Is memory located in the ground or in the soul? The state of Russian cemeteries is being discussed on the web

Well-known publicists Marina Shapovalova and Sergei Medvedev were simultaneously concerned with the cemetery issue on social networks, drawing attention to the unkempt and neglect of many Russian cemeteries. Shapovalova is sure that the culture of the people is determined by the cemeteries:

“The worst thing that the" scoop "did with the population of Russia was those" numbered "cattle burial grounds where we had to bury our loved ones.

In early childhood, I loved to walk around the Taganrog cemetery. History lived there. Family graves told me about tragedies and destinies. The beautiful marble and granite tombstones were enchanting. The cemetery existed within the same borders for three centuries and never expanded: new generations found eternal peace next to the previous ones - centuries on the same square meters. In 1971, the old cemetery was closed. They discovered a new one, which today goes beyond the horizon from the Nikolaev crossing. On this multi-kilometer polygon, not a single deceased lies next to their relatives...

I remembered how it was before.

Everyone knew where he would rest in his own time - next to his grandparents, great-great-grandfathers and great-great-great-grandmothers. It could be a family crypt or a site. After death, a person went to his ancestors, including in the literal sense: his body was immersed in the forefathers. Such a land in which you will certainly join those from whom you come is called the Motherland.

There was no practical sense in the Soviet "numbered cattle cemeteries": they grew rapidly, taking up too much space, growing tens of square kilometers - why? To destroy them and erase the memory in a quarter or a third of a century? So that no one in more than two generations has a native grave? This is dehumanization. Apparently, it was the goal".

Sergey Medvedev writes approximately in the same spirit when he visited his family Pyatnitskoye cemetery in Moscow and returned from there in frustrated feelings: “Instead of pacification and enlightenment, there is disappointment and annoyance at what should be called by its own name: the squalor of Russian life.

To begin with, I will say that this is my favorite cemetery in Moscow. In addition to the fact that many paternal and maternal relatives have been buried there over the past 120 years, this is one of the best places in the city for me, where in past years I could just drop in and take a walk. Yes, it does not have the pathos of Novodevichy or Troekurovsky, the European spirit of Vvedensky (German), the romanticism of the Donskoy, the excitement of Vagankov, but this is an enchanted quiet corner between the noise of the Krestovsky overpass and the roar of the Yaroslavl railway, where you suddenly fall from the city bustle into the space - time under the canopy of age-old maples, which have been knocked down a lot by hurricanes in recent years.

But the sadder was the sight that opened up to us today. I hadn’t been there since spring, and the dirt then whitewashed the general despondency, but now, in the height of summer, it became clear that the cemetery was completely abandoned. Three quarters of the graves, if not more, have not been visited for years - the rusty fences are lopsided, the monuments are covered with moss and mold, and most of the graves are overgrown with grass, nettles and small bushes: an epic sight. At the same time, there are no complaints about the workers of the cemetery - in recent years it has been cleaned, the paths have been renewed, there are garbage containers everywhere, garden tools are at the entrance; the problem is that the graves are abandoned, people do not go to them for years, and if they do, then drink vodka and crumble an egg for Easter, not caring at all about the appearance of the burial. I am used to seeing such pictures of desolation in provincial cities and villages, where the old people died out, and the youth left for the cities, and cemeteries die along with the settlements, but people (almost) do not go from Moscow, 75% of relatives could not emigrate - and It means that they simply do not go or do not care about renovating the graves in one of the main, historical, cemeteries of Moscow: instead of a memory zone, there is a zone of oblivion in the middle of a prosperous city. For an hour I was looking for the grave of a distant relative who had recently died of covid — I knew the site, landmarks, but could not find her among the dense thickets of nettles, fallen fences and crosses; I walked around the closely stuck flower girls, trying not to step on the graves themselves, and under my feet the left plastic bottles and cans crunched, in which everyone brings water for flowers and leaves them "for later", although this "later" never comes.

It is interesting to calculate, what is the average period of regular visits and care of the grave: three years after death, five, ten? With each new additional burial, the grave is dug up, covered with wreaths in ribbons, then the soil settles, the monument with a new line is put into place, and the inescapable Russian entropy, the machine of oblivion, begins to work again. Before, I used to take foreign guests to cemeteries - there, like nowhere else, the spirit of the place, materialized memory, communal rituals are revealed - but now I am simply ashamed, afraid to imagine what an outsider would think of Russia when looking at its cemeteries. And for myself, I think that, like more than a thousand years ago, when our ancestors burned forests to ennoble our alumina with ashes in slash-and-burn agriculture, Russia remains a shallow culture, with an extremely small depth of penetration into time, memory and its own soil, culture that does not grow to the ground, does not put down roots - because they will still cut down, burn, rob (not the Vikings with the Tatars, so their own master, clerk or voivode), wander into recruits, move to a new place. A wooden culture (a headache for archaeologists), where everything disappears and rots in the ground: material civilization, coffins, memory.

I will probably not compare with well-groomed European and strict Muslim and Jewish cemeteries (I remember in Scotland I found a churchyard where people of the same surname from the 11th to the 21st century lay nearby, and all the graves were equally groomed), I'll just say that this is another a metaphor for a disintegrating society, where even family ties and rituals wither away, societies whose time horizon is limited - both forward (planning) and backward (memory). Because the cemetery is not about the past, but about social cohesion, a sense of identity, orientation in time: a nation that has abandoned its cemeteries has no future. When was the last time you were at your graves - not for the sake of Easter, Parental Saturday or (outside) another death, but just like that, talk and think? If you go regularly, then my bow and respect to you, and if not, then go in the summer, while there is time, and at the same time weed the weeds - this perfectly clears karma..."

For comparison, journalist Oleg Pshenichny brought in the comments to this post photos of a well-kept rural cemetery in the Arkhangelsk region:

“Each grave has artificial flowers (but fresh), a glass, a treat. Everything is tidy, all right. Raise your head - there is a sky ... "

However, not everything is so simple, says activist Polina Karkina:

“For a person with an atheistic and rational view of the world, burial in itself may not be of value, since a person understands the ritual meaning of this story and its connection with a religion that is not close to him. From a rational point of view, in order to keep warm memories of a deceased person in memory, it is not necessary to visit the symbols regularly erected in the cemetery, or talk to the grave, thinking that you will be heard. With the same success, you may have at home some thing related to a person, which you look at and remember. And in matters relating to the customs of burial, one feels the pressure of centuries-old traditions, which, perhaps, no longer correspond to modernity for all people. For example, a person would be glad not to carry out the entire set of ritual rituals when forgiving the deceased, but he will not be able to do this, since all relatives will think that he did not honor his memory in the desired format. In general, personally, I can understand people who have designed the grave once, but then do not feel the inner need to go to her in order to remember.

Another question is that probably many people who decorate the graves are not atheists..."

This point of view was supported by one of the commentators:

“It would be very interesting to know what motives can be that can force a truly irreligious person to go to the cemetery, for whom, not in words, but in deeds, there is nothing but matter. For the sake of some kind of social cohesion and national future, no one will drag the weeds to the other end of the city, especially since these two ideas can be served with less costly means..."

By the way, it turned out that Muslims, unlike Christians, do not have a tradition of visiting cemeteries, they believe that the dead should not be disturbed, and the grave should be leveled by itself...

It is also known that, for example, in Buddhist Tibet, the corpses of the dead are fed to birds according to a special ritual (called "heavenly burial"), but in India the ashes of the deceased after cremation are poured into the Ganges, and before that the corpse was simply sent there. And not to say that there were weak family ties or a sense of homeland...