Vagankovo Cemetery
Vagankovo Cemetery (Vagan'kovskoye Cemetery; Ваганьковское кладбище), established in 1771, is located in the Presnya district of Moscow. It started in the aftermath of the Moscow plague riot of 1771 outside the city proper, so as to prevent the contagion from spreading.
Half a million people are estimated to have been buried at Vagankovo throughout its history.[1] As of 2010, the existing cemetery contains more than 100,000 graves.[1] The vast necropolis contains the mass graves from the Battle of Borodino, the Battle of Moscow, and the Khodynka Tragedy. It is the burial site for a number of people from the artistic and sports community of Russia and the old Soviet Union. William Taubman claims that during the Great Purge "alcohol-soused guards would execute weeping prisoners" after they had dug their graves in the cemetery.[2]
The cemetery is served by several Orthodox churches constructed between 1819 and 1823 in the Muscovite version of the Empire style.
Notable burials
- Nadezhda Lamanova (1861-1941), fashion and costume designer
- Avgust Yavich (1900-1979), writer, journalist, Russian Civil War and Second World War participant, Union of Soviet Writers
- Aleksandr Abdulov (1953-2008), actor
- Vasily Agapkin (1884–1964), musician, author of the song "Farewell of Slavianka"
- Boris Andreyev (1915-1982), actor
- Inga Artamonova (1936–1966), world speed-skating champion
- Grigori Chukhrai (1921–2001), film director
- Vladimir Dal (1801–1872), lexicographer
- Sergei Grinkov (1967–1995), world & Olympic ice skating pairs champion
- Leonid Kharitonov (1930–1987), actor
- Andrei Mironov (1941-1987). actor
- Bulat Okudzhava (1924–1997), poet and singer-songwriter, writer
- Vasili Oshchepkov (1892-1937), fighter
- Lyudmila Pakhomova (1946–1986), world & Olympic ice dancing pairs champion
- Mikhail Pugovkin (1923–2008), actor
- Prosh Proshian (1883–1918), Left Socialist-Revolutionary
- Alexei Savrasov (1830–1897), painter
- Gennady Shpalikov (1937–1974), poet, screenwriter
- David Shterenberg (1881–1948), artist
- Vitaly Solomin (1941–2002), actor
- Anatoly Solonitsyn (1934-1982)
- Nikolai Starostin (1902–1996), footballer
- Vasily Surikov (1848–1916), painter
- Yevgeny Svetlanov (1928-2002), conductor, composer, and pianist
- Igor Talkov (1956–1991), poet, singer-songwriter
- Anna Timiryova (1893–1975), poet
- Vasily Tropinin (1776–1857), painter
- Lev Vlassenko (1928–1996), pianist
- Vladimir Vysotsky (1938–1980), poet, singer-songwriter, actor
- Vasily Yan (1876–1954), writer
- Leonid Yengibarov (1935–1972), clown, mime, actor
- Yakov Rozval (1932-2015), engineer, inventor
- Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925), poet, husband of Isadora Duncan
- Antonina Zubkova (1920-1950), WWII bomber pilot, Heroine of the Soviet Union
- Lev Loktev (1908-1981), artillery designer
References
- "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-06-05. Retrieved 2016-06-04.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
- Taubman, William. Khrushchev, the man and his era. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 100.
External links
Media related to Vagankovo Cemetery at Wikimedia Commons