One way to study a country’s history is by its graves. Spending 12 hours on the road last weekend, I had plenty of opportunities to observe changing landscapes, architecture and cemeteries.
And while I was quite prepared to see the brick village homes in the Kyiv region replaced with wooden huts in the Carpathian Mountains, I was astonished by the diversity of burial grounds.
A different religious confession is the obvious answer. Orthodox Christians in central and eastern Ukraine turn cemeteries into black-and-white photo albums where tombstones feature pictures of the dead. In the west, Catholics and Greek-Catholics decorate their resting place with white stone angels or other saints.
Ukrainians across the country are rather responsible looking after their forebears’ graveyards. Orthodox believers choose to weed out any sprouts of wild grass making this home of sorrow look even more black and dismal. They plow lanes and plant flowers on small hillocks over the graves. Prominent crosses sit atop, along with small monuments, forming an eclectic mix of Christian and Soviet traditions. Granite or marble rectangular slabs bear images of the dead, photographs and even epitaphs. Fake flowers of acid pink and green, although never fading, hardly inspire thoughts of eternal life.
A woman cleans and decorates the grave of her relatives in Kyiv on April 11. (UNIAN)
Western Ukrainian cemeteries, on the other hand, look friendlier. Tomb stones and small monuments match in size, suggesting that everyone is equal after death. In spring, people let the grass take over the grounds, injecting some life into an otherwise dead place.
Graveyards around churches have been discontinued in the Russian empire after the 1771 Moscow plague. Tsars ordered cemeteries out of the city borders. Burying near the church was reserved only for the outstanding governors and church leaders. In the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, for example, you’ll find very few graves – one of them to Pyotr Stolypin, Russian prime minister in the early 1900’s, known for his agriculture reform. The founder of Moscow, Yuri Dolgorukov is also buried in the Lavra.
If you follow the path to the Far Caves, you’ll get to the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. There’s a small cemetery behind it where fresh graves border with the very old. It’s not allowed to bury on the church premises, but Lavra follows its own laws. When someone of a higher rank in the Lavra dies, they bury him at the cemetery, indicating only names on the tomb stones, omitting any dates.
Traditions of honoring the dead also differ from east to west of Ukraine. Memorial rituals in the Orthodox calendar fall on the ninth day after Easter. People save up some Easter cakes and painted eggs blessed in the church for this day. Taking food to the cemetery, they leave it at the graves for the dead who are believed to come down from heaven on this occasion. Others add vodka to this little picnic, leaving a shot covered with a piece of bread at the tomb. A lot of families can be seen eating and drinking at the cemetery – that, however, is the wildest interpretation of the ritual.
Albeit Orthodox priests serve memorials at the cemeteries on this day, they fail to explain that eating and drinking is mentioned nowhere in the Bible. There’s no such thing as a vacation for the dead on memorial days in the scriptures, either. Earthly food is for survival of the living. Leaving it for the dead goes back to the pagan times. Kyiv’s main Baikove cemetery used to have signs, banning food and drink on its premises in the 19th century. Some, however, believe that alcohol helps to release tension and soften the pain.
In Catholic and Greek-Catholic tradition, there’s no place for cemetery feasts. Austrian-Hungarian Empire and then Poland left their mark in western part of Ukraine. Memorial days fall on the beginning of November. In Podillya that stretches across Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Ternopil and parts of other regions, cherry trees are traditional at cemeteries – also an echo from the pagan times when trees were deemed as middlemen with the afterlife.
I personally find all local graveyards depressing. One, however, stands out. Lychakivsky cemetery in Lviv is more of a sculpture park sprinkled with legends. A banker is buried in a special vault, to enter which you had to know a code. A liquor magnate wished to walk to his own grave after death. So he designed a special mechanism to be stitched to his legs, which would enable his body to take the final few steps to his crypt. Armenian doctor’s dogs were buried with their owner. Pluto and Nero’s sculptures guard his bust near the entrance to the cemetery.
Dogs stayed at his grave without food and drink until they passed away. One outlived another by a single day, and so the sculptors marked it with two tears. These and many other legends turn Lychakiv into a fascinating journey. They even offer night excursions for the true taphophiles, those with high interest for the cemeteries.
One more Ukrainian grave recently sprung to spotlight. Built in the shape of the Egyptian pyramid, it once belonged to the family of Nick Clegg. The front man of the British Liberal Democratic party, he is a descendent of Russian aristocracy. Clegg’s great-great grandfather, who was regarded as one of Tsarist Russia’s most eccentric aristocrats, became obsessed with ancient Egypt and built an actual pyramid – albeit small — on his sprawling estate in Ukraine. It stands until this day in Poltava region.
German and Jewish cemeteries also stand out from others. Many German soldiers died in Ukraine during the World War II. Their graves have been relocated to separate cemeteries.
Violent Jewish massacres left their scars all over the country. Special attention is paid annually at Holocaust memorial in the Babyi Yar ravine in Kyiv. Tens of thousands of Jewish people also go on pilgrimage to Uman (Cherkasy region) every year to pay their respects to Rabbi Nachman, a prominent spiritual leader in the history of Hasidism.
So, if you aren’t really a bookworm but want a glimpse of history from an odder angle, head for the cemeteries.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected].
