Kuzminskoe cemetery - a memory of the builders of Tsarskoe Selo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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