Vvedenskoye Cemetery ( rus, Введенское кладбище, p=vʲːɪˈdʲenskəjə) is a historic
cemetery
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...
in the
Lefortovo District
Lefortovo District ( rus, райо́н Лефо́ртово, a=Ru-Lefortovo.ogg, p=lʲɪˈfortəvə) is a district of South-Eastern Administrative Okrug of the federal city of Moscow, Russia. Its area is . Population:
History
The Lefortovo Dis ...
of
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...
in
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
.
Until 1918 it was mainly a burial ground for the
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
and
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
communities of the city, principally
ethnic Germans, and thus it was also called the German Cemetery (russian: Немецкое кладбище). After 1918 the cemetery was
secular
Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...
ized and accepted the dead of all confessions, including the Orthodox clergy. Throughout its history it has also been extensively used as a military cemetery. It is located on a 20
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100- metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is ...
lot between Gospitalny Val Street and Nalichnaya Street at .
Origins
Between late 1771 and 1772,
Catherine the Great, Empress of the
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, issued an
edict
An edict is a decree or announcement of a law, often associated with monarchism, but it can be under any official authority. Synonyms include "dictum" and "pronouncement".
''Edict'' derives from the Latin edictum.
Notable edicts
* Telepinu Pro ...
which decreed that, from that point on, any person who died (regardless of their social standing or class origins), no longer had the right to be buried within church
crypts or adjacent
churchyards. New cemeteries had to be built across the entire Russian empire and from then on they all had to be located ''outside'' city limits.
One of the main motivations behind these measures was overcrowding in church crypts and graveyards. However, the true deciding factor which led to the new laws being enforced on such a mass scale across the entire Russian empire was to avoid further outbreaks of highly contagious diseases, especially the
black plague which had led to the
Plague Riot in Moscow in 1771.
When the Vvedenskoye cemetery was established in the early 1770s, an older, 16th-century German cemetery was incorporated into it. This older cemetery was located near
German Quarter
German Quarter (russian: Неме́цкая слобода́, ''Nemetskaya sloboda''), also known as the Kukuy Quarter (), was a neighborhood in the northeast of Moscow, located on the right bank of the Yauza River east of Kukuy Creek (h ...
(on the opposite bank of
Yauza River
The Yauza (russian: Я́уза) is a river in Moscow and Mytishchi, Russia, a tributary of the Moskva. It originates in the Losiny Ostrov National Park northeast of Moscow, flows through Mytishchi, enters Moscow in the Medvedkovo District an ...
), which had traditionally served the
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
community and other Western Christian denominations. In addition to German community, the cemetery tended to substantial English, Polish and Italian populations.
Unusual for Russian cemeteries, some graves, notably of Polish gentry, were set up as standalone crypts with walk-in chapels; these are now in a dilapidated state. Most graves, however, are plain headstones or crosses; traditional Russian
sarcophagus-styled tombs of this period are rare and usually belong to Orthodox dead, originally buried elsewhere and relocated to Vvedenskoe later.
Image:Vvedenskoye - Gothic crypt 06.jpg
Image:Vvedenskoye - Red crypt 01.jpg
Image:Vvedenskoye - Musina-Pushkina 01.jpg
Image:Vvedenskoye - English crypt 01.jpg
19th century
Due to the proximity of
Lefortovo,
Preobrazhenskoe and
Semyonovskoe military facilities, Vvedenskoe also became a common site for burying deceased military - Russian servicemen as well as foreign prisoners of war. In 1889 the French government erected a memorial
obelisk
An obelisk (; from grc, ὀβελίσκος ; diminutive of ''obelos'', " spit, nail, pointed pillar") is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape or pyramidion at the top. Originally constructed by An ...
at the mass grave of soldiers of
Grande Armée soldiers who died during the
French invasion of Russia in 1812–1814. In 1914–1918 the cemetery also tended to the German and Austrian prisoners of First World War.
In the 19th century, the remains of
Peter the Great generals
Franz Lefort Franz may refer to:
People
* Franz (given name)
Franz is a German name and cognate of the given name Francis. Notable people named Franz include:
Nobility
Austria-Hungary
* Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor (1708–1765)
* Francis II, Holy ...
and
Patrick Gordon
Patrick Leopold Gordon of Auchleuchries (31 March 1635 – 29 November 1699) was a general and rear admiral in Russia, of Scottish origin. He was descended from a family of Aberdeenshire, holders of the estate of Auchleuchries, near Ellon. The ...
, both who died in 1699, were
exhume
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...
d and transferred to Vvedenskoye. Also buried at Vvedenskoye is the general-major
Karl Staal, who was commander of Astrakhan cuirassier regiment in the 1813–1814
War of the Sixth Coalition
In the War of the Sixth Coalition (March 1813 – May 1814), sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, and a number of German States defeated F ...
against
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
. One of the most unusual tombs, of railroad engineer and educator
Christian Meyen, is assembled of rail car wheels and
steam engine parts and crowned with a 5-meter
wrought iron
Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...
cross.
Notable people buried before the revolution of 1917
Image:Vvedenskoye - Patrick Gordon 01.jpg, Patrick Gordon
Patrick Leopold Gordon of Auchleuchries (31 March 1635 – 29 November 1699) was a general and rear admiral in Russia, of Scottish origin. He was descended from a family of Aberdeenshire, holders of the estate of Auchleuchries, near Ellon. The ...
Image:Vvedenskoye - Karl Staal 01.jpg, Karl Staal
Image:Vvedenskoye - Francesco Camporesi 01.jpg, Francesco Camporesi
Francesco Camporesi (1747, Bologna – 1831, Moscow) was an Italian architect, painter, engraver and educator who worked in Moscow in 1780s-1820s. Most of his architectural work perished in the Fire of 1812, was severely altered, demolished or ...
Image:Vvedenskoye - French of 1812 01.jpg, French of 1812
*
Santino Campioni (1774–1847), sculptor
*
August Davidov
August Yulevich Davidov (russian: Август Юльевич Давидов) (December 15, 1823 – December 22, 1885) was a Russian mathematician and engineer, professor at Moscow University, and author of works on differential equations with p ...
(1823-1885), mathematician
*
Semyon Eybushitz (1851–1898), architect
*
John Field (1782–1837), composer
*
Friedrich (Fyodor) Haass (1780–1853), physician and philanthropist
*
Gustav List
Gustav, Gustaf or Gustave may refer to:
* Gustav (name), a male given name of Old Swedish origin
Art, entertainment, and media
* ''Primeval'' (film), a 2007 American horror film
* ''Gustav'' (film series), a Hungarian series of animated short car ...
(1835–1913), businessman and philanthropist
*
Lucien Olivier (1838–1883), chef
*
Pavel Petrovich Pahlen (1775–1834), cavalry general
*
Leonid Timister (1844–1905), businessman and philanthropist
*
Pavel Pabst
Paul Pabst (Russian: Pavel Pabst) (15 May 1854 – 9 June 1897) was a pianist, composer, and Professor of Piano at Moscow Conservatory.
Life and career
Pabst was born Christian Georg Paul Pabst in 1854, into a family of musicians in the cap ...
(1854–1897) pianist, composer and teacher
Soviet period and beyond
Upon secularization in 1918, new non-denominational graves gradually took over the older, untended, grave sites. As a result, today the historical graves are scattered among the majority of post-1918 graves.
During World War II, many soldiers who died in the nearby Lefortovo hospitals were buried here including 50
Heroes of the Soviet Union
The title Hero of the Soviet Union (russian: Герой Советского Союза, translit=Geroy Sovietskogo Soyuza) was the highest distinction in the Soviet Union, awarded together with the Order of Lenin personally or collectively for ...
among whom was
Stepan Kretov (1919–1975), and the deceased French pilots from the
Normandie-Niemen regiment. The latters' remains were relocated to France in the 1950s, however one tomb of ''Unknown French Pilot'', killed in action in July 1943, is still preserved.
The cemetery still allows burials; some historical family lots continue to date since early 19th century (some under original surnames, some under different ones when changed through marriage). In some instances, like the Pikersgills descending from Englishman John Pickersgill of
Howgrave
Howgrave is a civil parish in the Hambleton District of North Yorkshire, England. It is a very small parish, with an area of only and an estimated population in 2014 of only 10. There is no modern village in the parish. The site of the de ...
in
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
(1765–1841), original lots were too small to accommodate future generations, and were eventually re-established on different sites.
Notable people buried in Soviet period
*
Osip Abdulov, actor
*
Vsevolod Abdulov, actor
*
Yefim Baranovich (1884-1948), military leader
*
Grigory Barkhin, architect
*
Robert Bartini, aircraft designer
*
Leonid Grossman
Leonid (russian: Леонид ; uk, Леонід ; be, Леанід, Ljeaníd ) is a Slavic version of the given name Leonidas. The French version is Leonide.
People with the name include:
*Leonid Andreyev (1871–1919), Russian playwright a ...
(1888–1965), writer
*
Anna Izryadnova (1891–1946), wife of
Sergei Yesenin
*
Roman Klein
Roman Ivanovich Klein (russian: Роман Иванович Клейн), born Robert Julius Klein, was a Russian architect and educator, best known for his Neoclassical Pushkin Museum in Moscow. Klein, an eclectic, was one of the most prolific ...
(1858–1924), architect
*
Nikolai Kolli
Nikolai Dzhemsovich (Yakovlevich) Kolli (russian: Николай Джемсович (Яковлевич) Колли; – 3 December 1966) was a Soviet and Russian Modernist— Constructivist architect, architectural functionary, and city pl ...
(1894–1966), architect
*
Nikolai Koltsov
Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov (russian: Николай Константинович Кольцов; July 14, 1872 – December 2, 1940) was a Russian biologist and a pioneer of modern genetics. Among his students were Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovs ...
(1872–1940), biologist
*
Ivan Sergeyevich Kuznetsov (1867–1942), architect
*
Konstantin Melnikov
Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov (Russian: Константин Степанович Мельников; – November 28, 1974) was a Russian architect and painter. His architectural work, compressed into a single decade (1923–33), placed ...
(1890–1974), architect
*
Sophia Parnok (1885-1933), poet
*
Valeri Popenchenko (1937–1975) Olympic Gold Medal winning Boxer.
*
Mikhail Prishvin
Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin (russian: Михаи́л Миха́йлович При́швин) (January 23 ( N.S. February 4), 1873 – January 16, 1954) was a Russian and Soviet novelist, prose writer and publicist. Prishvin defined it this wa ...
(1873–1954), writer
*
Ivan Rerberg
Ivan Ivanovich Rerberg (October 4, 1869 – 1932, Moscow) was a Russian civil engineer, architect and educator active in Moscow in 1897–1932. Rerberg's input to present-day Moscow include Kiyevsky Rail Terminal, Central Telegraph building and ...
(1869–1932), architect
*
Alexander Filipovich Samoilov (1867–1930), physiologist
*
Pyotr Sobolevsky
Pyotr Stanislavovich Sobolevsky (russian: Пётр Станиславович Соболевский; 22 May 1904 – 26 June 1977) was a Soviet actor. He appeared in more than 50 films between 1926 and 1973.
Biography
Sobolevsky was born on 22 ...
(1904–1977), film actor
*
Ivan Susloparov (1897–1974), Red Army general who signed the first set of documents for unconditional surrender of Germany
May 7, 1945 in
Rheims
Reims ( , , ; also spelled Rheims in English) is the most populous city in the French department of Marne, and the 12th most populous city in France. The city lies northeast of Paris on the Vesle river, a tributary of the Aisne.
Founded by ...
*
Ivan Sytin (1851–1934), businessman, publisher and educator
*
Metropolitan Trifon (Boris Petrovich Turkestanov, 1861–1934)
* Artists
Victor Vasnetsov
Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov (russian: Ви́ктор Миха́йлович Васнецо́в; May 15 ( N.S.), 1848 – July 23, 1926) was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He is considered the co-founde ...
(1848–1926) and
Apollinary Vasnetsov (1856–1933)
*
Stanislav Vaupshasov (1899–1976),
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union.
...
guerilla operative, Hero of the Soviet Union
*
Maria Yudina
Maria may refer to:
People
* Mary, mother of Jesus
* Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages
Place names Extraterrestrial
*170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877
*Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, da ...
(1899–1970), Russian pianist
There is also a
cenotaph
A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...
to
Iona Yakir
Iona Emmanuilovich Yakir (russian: Ио́на Эммануи́лович Яки́р; 3 August 1896 – 12 June 1937) was a Red Army commander and one of the world's major military reformers between World War I and World War II. He was an ear ...
(1896–1937).
See also
*
German Quarter
German Quarter (russian: Неме́цкая слобода́, ''Nemetskaya sloboda''), also known as the Kukuy Quarter (), was a neighborhood in the northeast of Moscow, located on the right bank of the Yauza River east of Kukuy Creek (h ...
*
Volkovo Cemetery
The Volkovo Cemetery (also Volkovskoe) (russian: Во́лковское кла́дбище or Во́лково кла́дбище) is one of the largest and oldest non- Orthodox cemeteries in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Until the early 20th century i ...
*
Smolensky Cemetery
Smolensky Cemetery () is the oldest continuously operating cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Russia.[Germans from Russia
The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory military ...](_blank)
References
* Russian: Official register of memorial buildings in Moscow (Moskomnasledie
External links
{{commons category, Vvedenskoe cemetery
Unofficial site of Vvedenskoye cemetery*
ttp://www.vgd.ru/CEMETRY/VVDNSK/vvdnske1.htm Pictures of individual grave inscriptions with namesPhotos of gravesVvedenskoye Cemetery Photos
Cemeteries in Moscow
Christianity in Moscow
German cemeteries
Lutheran cemeteries
Roman Catholic cemeteries
History of Moscow
Russian and Soviet-German people
1771 establishments in the Russian Empire
Cultural heritage monuments of regional significance in Moscow