Federal Military Memorial Cemetery

Federal Military Memorial Cemetery
Details
Established June 21, 2013
Location Mytishchinsky District, Moscow Oblast
Country  Russian Federation
Owned by Ministry of Defence
Size 55 hectares (140 acres)

The Federal Military Memorial Cemetery (Russian: Федеральное военное мемориальное кладбище) is a national cemetery of Russia, located in Mytishchinsky District, Moscow Oblast, on the north-eastern outskirts of Moscow.

The cemetery was built as the new burial place for national dignitaries to replace the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, where burials ceased after 1985, and was opened with its inaugural burial on 21 June 2013.

History

The first decision to establish a national cemetery was adopted in 1953, as a resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers, but the project was never implemented. The burial of national dignitaries irregularly took place at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square, Moscow, ending with the funeral of Soviet General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there were plans to relocate the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, since it ruins the old style of the Moscow Kremlin. The concept of a national cemetery was resurrected in the early 1990s by a state-owned body called Mosproject-4, and the designer Alexander Taranin said he wanted to "create a minimalistic cemetery that gave a quiet and honest reflection of Russia". The cemetery was established in accordance with the Presidential Decree of July 11, 2001, number 829 "On the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery" to "perpetuate the memory of soldiers and other Russian citizens who died in the defense of the Motherland, and who had special merits to the state".

Construction of the Federal Military Memorial Cemetery began on March 15, 2008, on a 55 hectare plot off the Ostashkovskoe highway, located near the villages of Sgonniki and Borisovka in Mytishchinsky District, Moscow Oblast, west of the city of Mytishchi. The cemetery is planned to be the main national cemetery of Russia for the next 200 years, and is predicted to house 40,000 graves. On June 21, 2013, the inaugural burial took place when the remains of an unknown Red Army soldier who died in Smolensk Oblast during World War II, and the complex was officially opened to the public the following day. On August 30, 2013, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow consecrated the cornerstone of the cemetery church in honor of St. Sergius of Radonezh, which was opened in 2014. On December 27, 2013, the funeral of Mikhail Kalashnikov became the inaugural funeral held at the cemetery, conducted by Metropolitan Juvenaly of Krutitsy and Kolomna.

Design

The award-winning artist and architect Sergey Vitalevich Goryaev served as artistic director of the project. According to the British Daily Telegraph, the cemetery will be "a testament to extravagance, a piece of architectural monumentalism intended to reflect the glory of a resurgent Russia. Drawings show that the 132-acre (0.53 km2) site will feature obelisks, golden statues of figures from Russia's past and friezes of workers in heroic poses.[1] The cemetery will be richly adorned, using red and grey granite together with bronze". Goryaev died on September 8, 2013, just months after the cemetery's completion.

In 2015, monuments were planned to be installed on the first five graves. It is assumed that all the gravestones on the cemetery will be maintained in a uniform style and correspond to the three categories of burials. The contractor should have been selected by the competition, the documentation for which was developed by the specialists of the cemetery. The first contest was to be held in September of 2015, but was canceled. The Ministry of Defense appealed to the sculptors and pointed to the obvious shortcomings in the sketches of monuments described in the tender documentation. For example, it turned out that the bust of military commanders was cut off exactly on half of the epaulettes. Neither the developers of the documentation, nor their curators in the management of the perpetuation of memory, this fact apparently did not embarrass. Ended all the cancellation of the contest and a behind-the-scenes scandal, as a result of which several people from the cemetery administration were appointed guilty and fired.[2]

Notable burials

See also

References

  1. ↑ Vladimir Putin's last resting place – with Stalin
  2. ↑ "Федеральное военное мемориальное кладбище: Идея «русского Арлингтона» превращается в фарс?". Pokhoronka. 23 December 2015. Retrieved 2 July 2017.

Coordinates: 55°55′38″N 37°40′31″E / 55.92722°N 37.67528°E / 55.92722; 37.67528

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