Talk:Mykhailo Yalovy

Death by firing squad?!

A firing squad is a romantic image, and a practical way of easing the conscience or nerves of those taking part in an execution. Which of our bullets actually killed the man?

For the Soviet regime and, later on, the Third Reich, this was the exception, not the rule.

From early days onwards the Soviet method of quick despatch was to dig a trench and then, standing immediately behind the convicted person, shooting them at point blank range into the back of the head.

In the West we are familiar with this type of mass executions, killing tens and hundreds overnight, from the early stages of the Holocast on the occupied territory of the USSR in 1941. We are less well aware, it seems, that this was the tens of thousands were killed in the Soviet Union during the Great Purges of 1937 and 1938 - although teh location and excavation of such killing ground-burial sites since the perestroika years has provided ample proof of such execution methods.

Descriptions of how it all took place are rarer, but they do exist: the blood-spattered clothing of the executioners, the bottles of vodka they drank during or after the event to keep themselves going.

There is one vivid account of such an executioner, Niyazov, and his story in Lev Razgon's exceptional if ambivalent memoirs of those terrible years.

So -- please! -- no more "firing squads".John Crowfoot (talk) 05:38, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Place

Yalovy was executed in Sandarmokh IEU like so many Ukrainians (and Finns). --Abc10 (talk) 10:35, 20 June 2022 (UTC)