This is not an exemplary autopsy, which is shown in films, but typical of a provincial morgue, which does not even have a refrigerator (it broke several years ago, they never bought a new one).
Here are the actual tools, in a travel bag. “On the go” - because our expert is inter-district, one for three or four districts, around which he travels two or three times a week, depending on the volume of incidents. Of all the props, we will need mainly a scalpel, a saw, a rib knife and a ladle spoon (I don’t know what to call it scientifically), and also a “raspator” - something similar to a rake with four curved teeth. There are no circular saws for the skull cap. GonduRussia, sir...
And here is our client: legs together, arms extended. The day before, he was found in his bed in the middle of a terrible fight, with a wound on his head. This, most often, does not mean anything: with drunks it’s like this all the time - in the apartment it’s as if they had been fighting for a week, and the owner looks as if they were fighting with him. The normal condition of both the apartment and the owner, so - as they say, “an autopsy will show.” To be fair, I will say that the “criminal” corpses belong predominantly to the same contingent.
(By the way, if you came to this post from somewhere unknown, then, most likely, you already understood what is described here. So it’s not too late to turn back. I warned you).
Stage one is opening the skull. An incision is made from temple to temple with a scalpel, from which the skin is moved onto the eyebrows and back of the head using a rasp. Cynics will immediately remember the joke about Little Red Riding Hood, who wore her headdress made of wolf skin... uh, with the fur inside...
We saw through the skull cover: cuts from the temples through the frontal and parietal parts. A lenticular opening should form. The lid of the skull is removed using a rasp, and I still can’t get used to the sound it makes. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convert it from the internal format of the voice recorder on my mobile into a regular wav, otherwise I would have posted it too.
...this is what should happen as a result. In the background you can see a saw; it is made of some soft types of metal, and to prevent it from being bent in the process, there is a special “stiffening rib” in the form of a bent plate that secures the saw blade itself. Our soft saw, unfortunately, gets dull quickly, and even this cut was made in a dull state... There were no traces of a traumatic brain injury on the brain, that is, the wound on the head was superficial. Traces of a hematoma look like blood clots on the surface of the brain (and the hematoma itself, in fact, is a hemorrhage into the lining of the brain). In cases of traumatic brain injury, death occurs from compression of the brain by hematomas. Well, since there is nothing on the brain (the red spot in the picture is just a blood stain), we put it aside for now and get to work on the liver.
...We make an incision in the center of the chest, and then, using a scalpel, we push the skin, subcutaneous fat and muscles to the sides.
...Take out the intestines and set them aside.
Then, using a ladle, we take urine from the cut bladder for analysis. Cynics will probably now remember the joke about a waiter in a restaurant with a string sticking out of his fly and a “spoon” on his belt. Urine (as well as blood) is sent to chemical experts; based on the alcohol content in it, it can be determined whether the expert was abusing alcohol before his death, and how badly he used it.
Then, using a rib knife, we make cuts in the ribs on both sides of the sternum, and remove the cut out. Access to the lungs is open. By the way, in the middle of the chest on the ribs there is a noticeable red spot. This is no longer a blot; the rib may be broken at this point.
...And here, in fact, are the lungs - along with other internal organs, except for the intestines, which we took out earlier.
This is how we determine whether the ribs are broken - they just need to be separated from each other and shaken a little. That rib that seemed broken was actually intact, there was just hemorrhage. But the bottom one that is visible in the picture, the ninth, is indeed broken. It most often gets caught in fights or falls.
And this (I specifically asked to show it) is the inner wall of the opened aorta. Judging by her ideal condition, the deceased was not a fool to drink. The cardiovascular system of alcoholics is always in excellent condition, and they practically do not suffer from related diseases. True, in the final stages of alcoholism some changes occur in the heart. Which, by the way, we’ll look at now...
...And let’s make sure that in our case, alcoholism has not gone far: it is also like a baby’s. And it looks so strange because it was cut up with a scalpel: you have to look for physical injuries.
Now the buds are opening...
...and liver. The liver let us down: it is unnaturally light. This is also a sign of alcoholism: a normal liver is much darker, almost brown.
This, by the way, is the same spoon that was used to take urine for analysis.
And this is how they take away pieces of internal organs. They will go to expert histologists. Histological examination determines organ damage and the time of death - more accurately than can be done during an autopsy.
Now all that remains is to return everything that was taken to its original place. Within the limits of error, of course.
...And shred the brain left for last. He is also clean, without hemorrhages. In short, nothing fatal was found except a broken rib and a superficial wound on the skull. The primary diagnosis is alcohol intoxication. Histologists may find something else, but it will be at least ten days later (adjusted for Russian conditions - in a month: histologists sit in the regional center, where the test bottles still need to be taken).
If you put the brain in its place, in the skull, then in the warmth the head will begin to leak. So the brain goes into the chest. Sometimes the deceased’s clothes are also placed there, if there is space left, so that the chest does not sag too much. But not now.
Well, that's it, all that remains now is to sew up the deceased and fill him with formaldehyde. Formalin is pumped in with a regular ten-cc syringe. I didn’t film this part of the process anymore: there was no time.
The photo report and comments thereon are intended solely to satisfy curiosity. They can also be used as a visual aid in lectures about the dangers (or benefits) of alcohol, to rid teenagers of suicidal tendencies, consultations with detective writers, and the like.
end
Today in pairs we watched a video of a forensic medical examination of a corpse (popularly called an autopsy). An hour and a half.
After the film, the photos are somehow not impressive at all.
Copyright is not worth it, because... I couldn't find the original source.
If the photographs and text are yours, please let me know.
Strange as it may seem now, many of the now popular children's parks, shopping centers and even luxury residential complexes are located in places where there were once vast ancient cemeteries.
What remains of the long-vanished graves? It doesn’t make sense to talk in detail about all the cemeteries, let’s look at the largest and most famous - Dorogomilovskoye, Lazarevskoye, Semyonovskoye —>
In ancient Moscow, residents were buried near parish churches and monasteries, and until 1657, on the territory of the Kremlin. By the end of the 17th century, there were over 300 cemeteries in Moscow. In 1771, due to the plague epidemic, the Senate prohibited burying Muscovites who died of the plague in all Moscow cemeteries. Outside Moscow (behind the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val), cemeteries opened in the same year: Armenianskoye, Danilovskoye, Dorogomilovskoye, Kalitnikovskoye, Miusskoye, Pyatnitskoye, Semyonovskoye and Old Believer cemeteries - Preobrazhenskoye and Rogozhskoye, and later Jewish, Muslim and others. Most cemeteries are closed Due to the plague epidemic, they fell into disrepair and were gradually destroyed. And in Soviet times, especially in the 1930s and 40s, due to the construction and development of the former outskirts of the city, a number of cemeteries were destroyed. The cemeteries of the Alekseevsky, Androniev, Danilov, Novospassky, Perervinsky, Pokrovsky, Simonov, Sorokasvyatsky, Skorbyashchensky, and partially Novodevichy monasteries, as well as Altufevskoye (part), Bratskoye, Bibirevskoye, Bogorodskoye (part), Butyrskoye, Vorontsovskoye, Vladykinskoye (part), were liquidated. Deguninskoye, Dorogomilovskoye, Jewish, Karacharovskoye, Kozhukhovskoye, Semenovskoye, Filevskoye and Shelepikhinskoye cemeteries. The remains of only a few prominent people of Russia were transferred from them to Novodevichye, Vostryakovskoye and Vagankovskoye cemeteries.
Dorogomilovskoye Cemetery
Usually, in the place of destroyed cemeteries, squares and parks are laid out, or the territory is given over to industrial development. But Dorogomilovskoye Cemetery is an exception. In its place, a block of residential buildings was built, and for the party elite! The cemetery was located on the territory between Mozhaiskoe Highway (now Kutuzovsky Prospekt) and the Moscow River. Burials there continued until the 1930s.
In 1948, the cemetery was closed, the Church of St. Elizabeth located there and all the burials were destroyed, and the area was built up with residential buildings.
Monument over the mass grave of soldiers who died in 1812. Dorogomilovskoe cemetery, 1947-1950
The Jewish cemetery adjacent to Dorogomilovskoye and a significant part of it was also destroyed. The graves that were of value to the state were moved to the Novodevichye and Vagankovskoye cemeteries. But the old cemetery still reminds of itself. Residents of the area say that if you dig somewhere in the courtyards of houses on the even side of Kutuzovsky, you will certainly come across burials. And when they were building the Bagration Bridge and digging a pit for the foundation on the right bank, bones and fragments of tombstones kept coming across in the excavator bucket. They also say that “during the construction of Tower 2000 on the Taras Shevchenko embankment, in 1998, bones and skulls from the construction site lay quietly on a bench in the courtyard of house 22 on Kutuzovsky Prospekt... you’re going home from work, and then bang...”
On the territory of the cemetery there still stood the Church of St. Elizabeth, built in 1839 on the site of the old church. Alas, the Elizabethan Church shared the sad fate of the cemetery: it was demolished sometime in the early 1950s. 
Elizabeth Church at Dorogomilovskoye Cemetery
Tower 2000 stands approximately on the site of the Elizabeth Church.
And now a few eyewitness accounts about the Dorogomilovskoye cemetery:
“In 1938, according to the memoirs of F.F. Yegorov was still buried in Dorogomilov. And the very next year, an announcement appeared at the cemetery office about the closure of the cemetery and its imminent liquidation. Relatives of those buried here were asked to rebury their remains at the then newly opened Vostryakovsky cemetery. But very few did this. F.F. Egorov says that, at best, only every fifth grave was moved to a new location. Reburials continued until the early 1950s. And from the mid-50s, Dorogomilovo was rebuilt and acquired the appearance that has largely been preserved to this day. But the old cemetery still reminds of itself. Residents of the area say that if you dig somewhere in the courtyards of houses on the even side of Kutuzovsky, you will certainly come across burials. And when they were building the Bagration Bridge and digging a pit for the foundation on the right bank, bones and fragments of tombstones kept coming across in the excavator bucket.” (Yu. Ryabinin. “They had a bad lot…”) Please note: only every 5th grave (at best) was reburied on Vostryakovsky! 
Quarter of Stalinist houses on the site of the cemetery
Another memory, Sergei wrote:
“When in the year 65-66 they were laying some kind of heating main along the river bank along a railway line, we spent days and nights at this construction site as boys. Each bucket of soil removed by an excavator exposed and removed many graves. Barbarism... But then we didn’t understand it, it was just interesting and curious. All the remains were piled up, as if they were guarded by some assigned guy, but we still poked at the skulls, which were willingly taken from us by older “comrades” - medical students. The picture still remains in my memory: a ladle cuts off the side wall of another coffin and there... just like a flash - a sheaf of amazing copper-colored female hair of incredible length and beauty. Sorry for such details, of course... They found buttons from uniforms (there were burials of those who fell at Borodino), and once builders dug up some kind of crypt that the excavator bucket “couldn’t handle.” What was there remained a mystery to us, because all the “outsiders” were driven away so persistently that it was useless to resist.” 
This is where the Dorogomilovskoe cemetery was located
Local historian Igor Sergeev writes in his book:
“...I remember how we had to go to the Jewish cemetery to remove the wooden fences. I remember an incident when we were breaking down the fence in the place where the Kyiv cinema is now, and we were noticed by a guard of the railway bridge across the Moscow River. “Stop, I’ll shoot!” - he shouted and ran towards us. We waited quietly. He ran up, talked to my mother and let us go. I remember that in this cemetery there was a large granite slab on which was carved a whole story about a murder due to the jealousy of a Jewish woman. Another memory of mine is connected with this cemetery, but it dates back to the post-war period. Once upon a time, a steam locomotive transported barley to the Badaevsky brewery along a branch line past the Dorogomilovsky market along Mozhaisky Val Street, stopping the movement of vehicles along Dorogomilovskaya Street. During the reconstruction of this area, a bypass was laid: to the district railway under the bridge and through the liquidated Jewish cemetery along the Taras Shevchenko embankment to the brewery. At that time, the northwestern section of the Jewish cemetery remained intact. When deepening the pit under the railway line with an excavator, only half of the slope was uncovered by the graves. The upper parts of the skeletons remained in the ground. And here is my friend, with whom I studied in the same class. Zhenya Finochenko invited me there to mine gold crowns. We dug there, but didn't find any gold. Evgeniy Aleksandrovich Finochenko is now a retired police lieutenant colonel.”
The Jewish cemetery was located on this site
A mysterious object discovered on the territory of a former cemetery. Possibly the remnant of a grave monument
Lazarevskoe cemetery
In 1758, on the very outskirts of Moscow, in Maryina Roshcha, a cemetery was built for the poor, as well as for those who died a “bad death.” The Lazarevskoye cemetery was surrounded by a rather dense Maryinsky forest and was considered by many Muscovites to be a cursed, mysterious place...
The cemetery retained its status until the notorious plague epidemic of 1771, when it, together with a dozen “new” cemeteries, became a place where thousands of dead were buried. And already in the next 19th century, merchants, representatives of the clergy, military men, artists found peace here... Back in 1787, the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit was built at the cemetery.
Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Lazarevskoye Cemetery
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Lazarevskoye cemetery was quite neglected. As Moscow historian A.T. Saladin wrote in 1916, it “is far from pleasing to the eye... Hidden from the noise behind strong walls, the cemetery is covered with lush vegetation.
The grass is higher than the waist - it hides even high tombs, and some graves can be approached with difficulty, getting burned by nettles... In the early 1930s, the cemetery was closed, and in 1936 it was completely liquidated. Most of the graves were razed to the ground before the war, and the last ones were destroyed by bulldozers in the post-war years. Some of the remains were moved to other cemeteries, but most of the burials remained underground. And at the “coffin entrance” they ordered to “play young life” - they opened a cemetery on the territory... children's park! And to this day, if you dig under the playgrounds, you come across skulls and bones...
In 1917, its rector Nikolai Skvortsov and his wife were buried at the Lazarevskoye cemetery near the southwestern corner of the temple. They turned out to be victims of ordinary robbery: Father Nikolai collected money for the needs of the poor. Everyone knew about it; and the robbers assumed that the priest kept the treasury at home. At night they broke into his place, killed him and his mother, but did not find a penny. The archpriest very carefully handed over the incoming donations to the bank.
And in 1923, the rector of the Church of St. Nicholas on Maroseyka, Alexey Mechev, was buried here. Among his parishioners were N. Berdyaev, A. Golubkina, M. Nesterov...
Patriarch Tikhon himself served the funeral prayer service. But he did not enter the temple that day: the “renovationists” had already settled in it. Father Alexei was reburied in the Vvedenskoye Cemetery, and in 2000 the Bishops' Council canonized him.
The following people were buried at the Lazarevskoye cemetery: Professor R. Timkovsky, editor and publisher I. Kushnarev, Moscow writer of everyday life I. Kondratiev... And in 1837, F. Dostoevsky’s mother Maria Fedorovna, née Kumanina, was buried at the cemetery. The family of the future writer then lived at the Mariinsky Hospital, close to the cemetery, on Novaya Bozhedomka... When visiting Moscow, Fyodor Mikhailovich always visited his mother’s grave and made donations for the needs of the church. Where this grave was can only be indicated approximately, but the tombstone miraculously survived and is kept in the F. M. Dostoevsky Museum. 
The only surviving gravestone of the Lazarevsky cemetery. The inscriptions have not survived
Like any old cemetery in Moscow, Lazarevskoye is burdened with many legends. One of them, about a rich merchant’s wife who did not want to part with her jewelry even after death and bequeathed to put them in her coffin, still excites the imagination of treasure hunters... However, legends about cemetery treasures do not end with this case.
The family of a famous actor was once buried here Sandunov's forces, who remained in the memory of descendants as the organizer of baths on Neglinka. Having buried their very wealthy parents, the Sandunov brothers were surprised to discover that they did not receive a penny from the deceased.
Where the parental fortune went is unknown. But then they remembered that the mother, dying, asked to put her favorite pillow in the coffin. Suspecting something was wrong, the brothers dug up the coffin and took out the pillow, but found nothing but down and feathers.
The annoyed Sandunovs erected a cast-iron monument over the grave of their parents in the form of a rectangular box, topped with a cast-iron cross, which is entwined with two rather vile snakes...
When the brothers died, they were buried right there, next to their parents: actor Silu Nikolaevich - in 1820, and Moscow University professor Nikolai Nikolaevich - in 1832...
The secret remained a secret. But maybe the brothers were just looking poorly? Maybe their mother managed to order a coffin with a hiding place for herself? This means that today, somewhere under the paths of the park, Sandunov’s treasures lie in the ground...
In the 1920s, raiders and degenerate elements again settled in the cemetery. Hiding from pursuit, they felt at ease, having chosen the wooden building of the sisterhood, abolished in 1929, hiding the loot there, as well as in the thickets and crypts. The police were afraid to go deep into the cemetery territory and occasionally conducted raids there.
In the fall of 1932, the temple building was cordoned off by the police, and the rector of the temple was informed of its closure with the confiscation of property and the transfer of the building to the jurisdiction of the Moscow City Council. A year later, burials were prohibited in the cemetery. Burials and tombstones were transferred by relatives to other cemeteries during 1935-1936 at the expense of the state. And already in 1936, on the site of the cemetery, the Children's Park of the Dzerzhinsky District was opened with carousels and a dance floor. However, on the territory of the park one could still see the last ownerless tombstones, which completely disappeared during the 1953 cleanup. Since the mid-1990s, the territory of the park has fallen into disrepair and is often used as a place for criminal showdowns. Work is currently underway to improve the area. 
Children's park opened in 1936 on the site of the cemetery
Now the park is called Festival
The Temple of the Descent of the Holy Spirit was returned to the Church in 1991, although for several years after that, the Operetta Theater’s scenery workshops were located in the refectory.
The following were buried in the cemetery:
historian, professor of Greek and Latin literature - R. F. Timkovsky (1785-1820);
meteorologist, doctor of physics and chemistry, professor, dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Imperial Moscow University - Spassky, Mikhail Fedorovich (1809-1859);
historian, Moscow scholar, poet, songwriter, writer, translator - I.K. Kondratyev (1849-1904);
essayist, editor, publisher, owner of printing houses - I. N. Kushnerev (1827-1896);
martyrs murdered Archpriest Nikolai Skvortsov with his wife (1917);
founder of the Faculty of Medicine of the PMI - S. G. Zybelin;
aviator A. A. Mukhin (1914);
mother of F. M. Dostoevsky - M. F. Dostoevskaya (1837), aunt - A. F. Kumanina;
wife of V. G. Belinsky (1890).
Russian architect, chairman of the MAO in 1879-1894 - N. V. Nikitin (1828-1913)
Although the cemetery has long been destroyed, some traces still remain. For example, a gravestone was discovered (see photo above).
Stone on the territory of a former cemetery. Perhaps this is one of the gravestones...
Semenovskoe cemetery
The Semenovskoye cemetery was the only “plague-free” of the pre-revolutionary cemeteries located behind the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val.
The Semyonovskoe cemetery, or rather, a surviving fragment of a historical cemetery, is located on the territory of the Sokolinaya Gora district between Semyonovsky Val street, Semyonovsky passage and Izmailovskoe highway. The sad history of the Semenovsky necropolis is an example of how the loss of an object’s function automatically leads to the loss of the cultural heritage associated with it.
Officially, the cemetery in the village of Semenovskoye was opened in 1771, but the history of using the site on which it is located as a resting place for the dead is much older. Back in the 17th century, there was a churchyard here. The oldest burial on the territory of the Semenovsky cemetery supposedly dates back to 1641.
Historically, it so happened that the Semenovskoe cemetery, first of all, served as a military necropolis. It included a large military site, and there were many military graves in the “civilian” part. It was there that many of the wounded were buried, dying in the nearby Lefortovo military hospital. In addition to privates and officers, generals also rested there, in particular, artilleryman Konstantin Vasilyevich Sixtel and participant in the Caucasian War Nikolai Karlovich von Zeimern. The poet Alexander Polezhaev, who died as a soldier, was also buried at the Semyonovskoye cemetery. The search for his grave, lost before the revolution, continues. 
Until 1855, there was no church in this cemetery, and the cemetery itself was assigned to the Church of the Entry of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Semenovskoye (now the temple has been destroyed - see: List of churches abolished by the Soviet regime). In 1855, at the expense of the Moscow merchant Mikhail Nikolaevich Mushnikov and other investors, a stone church in the name of the Resurrection of Christ was built, and from that time on the cemetery became independent.
The Cemetery Church of the Resurrection of Christ was closed in the late 1920s or early 1930s. At first, the church building housed a cemetery office, and later the building was disfigured beyond recognition by reconstructions and was used as an industrial premises. 
Church of the Resurrection of Christ at Semenovskoye Cemetery
In 1935, the Semenovsky cemetery was legally liquidated, and in the 1960s it was built up, and Semenovsky Passage passed directly through its territory. A small area remained undeveloped and turned into a public garden. This is how the former cemetery remained until recently.
However, at the end of May 2011, the Sokolinaya Gora district administration began work on landscaping the territory of the park with the aim of installing a children's playground there. During excavation work, workers hired by the government stumbled upon ancient crypts in which human remains were discovered. In one of the open graves lay a man in the garb of a priest, presumably identified by local historians as Bishop Melchizedek (Mikhail Lvovich Paevsky, 1878-1931) - a native of western Belarus, from 1922 the former Metropolitan of Minsk and Belarus, convicted in 1925 on false charges in a massive concealment from the confiscation of church valuables, exiled to Siberia, and from 1927 appointed Archbishop of Krasnoyarsk.
In addition, during the work, historical tombstones were discovered. Some of the remains and slabs (including the tombstone from 1806) were preserved by Gennady Medvedev, a member of the initiative group to install a memorial sign on the territory of the cemetery.
Activists of the public movement "Arkhnadzor", noticing the work on the territory of the former Semenovsky necropolis, called representatives of the archaeological service of the Moscow Department of Cultural Heritage to the site. They, in turn, issued an order to suspend excavation work. However, according to Arkhnadzor, work on the territory of the Semenovsky necropolis is in full swing. Diggers continue to destroy not only ancient tombstones, but also the very memory of several generations of Russian soldiers buried in the cemetery. 
Gravestones of the Semenovsky cemetery, excavated during reconstruction in the 2000s
This is what V. Cardin writes in the story: “The Secret of the Semenovsky Cemetery”:
“A few days after the start of the war, many of our students, including me, were summoned to the Komsomol committee and declared mobilized to dig a pit for a large aircraft plant. They gave me the address and tomorrow without delay at eight in the morning. I, who was not known for social activity, was named one of the foremen by pure chance. This was especially absurd: having been born in Moscow and raised on Moscow asphalt, I rarely came into contact with a shovel. But don’t refuse when there is a war and the city is full of bad news. If necessary, we will dig the ground. At the factory we were greeted warmly, given shovels and taken... to the cemetery. It began right behind the fence and was lost somewhere in the green distance. The task was formulated quite simply - to dig a pit and not pay attention to the graves. That is, how to “not pay attention”? And so! War. We need combat aircraft. We have to expand the plant, build a new building... We dug from morning to evening during the day shift and from evening to morning during the night shift. It's hot during the day, but it's hard to breathe at night. They dug diligently, trying to suppress their internal confusion. Shovels crushed coffins. Bones, skulls, and pieces of decayed fabric fell into the wheelbarrow along with the soil. Sometimes treasures were discovered in coffins - glass jars with jewelry and gold coins. We called a policeman on duty nearby and gave him the find. To imagine the state of mind of the guys-diggers, I’ll give just one episode. A fellow student, Zhora, suddenly rushed at me with a shovel raised above his head. But he also suddenly froze. Hugged: “Sorry, I lost my nerves.” For some reason this incident stuck in my memory. Although Zhora is long gone - he died at the front. Like most of my fellow students... My consciousness unconsciously recorded some oddities. But he didn’t try to comprehend them. Why, when the pit was not yet finished, were we transferred to another site, to the other end of the cemetery? We again dug graves where we had been buried for many decades. Sometimes the remains lay in two or three layers. But they didn’t finish the next foundation pit - they started a new one. Every time, while fulfilling my duties as a foreman, I stayed late after work. The silent foreman came. While smoking, he took measurements and wrote something in his notebook. One day he suddenly started talking. We asked them not to pass on what they heard to the guys. It turned out that the pits we dug were buried by other teams of hard workers like us. But why? For what? A large number of young Muscovites, mostly students, were mobilized. And the management does not have confidence in the construction of a new building. It is possible that the plant will have to be evacuated... “What about the cemetery?” - I asked inappropriately. But he did not receive an answer. Having finished smoking his cigarette, the foreman only said that we were diligent guys. Look, someday our earth-moving skills will come in handy..."
They also write that:
“In the 80s, you could still find the remains of stone tombstones lying here and there on the territory of the former cemetery, and you could even read some surnames on these tombstones.”
“In the 90s, “grave diggers” appeared in the park. And individual tombstones with inscriptions and even a piece of a forged grave fence in the bushes were preserved until the early 2000s, when one fine night all the remains of the inscriptions were knocked off the slabs with jackhammers, and then collected and taken away. Now it’s undergoing reconstruction again.”
Park on the site of the Semenovsky cemetery
Cemetery of the Moiseevsky Monastery on the site of Manezhnaya Square
We looked at examples of cemeteries that were destroyed during Soviet times. But, before the revolution, cemeteries were also demolished, 200 and 300 years ago! The most interesting example is the ancient cemetery of the Moiseevsky Monastery, which was excavated during the construction of a shopping center on Manezhnaya Square.
This is the largest of the necropolises discovered in recent years - they discovered more than 600 burials. The Moiseevsky Monastery once stood on this site, which was destroyed during the time of Catherine II (in 1765): she ordered the construction of barracks there for the soldiers guarding the Kremlin. At the same time, the remains of people buried on the territory of the monastery were left in the ground. They have been encountered before, for example, during the construction of the metro and the reconstruction of Gorky Street.
And when in the late 1990s they began to build an underground shopping complex on Manezhnaya Square, all the burials were opened and reburied with a funeral service at the Christian cemetery in Rakitki, Moscow Region. By the way, according to the general director of the capital’s Center for Archaeological Research, Alexander Veksler, now all the remains that come across during construction are reburied. In the federal law on the protection and use of historical and cultural monuments, ancient cemeteries are classified as archaeological monuments.
Wexler says that ancient burials used to be treated with much less respect than they are now. “In all times except ours, buildings were either erected on bones, or, if basements were made, the remains were simply thrown out along with construction waste,” says Alexander Veksler. — And tombstones were very often used as building material. Almost every temple had tombstones embedded in the walls. I have seen this way of using them many times.”
In the course of archaeological work, it was possible to restore the layout of the monastery’s necropolis and the main stages of expansion of its territory. There were more than 600 burials in the necropolis; burials in wooden dugout logs were located in four tiers. During the clearing of the burials, rare finds were made: body carved wooden crosses and ceramic, glass, and metal vessels - teardrops for fragrant myrrh. Unique fabrics sewn with silk were also found, and, thanks to the peculiarities of the soil, which is particularly acidic, they retained their original color.
And now, when we walk around the Okhotny Ryad shopping center, we can’t even imagine that 15 years ago here, on the site of these shops, ancient burials were hidden in the depths of the earth.
Shopping center "Okhotny Ryad". This is where the ancient cemetery was located
Celebrities and destroyed cemeteries
The large-scale clearing of cemeteries in Soviet times did not spare the graves of some famous people, for example Gogol, Levitan and Venevitinov. All of them were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery. And, interestingly, all three died far from old age, Gogol at 42, Levitan at 39, and Venevitinov at 21!
The mystery of Gogol's grave
In connection with the liquidation of the Danilovsky Monastery cemetery, Gogol's grave was opened, and his remains were reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery.
The opening of Gogol's grave took place on May 31, 1931. At the same time, the graves of the philosopher-publicist Alexei Khomyakov and the poet Nikolai Yazykov were opened. The opening of the graves took place in the presence of a group of famous Soviet writers. Among those present during the exhumation of Gogol were writers Vsevolod Ivanov, Vladimir Lidin, Alexander Malyshkin, Yuri Olesha, poets Vladimir Lugovskoy, Mikhail Svetlov, Ilya Selvinsky, critic and translator Valentin Stenich. In addition to the writers, historian Maria Baranovskaya, archaeologist Alexey Smirnov, and artist Alexander Tyshler were present at the reburial ceremony.
The main source by which one can judge the events that took place that day at the Svyato-Danilovsky cemetery are the written memoirs of a witness to the opening of Gogol’s grave - the writer Vladimir Lidin.
According to these memoirs, the opening of Gogol's grave occurred with great difficulty. Firstly, the writer’s grave turned out to be located at a significantly greater depth than other burials. Secondly, during excavations it was discovered that the coffin with Gogol’s body was inserted into a brick crypt of “extraordinary strength” through a hole in the wall of the crypt. The opening of the grave was completed after sunset, and therefore Lidin was unable to photograph the writer’s ashes.
About the remains of the writer, Lidin reports the following: “There was no skull in the coffin, and Gogol’s remains began with the cervical vertebrae: the entire skeleton of the skeleton was enclosed in a well-preserved tobacco-colored frock coat; Even underwear with bone buttons survived under the frock coat; on the feet there were shoes, also completely preserved; only the grit connecting the sole to the upper had rotted on the toes, and the skin had curled up somewhat, exposing the bones of the foot. The shoes were with very high heels, approximately 4-5 centimeters, this gives absolute reason to assume that Gogol was short.”
Lidin further writes: “When and under what circumstances Gogol’s skull disappeared remains a mystery. When the opening of the grave began, at a shallow depth, much higher than the crypt with a walled coffin, a skull was discovered, but archaeologists recognized it as belonging to a young man.”
Lidin does not hide the fact that he “allowed himself to take a piece of Gogol’s frock coat, which a skilled bookbinder later put into the case of the first edition of Dead Souls.” According to the writer Yuri Alekhin, the first edition of “Dead Souls”, bound with a fragment of Gogol’s camisole, is now in the possession of Vladimir Lidin’s daughter.
Lidin cites an urban legend that Gogol’s skull was stolen by order of the famous collector and theater figure Alexei Bakhrushin by the monks of the St. Danilov Monastery during the restoration of Gogol’s grave, which was carried out in 1909 in connection with the 100th anniversary of the writer. Lidin also writes that “in the Bakhrushinsky Theater Museum in Moscow there are three skulls belonging to someone unknown: one of them is supposed to be ... Gogol.”
However, Leopold Yastrzhembsky, who first published Lidin’s memoirs, in his comments to the article reports that his attempts to discover in the Bakhrushin Central Theater Museum any information about a skull of unknown origin allegedly located there did not lead to anything.
Historian and specialist in the Moscow necropolis Maria Baranovskaya claimed that not only the skull was preserved, but also the light brown hair on it. However, another witness to the exhumation, archaeologist Alexey Smirnov, refuted this, confirming the version about Gogol’s missing skull. And the poet and translator Sergei Solovyov claimed that when the grave was opened, not only the remains of the writer, but also the coffin in general were not found, but allegedly a system of ventilation passages and pipes was discovered, arranged in case the buried person was alive, according to the website “Religion and MASS MEDIA".
According to the portal gogol.lit-info.ru, a former member of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee, diplomat and writer Alexander Arosev in his diary cites the testimony of Vsevolod Ivanov that when the graves were opened in the cemetery of the St. Danilovsky Monastery, “Gogol’s head was not found "
However, the writer Yuri Alekhine, who in the mid-1980s conducted his own investigation into the circumstances surrounding Gogol’s reburial, in an interview first published in the Russian House magazine, claims that Vladimir Lidin’s numerous oral recollections of the events that took place on May 31, 1931 St. Daniel's cemetery differ significantly from the written ones. Firstly, in a personal conversation with Alekhine, Lidin did not even mention that Gogol’s skeleton was beheaded. According to his oral testimony, brought to us by Alekhine, Gogol’s skull was only “turned to one side,” which, in turn, instantly gave rise to the legend that the writer, who allegedly fell into a kind of lethargic sleep, was buried alive.
In addition, Alekhine reports that Lidin hid the facts in his written memoirs, mentioning only that he took a fragment of a frock coat from the writer’s coffin. According to Alekhine, “from the coffin, in addition to a piece of cloth, they stole a rib, a tibia and... one boot.”
Later, according to Lidin’s oral testimony, he and several other writers who were present at the opening of Gogol’s grave, for mystical reasons, secretly “buried” the stolen tibia and boot of the writer not far from his new grave at the Novodevichy cemetery.
The writer Vyacheslav Polonsky, who knew well many of the writers present at the cemetery, also speaks in his diary about the facts of looting that accompanied the opening of Gogol’s grave: “One cut off a piece of Gogol’s frock coat (Malyshkin...), the other cut off a piece of braid from the coffin, which was preserved. And Stenich stole Gogol’s rib - he just took it and put it in his pocket.”
Later, according to Polonsky, the writer Lev Nikulin fraudulently took possession of Gogol’s rib: “Stenich... went to Nikulin and asked to keep the rib and return it to him when he went to his home in Leningrad. Nikulin made a copy of the rib from wood and, wrapped, returned it to Stenich. Returning home, Stenich gathered guests - Leningrad writers - and... solemnly presented the rib, the guests rushed to look and discovered that the rib was made of wood... Nikulin assures that he handed over the original rib and a piece of braid to some museum.”
Before reaching 22 years of age
The liquidation of cemeteries did not spare the grave of the poet Dmitry Venevitinov, who died at only 21 years old from consumption (or, as many believe, from unhappy love). In the early 1930s, most of the Simonov Monastery was demolished, as they said then: “Instead of a fortress of church obscurantism, a workers’ palace of culture.” On the site of the monastery and cemetery, the Zil recreation center was later built, and a park was laid out. And Venevitinov was reburied at the Novodevichy cemetery, like Gogol.
Dorogomilovskoye again
And the last story of reburial is connected with the Dorogomilovsky cemetery, already familiar to us, or rather with the Jewish one, which was part of Dorogomilovsky. This is the grave of the artist Isaac Levitan.
This is what Saladin A.T. wrote. about Levitan's grave at the Jewish cemetery
“A wide sand-strewn path leads from the gate into the depths of the cemetery. On it, some kind of service brick building divides the cemetery into two halves. A little short of this building, at the edge of the path, “Turgenev of Russian painting” is buried - Isaac Ilyich LEVITANE, b. August 18, 1860, d. July 22, 1900. On his grave there is the simplest monument, of which there are many in Orthodox cemeteries, only the cross has been removed. The inscription is in Russian: “Here lies the ashes of our dear brother, Isaac Ilyich Levitan (dates of birth and death follow). Peace be to your ashes."
He was reburied at the same Novodevichy cemetery.
Borders from graves
It is interesting that many graves from liquidated cemeteries found a further purpose. For example, in the 1930s, gravestones were often used to make curbstones. For the most part, traces of inscriptions remained on the inside of the stone, but there were exceptions. For example, there is still one stone preserved near the Church of Peter and Paul on Novaya Basmannaya, on which you can read the inscriptions:
So, when you walk along Moscow streets and parks or buy an apartment in an elite building, sometimes look around and wonder what was here before.
In the last refuge of a person there is something mystical and at the same time creepy, exciting curiosity and imagination. We have collected 15 of the most incredible cemeteries from around the world, where tourists who want to plunge into the atmosphere of horror films in real life flock to.
Old Jewish Cemetery (Prague, Czech Republic)
The old Jewish cemetery in the Josefov quarter in Prague dates back to the early 15th century. The oldest tombstone found dates back to 1439, and the latest to 1787. The exact number of gravestones and buried people is unknown, since in this cemetery burials were made in layers, on top of each other. It is estimated that more than 100,000 Jews are buried in the cemetery, but there are only 12,000 visible headstones. It's not surprising that many people see ghosts passing through tightly packed tombstones.
Paris Catacombs (Paris, France)
The Catacombs of Paris are a huge underground crypt under the capital of France. The network of caves and tunnels stretches for almost 300 km, and the remains of about six million people are buried in them. There are many stories about the creepy catacombs, which are literally covered with skulls and bones.
Allegedly, paranormal phenomena occur here all the time. Sometimes ghostly balls or ectoplasmic mist float in front of tourists, and sometimes even the shadows of ghosts wander along the corridors among piles of bones.
La Recoleta (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
The Recoleta Cemetery, which is located in the Recoleta district of the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, is a major tourist attraction due to its outstanding examples of 19th and 20th century architecture. There is a story associated with this cemetery about the “Lady in White” who often visits the graves at night.
Valley of the Kings (Cairo, Egypt)
The Valley of the Kings, which contains the tombs of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, became famous after the discovery of the unrobbed tomb of Tutankhamun and the “curse of the pharaohs” associated with it. Almost everyone who took part in the opening of the grave died mysteriously several years later.
Capuchin Crypt (Rome, Italy)
The bones of four thousand Franciscan Capuchin monks were used to decorate the walls of this crypt. Human bones were also used to create the interior of various chapels. For example, there are chapels called "Pelvis Crypt" and "Skull Crypt".
Bachelor's Grove (Chicago, USA)
Known as one of the most haunted sites in the United States, Bachelor's Grove Cemetery in Chicago opened in 1844. Stories about ghosts in this cemetery were especially popular in the 1970s and 1980s. There were stories of strange balls, phantom machines, and even a ghostly house that suddenly appeared before people and then disappeared into thin air. In 1984, witnesses also reported seeing several ghostly figures throughout the cemetery, dressed in monk robes.
Ganges River (Varanasi, India)
Due to its proximity to the Ganges, Varanasi is one of the holiest cities of Hindus in India. This city is famous for the fact that it is customary to burn corpses on the banks of the Ganges and then simply throw them into the river. Every day fires burn on the banks, and the Ganges is polluted by myriads of bacteria. Incredibly, people bathe and wash their clothes in the river while half-burnt remains float by.
Stull Cemetery, Kansas
The burial place, which is also called the “Gates of Hell”, according to legend is one of the seven portals of Hell on Earth. Legend has it that if you knock on a stone in the ruins of a church, the devil himself will answer.
Capela DOS Ossos (Portugal)
In the chapel, whose name literally means "Chapel of Bones", two skeletons hang in chains on the wall. At the same time, the walls are also covered with real skulls and human bones.
Witch Cemetery State (Tennessee, USA)
The cemetery, located in the Tennessee backcountry, is one of the oldest in the state. Stone tombstones are often engraved with pentagrams, which are said to contain witch powers. There are also numerous claims of strange lights being seen in the forest at night, as well as ghostly animals that were sacrificed during rituals in the cemetery.
Cemetery La Noria (La Noria, Chile)
La Noria is an abandoned mining town with a frightening history full of violence and slavery. The cemetery of this city is a terrible and incredible sight. Many graves have been uncovered. There are chilling rumors that at sunset the dead rise from their graves and begin to wander the abandoned mining town. Residents of Chile also reported seeing children in abandoned schools as if they were sitting in a regular lesson.
Sedlec Ossuary (Kutná Hora, Czech Republic)
In Sedlec, a suburb of the Czech town of Kutná Hora, there is a small Roman Catholic chapel near the cemetery church of All Saints. This crypt is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones were used to create decorations and furniture for the chapel.
Chamula Cemetery (San Juan Chamula, Mexico)
Although there was a Catholic church on the site in the 1960s, the priest from the parish of the neighboring village comes to mass only once a month. The rest of the time, local shamans use this area to create “magic potions.” Chickens are often sacrificed during healing ceremonies at this cemetery.
Cemetery in a cafe (Ahmedabad, India)
Tourists who go for a bite to eat at the New Lucky restaurant in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad find themselves in a cemetery - ancient Muslim graves are located throughout the building.
Okuno-in Cemetery (Japan)
Okuno is a sacred village near 120 Buddhist temples. The local cemetery is associated with an eerie legend. Kobo Daishi (Kukai), the founder of the Shingon school of Buddhism, is said to rest here and, according to legend, he did not die, but only entered deep samadhi and will be reborn along with his followers.
Equipment cemeteries present an equally creepy sight. will amaze even seasoned travelers.
One of the most mystical personalities in Russian literature is N.V. Gogol. During his lifetime he was a secretive person and took with him many secrets. But he left behind brilliant works in which fantasy and reality, the beautiful and the repulsive, the funny and the tragic are intertwined.
Here witches fly on a broomstick, boys and ladies fall in love with each other, the imaginary auditor takes on a pompous appearance, Viy raises his leaden eyelids and runs away from And the writer unexpectedly bids us farewell, leaving us in admiration and bewilderment. Today we will talk about his last charade, left to his descendants - the secret of Gogol’s grave.
The writer's childhood
Gogol was born in the Poltava province on March 1, 1809. Before him, two dead boys had already been born in the family, so the parents prayed to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker for the birth of the third and named the first-born in his honor. Gogol was a sickly child, they fussed over him a lot and loved him more than other children.
From his mother he inherited religiosity and a penchant for premonitions. From my father - suspiciousness and love for the theater. The boy was attracted by secrets, scary stories, and prophetic dreams.
At the age of 10, he and his younger brother Ivan were sent to the Poltava School. But the training did not last long. His brother died, which greatly shocked little Nikolai. He was transferred to the Nizhyn gymnasium. Among his peers, the boy was distinguished by his love of practical jokes and secrecy, for which he was called Mysterious Carlo. This is how the writer Gogol grew up. His work and personal life were largely determined by his first childhood impressions.
Is Gogol's artistic world the creation of a mad genius?
The writer’s works surprise with their phantasmagoric nature. On their pages, terrifying sorcerers come to life (“Terrible Vengeance”), and witches rise at night, led by the monster Viy. But along with evil spirits, caricatures of modern society also await us. A new auditor comes to the city, Chichikov buys dead souls, and shows Russian life with utmost honesty. And next to it is the absurdity of Nevsky Prospekt and the famous Nose. How were these images born in the head of the writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol?
Creativity researchers are still at a loss. Many theories are connected with the writer's madness. It is known that he suffered from painful conditions, during which mood swings, extreme despair, and fainting were observed. Perhaps it was disturbed thinking that prompted Gogol to write such bright, unusual works? After all, after suffering, periods of creative inspiration followed.
However, psychiatrists who studied Gogol's work find no signs of insanity. In their opinion, the writer suffered from depression. Hopeless sadness and special sensitivity are characteristic of many brilliant individuals. This is what helps them become more deeply aware of the surrounding reality, show it from unexpected sides, amazing the reader.
The writer was a shy and private person. In addition, he had a good sense of humor and loved practical jokes. All this gave rise to many legends about him. Thus, excessive religiosity suggests that Gogol could be a member of a sect.
Even more controversial is the fact that the writer was not married. There is a legend that in the 1840s he proposed to Countess A.M. Vilegorskaya, but was refused. There was also a rumor about Nikolai Vasilyevich’s platonic love for the married lady A. O. Smirnova-Rosset. But these are all rumors. As well as conversations about Gogol’s homosexual tendencies, which he allegedly tried to get rid of through austerities and prayers.
The death of the writer raises many questions. Gloomy thoughts and forebodings overwhelmed him after finishing the second volume of Dead Souls in 1852. In those days, he communicated with his confessor Matvey Konstantinovsky. The latter convinced Gogol to abandon sinful literary activities and devote more time to spiritual quests.
A week before Lent, the writer subjects himself to the most severe asceticism. He hardly eats or sleeps, which negatively affects his health. That night he burns papers in the fireplace (presumably the second volume of Dead Souls). Since February 18, Gogol has not gotten out of bed and is preparing for death. On February 20, doctors decide to begin compulsory treatment. On the morning of February 21, the writer dies.
Causes of death
People still wonder how the writer Gogol died. He was only 42 years old. Despite poor health recently, no one expected such an outcome. Doctors were unable to make an accurate diagnosis. All this gave rise to many rumors. Let's look at some of them:
- Suicide. Before his death, Gogol voluntarily refused to eat and prayed instead of sleeping. He consciously prepared for death, forbade himself to be treated, and did not listen to the admonitions of his friends. Perhaps he died of his own free will? However, for a religious person who fears hell and the devil, this is not possible.
- Mental illness. Perhaps the reason for Gogol’s behavior was a clouding of his mind? Shortly before the tragic events, Ekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of the writer’s close friend, to whom he was attached, died. On February 8-9, Nikolai Vasilyevich dreamed of his own death. All this could have shaken his unstable psyche and led to excessively harsh asceticism, the consequences of which were terrifying.
- Incorrect treatment. Gogol could not be diagnosed for a long time, suspecting either intestinal typhus or inflammation of the stomach. Finally, a council of doctors decided that the patient had meningitis and subjected him to bloodletting, warm baths, and cold douses that were unacceptable for such a diagnosis. All this undermined the body, which was already weakened by long abstinence from food. The writer died of heart failure.
- Poisoning. According to other sources, doctors could provoke intoxication of the body by prescribing calomel to Gogol three times. This was due to the fact that various specialists were invited to the writer who did not know about other appointments. As a result, the patient died from an overdose.
Funeral
Be that as it may, the burial took place on February 24. It was public, although the writer's friends objected to this. Gogol's grave was originally located in Moscow on the territory of the St. Danilov Monastery. The coffin was brought here in their arms after the funeral service in the church of the martyr Titiana.
According to eyewitnesses, a black cat suddenly appeared at the place where Gogol’s grave is located. This caused a lot of talk. Suggestions began to spread that the writer’s soul had transmigrated into a mystical animal. After the burial, the cat disappeared without a trace.
Nikolai Vasilyevich forbade erecting a monument on his grave, so a cross was erected with a quote from the Bible: “I will laugh at my bitter word.” Its basis was granite stone brought from Crimea by K. Aksakov (“Golgotha”). In 1909, in honor of the centenary of the writer’s birth, the grave was restored. A cast iron fence was installed, as well as a sarcophagus.
Opening of Gogol's grave
In 1930, the Danilovsky Monastery was closed. In its place, it was decided to set up a reception center for juvenile delinquents. The cemetery was urgently reconstructed. In 1931, the graves of such outstanding people as Gogol, Khomyakov, Yazykov and others were opened and moved to the Novodevichy cemetery.
This happened in the presence of representatives of the cultural intelligentsia. According to the memoirs of the writer V. Lidin, they arrived at the place where Gogol was buried on May 31. The work took the whole day, since the coffin was deep and inserted into the crypt through a special side hole. The remains were discovered after dusk, so no photographs were taken. The NKVD archives contain an autopsy report, which does not contain anything unusual.
However, according to rumors, this was done in order to not make a fuss. The picture that revealed itself to those present shocked everyone. A terrible rumor immediately spread across Moscow. What did the people who were present at the Danilovsky cemetery see that day?
Buried alive
In oral conversations, V. Lidin said that Gogol lay in the grave with his head turned. Moreover, the lining of the coffin was scratched from the inside. All this gave rise to terrible assumptions. What if the writer fell into a lethargic sleep and was buried alive? Perhaps, having woken up, he tried to get out of the grave?
Interest was fueled by the fact that Gogol suffered from tophephobia - the fear of being buried alive. In 1839, in Rome, he suffered severe malaria, which led to brain damage. Since then, the writer has experienced fainting spells, turning into prolonged sleep. He was very afraid that in this state he would be mistaken for dead and buried ahead of time. Therefore, I stopped sleeping in bed, preferring to doze half-sitting on the sofa or in a chair.
In his will, Gogol ordered not to bury him until obvious signs of death appeared. So is it possible that the writer’s will was not fulfilled? Is it true that Gogol turned over in his grave? Experts assure that this is impossible. As evidence, they point to the following facts:
- Gogol's death was recorded by the five best doctors of that time.
- Nikolai Ramazanov, who filmed the great namesake, knew about his fears. In his memoirs, he states: the writer, unfortunately, slept in an eternal sleep.
- The skull could have been rotated due to the displacement of the coffin lid, which often happens over time, or while being carried by hand to the burial site.
- It was impossible to see the scratches on the upholstery, which had decayed over 80 years. This is too long.
- V. Lidin's oral stories contradict his written memories. After all, according to the latter, Gogol’s body was found without a skull. In the coffin lay only a skeleton in a frock coat.
Legend of the Lost Skull
In addition to V. Lidin, the archaeologist A. Smirnov and V. Ivanov, who were present at the autopsy, also mention Gogol’s headless body. But should we believe them? After all, the historian M. Baranovskaya, who stood next to them, saw not only the skull, but also the light brown hair preserved on it. And the writer S. Solovyov did not see either the coffin or the ashes, but he found ventilation pipes in the crypt in case the deceased was resurrected and needed something to breathe.
Nevertheless, the story about the missing skull was so “in the spirit” of the author Viy that it was developed. According to legend, in 1909, during the restoration of Gogol’s grave, collector A. Bakhrushin persuaded the monks of the Danilovsky Monastery to steal the writer’s head. For a good reward, they sawed off the skull, and it took its place in the theater museum of the new owner.
He kept it secretly, in the pathologist's bag, among the medical instruments. When he passed away in 1929, Bakhrushin took with him the secret of the whereabouts of Gogol’s skull. However, could the story of the great phantasmagorist who was Nikolai Vasilyevich end here? Of course, a sequel was invented for it, worthy of the pen of the master himself.
Ghost Train
One day, Gogol’s great-nephew, naval lieutenant Yanovsky, came to Bakhrushin. He heard about the stolen skull and, threatening with a loaded weapon, demanded that it be returned to his family. Bakhrushin gave away the relic. Yanovsky decided to bury the skull in Italy, which Gogol loved very much and considered his second home.
In 1911, ships from Rome arrived in Sevastopol. Their goal was to collect the remains of their compatriots who died during the Crimean campaign. Yanovsky persuaded the captain of one of the ships, Borgose, to take with him a casket with a skull and hand it over to the Russian ambassador in Italy. He had to bury him according to the Orthodox rite.
However, Borghose did not have time to meet with the ambassador and set off on another voyage, leaving the unusual casket in his house. The captain's younger brother, a student at the University of Rome, discovered the skull and decided to scare his friends. He was about to travel in a cheerful company through the longest tunnel of that time on the Rome Express. The young rake took the skull with him. Before the train entered the mountains, he opened the casket.
Immediately the train was enveloped in an unusual fog, and panic began among those present. Borghose Jr. and another passenger jumped off the train at full speed. The rest disappeared along with the Roman Express and Gogol's skull. The search for the train was unsuccessful, and they hastened to wall up the tunnel. But in subsequent years, the train was seen in different countries, including Poltava, the writer’s homeland, and Crimea.
Is it possible that where Gogol was buried, only his ashes are found? While the writer's spirit wanders around the world on a ghostly train, never finding peace?
Last refuge
Gogol himself wanted to rest in peace. Therefore, we will leave the legends to science fiction lovers and move to the Novodevichy cemetery, where the remains of the writer were reburied on June 1, 1931. It is known that before the next burial, admirers of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s talent stole pieces of the coat, shoes and even bones of the deceased “as souvenirs”. V. Lidin admitted that he personally took a piece of clothing and placed it in the binding of “Dead Souls” of the first edition. All this, of course, is terrible.
Along with the coffin, the fence and the Calvary stone, which served as the basis for the cross, were transported to the Novodevichy cemetery. The cross itself was not installed in the new place, since the Soviet government was far from religion. Where he is now is unknown. Moreover, in 1952, a bust of Gogol by N.V. Tomsky was erected on the site of the grave. This was done contrary to the will of the writer, who, as a believer, called not to honor his ashes, but to pray for his soul.
Golgotha was sent to the lapidary workshop. The widow of Mikhail Bulgakov found the stone there. Her husband considered himself a student of Gogol. In difficult moments, he often went to his monument and repeated: “Teacher, cover me with your cast-iron overcoat.” The woman decided to install a stone on Bulgakov’s grave so that Gogol would invisibly protect him even after his death.
In 2009, for the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Vasilyevich, it was decided to return his burial place to its original appearance. The monument was dismantled and transferred to the Historical Museum. A black stone with a bronze cross was again installed on Gogol’s grave at the Novodevichy cemetery. How to find this place to honor the memory of the great writer? The grave is located in the old part of the cemetery. From the central alley you should turn right and find the 12th row, section No. 2.
Gogol's grave, as well as his work, is fraught with many secrets. It is unlikely that it will be possible to solve them all, and is it necessary? The writer left a covenant with his loved ones: not to grieve for him, not to associate him with the ashes that worms gnaw, and not to worry about the burial place. He wanted to immortalize himself not in a granite monument, but in his work.
CHAPTER XVII Curse of the Pharaohs “In order to study the era of Alisher Navoi, the anniversary committee is allowed to open the mausoleum of Timur... the opening of the mausoleum is expected to take place on June 15.” This small newspaper article would hardly attract the attention of anyone except history buffs. But in the Samarkand bazaars the old men whispered anxiously among themselves and finally decided to send their representatives to the leader of the archaeological expedition. The fact is that the ancient legend said: when the bones of the “Great Lame Man” are disturbed, the bloodiest of wars on Earth will begin. Venerable archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists only laughed at the stupid superstitions of the Samarkand elders and continued their work. . . On June 20, newspapers report: “Samarkand, June 19 - Today the opening of Timur’s grave begins...” The newspaper “Izvestia” dated June 22, 1941 published a note: “Excavations of the Timurid mausoleum continue. . . Remains of hair were found on Timur's skull. . . ".
On the night of June 21-22, 1941, the famous Soviet archaeologist and anthropologist M. M. Gerasimov descends into the newly opened tomb of Timur and picks up the skull of the most bloodthirsty of all conquerors of the past in order to reconstruct his facial features using a specially developed technique. . . A few hours later, the Great Patriotic War, the bloodiest in the history of our country, begins with an attack by fascist troops along the entire Soviet border. How can one not believe in the truth of ancient prophecies! When I first heard this story in a small teahouse in Samarkand, not far from the ruins of the Bibi Khanum Mosque, I, frankly speaking, did not believe it and classified it as one of the colorful legends of the East, which have already accumulated quite a lot in my notebook. Imagine my surprise when, having returned to Leningrad and checking everything that was said in newspaper and magazine publications, I became convinced of the authenticity of the facts presented. So, should we believe in the miraculous power of ancient curses? However, let's not rush. The bloodiest war in world history, World War II, as we know, began not on June 22, 1941, but on September 1, 1939, with the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland. And it had been burning for over a year and a half, although no one had even intended to disturb the ashes of the “Great Lame Man.” The Great Patriotic War was approaching our borders due to the inexorable logic of political events of that period and hardly depended on the efforts of the anniversary committee of Alisher Navoi. Its inevitability was felt by many, with the exception of the narcissistic Georgian maniac who decided the fate of our country. If the expedition had opened Timur's tomb just one day later, the legend would have lost all its meaning.
Yes, but the tomb was still opened a few hours before the start of the war, and therefore the ancient legend lives on and will sound more and more convincing over the years, although we have just become convinced of the coincidence of facts.
Another such mystery related to burials is the mystery of the Egyptian pharaohs, which has been exciting the minds of mankind for many years. The curse of the pharaohs is one of the mysteries of ancient Egyptian civilization, which became generally known after the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922. A warning was written on a tablet found at the entrance: “DEATH WILL OTC EVERYONE WHO DISTURBS THE PEACE OF THE PHAROAH.” Another tablet found there read: “THE SOUL OF THE DECEASED PHARAOH WILL BRING THE NECK OF THE GRAVE ROBBEER AS IF IT WAS THE NECK OF A GOOSE.” It so happened that many of the world's most famous archaeologists died terrible, painful deaths after working with Egyptian mummies. According to German researchers from Goppingen, the cause of the archaeologists' suffering was not the revenge of ancient mummies, but a fungus that is impossible to see without a microscope. In the Egyptian burial chambers it lay dormant for many thousands of years, waiting for the day when the crypts would be reopened. Believing in life after death, the ancient Egyptians placed food in their tombs next to their mummies. The food decomposed and deadly spores multiplied inside the pyramids. When researchers entered the burials, the spores quickly affected their organs and caused cancer. Over the years, this tiny fungus has killed several more people. Among them: the English archaeologist Lord Kernervon and twelve members of his expedition. They died within six years of their discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. Two members of the crew that carried the relics of Pharaoh Tut from Cairo to London in 1972. They were completely healthy people, and their death was unexpected. Twelve members of the Polish anthropological expedition. Death came to them after they discovered the tomb of another pharaoh in 1973. In addition to this, forty German museum workers are currently ill. The cause of their suffering is deadly spores. Ancient Egyptian mummies are increasingly being studied by doctors together with archaeologists. In 1974, a group of Czechoslovak and American scientists performed an autopsy on a mummy that was more than twenty centuries old. One of the researchers' goals was to determine what infectious diseases the inhabitants of Ancient Egypt suffered from. You can find out what illness a person has by looking at the antibodies contained in his blood. They have a protein structure and can be preserved in mummies for thousands of years. In some cases, when the body was mummified immediately after death, the pathogenic bacteria and viruses themselves could survive to this day. Microsamples taken from internal organs and the skull were subjected to special bacteriological studies. What struck me most in the article reprinted by Science and Life from the Czechoslovakian magazine Ves mir (No. 4, 1974) was the photograph: six “scientists” dissecting a mummy lying on the operating table. I, a surgeon, was simply shocked by the appearance of these “researchers”: no sterile medical caps, masks, lush curls spread out over the collars of the gowns, shirt cuffs were coming out from under the sleeves of the gown and rubbing along the surface of the mummy, there were no traces of rubber gloves or aprons. But these “medical scientists,” apparently not at all familiar with the elementary rules of asepsis, set as their task, no more nor less, to investigate “what infectious diseases the ancient Egyptians suffered from.” If they are “lucky” and this Egyptian actually died from some unknown to science (or maybe even well-known) bacterial or viral disease, then they have every reason to experience the symptoms of this infection on themselves. And journalists in obituary articles will not fail to once again exaggerate the legend of the “curses of the pharaohs.”
One of the features of anthrax infection is the exceptional persistence of its soil foci. Therefore, in those places where the corpses of dead animals are buried, there is always a danger of new outbreaks. For example, in the Chita region there is a pad, which local Buryats consider a dangerous place and do not allow livestock there. According to legend, this place was the site of Genghis Khan's troops. Anthrax then killed most of the horses and livestock captured by the troops, and the pad turned into a large cemetery. This legend is not without foundation - even thirty years ago, cases of animal deaths were still noted here. Pasteur also drew attention to the fact that earthworms carry anthrax spores into the upper layers of the soil and onto its surface, and therefore recommended burying animal corpses in dry sandy or calcareous soil. The soil is considered not only as a passive keeper of the pathogen, but also as a second habitat after the animal body. Some revival of this peculiar soil infection can be observed during construction work associated with soil lifting, or during archaeological excavations. In the tomb of the Polish kings in Krakow, in Wawel Castle, I heard an interesting story. One of the Polish monarchs buried here died from an unknown disease. The chronicles recorded his symptoms in sufficient detail, but they did not correspond to any of the currently known diseases. Scientists decided to examine the remains of the king and for this purpose they removed the knee joint from the tomb, where most of the tissue was preserved. The causative agent of the mysterious disease could not be found, but several people who participated in the study died with exactly the same symptoms as those recorded in the ancient chronicle. They decided to urgently stop the experiment and burned the ill-fated joint in the crematorium. Scientists believe that in this case they encountered a virus still unknown to science.
Apparently guided by considerations about the possibility of future infections of unknown nature by viruses from the dead, the city authorities of Padua ordered the establishment of a separate cemetery for those who died of AIDS. This burial ghetto is separated from the regular cemetery by double bars. The dead are buried naked, wrapped only in shrouds soaked in disinfectant. It is likely that this decision is very far-sighted, but now most journalists assess it extremely negatively and equate it to posthumous discrimination.
The mystery of death and the fear of it gave rise in ancient man to disgust and fear of the dead body. Religion supported and strengthened these feelings. People whose profession involved the burial of corpses - embalmers and gravediggers - became renegades. Their children had no right to engage in anything other than the profession of their fathers. There were such renegades in ancient Egypt. In India they formed the untouchable caste. Few people know that the surname Mordasov, well known in Russian history, comes from the Persian word “mordas” (“murdesuj”) - a person who washes the dead. In Ancient Judea, a person who touched a dead body was considered defiled and had to undergo special purification rites.
Only in the 17th century, when scientists gained the right to dissect the corpses of the dead for scientific purposes, anatomy and pathological anatomy moved forward with rapid steps. But the myth about the uncleanness of the dead body continued to live. It took the form of a teaching about the so-called “cadaveric poisons,” although no one really knew what cadaveric poison was or how it was introduced into the wound.
Let's remember one of the most famous heroes of Russian literature - Bazarov. During the autopsy, he injured his finger and immediately realized that he was doomed. Like every doctor of his time, he thought that a deadly cadaveric poison had entered his body through the cut. ". . . Bazarov entered his father's room and asked if he had a hellish stone? - Yes, what do you need? - You need... to cauterize the wound. - For whom? - For yourself. - Like, for yourself! Why is this? What kind of wound is this? Where is it? - Here, on my finger. Today I went to the village, you know, where they brought a typhoid man from. For some reason they were going to open it, but I haven’t practiced this for a long time. - Well? - Well, here I asked the district doctor; well, I cut myself. Vasily Ivanovich suddenly turned completely pale and, without saying a word, rushed into the office, from where he immediately returned with a piece of the hellish stone in his hand... - What do you think, Evgeny, wouldn’t it be better for us cauterize with iron? - This should have been done earlier; but now for real, and the hellish stone is not needed. If I got infected, it’s too late now. - How... late... - Vasily Ivanovich could barely say. - Of course More than four hours have passed since then." Why is it that in the text of the novel “Fathers and Sons” we do not find the term “cadaveric poison”? The vagueness of determining the causes of Bazarov's death was apparently reflected in the ambiguity in this matter that reigned in science at the time the novel was written. The mystery of such deaths was revealed after Pasteur made his discoveries. Not “cadaveric poison,” but certain types of microorganisms that quickly multiply in tissues after death and enter the body through an accidental cut, caused general blood poisoning - sepsis - and death. Bazarov also died from blood poisoning. Only the discovery of ways to combat pathogenic microbes - asepsis and antiseptics - dispelled the myth of cadaveric poison. However, in some places this myth has survived to this day, as evidenced by an excerpt from Sergei Kaledin’s story “The Humble Cemetery.” One of the heroes of the story, gravedigger Leshka Vorobey, recalls the following episode from his practice: “The spring before last, he was digging at the fifteenth site and, standing below, in the mud, he kicked in without looking into the lining that had swummed with the incoming slurry. A little splashed from the coffin, and the stench rushed out of cracks, pushed him out of the hole. He dug as he loved, without tops (mittens) - the splashes hit his fingers, his hangnails, always torn into blood.
Then he got sick. I wouldn't wish this on my enemy. Everything hurt: eyes, hands, hair, torso, insides - it hurt continuously, heavily, dullly, stone-like. The guys said it was infected with rotten poison. I didn’t call the doctor: I was afraid he would confirm. Vodka stood in the decanter like water, all the time Tomka, his then, poured it into the glass, day and night.”
However, let us return to the topic of our conversation - the opening of burials by scientists or robbers.
Neither the fear of the dead nor the fear of damnation stopped those who were looking for treasure. It was they, the desecrators and grave robbers, thousands of years before the “treasure hunters of science” - archaeologists, who broke the seals of tombs and penetrated into the forgotten hiding places of the “city of the dead”. In Egypt, the devastation of the royal tombs became so widespread and began so long ago that already 3,000 years ago the pharaohs were forced to install round-the-clock guards near the tombs, and inside to build false entrances, secret passages, and ingenious devices that were supposed to destroy anyone who dared to enter inside the pyramid. In 1991, a group of Egyptian schoolchildren discovered a cache in the vicinity of the city of Abu Zaabal. The entrance to it was blocked by a clay jug decorated with drawings depicting people and animals. The jug opened unexpectedly easily, and several dozen dry dark lumps flew out of it. Upon closer inspection, they turned out to be dried out scorpions of very large size. The intention of the ancients was probably this: thieves, enticed by the jug, would open it and be fatally stung by scorpions. To facilitate the release of the latter, a small ejection spring was installed in the jug, which was activated when the lid was opened.
Can you guess that the plot of the famous fairy tale about Aladdin and the magic lamp from the Arabian Nights reproduces the situation of the robbery of the royal tomb? It turns out that this is indeed true. The location of the underground treasury into which Aladdin finds himself, the number and sequence of rooms that he must first pass through, is not a figment of fantasy or an accident. Their description reproduces the internal structure of the tombs of the so-called Valley of the Kings in Egypt, belonging to the “late period”. Omnipotent during life, rulers after death found themselves at the mercy of treasure seekers and gold hunters. And so, not wanting to make their final refuge a prey to someone else’s greed, they begin a game of hide and seek that continues for centuries: the dead hide, the living search.
In 410, the Visigoth king Alaric I died in Calabria. The same Alaric who, in the year of his death, managed to capture and plunder Rome. Centuries have passed since then. For a long time there have been no people who called themselves Goths. But for one and a half thousand years, neither the hand of a robber nor the shovel of an archaeologist touched the grave of their leader. And this despite the fact that it is known how much gold, precious stones and other treasures looted throughout Europe were placed in Alaric’s grave. Of course, the Goths were well aware of treasure hunters. That is why they tried to make the burial place of their leader inaccessible. To do this, they blocked the flow of the river with a dam and, when the bed was exposed, dug a deep grave at the bottom. Then, having lowered the golden coffin and all the treasures into it, they destroyed the dam, and the river returned to its channel. The multi-meter layer of water and the fast current became guardians of the buried treasures. And so that those who prepared the burial of the leader could not reveal the secret to anyone, they were all killed that same night. In 453, the leader of the Huns, Attila, died, causing terror throughout Europe and nicknamed “the scourge of God.” His body was placed in a gold coffin, the gold coffin was placed in a silver one, and the silver one was placed in an iron one. The iron coffin, along with countless treasures, was then buried. In order to ensure that the place where their leader was buried remained unknown, the Huns also killed everyone who participated in the funeral.
The history of cemetery thieves, grave diggers, or, as they were called, grave diggers, is as old as the history of the burials themselves. Starting from the Egyptian pharaohs, this theme runs through the folklore of almost all nations. Here, for example, is an old Persian joke: “One man lived by removing the shrouds from the dead and selling them. Whenever someone died, he would go to the grave at night, tear it up and take away the shroud. And before his death, he repented in his sins and began to regret that no one would remember him with a kind word. His son promised: “Father, I will do everything so that people remember you only with good things.”
And so, after the death of his father, the son quietly sneaked into the cemetery at night, took off his father’s shroud, pulled the corpse out of the grave and threw it nearby. The next day people came to the cemetery to read a prayer for the deceased. They saw what happened and said: “God have mercy on the dead grave thief!” Although he stole the shroud, he did not throw the dead out of the grave."
However, soon the undertakers began to steal not only clothes and jewelry, but also the bodies of the dead. They did this mainly on the orders of medieval doctors and anatomists, since the church forbade dissecting human corpses, considering it blasphemy. It is known that the great physician and anatomist of the Renaissance, Andrei Vesalius (1514 - 1564), at the dawn of his activity, stole bones from cemeteries at night to study the human skeleton, and, risking his life, removed the corpses of executed criminals from the gallows and dissected them at home.
The scene from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” has become a classic scene, where at night, in the cemetery, the old drunkard Muff Potter and the sinister mestizo nicknamed Injun Joe dig up a recently buried corpse for Dr. Robinson: “For some time, only the grinding of shovels was heard, throwing small pebbles aside and lumps of earth - the sound was monotonous and dull. Finally, there was a dull knock on the tree: the shovel stumbled upon the coffin, and after a few minutes the diggers lifted it up. With the same shovels, they threw off the lid, pulled out the body and unceremoniously threw it to the ground. At that moment the moon came out from behind the clouds and illuminated the pale face of the dead man. They moved a stretcher, put the corpse on it, covered it with a blanket and tied it with a rope... " Equally classic for cinema was the scene in one of the first American horror films, “Frankenstein,” where the young Doctor Frankenstein, accompanied by a hunchback assistant, digs up a dead man in a cemetery at night in order to create a monster out of him.
As already mentioned, grave digging existed at all times and among almost all peoples. It was thanks to the grave thieves that it was possible to repeatedly save those buried alive, which we described in the corresponding chapter. The spread of grave-digging in St. Petersburg in the era of Anna Ioanovna is evidenced by the historian M.I. Pylyaev: “There were cases of robbery... in St. Petersburg, which were called “coffin-digging.” Thus, in one pickaxe, the body of some noble foreign person was left overnight. Thieves "They snuck into the pickaxe, threw the body out of the coffin and robbed it. The thieves were found and executed." The famous 19th century St. Petersburg painter M. A. Zichy (1827 - 1906), a native of Hungary, has one watercolor dedicated to the theme of grave digging. The famous French writer Théophile Gautier, visiting St. Petersburg in 1858, met with Zichy and left a description of this drawing: “The scene takes place in a cemetery. Night. Weak moonlight penetrates through heavy rain clouds. Black wooden crosses, tombstones, columns, urns. . ... In the foreground, among the scattered earth, there are two spades stuck into the clay... Cemetery thieves rummage through graves to steal death's last possession: a woman's gold ring, a child's silver rattle, a lover's or lover's medallion, an icon from believer. They opened a rich coffin, the slightly opened lid of which is upholstered in black velvet with silver decorations. Under the lid one can see the head of a young woman lying on a lace pillow. The shroud pulled back reveals her chin drooping on her chest. She is in that very position of deep thought that fills the grave life. One of the thieves, with a bestial expression on his face, with the appearance of a convict, in a disgusting cap, holds a candle stub, which he covers with his hand from the gusts of the night wind. A trembling, deathly pale, dim light falls on the pale face of the deceased. Another bandit, half-hidden in the pit, with wild features, raises with his paws a fragile hand, pale as wax, which the corpse gives to him with the indifference of a ghost. He tears off from his ring finger, which may be breaking due to his sacrilege, a precious ring, a wedding ring, of course! The third scoundrel is on guard: on a mound of grave earth, putting his cap to his ear, he listens to the distant barking of a dog that senses the bandits, or to the barely discernible steps of a watchman making his nightly patrol round. Vile fear distorts his features, his face black in the night shadows, and the vile, dew-soaked folds of his pants, smeared in the greasy cemetery soil, cling to his monkey legs. It is impossible to go further in depicting a romantically horrifying scene."
But the real epidemic of grave digging began in St. Petersburg cemeteries during Soviet times. It should be noted that it was customary for rich St. Petersburg residents to be buried not just in the ground, but in a specially built crypt, which greatly facilitated the actions of the robbers. One had only to break through the vault of the crypt, and the thief found himself next to the coffin, where no one and nothing interfered with his activities. Even in the decree of the Holy Synod of October 23, 1738, on the opening of a cemetery at the Church of the Annunciation on Vasilievsky Island, it was prescribed: “All graves at this church should be laid out with bricks and the vaults should be made into a whole brick, and then the earth should be firmly trampled down so that the spirit does not happen, without which “No one should be allowed to bury anyone in this church.” Later, this tradition spread to the newly opened St. Petersburg cemeteries.
In the 20s - 30s of our century, in all the cemeteries of old St. Petersburg, hammers were knocking in the evenings and at night - citizens were opening the crypts. Numerous witnesses, old St. Petersburg residents, told me this. I myself saw many broken crypts in the ancient cemeteries of the city - Smolensky, Volkov, the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and the St. Petersburg Novodevichy Convent. The outside of the crypts was lined with Karelian granite, and inside, on the walls, one could see the remains of magnificent ceramic tiles. Remains, because the followers and descendants of the grave diggers of the era of the first five-year plans did not hesitate to pick up the pitiful remains of their activities and in the era of stagnation (and even during the years of perestroika), they tore off the lining of the crypts, picked out the miraculously preserved mosaic icons and crosses.
The loot of those first grave diggers was incomparably richer: orders, jewelry, officer daggers, gold-embroidered epaulettes, silver buttons, precious stones.
The scale of the barbaric activities of the grave thieves is shocking - practically not a single rich, uncollected grave has survived in the city. Although I was repeatedly told that the Leningrad authorities of that period themselves supported and directed this “activity,” it was absolutely impossible to believe it. However, recent newspaper publications, unfortunately, confirm this: “Brigades of criminals recruited from prison appeared at the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and began to carry out an action to confiscate valuables. They opened crypts, broke coffins. Greedy hands searched the bodies of the deceased. In the Kazan Cathedral They did not even spare the body of M.I. Kutuzov. And during the next seizure in 1933, they were flattered by the cylindrical vessel with his heart... The monuments that were not destroyed were dragged and brought to one place. As a result of this kind of activity, the the so-called "Museum of Urban Sculpture" - the name is more than strange... If the city needed stone for lining sidewalks or building monuments to leaders, they went to the cemetery. Magnificent metal decorations were broken when the country needed metal. All the churches of the Lavra, where the burials were located , have long been desecrated, and in the crypt of the Georgian queen there are tour guides talking about the culture. It’s the same in the Kazan Cathedral.”
Such “activity” would inevitably affect the psychology of the people. Therefore, I was not at all surprised by the fact that many were shocked by the desecration and robbery of the grave of the recently deceased Marshal of the Soviet Union S. F. Akhromeyev, who was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery in Moscow. On the night of August 31 to September 1, 1991, the burial was excavated, and the marshal's uniform was removed from the deceased. The same fate befell the grave of Colonel General Sredin, who was buried a few days earlier. The gravediggers said that both coffins were covered with earth only for show - the criminals did not try too hard to cover their tracks. The caps, which are usually nailed to the coffin lid, have been torn off. The first thought when this terrible news came: one of our political paranoids, it doesn’t matter - right or left, tried. But it turned out that everything was much simpler and therefore, perhaps, even more terrible. According to the prosecutor of the Gagarinsky district of the capital, Vladimir Ilyin, marshal and general uniforms are in definite demand among eccentric domestic and Western collectors. It may very well be that soon a uniform with gold braid will “pop up” in some quiet private collection. Decidedly far from big politics. And also - from everything human. The police cordon has already been lifted at the Troyekurovskoye cemetery, and all the unpleasant, but necessary in this situation, formalities have been settled. The bodies of Marshal of the Soviet Union Akhromeyev and Colonel General Sredin were again interred. Now - in civilian clothes.
Among the grave diggers there is a group that is too unusual even for this exotic craft. We are talking about necrophiliacs. This topic is so sensitive that in order to avoid misunderstandings and omissions, we will quote verbatim the message of journalist Alexander Tarasov: . . . On July 29, at about 10 p.m., at the Burkovskoye cemetery, two police officers stopped a cyclist riding along the paths of the village churchyard. When asked what he was doing in the cemetery at such an inopportune hour, the elderly man did not answer anything intelligible. At the internal affairs department, a lantern, a knife, a chisel and a plastic bag were confiscated from the detainee, after which the cemetery cyclist Damaki admitted that he once again intended to break open the coffin to commit sexual intercourse with the corpse.
Your hair stands on end when you read Damaki’s recorded revelations: “Since 1972, I have been living in the Moscow region. I work on a state farm as a cattleman - shepherd. I lived with my wife. We have a son from our marriage. Lately my wife and I have been living poorly, and therefore March 1986 I live separately. In March - April 1985 I began to experience strong sexual arousal. I decided to satisfy sexual passion with the corpse of a woman. I went to the Rogozhskoye cemetery, taking a bicycle, a chisel for breaking open a coffin and a lantern. I arrived at the cemetery around 23 o'clock. Having made sure that no one was there, I found a grave of a recent burial by fresh wreaths. Having reached the coffin, I tried to open the lid with a chisel, but I could not do this, after which I broke the upper part of the coffin lid and through the resulting gap I pulled the corpse out of the coffin by the legs ... In August 1985, I read an obituary in the local regional newspaper. It was signed: “The staff of the school. . . “I found this grave. I dug it up with a shovel, then with the help of a chisel I broke open the lid of the coffin and began to pull out the corpse by the leg. I couldn’t pull it out, after which I left the cemetery.
At the beginning of October I went to the Nofievskoe cemetery. From the edge I saw a fresh grave. I determined that a woman was buried by the inscriptions on the wreaths. Not far away I found a shovel, with which I began to tear up the grave. Hearing the voices of approaching people from the direction of the village, he got scared, covered the grave a little with earth and ran away. In March 1986, I again came to the Burkovskoye cemetery. In the lowland I saw a fresh grave with a photograph of a young girl on it. I liked the girl’s face and decided to open the grave. Breaking it to a depth of about 0.5 meters, I discovered that further there was water, and the ground was frozen and difficult to dig. Therefore, I decided to abandon the plan.
A few days later I arrived at the Burkovskoye cemetery. He found a shovel and began to tear up the grave. It began to rain heavily, it became more difficult to dig, and I left the cemetery, lightly covering the grave with earth.
Thus, I fully plead guilty to 10 counts of grave digging."
Can a sane person stoop to the abomination listed above?! Apparently not. By the decision of the People's Court of Damaki, born in 1948, a native of the Kharkov region, a Ukrainian, was released from criminal liability for his actions and sent for compulsory treatment to a special type of psychiatric hospital. . . Necrophilia (literally “love of the dead”) is a fairly rare sexual perversion and is considered a mental disorder. Let us give a characteristic description of a patient with necrophilia - the pharmacist Poilfjre - from the satirical novel by the French writer Gabriel Chevalier "Clochemerle". The pharmacist Poilfar behaved very strangely with girls of easy virtue. “He asked them to strip naked, close their eyes and, wrapped in sheets, freeze, imitating rigor mortis. In their hands they had to clutch a small crucifix, which he always carried with him. Kneeling down in front of the bed, Monsieur Poilfar cried bitterly for a long time, and then... he left the resurrected beauties and went to the cemetery... where he chose rare epitaphs and copied them into a notebook... "After numerous erotic adventures, Poilfar ends up in a psychiatric clinic, where "a certain psychiatrist of the newest school" revealed the reasons for his illness: “at the age of fourteen, the pharmacist experienced his first sexual excitement at the bedside of his deceased cousin, a twenty-three-year-old beauty whom he secretly adored. The mixed smell of flowers in a dead body sunk into the memory of young Poilfar with such sweet power that subsequently his dark instincts incessantly sought to return to this feeling." Currently, in the Criminal Code of Russia there is a special article on the desecration and robbery of graves. Unauthorized reburials can also be included under this article, although sometimes noble motives serve as the motivation for these actions. So, secretly, at night, the widow of the writer Alexander Green, Nina Nikolaevna Green, who died in 1970, was reburied. The arbitrariness of officials did not allow her last wish to be fulfilled - to be buried next to her husband. Then friends and admirers of Green’s work, risking a lot, came to the Old Crimea cemetery at night, dug up her coffin and buried her in the fence with her husband. Only 20 years later they decided to talk about it in the Rodina magazine. On the pages of this chapter are closely intertwined stories about archaeologists and cemetery thieves, noble people and defilers, about science and superstition, about truth and fiction. But an even more colorful kaleidoscope of amazing facts awaits you, reader, in the next chapter.
Sergey Ryazantsev. THANATOLOGY - THE SCIENCE OF DEATH. St. Petersburg, 1994.
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