Solomon Kipniss walked briskly around Novodevichy Cemetery as if his feet weren't freezing from the puddles beneath his shoes and the wind weren't whipping at his face. He walked like he could find his way through the gravestones in the dark.
"Seven hectares of land, and everything is here", said Kipniss, a polite but intense man of 73. "Buried here are the people who tell the story of the whole culture of my country".
Kipniss began rattling off names with mind-boggling speed. I caught only every third name or so, but it was enough". . . . and Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov . . . and Stalin's wife, who committed suicide. . . Ilyushin, who made the plane . . . Molotov, and Kropotkin, who was actually an anarchist, but of course that's not on his monument. . ".
Nearly breathless, he paused for a moment and waved his hand. "Aach, I'm only scratching the surface", he said.
For the past five years, Kipniss has devoted himself to identifying and cataloguing every person buried at this unusual cemetery. While Lenin is entombed on Red Square, and the most esteemed heros of the Soviet Union are buried by the Kremlin wall, the cemetery at the Novodevichy Convent is the burial place of prestige for the country's most honored writers, artists, actors, political figures, scientists, and athletes. It is also an open-air museum, as most of the monuments are sculptures that reflect the accomplishments of the deceased.
But there is no official record of the 20, 000 people buried there.
"I can't prove this with documents", Kipniss told me, "but apparently when the Germans were approaching Moscow in 1941, some-fool destroyed the cemetery records to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy".
An editor at Science and Life magazine for 35 years, Kipniss knows the historical importance of such records. Researching the lives of scientists, he had often consulted the "Moskovsky Nekropol", written before the Russian Revolution and now stored in the Lenin Library. A nekropol is an inventory of every person buried in the city's cemeteries.
"There was no such record for this unique cemetery, so I decided to do it myself", Kipniss said. "I decided to create a nekropol".
He went to the cemetery every day, and scribbled down names and dates from the monuments into an oversized notebook. Some of the names were well-known and required little research. Other monuments were marked simply with initials and last names. Relying on newspaper obituaries, old telephone books, memoirs, encyclopedias and interviews with descendants, Kipniss identified nearly all of the people buried at the cemetery. On holidays, he would approach people laying flowers on the graves and ask for the stories of their ancestors.
With scientific precision, Kipniss made detailed notecards for each person. He typed all the information into a computer. He now has a nearly complete nekropol of the cemetery, catalogued by name, profession and section of the cemetery.
"Why am I doing this? " Kipniss said later, flipping through the pages of his nekropol with undisguised pride. "To preserve memory. That is the most important thing".
While researching the cemetery, Kipniss also compiled 200 vignettes, many of which reveal little-known facts about the people buried at Novodevichy. His stones include the shining lights of Soviet culture and the shameful details of the country's history. "This one might interest you. Do you remember an American named Paxton Gibbons? " he asked me.
He proceeded, with the drama of a true storyteller, to tell me about Gibbons, an American diplomat stationed in Russia who raised money to help starving children here during World War I Gibbons was later accused of being a Kremlin spy. His ashes are interred at Novodevichy.
"Fascinating, isn't it? " Kipniss said.
Kipniss is now trying to publish his nekropol but has not been able to find an interested publisher.
"If I die, I'll ask that my children give it to the library", he said. "But I don't want to die - I'm really in no hurry - and if it's in a library, then it's only one copy. It should be in many libraries, for people to use and learn from. As our great writer Turgenev said, 'The footprints of human life fade away very quickly'.
"Seven hectares of land, and everything is here", said Kipniss, a polite but intense man of 73. "Buried here are the people who tell the story of the whole culture of my country".
Kipniss began rattling off names with mind-boggling speed. I caught only every third name or so, but it was enough". . . . and Chekhov, Gogol, Bulgakov . . . and Stalin's wife, who committed suicide. . . Ilyushin, who made the plane . . . Molotov, and Kropotkin, who was actually an anarchist, but of course that's not on his monument. . ".
Nearly breathless, he paused for a moment and waved his hand. "Aach, I'm only scratching the surface", he said.
For the past five years, Kipniss has devoted himself to identifying and cataloguing every person buried at this unusual cemetery. While Lenin is entombed on Red Square, and the most esteemed heros of the Soviet Union are buried by the Kremlin wall, the cemetery at the Novodevichy Convent is the burial place of prestige for the country's most honored writers, artists, actors, political figures, scientists, and athletes. It is also an open-air museum, as most of the monuments are sculptures that reflect the accomplishments of the deceased.
But there is no official record of the 20, 000 people buried there.
"I can't prove this with documents", Kipniss told me, "but apparently when the Germans were approaching Moscow in 1941, some-fool destroyed the cemetery records to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy".
An editor at Science and Life magazine for 35 years, Kipniss knows the historical importance of such records. Researching the lives of scientists, he had often consulted the "Moskovsky Nekropol", written before the Russian Revolution and now stored in the Lenin Library. A nekropol is an inventory of every person buried in the city's cemeteries.
"There was no such record for this unique cemetery, so I decided to do it myself", Kipniss said. "I decided to create a nekropol".
He went to the cemetery every day, and scribbled down names and dates from the monuments into an oversized notebook. Some of the names were well-known and required little research. Other monuments were marked simply with initials and last names. Relying on newspaper obituaries, old telephone books, memoirs, encyclopedias and interviews with descendants, Kipniss identified nearly all of the people buried at the cemetery. On holidays, he would approach people laying flowers on the graves and ask for the stories of their ancestors.
With scientific precision, Kipniss made detailed notecards for each person. He typed all the information into a computer. He now has a nearly complete nekropol of the cemetery, catalogued by name, profession and section of the cemetery.
"Why am I doing this? " Kipniss said later, flipping through the pages of his nekropol with undisguised pride. "To preserve memory. That is the most important thing".
While researching the cemetery, Kipniss also compiled 200 vignettes, many of which reveal little-known facts about the people buried at Novodevichy. His stones include the shining lights of Soviet culture and the shameful details of the country's history. "This one might interest you. Do you remember an American named Paxton Gibbons? " he asked me.
He proceeded, with the drama of a true storyteller, to tell me about Gibbons, an American diplomat stationed in Russia who raised money to help starving children here during World War I Gibbons was later accused of being a Kremlin spy. His ashes are interred at Novodevichy.
"Fascinating, isn't it? " Kipniss said.
Kipniss is now trying to publish his nekropol but has not been able to find an interested publisher.
"If I die, I'll ask that my children give it to the library", he said. "But I don't want to die - I'm really in no hurry - and if it's in a library, then it's only one copy. It should be in many libraries, for people to use and learn from. As our great writer Turgenev said, 'The footprints of human life fade away very quickly'.
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