|
The beautiful Vagankov Cemetery is located in the quiet
Krasnaya Presnaya district of the city and is a pleasure to wander
around. Almost as prestigious as the Novodevichy Graveyard, where
the majority of Moscow's major political, literary and historical
figures were laid to rest, the cemetery dates from 1771, when an
outbreak of plague compelled the authorities to dig up all the
graveyards in central Moscow and establish new ones beyond the city
limits. The cemetery's name derives from the parish graveyard that
belonged to the Church of St. Nicholas in Old Vagankov, which stands
near the Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin where a village of the same
name stood in medieval times. Of the many distinguished figures
buried in the Vagankov Cemetery of particular note is the grave of
the maverick actor, poet and drunk of the Brezhnev era Vladimir
Vysotsky, whose melancholy ballads and lyrics have become part of
the national consciousness.
Closely linked with Moscow's Taganka Theater, where his
performances of a black-jeaned, guitar-playing Hamlet stunned
audiences in the 1970s, Vysotsky sang of disillusionment and the
seedier side of Russian life and found fame and popularity
throughout the country. His death during the Moscow Olympic Games in
1980 was unpublicized but hundreds of devoted fans still turned up
to his secret funeral in the cemetery, although no monument was
permitted on his grave until five years later with the advent of
perestroika. Today the grave is marked by a statue of the great
singer, shrouded in a cloak with his guitar forming a halo behind
his head.
Another significant grave is that of the striking but volatile
young poet, Sergei Yesenin, whose final verse (To die is not new -
but neither is it new to be alive) was written in his own blood just
before he hanged himself in a hotel room in St. Petersburg. Having
grown up in the archaic provincial setting of traditional rural
Russian life, the young poet spent the rest of his life trying to
adjust to the new age of social revolution and upheaval, which he
communicated through his popular and poignant lyric poems. After a
stormy marriage to the American dancer Isadora Duncan, during which
the poet became increasingly mentally unstable and turned more and
more to alcohol and drugs to quell his disquiet and dissatisfaction
with life, and a brief second marriage to one of the granddaughters
of the great writer Tolstoy, Esenin became so tormented by guilt at
his inability to fulfill the messianic role of a poet of the people
that he tragically took his own life. His grave is marked by a
dashing sculpture of the poet carved from white marble. One of the
poet's many admirers, a Galina Benislavskaya, shot herself on his
grave a year after his death and was buried in the plot behind him.
Visitors should also look for the graves of the great Russian
historical painter Vasily Surikov, which is marked by a sculpted
palette and brush, the famous lexicographer Vladimir Dal, whose work
is known to and probably the bane of every student of the Russian
language, and the Mafia boss Otari Kvantrishvili, who was shot by a
contract killer in a traditional Russian bath house back in 1994 and
whose funeral was shown on television accompanied by the theme tune
from the film The Godfather. |
Contact Us
Visas
Hotels
Cars
Adventure
Sights
Cruises
Flights
