Butyrka Prison - Famous Inmates

Famous Inmates

• Andrei Amalrik, Russian historian and famed dissident during the 1960s. Author of "Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984".
• Fabijan Abrantovich, a well-known Catholic priest and a pro-independence activist from Belarus.
• Anna Abrikosova, a nun of the Dominican Order and prominent figure in the Russian Catholic Church.
• Władysław Anders, Polish general and prime minister.
• Isaak Babel, writer, killed in 1940.
• Walerian Czuma, Polish general.
• Felix Dzerzhinsky, Cheka founder.
• Vladimir Dzhunkovsky, Russian statesman.
• Blessed Leonid Feodorov, Exarch and reputed bishop of the Russian Catholic Church.
• Heinz Hitler, German dictator Adolf Hitler's favorite nephew died after several days of torture in 1942.
• Werner Haase, one of Adolf Hitler's personal physicians, died in captivity in 1945.
• Bruno Jasieński, Polish poet and futurist, killed in 1938
• Stanisław Jasiukowicz, Polish minister, tortured to death in Butyrki in 1946.
• Yevgenia Ginzburg, Russian writer and historian.
• Sergei Korolev, Russian rocket and spacecraft designer.
• Blessed Zygmunt Łoziński, Catholic bishop of Minsk.
• Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist.
• Vladimir Mayakovsky, poet.
• Leopold Okulicki, Polish general, last commander of the Armia Krajowa, killed in Butyrki in 1946.
• Yemelyan Pugachev, pretender to the Russian throne and leader of a Cossack insurrection in 1773-1774.
• Varlam Shalamov, writer and soviet dissident. Wrote The Kolyma Tales.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, famous Nobel Prize laureate, writer and dissident. Wrote The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
• Yevgenia Ginzburg, author of Journey into the Whirlwind and Within the Whirlwind and mother of the writer Vasili Aksyonov. In her books, she tells the incredible story of her arrest during the 1937 purges in the city of Kazan, where she worked as a leading member of the local Communist Party structures of Tartary.
• Mieczysław Boruta-Spiechowicz, Polish general and one of the leaders of anti-communist opposition in the 1970s.
• Elena Stasova, Russian communist.
• Léon Theremin, a pioneer of electronic music, the inventor of the theremin and an electronic eavesdropping bug.
• Sergei Tretyakov, Avant-Garde playwright during the 1920s. He apparently threw himself down a prison stairwell to avoid execution.
• Augustinas Voldemaras, once the prime minister of Lithuania, died in this prison after Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940.
• Avhustyn Voloshyn, former president of Carpatho-Ukraine, died in Butyrka in 1945.
• Jonas Žemaitis, Lithuanian general, head of the Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisan forces after WWII, shot to death in 1953 .
• Garig Basmadjian, (still speculated) famous art major. Still to be found. Last seen 1991 by Alexander Budilov.
• Sergei Magnitsky, famous lawyer.
• Rashid Khan Gaplanov, Education and Finance Minister of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.