Pullup bar on soldiers 'graves: how the Moscow authorities destroy the soldiers' cemetery

In 2009, Luzhkov's bulldozers came on the second wave. In 2021, the authorities of the VAO (Eastern Administrative District) and the mayor's office are completing what they started.

Yelena Ivanova, Natalia Seibil

On the territory of the Semyonovsky cemetery, which the prefecture of the Eastern Administrative District has been stubbornly calling a square for 12 years in a row, reconstruction is again planned. Playgrounds on the graves were built in 2011, apparently, the next stage has begun.

"The entire territory of the park is a cemetery. There, burial mounds have been cut to level the surface. This led to the fact that the burials were at a shallow depth. The ground that now lies was laid ten years ago. This is a thin layer of turf. When heavy equipment was driven into the park ten years ago, the tractor fell into the crypt. The thin brick vaults of the crypt are not designed to be driven by tractors. Bones were lying on the surface, local historians collected skulls and bones in a box from under the TV", - says historian Natalya Samover.

The Semyonovskoye cemetery is the only necropolis in Russia, which was formed over 300 years. Soldiers who died from their wounds were buried here. When, in 1707, Peter the Great ordered the opening of a military hospital in Lefortovo, officers and generals began to be buried at the Preobrazhensky cemetery, and ordinary soldiers who were wounded in the Patriotic War of 1812, the wars of the 19th century in the Caucasus, the Russian-Japanese war were buried at the Semenov cemetery. 1903-1905, World War I. Historians say that more than half a million defenders of the Fatherland are buried here.

In 2017, Patriarch Kirill consecrated the restored church built in 1855 in the old part of the cemetery and was outraged that the church is called "the Church of the Resurrection of Christ at the former Semyonov cemetery. "Witnesses say what the patriarch said: "There are no former cemeteries".

"Ten years ago, all these vandal works could still be explained by the fact that the then administration of the Eastern Administrative District no longer remembered that this place had been a cemetery for many centuries. Legally, it was a square, the history of which they did not know. And for them it was a surprise when gravestones and bones climbed out of the ground", - recalls Samover.

The ruined tombstones were laid near the former cemetery church, large bones, which local historians ransomed from the workers, were taken by archaeologists, where they remain unknown to this day. Small bones were scattered throughout the park. Local historians sounded the alarm, in the press there was a flurry of materials about the destroyers of the cemetery. Leonid Kondrashov, who heads the archaeological service in the Moscow City Heritage Site, went to the site. Then he said aloud under the cameras that the Moscow City Heritage Site would make efforts to ensure that this territory received the status of a landmark, and this is a kind of cultural heritage. Accordingly, in this case, certain restrictions would be established. Kondrashov promised that there will be a memorial park here.

At the end of 2012, officials assured of the seriousness of their plans, they said that the city was going to enter the memorial Semyonovskoye military cemetery into the unified state register of cultural heritage sites. But until today on the site of the unified register there was no information about the Semenovskoye cemetery, and there is still no information.

Several more years passed, and in 2019 sports horizontal bars were installed on the graves.

“And the next day, the workers arrived, they set horizontal bars and laid colored paths - as in the fairy tale“ The Wizard of the Emerald City ”- leading to the temple. The abbot left the church - he was speechless. Then those wishing to build a health trail for the Scandinavian walking came to him, as in 2011 - a "folk ski track" ... and so on in a circle", - says a historian, employee of the museum education of the Main Military Clinical Hospital. Academician N.N. Burdenko, member of the Council of the International Public Organization "Union of Orthodox Women" Marina Ovchinnikova.

The Soviet government deliberately demolished everything that reminded of the past, including cemeteries. Cemeteries reminded people that they had ancestors, and this connection of times was deliberately cut off.

"Why the Moscow authorities are doing this now, I do not understand at all. They also say that they defend traditional values, brag about their conservatism. Historical memory is our everything. And at the same time, our children should have fun on the bones of not just their ancestors, but their defenders!”, - Natalya Samover is indignant.

The historian wrote letters to the Ministry of Defense , the mayor of Moscow and President Putin. The presidential administration kicked off to the Moscow government, and the Moscow government to the Moscow City Heritage Site. The same Leonid Kondrashov writes in his reply that the cemetery is not a monument, because no one declared it as a monument. What prevented the Moscow City Heritage and its archaeological service from doing this over the past 10 years, the official did not say.

We contacted the Department and Novye Izvestia and received the following answer without a signature:

“The territory of the Semenovsky necropolis in the city of Moscow is not an object of cultural heritage and is not under State protection ... The necropolis on its territory was liquidated in the 1930s. According to the information of the State Budgetary Institution "Ritual", the archival documents for 1934 contain records of the reburial of a part of the remains at the Preobrazhensky cemetery".

Whose bones were dug up by workers 77 years later in 2011, in the department, apparently, they do not know and do not want to know.

"You have to understand that those playgrounds that now exist are on the bones. Nobody carried out any exhumation during their construction. When construction work was going on in 2010, and bones were discovered, they were either taken out with the soil to a landfill, or fell into the hands of a local historian if he suddenly ran by. Then the bones belonged to the territory of the temple. They were allegedly reburied, but where and how is unknown", - says Samover.

Local historians and historians have long demanded that the Semenovsky cemetery be given the status of a protected area, and a memorial park should be built in its place. There is such experience in Moscow. Back in Soviet times, the Fraternal Cemetery was razed to the ground on the Falcon, where the victims of the First World War were buried in mass graves. In the 90s, a memorial and a chapel were built there. Time passed, and everything got mixed up, merged - the monument, and the mothers walking with the strollers, and the children, and next to them were boulders from the graves that could not be moved.

But it was a long time ago. Now the mayor's office is doing everything possible not to increase the number of protected areas in the capital. It reaches the point of absurdity. In 2015, 45 cities were declared historical, that is, the most protected settlements in the Russian Federation, from Arzamas and Torzhok to St. Petersburg. Only Moscow is not on this list.

"In Moscow it is extremely unprofitable for the city to take protection of the territory. Because if you "throw umbrellas", it will only complicate the construction activity. This is the main reason why the city government stands to the death and refuses to assign the status of a historical settlement to the central part of Moscow. Moscow is not a historical settlement".

Rustam Rakhmatullin from Arkhnadzor agrees with Natalya Samover. He strongly doubts that the activists will be able to move the story with the memorial park on the site of the Semenovsky cemetery:

"For the last two years, the identification of objects has been blocked by an unofficial order. Therefore, applications are returned in 99% of cases. Most likely, the application for the Semyonovskoye cemetery will be returned three times on formal grounds, and for the fourth time they will be refused in essence, if something does not change during this time in the position of the mayor. This is our overall impression".

The city authorities need to build - no matter where, the main thing is that a lot and without looking back at anyone, activists say. Back in 2012, Arkhnadzor appealed to the Moscow City Duma to hold hearings on the destroyed necropolises. The people's choices brushed aside the topic. But the plan is very correct: it is necessary to unite the efforts of everyone, from the Moscow City Park and the Moscow City Heritage Site to the Department of Education and Physical Education, from the church to local historians and draw up a list of former cemeteries, give them the protected status of places of interest and carry out any design taking into account the special status of these territories, as well as carry out any work with archaeological support.

The Department of Cultural Heritage promised a memorial park ten years ago, but now it pretends that no one said anything like that. Natalya Samover believes that it is high time to transfer him to federal subordination:

"City heritage protection authorities are part of the city government. If a decision is made to build, then their task is to rape the legislation so that the building complex can do it. These are bodies that do not comply with the legislation on the preservation of cultural heritage, but adapt this legislation to the needs of the construction lobby. If all bodies are integrated into the federal vertical, they will cease to be subordinate to the regional authorities. It is understandable that this will provoke fierce resistance from regional governments, because they will find themselves face to face with federal law that must be respected".

The Semenovskoye cemetery is not a square on the former Moscow outskirts, it is 300 years of Russian history, and activists are not protecting gravestones, but the historical memory of our people. For the Moscow mayor's office, square meters and hectares are more important.

Novye Izvestia appealed to the Russian Military Historical Society with a request to comment on the situation around the Semenovskoye cemetery. On his page on the Internet, its chairman, Vladimir Medinsky, says that a thread connecting us with our ancestors should be woven in history lessons. This also applies to material memory, for example, military cemeteries. The editorial board has not yet received a response

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