I present to you three Russian cemeteries, one in Moscow (Novodevichy), one in St. Petersburg (Tikhvin), and one in Sitka, Alaska (the Russian Orthodox Cemetery), each a gem, each with its own distinct characteristics, each to welcome its existence and revealing histories filled with the characters who occupy the grounds.
The overgrowth and abundant greenery in Sitka is romantic to some. Tikhvin's age and remarkable count of hundreds of buried artists capture hearts. My favorite though is Novodevichy, a calming place, a soothing application to mental spirits with its parklike setting and individually sculptured grave markers.
It's easy to spend hours at the cemetery, a common pastime of Russians who wander amidst the paths, greenery, and tall pines, admiring the artworks, considering the lives of famous Russians, many who led turbulent lives, but now lay quiet.
Compare Novodevichy to Arlington National Cemetery and its uniformity. Novodevichy is graves gone wild!
It has 27,000 plots, and unlike our cemeteries, it's "alive" with graves of hundreds of artists, writers (Gogol, Chekhov), politicians (Andre Gromyko, Boris Yeltsin, Nikita Khrushchev), military leaders, actors, composers (Shostakovich, Prokofiev), and the great and not-so-great like Joseph Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina, who was 31 when she died. (Until I looked her up at "Find-A-Grave," I thought she was a suicide victim, but evidence points to her possible murder by... who else? Her husband who killed between six and 20 million of his own people. Where is her biography? Another story, one of many to be found in cemeteries.) (Why are Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Yeltsin not buried at the Kremlin?)
Here is a link to names of the dead in Novodevichy.
Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
The grave of the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007, Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018, near the entrance/Patricia Leslie
Novodevichy's namesake is its neighbor, the Novodevichy Convent, on the other side of a "great wall" which separates the cemetery from the convent which was founded in 1524. It was the home of Eudoxia Fedorovna Lopukhina (1669-1731), first wife of Peter the Great (1669-1725), and Peter's half-sister, Sophia (1657-1704), both women whom Peter stashed in the convent to get rid of them. (Sophia plotted against Peter and died here.)
Grounds at Novodevichy Convent, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie
Tikhvim Cemetery, St. Petersburg
Tikhvim, called the "Necropolis of Masters of Arts," opened in 1823. During "Soviet times" in the 1930s, the bodies of many artists were exhumed from graves around St. Petersburg and re-buried here. It is part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture.
In the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie
Russian Orthodox Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska
The Russians first came to Sitka, Alaska in 1741 but few have remained to take care of their 200-year-old cemetery with 1,500 to 1,600 graves, most plots covered now by vegetation, trees, and weeds. A quick visual survey gives the impression that maybe 100 persons are buried in these creepy, hilly grounds which is romantic in its own way, but not a place for scaredy-cats like me, to spend Halloween or anytime here alone which is what I was at the cemetery that day. (Bear watch! Wherever you go in Alaska, bear warnings [and guns] are omnipresent, guns to ward off the bears. A museum employee told me he has wrangled with bears on shores over salmon he caught while standing to fish and with eyes turning constantly for...bear watch!)
Sitka is a beautiful community on an island along the outer coast of the Inside Passage, accessible only by plane, ship, or boat. At Sitka you'll find the Fort Rousseau Causeway State Historical Park, the World War II Japonski Island base, other islands and rental boats to row to extant bunkers, some where a machete would help weave a path through thick, five feet high weeds and still worth the effort to get there. (Budget cuts in 2015 led to Alaska's park service eliminating maintenance of a trail here.)
Some Sitka history: In the 1850s when Russian czar Alexander II needed money, the U.S. showed interest in buying Alaska, but the U.S. was dealing with more important matters like the advent of the Civil War (1861-1865), and the death of a president before it could take a serious look at owning a territory about a fifth of the U.S.'s size then (375 million acres).
But President Abraham Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, pursued the purchase, and in 1867, the U.S. bought Alaska for $7.2 million or about two pennies an acre.
Labeled "Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," and (you, no doubt remember from school days) "Seward's Folly," by a vote of only one or "by a wide margin" (based on the websites you visit), the U.S. Senate agreed to the treaty.
In Sitka, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward represented the U.S. at the ceremony which is commemorated now with a hilltop memorial, flag, markers, and a wide viewing span of the town and waterways.
October 18, Alaska Day, is a state holiday to honor the purchase of the territory by the U.S. Every Alaska Day volunteers spend hours cleaning up the cemetery. It needs it!
America's Russian cemetery is a fascinating place to visit which I highly recommend when you're in Sitka. And the other cemeteries, too, when you travel to Russia. None to miss! I always wished I had had more time to explore these jewels of Earth.
patricialesli@gmail.com
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