The former Vankovich estate in Slyapyanka was nationalized in the 1920s. During the interwar years it housed the sovkhoz office, a potato-breeding station, an NKVD school, and the Minsk greenhouse complex. A forest stood nearby.
In 1932 Uladzimir Hutko, a student at the Minsk Pedagogical Technical School (later known by the pen name Duditsky), was completing agricultural practice at the estate's research station. Rumors circulated among students about shootings in the nearby forest. They were even forbidden to leave the barracks, being told that a protected area began nearby. Once, while walking with a companion, Hutko discovered graves disguised as an animal burial pit. They were located not far from the railway line toward Moscow.
Another student of the Minsk Pedagogical Technical School, the poet Mikhas Kavyl, also recalled shootings and burials in that area: 'I remember how we — Syarhei Astreyka, Hintawt, Rusakovich — wandered at night through the forest near the Slyapyanka sovkhoz, where we had been sent on a 'razryv', and witnessed a shooting. How the unfortunate man fell to his knees and raised his hands to the sky, how after the shot he collapsed into the pit...'
In the late 1930s the estate of the new head of the BSSR state security, Lavrentiy Tsanava, was established in the forest itself. It was here on the night of January 12–13, 1948, on Stalin's orders, that the famous Jewish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, head of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, was killed along with theater critic Vladimir Golubov. According to Tsanava's own testimony, at about 10 p.m. the victims were brought to the estate and crushed by a truck. After midnight their bodies were dumped in the city on a quiet street, staged as a traffic accident. For their participation in the operation MGB officers received high state awards, and Tsanava was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
After the war the estate building was used as an MVD departmental kindergarten. However, in 2005 it burned down, and six years later it was demolished. In the summer of 2024, during construction of the Utulny residential complex on Parnikova Street, builders discovered human bones. The 52nd Special Search Battalion of the Ministry of Defense, in six excavations, found the remains of 75 men and women ranging in age from 18, as well as shell casings and personal items.
Minsk prosecutor Oleg Lavrukhin asserted that 'there was no information about tragic events in this area.' 'We tend to conclude that these people are civilians, since shell casings were found from small arms that were in use by the German army at that time, and the skulls bore entrance and exit holes from gunshot wounds,' the prosecutor said, giving details. He added that archival documents had been thoroughly examined, but none mentioned burial sites near the present-day Parnikova Street. 'In the testimony of more than 19,700 witnesses interviewed over four years as part of the criminal investigation into the genocide of the Belarusian people, there was also no information about tragic events in this area,' Lavrukhin said.
On June 17, 2025 the human remains were ceremonially reburied as victims of the genocide of the Belarusian people at the Chyzhou Cemetery.
