Kuzminskoe cemetery - a memory of the builders of Tsarskoe Selo

Kuzminskoe cemetery is one of the oldest inLeningrad region. Its name it inherited from the homonymous settlement that was near the Kuzminki River in the XVIII century. Then, in the fifties of the same century, it became Tsarskoye Selo, thereby indicating an increase in the number of "residents" of the latter. For the same reason, the pogost was postponed several times, forbidding burying within the summer imperial residence. In the era of Catherine the Great, Kuzminskoe cemetery was moved beyond the river.

Paul did not pay tribute to the man's handiwork, andThe city of Sofia, which, according to the Empress's plan, was to become a model for the whole power, came to desolation. This does not mean that life in Tsarskoe Selo has completely ceased. People still lived here, and the place of their last rest became, after the funeral service in the Znamenskaya church, the Kuzminsky cemetery. The same applies to the priests who served in this temple, for a long time considered a courtier.

Of particular mention are the architects,erected Tsarskoe Selo and created his architectural ensemble. The first of them lay in the consecrated land in 1782, Vasily Ivanovich Neelov. His grave is protected by the state as a historical monument. The architects of the late period, Alexander Romanovich Bach and son, who continued his father's work, are buried in the late thirties of the 20th century.

Although ancient, but not very famousKuzminskoe cemetery. The list of burial places almost does not contain surnames, which a modern person, as they say, "by ear", although this is not always deserved. Visitors should pay tribute to the memory of Nikolai Svyatsky, a poet, a disabled hero of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, a real Russian nobleman. He was paralyzed, could not write with his hands, and created his wonderful works, full of a piercing love, holding the pen in his teeth.

The publisher Petr Petrovich Soikin alsodeserves respect, as a person who has done a lot for culture and education in our country. It is to him that we are indebted to A. Brem's three-volume "The Life of Animals", the first in Russia to publish the fiction novels of Jules Verne and Charles Dickens.

Kuzminskoe cemetery was visited by Nikolai Gumilev, his father was buried here.

Then there was the October Revolution, andruthlessness of the new government to people was added cruelty to their memory. Kuzminsky cemetery was not an exception. Pushkin - the so-called Tsarskoe Selo since 1937. For the Bolsheviks, the old graves did not represent value, and, guided by a materialistic worldview, they permitted the destruction of tombstones, using valuable stone rocks repeatedly. In the years of godlessness, crosses were massively destroyed in the cemetery, and the temple was plundered in 1923. In 1939 it was closed - as the then masters of life thought, forever.

During the Great Patriotic War, the line of defense of the besieged Leningrad passed here. Kuzminskoe cemetery received victims of battles and bombings. The dead were buried in mass graves.

Then there were decades of desolation. In the eighties of the XX century the city grew larger, they remembered the old cemetery, and again they began to bury it. On the basis of the Blagoveshchensk church destroyed in the battles in 2007, a chapel was built that overshadowed all those lying in this land, both known and unknown. May they have eternal memory and eternal rest!