Medvedev Forest massacre

The Medvedev Forest massacre was a mass execution in the Soviet Union carried out by the NKVD on September 11, 1941. Barely three months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 157 political prisoners incarcerated at Oryol Prison were executed in Medvedev Forest, just outside Oryol, by personal order of Joseph Stalin. Among the victims were Christian Rakovsky, Sergei Efron, Olga Kameneva, and Maria Spiridonova. In 1941, the Orel isolation prison contained some five thousand political prisoners.