State-sponsored violence in the Soviet Union : skeletal trauma and burial organization in a post-World War II Lithuanian sample

This dissertation investigates both the victims and perpetrators of violence in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist period through a site specific and regional evaluation of burial treatment and perimortem trauma. Specifically, it compares burial treatment and perimortem trauma in a sample (n = 155) of prisoners executed in the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (L.S.S.R.) by the Soviet security apparatus from 1944 to 1947, known as the Tuskulenai case. It compares that with 3 other cases of state-sponsored violence in Rainiai, Vinnytsia, and Katyn.