The Volkovo Cemetery (also Volkovskoe) ( or Во́лково кла́дбище) is one of the largest and oldest non-

Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pag ...

cemeteries in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. Until the early 20th century it was one of the main burial grounds for

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

Germans in Russia The German minority population in Russia, Ukraine, and the Soviet Union stemmed from several sources and arrived in several waves. Since the second half of the 19th century, as a consequence of the Russification policies and compulsory militar ...

. It is estimated that over 100,000 people have been buried at this cemetery since 1773.

Origins 1770–1773

Between late 1771 and 1772,

Catherine the Great Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

, empress of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, issued an

edict An edict is a decree or announcement of a law, often associated with monarchies, but it can be under any official authority. Synonyms include "dictum" and "pronouncement". ''Edict'' derives from the Latin edictum. Notable edicts * Telepinu ...

which

decree A decree is a law, legal proclamation, usually issued by a head of state, judge, monarch, royal figure, or other relevant Authority, authorities, according to certain procedures. These procedures are usually defined by the constitution, Legislativ ...

d that, from that point on, any person who died (regardless of social standing or class origins) no longer had the right to be buried within church

crypt A crypt (from Greek κρύπτη (kryptē) ''wikt:crypta#Latin, crypta'' "Burial vault (tomb), vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, Sarcophagus, sarcophagi, or Relic, religiou ...

s or adjacent

churchyard In Christian countries, a churchyard is a patch of land adjoining or surrounding a church (building), church, which is usually owned by the relevant church or local parish itself. In the Scots language and in both Scottish English and Ulster S ...

s. New cemeteries had to be built across the entire Russian Empire and from then on they all had to be located outside city limits. One of the main motivations behind these measures was overcrowding in church crypts and graveyards. However, the true deciding factor which led to the new laws being enforced on such a mass scale across the entire Russian empire was to avoid further outbreaks of highly contagious diseases, especially the

black plague The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...

which had led to the Plague Riot in Moscow in 1771. The Volkovo cemetery was founded in 1773. The first person to be buried in this cemetery was Johann Gebhard Brethfeld, a merchant in Saint Petersburg.

Current research

The person who has done the most work in investigating the history of the cemetery is Dr. Benedikt Böhm in Saint Petersburg. As of 2007, Dr. Böhm and published four volumes on the history of the cemetery, each of which contain extensive lists of names of those people who were buried there between 1773 and 1936. His 2 main sources for these publications are as follows: * The original parish registers of burials at the cemetery kept in the states archives in Saint Petersburg. * Countless personal visits to the cemetery itself since 1989 in which he compiled an inventory of all those graves which are still standing today complete with photographs of each

gravestone A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The us ...

Dr Böhm's publications

* Volume 1 contains 3700 names of those buried in the cemetery between 1773 and 1936 ''whose graves are still standing today'' and a further 17,000 names of those interred who were sold a

burial plot A grave is a location where a dead body (typically that of a human, although sometimes that of an animal) is buried or interred after a funeral. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as grave ...

''for eternity'', but which no longer have a

headstone A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The u ...

. The book contains a present-day map detailing the location of all headstones and burial plots. * Volume 2 contains 40,000 names of those buried between 1863 and 1919, based on the original parish registers of burials. * Volume 3 contains 40,000 names of those buried between 1820 and 1862, based on the original parish registers of burials. * Volume 4 is a partial repeat of the information in Volume 3. It contains the names of those buried between 1820 and 1867, indicating which of the 27 non orthodox

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...

es the deceased person belonged to in Saint Petersburg. The publications are used by

genealogists Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...

for family research in pre-revolutionary Russia and the early

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

period when

vital records Vital records are records of life events kept under governmental authority, including birth certificates, marriage licenses (or marriage certificates), separation agreements, divorce certificates or divorce party and death certificates. In some j ...

are missing or prove difficult to find.

Historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

s use them to research the

social histories Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past. Historians who write social history are called social historians. Social history came to prominence in the 1960s, spreading f ...

of the city.

Notable interments

* Artur Adamovich Nepokoychitsky (1813-1881), Imperial Russian military leader. *

Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (; née Blank; – ) was the mother of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who in 1922 founded the Soviet Union. She was born in Saint Petersburg as Maria Alexandrovna Blank, one of six children. Her father, Al ...

(1835-1916),

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's mother. *

Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova Olga Ilyinichna Ulyanova (Russian language, Russian: Ольга Ильинична Ульянова; 1871 1891) was a Russian noblewoman, polyglot, and the sister of Vladimir Lenin. She was born into a wealthy family of middle-class status but, ...

(1871–1891), Lenin's sister * Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938), famous Russian writer.

References

* Wolkowo lutherischer Friedhof in St. Petersburg, 1998, Dr. Benedikt Böhm, 178 pages * Wolkowo – Lutherischer Friedhof in St. Petersburg, Band 2, Benedikt Böhm, 2003. 512 pages * Wolkowo – Lutherischer Friedhof in St. Petersburg, Band 3, Benedikt Böhm, 2004. 522 pages * Wolkowo – Lutherischer Friedhof in St. Petersburg, Band 4, Benedikt Böhm, 2005. 536 pages

External links