Fraternal graves and our memory

Skudelnitsy - so in ancient times they called communal graves in Russia. The reasons for their appearance were different: pestilences, fires, but more often they arose after large-scale battles.

Fraternal graves of Peter's times

Peter I, the day after the victorious Poltava battle, ordered the digging of two mass graves for officers and soldiers of the Russian army, who accepted death for faith, the tsar and the Fatherland. It happened in 1709, on June 28. Having served a requiem, the participants of the funeral ceremony sold soldiers with military honors, they were 1,345 people. The losses of the Swedes were much more significant - 11 thousand. The cross (according to the legend) autographed by Peter the Great, stood until 1828, crowning both mass graves. The text on it read: "The pious warriors, for the piety blooded by the wedding, the years from the incarnation of God the Word 1709, June 27 days." Then in 1909 a beautiful memorial was built. This was the basis of the modern tradition of burial of soldiers who died for Russia.

The mass graves of the twentieth century

The armies of all countries that took part in military conflicts faced the same problem. After major battles, the victor was to bury the dead soldiers: both their own and the enemy. Losses sometimes reached thousands of numbers, and it was often not possible to dig up each grave for each soldier, because the troops were to have new campaigns. Whether they went on the offensive or made another maneuver - there was not enough time. In most cases, grave graves were digging. So it was during the Russian-Turkish wars, and later - in the First World War. But most of all mass graves appeared during the Great Patriotic War. The soldiers perished at the front and died in the rear hospitals. Thousands of residents of besieged Leningrad died away, and city cemeteries became the place of their repose. Most of the people were in Piskarevsky, where according to the estimated data, half a million inhabitants of the city took the mass graves. No one counted accurate calculations, there was no time for that. Just buried and the victims of reprisals, repaired by the invaders. In many cities and villages, tens of thousands of people were burned, hanged, shot. After the liberation, mass graves were uncovered, identification was carried out, but in most cases the dead were again buried in mass graves.

Everlasting memory

Mournful hills are in all the cities through which the fiery wheel swept the war, and in many places where it did not reach, but where hospitals worked. People bring flowers to them, and poets compose poetry. Olga Berggolts wrote: "We can not list their noble names here ...". Vladimir Vysotsky sang: "On communal graves do not put crosses ...". So it was. And the names remained unknown, and the burial service of the dead began only recently. Paradoxical as it may sound, the inhabitants of the "eternal state apartments" with the monuments were still lucky. Many of the dead lie in obscure ravines and under nameless skyscrapers with nothing to say to modern man numbers. On them go and drive, and no one even knows that there was once in 1942 or 1943 trenches in which a soldier or sergeant of the Red Army, whose name is unknown, took his last fight. But this is someone's grandfather or great-grandfather ...