In all, around 4,500 people are thought to be buried there.[1] Memorial are currently trying to raise funds to build a museum to commemorate those who died there.
The forest is located within the Rzhevskij Poligon (Ржевский полигон - Rzhev firing range), where up to 30,000 are thought to have been shot during the Red Terror which took place from 1918 into the 1920s.[2] Among those murdered was the poet Nikolay Gumilev.[2] The bodies in Kovalevsky Forest were found by Memorial in 2002.[2]
Memorial has for many years been trying to build a museum at the site. In 2009 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev indicated that he supported the building of a museum to the memory of those killed in Kovalevsky Forest, but as of November 2010, no move has been made by the government or local authorities to provide funds for such a museum.