Cemetery Vagankovsky. Vagankovskoe cemetery Pogost for the poor
The cost of a place in cemeteries in Moscow and the region depends on their location and status. At the Khovanskoye cemetery, a standard place with an area of 1.8 by 2 square meters costs about 120-150 thousand rubles. A landscaped place next to the temple at the Khimki cemetery will cost 1.5 million rubles. Funerals at one of the oldest cemeteries in Moscow are held quite rarely due to lack of space. However, they are possible on the site of old graves. So, if a grave is declared ownerless, then the remains of the person buried in it are transferred to a general burial, and a new burial may appear in its place. At the Vagankovskoye cemetery, a plot will cost an amount equal to the cost of a one- or two-room apartment in Moscow. And few people already remember that this cemetery was founded at the end of the 17th century as a graveyard for the poor.
Vysotsky's grave at the Vagankovskoye cemetery
Vagankovskoye Cemetery is one of the most extensive and famous cemeteries in Moscow. Let's find out the history, watch a film about its secrets and finally wander there among the majestic tombstones.
Churchyard for the poor
The VAGANKOVSKY necropolis appeared in 1771, when a plague epidemic was rampant in Moscow. From this year, by decree of the Senate, it was forbidden to bury deceased patients in city churchyards and it was ordered to “set aside special cemeteries for them outside the city... and build at least small wooden churches on them for the first time.” A new cemetery was formed to the west of the Krasnopresnenskaya outpost near the village of Vagankovo. For almost a century and a half, poor people - the peasant and bourgeois class, and less often - petty officials and retired military men found their last refuge here. In the middle of the 19th century, burial places of famous people appeared who left their mark on Russian history, science and culture, and in the last third of the 20th century, the Vagankovskoye cemetery became the third most prestigious after the Kremlin and Novodevichy.
The most famous grave is that of Vladimir Vysotsky. According to unconfirmed rumors, Joseph Kobzon bought the burial place for the great artist for several thousand dollars in 1980, since the authorities were afraid of Vysotsky’s nationwide popularity and did not give permission for his burial in an elite cemetery.
There are always a lot of people at the graves of Andrei Mironov (with a monument in the form of curtains) and Vlad Listyev.
The latter is decorated with a white marble figure of a mourning female angel with a fallen wing. Several years ago, Andrei Mironov’s mother, actress Maria Vladimirovna Mironova, who survived her son by almost ten years, was also buried in Andrei Mironov’s grave.
Until the last day, Maria Vladimirovna came to visit her son (the cemetery gates were opened especially for her and a car with an elderly woman was allowed directly into the territory, which is basically prohibited). Mironov was not buried at the prestigious Novodevichy only because he did not have the title “People’s Artist of the USSR.”
In order not to destroy the tombstone of the great artist, the grave for his mother, according to cemetery regulars, was dug by specialists invited from Novodevichy. Alas, in addition to fans of the Mironovs, vandals also visit, having once stolen a bronze fence from the grave. It was recently restored...
On the grave of Igor Talkov there is a huge cross, a wooden prototype of which was found by the singer shortly before his death and brought into the house, which was always considered a bad omen. Each of the graves has its own guide, from whom you can learn, for example, how a Talkov fan once decided to bury herself next to him. She dug a hole, lay down in it, and even came up with a way to be covered with earth at once. Fortunately, her head did not fall asleep, and local diggers managed to save the girl. Or how a tree that fell during a hurricane completely destroyed the grave of actor Burkov...
Among those buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery is an actress known to many from the films “Wedding in Malinovka”, “Give me a book of complaints”, Zoya Fedorova, who was killed in her apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt under unclear circumstances, the king from “Cinderella” Erast Garin and those who did not need performance Oleg Dal, Vitaly Solomin, Marina Levtova, Andrey Rostotsky, Mikhail Gluzsky, Maris Liepa, Yuri Bogatyrev, Anatoly Romashin, as well as the “thinking clown” and pantomime master Leonid Engibarov.
On the day of his death, July 25, 1972, there was unprecedented heat and drought in Moscow. Peat bogs have been burning in the Moscow region for a week now, and on some days the air was such that it was impossible to see a person a few meters away. Engibarov felt bad. The doctor diagnosed poisoning. The artist was suffering from pain and during one of the attacks he suddenly asked his mother: “Give me some cold champagne, I will feel better!” Apparently, he did not know that champagne constricts blood vessels, drank half a glass and soon died of a broken heart. He was only 37 years old... When Engibarov was buried, heavy rain began in Moscow. It seemed that the sky itself was mourning the loss of a wonderful artist.
Young poets still come today to venerate the ashes of the great Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, who committed suicide at the Angleterre Hotel in St. Petersburg.
Many of whom, by the way, firmly believe that Yesenin was actually killed by security officers. They always readily tell their version to anyone interested. And they add that his admirer Galina Benislavskaya, with whom the poet at one time had a closer relationship, committed suicide at Yesenin’s grave. Benislavskaya left a posthumous note written on a piece of a packet of Belomor. The woman shot herself with a revolver that had a single bullet, writing in a note that if she regretted what she had done, the revolver would be next to her body. If not, she will throw him behind the grave of her beloved Sergei. When Benislavskaya was discovered, the revolver was a few meters from the body of the suicide. The woman was buried, as she asked, next to Yesenin. Many years later, his mother was buried in the son’s grave.
Not far from the grave of Sergei Alesandrovich is the “spiritual” grave of the great director Vsevolod Meyerhold. The fact is that Meyerhold, who was the second husband of Yesenin’s wife, actress Zinaida Reich, who was brutally murdered in her apartment, was shot in prison. And since the location of his ashes is unknown, the Vagankovskoye cemetery is considered to be Meyerhold’s final resting place. Another famous theater director Yuri Zavadsky, who for many years directed the capital’s Theater named after. The Moscow City Council, according to the norms that existed during the Soviet years (Zavadsky was a laureate of all possible prizes and awards, including the Golden Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor), should have been buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. However, a will was found in the director’s desk, in which he asked to be buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery next to his mother’s grave. No matter how much the party bureaucrats resisted, the will of the deceased was satisfied.
Many athletes are also buried here: pre-war runners, the Znamensky brothers (George died of a serious illness, and Seraphim shot himself in front of his wife), speed skater Inga Artamonova, European, world and Olympic champion in ice dancing Lyudmila Pakhomova, football player Eduard Streltsov, football player goalkeeper Lev Yashin, figure skating coach Stanislav Zhuk.
Mass graves
Victims of the Khodynka disaster, crushed in the crowd during the celebrations on the occasion of the coronation of Nicholas II on May 18, 1896, are buried in ONE of the mass graves. During the solemn ceremony, then someone said that carriages with expensive gifts appeared and their distribution began - as a result, in a stampede in a matter of hours, according to unofficial data, 1,500 people died, and another four to five thousand received various injuries. In another mass grave lie the remains of soldiers who took part in the Great Patriotic War.
But the victims of the recent terrorist attack on Dubrovka, spectators and participants of the musical "Nord-Ost", are buried in separate graves, sometimes even in different sections of the cemetery. Only two of them - actors of the musical 13-year-old Arseny Kurylenko and his 12-year-old girlfriend Kristina Kurbatova are buried nearby.
Cemetery horror stories
The "STROKE" of local guides is horror stories and stories about vandals. One day, a woman visiting the grave of her relative decided to take a shortcut to the exit and began to climb over the fence of one of the graves. She fell awkwardly, and her leg was pierced and firmly pinned with a metal rod. Her cries for help were heard by random passers-by - visitors to the cemetery. They called an ambulance, but the doctors who arrived could not remove the woman from the fence - they were afraid of damaging the artery. The capital's rescuers came to the rescue and freed the unfortunate woman by cutting out a piece of the fence.
Vandals at the Vagankovskoye cemetery are mainly clients of precious metals collection points. Several years ago, a bronze easel was stolen from the grave of the artist N. M. Romadin, and copper strings disappeared from the monument to harpist Maria Gorelova... Photographs of beloved idols have also repeatedly disappeared from graves.
In the first section of the Vagankovskoye cemetery there is an amazing monument - a headless female figure made of white marble under black palm trees. The pedestal of the monument is covered with inscriptions like: “Sonya, teach us to live,” “Solntsevskaya lads will not forget you,” “Mother, give happiness to Zhigan.”
The tombstone was ordered with money from Odessa, Neapolitan, London, St. Petersburg and other scammers, and under it, according to legend, lies the unforgettable Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka (in the world Sofia Bluvshtein) - once a famous thief, and now a local saint of the underworld. Still would! After all, Sonya could not only hide diamonds in the folds of her dress or under her long nails, but she was also a “noble” thief: she returned 5,000 rubles to the widow she had robbed, who had two daughters, in a fit of emotion she sent a gold watch to the actor of the Maly Theater, taken from a neighbor in the hall, and she saved a sleeping young man, near whom lay a revolver and a letter to his mother about embezzling 300 rubles, from suicide by placing a 500-ruble note under his arm.
The monument suffered damage several years ago, when dashing guys from the Urals, having gotten drunk, went to kiss it and accidentally tore the head off the statue. However, this cannot be called blasphemy either - after all, the grave, according to the guides, was built for fun. In fact, it is empty. According to legend, somewhere nearby there is the grave of a thief in law, the leader of the “Black Cat” gang, whose story formed the basis of Stanislav Govorukhin’s film “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed.” After the release of the film, the “brothers” began to gather more often at their graves, paying tribute to their famous predecessors.
Secrets of the Vagankovsky cemetery. Secrets of the century.
Vagankovo is an alternative cemetery. There are the graves of those who, for various reasons, could not be buried at Novodevichy - Talkov, Mironov, Yashin, Vysotsky, Engibarov, Dal, Shchelokov. Our country had two histories and two lives - official and unofficial. Those who made official history ended their lives at Novodevichy, and Vagankovo is a graveyard for those who were surrounded by human rumor, love and fame, but for one reason or another “did not reach” Novodevichy. The heroes of the program are “outstanding” deceased and living workers of Vagankovo. Living and Dead. The Vagankovskoe cemetery is a model of society, an alternative to the pompous and bravura political “officialdom”.
And in conclusion, a photo tour of the cemetery:
Address: 123100, Moscow, st. Sergeya Makeev, 15.
Directions: metro station "Ulitsa 1905 Goda".
The Vagankovsky necropolis, which arose at the end of the 18th century, located west of the Presnenskaya outpost in Novye Vaganki, became one of the outstanding Moscow monuments of history and culture. The area of the necropolis is 50 hectares. The official year of its foundation is considered to be 1771, although from historical sources it is known about slabs of earlier burials found at this place.
The first to be buried at the Vagankovskoe cemetery were thousands of nameless Muscovites who died of the plague in 1771. Over the next century and a half, poor people - the peasant and bourgeois classes, minor officials, retired military men and inhabitants of the Moscow slums picked up on the streets - found their final refuge at Vagankovo. Only in the 19th century did the graves of people who left their mark on Russian history appear here. In 1824, according to the design of the architect A.G. Grigoriev, the Church of the Resurrection of the Word with a northern aisle in the name of John the Merciful was erected here on the site of the old church, and a rotunda was built in memory of the old church of the same name. A little later, near the new temple, the graves of the Decembrists A.F. Frolov and P.S. Bobrishchev-Pushkin appeared, a little further - the graves of A.S. Pushkin’s friends, Count F.I. Tolstoy and composer A.N. Verstovsky.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, with the growth of Moscow's population and the expansion of residential development, the number of city cemeteries also increased. Many of them, who were outside the city, now find themselves within its boundaries. Some of them were closed for burials, others were moved to new places. Several old Moscow cemeteries - Donskoye, Novodevichye, Vagankovskoye - have turned into unique historical monuments-necropolises, preserving not only the memory of the people who rested here, but also collections of works by outstanding sculptors, architects and artists - authors of tombstones.
From the burials of the Vagankovo necropolis, one can trace Russian history through its tragic moments: here is a mass grave of soldiers who died in the Battle of Borodino in 1812, and a mass grave of the victims of Khodynka, who died in a stampede during the distribution of gifts after the coronation of Emperor Nicholas II, a monument to the victims of Stalin repressions of the 1930s, a mass grave of the defenders of Moscow who held its defense during the Great Patriotic War in 1941–42, a monument to the victims of the 1991 coup and, finally, a monument to the children - actors of the musical "Nord-Ost" who became victims terrorist attack on Dubrovka in 2002
Over the 235 years of its existence, the Vagankovo necropolis has buried more than half a million people. Currently there are more than 100,000 graves of Moscow citizens.
Information from the site
Kharitonov Leonid Vladimirovich. (1930-1987). Soviet theater and film actor. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1972), known for the films “Soldier Ivan Brovkin”, “Ivan Brovkin on Virgin Lands”, “The Street is Full of Surprises”. One of the most popular actors in Soviet cinema of the 1950s. Leonid Kharitonov was born on May 19, 1930 in Leningrad. Leonid's mother worked as a doctor, and father was an engineer. Younger brother Viktor Kharitonov. During the military blockade in Leningrad, Lena sometimes had to eat soap due to hunger, which is why he later developed a stomach ulcer. After school, he entered the Faculty of Law at Leningrad University. After studying there for one year, Kharitonov decided to leave law and devote himself to the acting career that he had dreamed of since childhood. He entered the Studio School named after. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theater, from which he graduated in 1954. In 1954-1962 and from 1963 - artist of the Moscow Art Theater. M. Gorky, in 1962-1963 - Theater named after. Lenin Komsomol and Theater named after. A. S. Pushkin. His first film role in the film “School of Courage” brought Leonid Kharitonov fame. He starred in it while still a student, in 1954. A year later, the film “Soldier Ivan Brovkin” was released on the country’s screens, after which the young actor became an idol of the generation. Over the course of several years, about ten films were released with Kharitonov in the title role. He created the image of a new social hero - kind, modest, charming and “slightly unlucky.” Kharitonov’s characters not only educated, but also entertained, for which the actor was loved by viewers of all generations. As Kharitonov grew older, he appeared less and less on screen. I didn’t want to play aging boys, I acted extremely rarely, I taught, and prepared myself for a real milestone role. Sometimes he appeared in episodes completely gray-haired, overweight, but with the same mischievous twinkle in his eyes as the heroes of his early films. An episode from Vladimir Menshov’s Oscar-winning film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” recalled his former glory, where before entering the Film Actor’s Theater the heroine Irina Muravyova squealed enthusiastically: “Oh, Kharitonov!!!” In recent years, Kharitonov was seriously ill. In the summer of 1980, during the Moscow Olympics, he suffered his first stroke. Then, on the set of the film “From the Life of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department,” on July 4, 1984, a second stroke followed. His health failed him during the crisis at the Moscow Art Theater in the summer of 1987. On June 20, 1987, the day the theater was divided into two parts, Kharitonov suffered a third stroke, and on the same day the actor died. The tombstone is a split stone in the form of a Moscow Art Theater seagull broken in two, symbolizing the split of the Moscow Art Theater. Gibova Evgenia Alexandrovna. (1942-2004). Wife of Leonid Kharitonov. Born March 8, 1942. Since 1962 she studied at the acting department of the School-Studio named after. V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theater. M. Gorky. Author of poetic works. In 1963 she married Leonid Kharitonov. She died in 2004.
