In the Russian capital, perhaps, there was never a graveyard that would be located as picturesque as the Dorogomilovsky cemetery. This sad sight, long gone in history, was located on the banks of the Moskva River between the eponymous outpost and the District Railway. About when the Dorogomilovsky cemetery arose and why today it is not on the map of Moscow, it is described in the article.
Plague riot
Both from the side of Presnya, and from the side of the Moscow River, the Dorogomilovskoye cemetery looked very picturesque in summer. It occupied a considerable territory and was surrounded by greenery.
The cemetery was located near the Dorogomilovskaya outpost. It arose in 1771, the same year when an epidemic broke out in the capital that led to an uprising. The plague struck primarily workers who were forced to live and work in unsanitary conditions. In addition, Moscow in those days was a rather dirty city. The garbage was not taken out, it was thrown into the streets or into the river. The disease, which supposedly came from Turkey, in Russia received favorable conditions for spread.
The city began to panic. Under the influence of a number of other social phenomena, an uprising broke out, which went down in history as the "Plague Revolt".
The emergence of a cemetery
The exact number of deaths from the plague and those who died as a result of the uprising is unknown. But apparently, there were many victims, because after the suppression of the riot in Moscow several new cemeteries appeared. Among them is Vagankovskoye, where today mainly celebrities are buried. Dorogomilovskoe, on the other hand, lasted a little over 150 years.
This graveyard was unremarkable. At the end of the 18th century, ordinary people were buried here. As a rule, peasants or landlord households.
Patriotic War
Where the Dorogomilovskoye cemetery was located, today there is no trace of the graveyard. From time immemorial, burial sites have kept many mysteries and generated many legends. Soldiers were buried in the cemetery, which was located not far from those places where the Mozhayskoye highway passes today, that is, in the west of Moscow. And not only Russian, but also French.
According to official figures, only three hundred people were buried. At least at the Dorogomilovsky cemetery in tsarist times there was a monument erected at the expense of the famous capital manufacturer Prokhorov, and this figure was indicated on it. The official data of modern scholars, inclined to talk about the dark Soviet past, is doubtful.
Everyone remembers from the school course about the Moscow events of 1812. The city was on fire. Muscovites fled to where. Rostopchin and Kutuzov organized the export of Orthodox shrines from the capital. They helped, of course, get out of burning Moscow and members of noble families. However, on their ark there was no place for several hundred soldiers. They died in the days of occupation.
There is a version that in the cemetery, which was located near the Mozhayskoye Highway, not three hundred people were buried, but much more. And the grave here was not alone.
Soviet times
In the twenties, the stele, installed in the 19th century, was dismantled. It was made in the Orthodox style, which was not in line with the new policy. In 1940, a new monument appeared in Dorogomilovsky cemetery, fully meeting the spirit of the times. However, he did not last long either.
In 1950, the cemetery was closed. According to one version, the remains of Russian soldiers were transferred to Novodevichye. On the other - to Vagankovskoe. A prominent Soviet local historian put forward the third version: the remains of the soldiers could not be transported anywhere, they rest in the ground, under the houses built on the site of the Dorogomilovsky cemetery.
Church
The address of the Dorogomilovsky cemetery today is impossible to name. As you know, in Soviet times, almost all of Moscow's streets were renamed. In 1939, a temple was erected in the cemetery. Apparently by accident. Ten years later, the authorities came to their senses and destroyed a relic of the royal past.
This religious building was located where today stands house number 26 on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. The Church of Elizabeth the Reverend - that was the name of the Orthodox church, demolished in the late forties.
In the place of the cemetery there was a temple before. The first church was wooden, and it was built in 1722. The temple, like the cemetery, was a monument to the battle of Borodino. The mass grave was approximately 100 meters from it.
In the twenties, Orthodox churches and monasteries were closed and liquidated in the country. But the church of Elizabeth the Reverend in the Dorogomilovsky cemetery, strangely enough, was preserved. Moreover, in the late thirties the authorities allowed the townspeople to raise money for the construction of a new, stone one.
By the end of the forties, the Elizabethan church, just such a name in those days was usually used by Muscovites, was in complete disrepair. When the cemetery was closed, the temple was razed to the ground. In its place, houses were built in the style of the Stalinist empire.
Professorial cemetery
However, let us return to the history of the churchyard, which at the end of the forties added to the list of disappeared cemeteries in Moscow. As already mentioned, at the end of the 18th century, mostly peasants were buried here. And during World War II - a soldier. The cemetery then acquired a certain historical significance, which, however, did not give it prestige.
There was not a single merchant's grave. No wealthy people were buried at this cemetery. The merchants of the first guild preferred the Novodevichy cemetery as their last refuge. Even the manufacturer Prokhorov, through whose efforts the stele was erected in memory of the heroes of World War II, was buried in the most prestigious Moscow churchyard, the very one that today is an open-air museum and attracts a huge number of tourists.
For unknown reasons, at the end of the 19th century, scientists were suddenly buried in the Dorogomilovsky cemetery. Here appeared the graves of well-known university teachers at that time. The cemetery could get a second unofficial name - Professorship. But that did not happen.
At the beginning of the 20th century, artists, politicians and other famous personalities were buried here. In the cemetery, which is fraught with many mysteries, the last refuge was found by the Minister of Education, who was killed by a radical student in 1901.
This metropolitan necropolis could become no less valuable historical monument than the one located at the walls of the Novodevichy Convent. But in Stalin's time, apparently, there was no safety of relics. Muscovites sorely lacked housing, the housing issue spoiled them. New residential buildings were needed, and they were built. It is unlikely that the inhabitants of the capital, who finally found housing, then occupied such a trifle as the remains of burials at the foundation.
From the history of Moscow
The fate of the Dorogomilovsky cemetery was shared by other metropolitan graveyards. In the twenties, the Bolsheviks launched a large-scale struggle with the religious cult and, apparently, with death as such. Churches were destroyed, cemeteries, which, according to Orthodox traditions, were located next to churches, were liquidated.
A strange custom has appeared: to erect educational institutions and residential buildings on the site of churches and necropolises. Sometimes the graves were demolished, the territory was cleared, and a park or football field appeared on it. Far from always relatives were allowed to bury the remains. Often such events were carried out suddenly, using escalators that transported gravestones to a landfill.
Jewish cemetery
Brezhnev, Andropov and other statesmen once lived in house No. 26 on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. In place of this building and neighboring buildings used to be two cemeteries. The first, Orthodox, is described above. However, there was another Dorogomilovsky cemetery in the Russian capital - the Jewish one. How long it lasted is unknown. According to some reports, the Jewish cemetery was founded before the Orthodox, but destroyed in the same year as the Elizabethan church.
Terrible find
A few years ago, construction began on Taras Shevchenko embankment. Then gravestones were discovered, which were razed to the ground more than 50 years ago.
It is worth saying that the story of a terrible find near Kutuzovsky Prospekt has not been officially confirmed. They say that during the construction not only parts of the gravestones were discovered, but also human remains and military uniforms. Hence the version appeared that the soldiers who died during the Napoleonic invasion were not reburied in Soviet times. True, the Moscow fire occurred more than two centuries ago. How could a military uniform survive for so many years?
Houses at the site of the cemetery
What stands today on the former graves? In addition to the apartment building in which famous politicians once lived, there is a factory, a gymnasium, several residential buildings that belong to the street in 1812.
Legends
They say that the aura in these houses is not good. Once lived Schelokov with his wife. After the death of Brezhnev, he lost his post. Two years later, committed suicide. In 1984, Shchelokov himself shot himself.
According to legend, his apartment was taken by another statesman, who also ultimately committed suicide. But do these stories relate to the Dorogomilovsky cemetery? Unlikely. In Soviet times, many political and statesmen ended their careers tragically.