ABSTRACT
The Butovo Polygon has attracted a considerable amount of scholarly attention, most of which focuses on its historical past as an execution site and on the conflicts which the double function of the Butovo Polygon as 'site of memory' and 'holy ground' has caused. Execution sites similar to the Butovo Polygon existed all over the Soviet Union, but few of them are sites of memory today. The Butovo Polygon is both a site of memory and a symbol of the Great Terror but it is also home of an Orthodox parish with an active liturgical life. Mikhail Mindlin, a former prisoner of the Kolyma Gulag, played an important role as initiator of the establishment of the Butovo Polygon as a site of memory. Besides symbolizing the suffering and the glory of the new martyrs of Russia, the Church of Resurrection of Christ in Butovo has become a symbol of the unification of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) with the ROCOR.
