The prisoner-of-war camp in Ryazan-Diagilev was officially named Diagilevo 178 and was subordinate to the complex of prisoner-of-war camps No. 454 in Ryazan. It was treated by the Soviet authorities as a camp of a special character (speclagier) for interned soldiers of the AK. In the first half of 1946, the Diaghilev camp became a place of concentration for AK officers and members of the delegations, held until then in camps in Kharkov, Kiev, Stalinogorsk and Skopin, as well as in a prison in Lvov. By decision of the Soviet authorities, these persons were not qualified to return to the country at the beginning of 1946 and were to remain in internment camps on the territory of the USSR. In 1946, many leading commanders of several AK districts and representatives of the civilian authorities of the Polish government in exile were interned in Diaghilev. Among the internees were 5 Home Army generals (L. Bittner, W. Filipkowski, A. Krzyżanowski, A. Świtalski and K. Tumidajski), as well as around 30 officers in the ranks of colonel, lieutenant colonel and major, holding high staff positions in the organisation, including commanders of areas (Lvov and Warsaw-East) and districts (Lublin, Lvov, Vilnius, Tarnopol). For a long time, only Polish citizens stayed in Diaghilev. For unknown reasons, in the second half of 1946, a group of more than 20 Russians, originating from post-revolutionary emigration who had voluntarily returned to the USSR from Western European countries after the war, were brought to the camp. The Diaghilev camp was treated as privileged by the Soviet authorities. In terms of the conditions of food, accommodation and the relatively mild rigour prevailing there, it differed markedly from other camps in which Poles were detained between 1944 and 1947. Apart from the right to correspond, it generally observed other rules arising from the status of the internees. Officers were exempted from any physical work and were not forced into it by indirect means, as was the case in other camps. Despite these relatively good conditions, several dozen internees died in the camp. Their bodies were taken to a cemetery located about 1.5 km north-west of the camp and buried without coffins, in pits. Crosses placed by fellow prisoners on the graves were systematically removed by the authorities. Some time after the camp was liquidated, the cemetery was destroyed by the Soviet authorities, but documents confirming its existence have survived in the archives. On their basis, the necropolis was reconstructed in the early 1990s. In 1992, on the initiative of the Ryazan 'Memorial', a commemoration was set up in the form of three tall crosses with barbed wire wreaths, and in the summer of 1993, crosses were set up with the names, surnames and dates of life of the Poles buried here, as well as the sign of Fighting Poland; these crosses are distributed throughout the cemetery, as it is now impossible to determine where the Poles were buried. The Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Remembrance participated in the renovation of the cemetery. The renovated cemetery was consecrated in June 1994 and now also contains memorials to prisoners of other nationalities - including Hungarians and Germans.