Parks of concentrated grief: why do people go to cemeteries in the Northern Capital
Margarita Nikolaeva's book "Necropoli of St. Petersburg" contains many tragic and cruel facts from St. Petersburg, Petrograd and Leningrad history. However, she did not do without macabre humor. For more information, see Lidia Maslova's review, especially for Izvestia.
Margarita Nikolaeva
"Necropolis of St. Petersburg. Adam's Heads, cholera cemeteries and a Thunder Stone"
Moscow : MIF, 2025. 224 p.
At the end of his serious book, after a short guide to the most interesting historical cemeteries that have survived to this day, the author realizes that he did not take much care of entertaining the reader, who most likely expected "mystical stories and cemetery legends," and cites one such, recorded in 1910, about a flying coffin over the Volkovsky cemetery..
We will not disclose the denouement of this story, which Nikolaeva cites as an epilogue "not only to make you laugh, but also to remind you that treating cemeteries as mystical places full of undead and secrets increases the stigmatization of necropolises, giving them the coloring of something irrational, otherworldly." In principle, the researcher is not at all against the mystical atmosphere that gives necropolises a peculiar charm, but the main thing is that mysticism and superstition in reasonable doses do not interfere with an objective assessment of the cultural and historical significance of cemeteries as an integral part of urban architecture.
This is the main pathos of the "Necropolises of St. Petersburg", reinforced at the beginning of the book by a quote from academician Dmitry Likhachev ("Cemetery is an element of the city"), given in the first chapter, which deals with cemeteries that existed on the Prince's lands before the founding of the city, St. Petersburg unofficial cemeteries of the early XVIII century. and official cemeteries that existed for several years. decades (the first of them was the one that opened in 1711 Sampsonievskoe). Already during this period, a natural process of close interpenetration began between the city and cemeteries as parts of a single whole, despite the fact that "for religious reasons, frequent visits to cemeteries or using them for walks or other leisure activities were not encouraged."
Nevertheless, the living were always drawn to the cemetery in one way or another, and not necessarily for the ritual purpose of burying relatives and friends. One can recall the era of sentimentalism and romanticism with their cult of death and their love of cemetery walks, sung in elegies and ballads that shaped the "aesthetic perception of the necropolis." You can read about this in one of the most fundamental and authoritative works on St. Petersburg cemeteries, which is often referred to by Nikolaeva — the book by A.V. Kobak and Yu.M. Piryutko "Historical cemeteries of St. Petersburg". But even before the appearance of romantic poets, fascinated by the afterlife and who loved to stand with one foot in the grave in their writings, simpler people gathered in cemeteries with some pleasure.
The second chapter, "One Hundred years of the St. Petersburg Necropolises," covering the period from the middle of the 18th century to 1917, tells about the most amazing phenomenon in the long—term history of the Smolensk cemetery on Vasilyevsky Island - folk festivals in honor of festive church dates, especially on the day of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God. Here Nikolaeva gives the floor to the famous actor Peter Karatygin, who wrote a lyrical story in 1858, "A Day at the Smolensk Cemetery. From the notes of a St. Petersburg old-timer," which describes a cheerful festive crowd rushing to a cemetery picnic with bundles, baskets and bottles: "It's a strange thing! Our public, official festivities, due to their monotonous primness, were compared by someone to a funeral procession, but here, on the contrary, a walk to the cemetery could be mistaken for the most cheerful holiday. <...> Everywhere there was noise and chatter, the mournful pronouncing of women and old women, laughter, crying and screeching of children, minor semitones beggars —all this together presented a strange, wild picture!"
By the 1910s, such festivities had lost their former scope, and although the townspeople continued to stroll through the Smolensk Cemetery on Sundays and summer holidays, the newspaper Peterburgsky Listok in 1914 testified: "... thanks to strict measures taken in advance, the old custom of drinking on family and other people's graves was almost eradicated in the cemetery.".
The Volkovsky cemeteries, which appeared around the same time, became no less attractive as a leisure destination than the Smolensk cemetery complex. "Historical and statistical information about the St. Petersburg Diocese" from 1885 describes the Volkovskoye Orthodox cemetery as a truly paradisiacal corner, "a garden or park planted with trees and shrubs of various breeds, with palisades, gazebos, monuments and crosses; in summer, all this is lined with flowers, decorated with wreaths and garlands."
However, it was not the angels who were attracted to this paradise, as the Volkov cemetery acquired the importance of a necropolis of the literary intelligentsia, including the opposition: here, for example, A.N. Radishchev, "a rebel worse than Pugachev," found his last refuge. Because of the political views of some of those buried, who were skeptical of the tsarist government and social foundations, as Nikolaeva writes, "The Volkovskoye cemetery began to serve as a platform for opposition speeches by young people. They began with the funeral of N.A. Dobrolyubov, after which similar political actions occurred regularly at funerals or death anniversaries of prominent cultural figures."
The theme of interpenetration, blurring the boundaries between the world of the living and the dead, between a city park and a cemetery, between an official celebration and a funeral procession, receives an ironic continuation in the description of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of St. Petersburg in 1903, left by the famous bibliographer Sergei Mintslov. Nikolaeva quotes his diary, which describes the attempts of the organizers of the celebrations to arrange in the city center "a wild corner of the primitive Neva: rocks, fir trees, and Peter stands among them with an axe in his hand, as if surveying the expanse in front of him..." This decor, including fake mausoleums covered with spruce trees with the dates of the death of the tsars, evoked mourning and cemetery associations for many: "... there are Christmas trees everywhere, trees without end, as if at a funeral of the first class...> The death of the people. <...> No jokes, no laughter, like a huge procession slowly moving behind a coffin or a religious procession. <...> The impression was as if we were at the Alexander Nevsky Cemetery. I don't know whose fantasy gave birth to these mausoleums!"
Soviet physicist Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov
An equally expressive quote belongs to physicist Sergey Vavilov, whose diary entry is given in the third chapter, devoted to the Soviet period of St. Petersburg cemeteries, when many historical necropolises were either severely destroyed or completely destroyed. In the post—war period, the authorities had enough worries without cemeteries, so funeral facilities were the last on the list of priorities, and people who wanted to bury their loved ones with dignity had to get out by making funeral paraphernalia from improvised materials - pipe scraps, old mechanical parts, fittings and other junk. Observing these bizarre constructions, Vavilov described the Soviet cemeteries of that time as "strange parks of concentrated grief and fanaticism even beyond the grave." Nevertheless, the word "parks" in this quote is encouraging, it adds some kind of life-affirming note, as does the book's concluding guide to existing (or at least preserved) cemeteries, which, as Margarita Nikolaeva is sure, "will always find something to surprise" and invariably testify to the inextricable link between the living and the dead.
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