Body Parts Found at Moscow Estate

Body parts belonging to an estimated 34 people have been unearthed along with a rusty pistol at a l9th Century Moscow mansion undergoing renovation. Workers found the remains at a city center site once owned by a tsarist-era noble family, the Sheremetyevs. Forensic experts are trying to identify the bodies, some of which appear to date to the l930's. Thousands of perceived opponents and rivals of the Soviet leadership were killed by secret police in that period. The killings reached their climax in l937 and l938, when historians say some 1.7 million people were arrested by the security services, at least 818,000 of whom were then shot. The era, under the leadership of the dictator Josef Stalin, came to be known as the Great Terror.