I see dead people

Last week in St. Peterburg I visited the cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and this week I visited the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow (the second most prominent place for burials after the Kremlin Necropolis, which is currently not taking new customers). There was almost nobody (alive) at either place since who wants to visit anything outdoors at this time of year in Russia?

The cemetery at the Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg is quite close to the Alexander Nevsky metro station, which has a mosaic of one of his battles at the top of the escalator:

Here is the pathway to the monastery, with the two parts of the cemetery on either side

the older one called Necropolis of the 18-th century

and the other called Necropolis of the Masters of the Arts:

Euler is buried in the 18-th century cemetery, so that's the one I wanted to see. There is a separate ticket to purchase for each cemetery, and I got charged the foreigner's rate as soon as I opened my mouth (200 rubles, instead of 150). While there is a large map on the wall just inside each cemetery which shows who is buried where, there are also convenient signs if you happen to be looking for Euler:

And here he is, from the front and the back:

At first I was there on my own, but I joined a guided tour in progress to hear what the guide would have to say about Euler. I expected she'd say he was a mathematician and physicist, and not anything more in terms of his work. Much to my surprise the first thing she said about him is that he worked in number theory. I was tempted to ask if she could tell us anything more about that work, but resisted the urge.  The guide said that the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences paid for the special grave (which is made of a colored stone, unlike other graves) and, perhaps at a loss about what more could be said, pointed out that prominent political and artistic figures are widely known by the public but folks like Euler are really not. With that she moved on.

Here is Lomonosov, whom Moscow State is named after:

The first director of Moscow State is buried under this snow:

Note he died in 1757, so he was hardly a first director for long: the school was founded in 1755.

The first Russian scholar of China, Nikita Bichurin:

One old grave has a tree growing out of it:

When I stepped out of that 18-th century cemetery to go home, a lady at the entrance to the Masters of the Arts cemetery motioned for me to come there too.  I was pretty certain you needed a separate ticket; maybe she thought I was on the guided tour and got lost? In any case I followed the lady's suggestion and saw some Masters of Arts, such as Dostoyevsky

and in the composer's corner (all near each other) is Tchaikovsky

Mussorgsky

Borodin

and Rimsky-Korsakov

which is a grave I had to find by interpolation from the map on the wall. In fact a lot of graves were similarly covered up because of the winter weather. It looked like there were a lot of outhouses all over the place. Here are some more of them:

Unlike these cemeteries in St. Petersburg, the Novdevichy cemetery in Moscow is free to all visitors. It is located next to the Novodevichy convent, which looks as follows if you go there by Metro:

To get to the cemetery you walk towards the tall tower on the left, past it, until you reach a red brick wall and then keep walking until you reach a set of open gates with a big sign. In the cemetery I wanted to see the graves of Arnold (passed away last summer), Kolmogorov, Kantorovich (the economist), and  Pontryagin. However, in that cemetery there are thousands of graves and you need a small book to list  where they are all located. They do sell a map, but of course it is limited to a small number of famous political, artisitic, and military figures. There was an old lady at the map kiosk who offered to take me on a tour for 300 rubles (about $10, so it's free if you just wander aimlessly) and she had a complete directory in book form.  I quickly said yes, and after she found the dead people I came to see she showed me where other notable folks are buried.

Here is Arnold, who is still waiting to get a gravestone.  To his left is the physicist Ginzburg.

And next we have Kolmogorov

Kantorovich (whose gravestone looks like something is missing)

and Pontryagin:

Initially my guide looked through her book and told me Pontryagin was not there.  I insisted he was, although saying "I saw it on the Internet" isn't really a guarantee of anything.  She still said the name wasn't in her book, but when I gave his full name she found it. The last name had been misprinted:  Пантрягин instead of Понтрягин.

Two other mathematicians buried here are the bald number theorist I. M. Vinogradov

and the long-time rector of Moscow State, Petrosvsky,

whose gravestone has a tensor transformation law on it.

The mysterious Lada Pyshkina (does anyone know who she was?) has a golden spiral on her grave

Some physicists there besides Ginzburg are Landau

and Kapitsa:

The inventor of the modern parachute, Kotelnikov, has a grave with a big parachute on it.

Musicians include Shostakovich

and Prokofiev,

who had the unfortunate timing to die on the exact same day as Stalin, so few people noticed. (The Wikipedia link for Prokofiev discusses this point some more. Another example of someone who died on a day someone far more famous died is here.)  While Tchaikovsky is buried up in St. Peterburg, his brother the engineer is in a covered grave in Moscow:

Writers here include Chekhov

and Bulgakov:

In acting there is Stanislavski

and Nikulin

who at the end of his life was in charge of a circus. My guide said that for good luck people brush their hand on either of the ears of that dog.  This is more painful in winter than in summer.

Some people related to politics in the cemetery are Stalin's second wife (the first wife is buried in Georgia)

 Yeltsin under an enormous tricolor stone flag

Raisa Gorbachev

and the future site of Mikhail Gorbachev

to his wife's right (or left, depending on your point of view).  My guide told me that the Gorbachev grave plot is where Yeltsin had wanted to be buried, but Gorbachev's wife beat him to it by dying first. Another politician there is Gromyko

whose grave has a positive and negative image in it.  Here is the negative image on closer inspection:

Finally, here is (according to my guide) the oldest grave in the cemetery:

I of course asked the guide where the second oldest grave is. She wasn't sure.

Unfortunately I can't tell you where almost any of these graves are located in the cemetery since I didn't see any numerical markers of rows to help out (I wonder what was in the directory my guide was using).  But I do remember that if you walk straight ahead through the entrance you will see Yeltsin's grave some distance down on the left and its size and colors make it quite noticeable.  Nikulin's grave is in the same general area, but along a path on the right.

Many of the graves have flowers.  Who is ordering these flowers?  The guide said that, at least for all the  military graves, the flowers are paid for by the Defense Ministry, which puts them up on birthdays or other important occasions.

The cemetery was undergoing a lot of repairs the day I was there

so many of the paths were closed off.  Even paths that were open were partly stone and partly dirt:

At first I thought the barrier at the end of the stone path above would have a sign on the other side warning people about the rough dirt terrain ahead, but in fact it said nothing:

You just need to watch where you're walking.