Smolensky Cemetery
Encyclopedia
Smolensky Cemetery is the oldest continuously operating cemetery
in St. Petersburg, Russia
. It occupies a rectangular parcel in the western part of Vasilievsky Island
, on the bank of the small Smolenka River
, and is divided into the Orthodox
, Lutheran, and Armenia
n sections.
The cemetery has two churches. The older church is dedicated to the Theotokos of Smolensk. The azure
-painted Neoclassical
building was erected between 1786 and 1790. The church was closed for worship by the Bolsheviks between 1940 and 1946, then between 1960 and 1987. The newer church (1904), currently in disrepair, is dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ. It is the only example of Naryshkin Baroque
in St. Petersburg. The church used to be known for its dazzling Neo-Baroque
icon screen with a set of Vasnetsov
icons. Other buildings on the grounds included the first wooden church, that of Michael the Archangel (destroyed by the Saint Petersburg flood of 1824), and an almshouse
designed by Luigi Rusca
.
The cemetery was a traditional burial place for the professors of the Imperial Academy of Arts
and St. Petersburg University (both sited on Vasilievsky Island). Up to 800,000 people are estimated to have been interred at Smolensky Cemetery before the Russian Revolution, making it the largest 19th-century cemetery of St. Petersburg. Interments included:
After the Russian Revolution the local authorities announced plans to demolish the cemetery by 1937, replacing it with a public garden "for sanitation
's sake". Entire tombs or their sculptural details were moved to museums in order to preserve them. The remains of Kozlovsky, Zakharov, Martos, Bortniansky, Karatygin, Kramskoi, Shishkin and Kuindzhi were transferred to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra
. Alexander Blok was the last to be reburied in 1944. The outbreak of the Second World War put these plans on hold. The cemetery was eventually reopened for select burials in the early 1980s.
and the Catholic Church of St. Catherine
, including Leonhard Euler
, Germain Henri Hess
, José de Ribas
, Vasily Dokuchayev, Moritz von Jacobi, Agustín de Betancourt
, Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
, Fyodor Litke, 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.
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
in St. Petersburg, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. It occupies a rectangular parcel in the western part of Vasilievsky Island
Vasilievsky Island
Vasilyevsky Island is an island in Saint Petersburg, Russia, bordered by the rivers Bolshaya Neva and Malaya Neva in the south and northeast, and by the Gulf of Finland in the west. Vasilyevsky Island is separated from Dekabristov Island by the Smolenka River...
, on the bank of the small Smolenka River
Smolenka River
Smolenka is a minor river in the city of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is one of the armlets of the Neva River forming its delta. It branches off the Malaya Neva armlet at , and flows through the Smolensky Cemetery into the Gulf of Finland, separating Decembrists' Island from the Vasilievsky...
, and is divided into the Orthodox
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
, Lutheran, and Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
n sections.
Orthodox cemetery
The Orthodox cemetery is known to have existed in 1738, but was not officially recognized until 1758. Not only was it far removed from the city center, but it was also damp, necessitating the construction of drainage canals.The cemetery has two churches. The older church is dedicated to the Theotokos of Smolensk. The azure
Azure (color)
The color bleu de France is displayed at right.Bleu de France is a color that has been associated in heraldry with the Kings of France since the 12th century.-Brandeis blue:...
-painted Neoclassical
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
building was erected between 1786 and 1790. The church was closed for worship by the Bolsheviks between 1940 and 1946, then between 1960 and 1987. The newer church (1904), currently in disrepair, is dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ. It is the only example of Naryshkin Baroque
Naryshkin Baroque
Naryshkin Baroque, also called Moscow Baroque, or Muscovite Baroque, is the name given to a particular style of Baroque architecture and decoration which was fashionable in Moscow from the turn of the 17th into the early 18th centuries.-Style:...
in St. Petersburg. The church used to be known for its dazzling Neo-Baroque
Neo-Baroque
Neo-Baroque may refer to:*Neo-Baroque music*Neo-Baroque painting*Baroque Revival architecture...
icon screen with a set of Vasnetsov
Viktor Vasnetsov
Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov , 1848 — Moscow, July 23, 1926) was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He was described as co-founder of folklorist/romantic modernism in the Russian painting and a key figure of the revivalist movement in Russian art.- Childhood ...
icons. Other buildings on the grounds included the first wooden church, that of Michael the Archangel (destroyed by the Saint Petersburg flood of 1824), and an almshouse
Almshouse
Almshouses are charitable housing provided to enable people to live in a particular community...
designed by Luigi Rusca
Luigi Rusca
Luigi Rusca was a Neoclassical architect from Ticino who worked in St. Petersburg, Russia between 1783 and 1818. He was apprenticed to Georg Veldten and Giacomo Quarenghi, then went on a successful career on his own...
.
The cemetery was a traditional burial place for the professors of the Imperial Academy of Arts
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...
and St. Petersburg University (both sited on Vasilievsky Island). Up to 800,000 people are estimated to have been interred at Smolensky Cemetery before the Russian Revolution, making it the largest 19th-century cemetery of St. Petersburg. Interments included:
- Xenia of Saint PetersburgXenia of Saint PetersburgSaint Blessed Xenia of St. Petersburg is a patron saint of St...
, the patron saintPatron saintA patron saint is a saint who is regarded as the intercessor and advocate in heaven of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family, or person...
of the city; her tomb is marked by a chapel. - Mikhail KozlovskyMikhail KozlovskyMikhail Ivanovich Kozlovsky was a Russian Neoclassical sculptor active during the Age of Enlightenment....
(1802) - Andreyan ZakharovAndreyan ZakharovAndreyan Zakharov was a Russian architect and representative of the Empire style. His designs also alternated neoclassicism with eclecticism. He was born to a family that was employed by the Admiralty board, and his greatest work was his renovation and expansion of the Admiralty building...
(1811) - Dmitry Bortniansky (1825)
- Ivan MartosIvan MartosIvan Petrovich Martos was a Russian sculptor and art teacher of Ukrainian origin who helped awaken Russian interest in Neoclassical sculpture....
(1835) - Taras ShevchenkoTaras ShevchenkoTaras Hryhorovych Shevchenko -Life:Born into a serf family of Hryhoriy Ivanovych Shevchenko and Kateryna Yakymivna Shevchenko in the village of Moryntsi, of Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire Shevchenko was orphaned at the age of eleven...
(1861, reburied on Chernecha HoraChernecha horaTaras Hill or Chernecha Hora is a hill on the bank of the Dnieper near Kaniv in Ukraine, where the remains of the famous Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko have been buried since 1861. The original site of Shevchenko's burial is the Smolensky Cemetery in St. Petersburg. The hill formerly...
near KanivKanivKaniv is a city located in the Cherkasy Oblast in central Ukraine. The city rests on the Dnieper River, and is also one of the main inland river ports on the Dnieper...
) - Nikolay UstryalovNikolay Gerasimovich UstryalovNikolay Gerasimovich Ustryalov was a Russian historian who elaborated the Official Nationality Theory...
(1870) - Vasily KaratyginVasily KaratyginVasily Andreevich Karatygin was a leading actor of Russian Romanticism, sometimes styled the Russian Kean.Karatygin joined the Bolshoi Theatre in St Petersburg in 1820 and moved to the Alexandrine Theatre in 1832...
(1880) - Nikolay ZininNikolay ZininNikolay Nikolaevich Zinin was a Russian organic chemist.-Life:He studied at the University of Kazan where he graduated in mathematics but he started teaching chemistry in 1835. To improve his skills he was asked to study in Europe for some time, which he did between 1838 and 1841...
(1880) - Ivan KramskoiIvan KramskoiIvan Nikolaevich Kramskoi was a Russian painter and art critic. He was an intellectual leader of the Russian democratic art movement in 1860-1880.-Life:...
(1887) - Alexander Mozhaysky (1890)
- Ivan ShishkinIvan ShishkinIvan Ivanovich Shishkin was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement.Shishkin was born in Yelabuga of Vyatka Governorate , and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium...
(1898) - Arkhip KuindzhiArkhip KuindzhiArkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi was a Russian landscape painter.Arkhip Kuindzhi was born in January 1841 in Mariupol , but he spent his youth in the city of Taganrog. He grew up in a poor family, and his father was a Greek shoemaker Ivan Khristoforovich Kuindzhi...
(1910) - Nikolay Beketov (1911)
- Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky (1914)
- Alexander BlokAlexander BlokAlexander Alexandrovich Blok was a Russian lyrical poet.-Life and career:Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg...
(1921) - Fyodor SologubFyodor SologubFyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.-Early life:...
(1927) - Fyodor UspenskyFyodor UspenskyFyodor Ivanovich Uspensky or Uspenskij was the preeminent Russian Byzantinist in the first third of the 20th century. His works are considered to be among the finest illustrations of the flowering of Byzantine studies in Tsarist Russia....
(1928) - Nikolay LikhachyovNikolay LikhachyovNikolay Petrovich Likhachyov , alternatively spelled Likhachev, was the first and foremost Russian sigillographer who also contributed significantly to an array of auxiliary historical disciplines, including palaeography, epigraphy, diplomatics, genealogy, and numismatics...
(1936) - Boris PiotrovskyBoris PiotrovskyBoris Borisovich Piotrovsky was a Soviet Russian academician, historian-orientalist and archaeologist who studied the ancient civilizations of Urartu, Scythia, and Nubia. He is best known as a key figure in the study of the Urartian civilization of the southern Caucasus...
(1990)
After the Russian Revolution the local authorities announced plans to demolish the cemetery by 1937, replacing it with a public garden "for sanitation
Sanitation
Sanitation is the hygienic means of promoting health through prevention of human contact with the hazards of wastes. Hazards can be either physical, microbiological, biological or chemical agents of disease. Wastes that can cause health problems are human and animal feces, solid wastes, domestic...
's sake". Entire tombs or their sculptural details were moved to museums in order to preserve them. The remains of Kozlovsky, Zakharov, Martos, Bortniansky, Karatygin, Kramskoi, Shishkin and Kuindzhi were transferred to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Alexander Nevsky Lavra
Saint Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Saint Alexander Nevsky Monastery was founded by Peter I of Russia in 1710 at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg supposing that that was the site of the Neva Battle in 1240 when Alexander Nevsky, a prince, defeated the Swedes; however, the battle...
. Alexander Blok was the last to be reburied in 1944. The outbreak of the Second World War put these plans on hold. The cemetery was eventually reopened for select burials in the early 1980s.
Lutheran cemetery
The Lutheran cemetery on Dekabristov Island is known to have existed in 1747. The minor Smolenka River separates it from the eponymous Orthodox cemetery. This cemetery contained the burials of the parishioners of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint KatarinaEvangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Katarina
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Katarina is an Evangelical Lutheran church located in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its building was built in 1885...
and the Catholic Church of St. Catherine
Catholic Church of St. Catherine
The Catholic Church of St. Catherine in St. Petersburg is one of the oldest Catholic churches in Russia. It is part of the Archdiocese of Moscow headed by H.E. Msgr. Paolo Pezzi. It is located on the Nevsky Prospekt.- Construction :...
, including Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler
Leonhard Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, particularly for mathematical analysis, such as the notion...
, Germain Henri Hess
Germain Henri Hess
Germain Henri Hess was a Swiss-born Russian chemist and doctor who formulated Hess's Law, an early principle of thermochemistry.-Early days:...
, José de Ribas
José de Ribas
José Pascual Domingo de Ribas y Boyons known in Russia as Osip Mikhailovich Deribas was a Russian admiral of Spanish-Irish origin who founded the city of Odessa...
, Vasily Dokuchayev, Moritz von Jacobi, Agustín de Betancourt
Agustín de Betancourt
Agustín de Betancourt y Molina was a prominent Spanish-Canarian engineer, who worked in Spain, France and Russia. His work ranged from steam engines and balloons to structural engineering and urban planning...
, Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
Jean-François Thomas de Thomon was a French neoclassical architect who worked in Eastern Europe in 1791–1813. Thomas de Thomon was the author of Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns on the spit of Vasilievsky Island in Saint Petersburg and the first building of the Odessa...
, Fyodor Litke, Xavier de Maistre
Xavier de Maistre
Xavier de Maistre of Savoy , lived largely as a military man, but is known as a French writer. The younger brother of noted philosopher and counter-revolutionary Joseph de Maistre, Xavier was born to an aristocratic family at Chambéry in October 1763...
, Ludvig Nobel
Ludvig Nobel
Ludvig Immanuel Nobel was an engineer, a noted businessman and a humanitarian. One of the most prominent members of the Nobel family, he was the son of Immanuel Nobel and Alfred Nobel's older brother...
, Georg Friedrich Parrot
Georg Friedrich Parrot
Georg Friedrich Parrot was an Livonian scientist. He was the first rector of the Imperial University of Dorpat founded in 1802.-Biography:Georges-Frédéric Parrot was born in Montbéliard, France...
, Karl Nesselrode
Karl Nesselrode
Baltic-German Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, also known as Charles de Nesselrode, was a Russian diplomat and a leading European conservative statesman of the Holy Alliance...
, 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.