The Butovo Firing Range or Butovo Shooting Range, is a former private estate near the village of Drozhzhino in the Yuzhnoye Butovo District south of Moscow that was seized by the Soviets after the 1917 revolution and thereafter used by secret police as an agricultural colony, shooting range, and from 1938 to 1953, as a site for executions and mass graves of persons deemed enemies of the people. The exact number of victims executed remains unknown, as only fragmentary data has been declassified by NKVD's successor services. However, between 1937 and 1938, the height of Josef Stalin's Great Terror, 20,761 prisoners were transported to the site and execut...
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