Smolensky Cemetery
59°56′36″N 30°14′55″E / 59.94333°N 30.24861°E
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Smolensky Cemetery (
Lutheran, and Armenian
sections.
Orthodox cemetery
The Orthodox cemetery is known to have existed in 1738,[1] but lacked official recognition until 1758.[2] Not only was it far removed from the city center, but it was also damp, necessitating the construction of drainage canals.[3]
The cemetery has two churches. The older church is dedicated to the
Michael the Archangel (destroyed by the Saint Petersburg flood of 1824), then rebuilt in stone as a Church in honor of the Holy Life-giving Trinity (1831–1932) and an almshouse designed by Luigi Rusca
.
The cemetery became a traditional burial place for the professors of the
Russian Revolution of 1917, making it the largest 19th-century cemetery of Saint Petersburg.[3]
Interments included:
- Xenia of Saint Petersburg (died c. 1803), the patron saint of the city; her tomb is marked by a chapel.
The Smolensky Church (1786–90) is dedicated to the Theotokos of Smolensk - Vasily Trediakovsky (1769)
- Mikhail Kozlovsky (1802)
- Andreyan Zakharov (1811)
- Elisabeth Kulmann (1825, later moved to the Tikhvin Cemetery)
- Dmitry Bortniansky (1825)
- Ivan Martos (1835)
- Taras Shevchenko (1861, reburied on Chernecha Hora near Kaniv)[4]
- Nikolay Ustryalov(1870)
- Vasily Karatygin (1880)
- Nikolay Zinin (1880)
- Ivan Kramskoi (1887)
- Alexander Mozhaysky (1890)
- Ivan Shishkin (1898)
- Dmitry Gamov (1903)
- Arkhip Kuindzhi (1910)
- Nikolay Beketov (1911)
- Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1914)
- Leonid Pozen (1921)
- Alexander Blok (1921)
- Alexander Friedmann (1925)
- Fyodor Sologub (1927)
- Fyodor Uspensky (1928)
- Nikolay Likhachyov (1936)
- Boris Piotrovsky (1990)
- Eduard Khil (2012)
After the
Second World War put the redevelopment plans on hold. The cemetery eventually reopened for select burials in the early 1980s.[1]
On August 29, 2023,
Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, a businessman, the head of the Concord Group and the Wagner PMCs, was buried at the cemetery. The funeral took place in the strictest secrecy, at 6 o'clock in the morning. Subsequently, relatives and representatives of Prigozhin's company staged the funeral service and preparations for the funeral at the Serafimovsky and Northern cemeteries in order to hide the true burial place from vandals.[5]
Lutheran cemetery
The Lutheran cemetery on
Vasily Dokuchayev, Moritz von Jacobi, Agustín de Betancourt, Jean-François Thomas de Thomon, Xavier de Maistre, Ludvig Nobel, Georg Friedrich Parrot, Karl Nesselrode, and Vladimir Lamsdorf. In the 20th century, several parts of the cemetery were destroyed; the remains of Euler and Betancourt were reburied in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.[1]
-
The grave of Karl Nesselrode -
The grave of Adolph Theodor Kupffer -
The grave of Count Friedrich Michael Lütke -
The grave of José de Ribas
Armenian cemetery
The Armenian section of the cemetery has a church consecrated in 1797. The architect was probably
Georg Veldten.[1]
In literature
An annual mourning ceremony accompanied by a picnic feast is recorded in Letitia Elizabeth Landon's poem Cemetery of the Smolensko Church of 1836.
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See also
References
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