The cemetery was completely destroyed and the corpses removed after the Bolsheviks came to power, who created an amusement park on the site and installed a statue of Sergei Kirov, the prominent Bolshevik leader.[4] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the statue and the amusement park facilities were removed and the location was reinstated as a burial site for national heroes.[2] The first buried at the newly instated memorial were those who had died during the Black January events of 1990 when Soviet forces invaded Baku.[3]