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Alexander Nevsky Lavra Cemetery is a small cemetery adjacent to Alexander Nevsky Lavra or Moanstery. Nevertheless it is famous as the resting place of some of the most famous figures in Russian history. Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and many other notable people in Russian history are buried here.
Lazarevskoye Cemetery is a museum-necropolis of the
18th century as part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture (since
1932), on the territory of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. The area is 0.7
ha. Since 1932, the cemetery has been a museum-necropolis, burials are
not carried out. The oldest of the surviving cemeteries in St.
Petersburg.
History
The cemetery was founded simultaneously
with the buildings of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and served as a
burial place for representatives of the privileged strata of St.
Petersburg society. Initially, the burials were carried out near the
small wooden Church of the Annunciation, built in 1713 (rebuilt in the
1750s, dismantled in 1789) and in the Lazarevskaya tomb, from where the
former name of the cemetery came from.
Initially, the personal
permission of Peter I was required for burial on it. The sites near the
Lazarevskaya tomb, built over the grave of the beloved sister of the
emperor Natalia, were considered the most honorable. By the end of the
century, it was allowed to bury people of the merchant class, provided
that an extremely large amount was paid.
In the first half of the
18th century, the main artistic form of the tombstone was a stone or
cast-iron slab. In the second half of the same century, with the
establishment of classicism, other monumental forms arose: sarcophagi,
columns, stelae, obelisks and other samples that imitated antiquity with
the inherent allegoricalness borrowed from it. There are about a
thousand structures in the necropolis, arranged in the natural order of
their installation.
From the very first years of its foundation,
the cemetery began to be filled with highly artistic tombstones and
monuments. At the beginning of the 20th century, plaster casts were made
from some of them, now stored in the State Russian Museum and the Museum
of the Russian Academy of Arts.
After the October Revolution, the
cemetery was closed and taken under state protection and soon turned
into a nature reserve. For the first time in the history of the
cemetery, work began on the study and measurement of memorial works that
were of artistic value according to the criteria of that time.
In
1922, the necropolis was taken under protection by the "Old Petersburg"
society.
In the early 1920s, the People's Commissariat of
Education proposed, and the Presidium of the Leningrad City Council
decided to turn the cemetery into the Museum of Tombstones, but for many
years the cemetery remained closed for inspection. After a visit to the
cemetery in 1934 by a group of Soviet writers who, with the support of
Maxim Gorky, emphasized the great cultural and historical significance
of the cemetery, after some time it began to be regarded as an
18th-century Necropolis.
Since 1932, the cemetery has been a
museum-necropolis. Tombstones made by I. P. Martos, M. I. Kozlovsky, V.
I. Demut-Malinovsky, Voronikhin, F. P. Tolstoy, as well as F. G.
Gordeev, F. I. Shubin, I. P. Prokofiev have survived , M. G. Krylov and
other masters of Russian plastic art.
In 1935, the Lensoviet
proposed to concentrate in the museum all the valuable in his opinion
memorial sculpture of the city. In 1939, all the best city monuments
moved to the museum-necropolis, with the exception of those that were
destroyed for political reasons (for example, the monument to Prince
Oldenburgsky, the manager of the Mariinsky Hospital, the monument to the
“Tsar the Carpenter”, etc.). The Great Patriotic War did not interrupt
the activities of the museum. Since August 1941, on the basis of the
museum, subdivisions were created to cover the monuments of the city,
which are part of the museum collection. For almost the entire blockade,
employees of the department of monuments walked around the city,
inspecting their objects - monuments and memorial plaques. For a short
period, the museum was reorganized, becoming part of a single museum
community, since many employees died of starvation and bombing. During
the days of the blockade, excursion-mass work was carried out, military
detachments came to the Annunciation tomb to bow to the memory of
Generalissimo A.V. Suvorov.
After the end of the blockade,
restoration work began in 1944, and by 1947 the museum began to receive
visitors as usual.
In 1952, the Lazarevskaya tomb was opened to
the public.
Notable burials
Peter I's associates
Field Marshal B. P. Sheremetev
General A. Weide
lab-physician R. Areskin
academics
M. В.
Lomonosov
L. Euler
В. E. Adodurov
S. P. Krasheninnikov
Admiral V. Я. Chichagov
playwrights
D. I. Fonvisin
Я. B.
Princess
architects
I. E. Starov
А. N. Voronikhin
J.
Quarries
J. F. Thomas de Thomon
А. D. Zakharov
K. I. Rossi
engineers
mining engineer F. F. Beger
military engineer A. А.
Betancourt
government officials
S. Yu. Witte
В. R.
Marchenko
N. S. Mordvinov
M. N. Muravyev
А. S. Stroganov
Tatarinov, Valerian Alekseevich
Jankovic de Mirievo, Fyodor Ivanovich
Passek, Peter Bogdanovich
Shishkov, Alexander Semyonovich
representatives of the counties
Samoilov, Nikolai Alexandrovich -
(ca. 1800—1842) - Russian Count, friend A. S. Pushkin
Morkov, Arkady
Ivanovich - (1747 - 1827) - Count of the Holy Roman Empire. A prominent
Russian diplomat of the XVIII and XIX borders.
representatives of princely families
Beloselsky-Belozersky
Trubetskoy
Volkonsky
noble family
Naryshkin
former merchant families of the Demidovs, Yakovlevs and
others.
widow of A. S. Pushkin N. N. Lanskaya (1812-1863)