House 23 on Nikolskaya Street has a rich history. Its lower floors preserved fragments of the chambers of the princes Khovansky from the 17th century. In the 19th century, the building belonged to the Moscow Crafts Administration. In 1835, one of the apartments was home to Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich, the founder of the literary and philosophical "Stankevich Circle," which included notable figures such as V. Belinsky, T. Granovsky, K. Aksakov, A. Koltsov, and M. Bakunin.

However, the building became widely known as the "execution house." During the Great Terror, it housed the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under the leadership of V.V. Ulrich. The Collegium moved here in the early 1930s and remained until the end of the 1940s. The proximity to Lubyanka may have played a role in the choice of location, and memoirs often mention underground passages between the buildings.

From 1934 to 1955, the Military Collegium sentenced 47,549 people. Between October 1936 and November 1938, over 36,000 people were convicted, of which 31,456 were sentenced to the highest penalty, including 7,408 Muscovites. Although this is only a part of the total number of repressed individuals, the Military Collegium was a central element of the repressive mechanism.

The Collegium issued sentences to many well-known figures: writers I.E. Babel, I.I. Kataev, director V.E. Meyerhold, marshals M.N. Tukhachevsky and A.I. Egorov, among many others. Here, the parents of famous individuals, such as M. Plisetskaya and O. Aroseva, were also sentenced.

In 1937, a session on the "Tukhachevsky case" took place in this house, and in 1946, the commander of the Air Force A.A. Novikov and the People's Commissar of Aviation Industry A.I. Shakhurin were tried here. In 1948, Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov was tried here as well.

The Military Collegium gave the repressions an appearance of legality, although the sentences were issued without the participation of defense and the possibility of appeal, taking no more than 10-15 minutes. It executed the decisions of the Politburo and the NKVD, formalizing them as sentences. Orders for execution were signed on forms with the address "25th October St., 23."

Documents published in the 21st century testify to the process of condemnation. For example, a note from Yezhov to Stalin dated July 26, 1938, contained a list of those arrested for trial by the Military Collegium. Stalin approved the execution of 138 people from the list.

All individuals from this list, except for three Chekists, were rehabilitated.