The Tsarskoye Selo Common Cemetery of World War I Heroes.

Categories / Tsarskoe Selo and town of Pushkin. The digital chronological reference book/Monuments of history and culture
The first Common Cemetery of World War I heroes was founded in September 1914 according to the initiative of Empress Alexandra Fiodorovna. It occupies a plot near the Kazan Cemetery and was under the special patronage of the Empress. Its territory was fenced in, at first the fence was wooden and later it was replaced by lace iron one with crosses on pillars and green fir-trees hedge. An alley planted along with evergreen thuja, on sides of which there were equal rows of turfed grave mounds and planted with flowers in summer. The Common Cemetery was kept for Her Majesty’s money and was in charge of The Tsarskoye Selo special evacuation center. It was served by a team of soldiers. Officers and lowers ranks, perished on battle fields and dead in Tsarskoye Selo military hospitals, were buried here. Later it was allowed to bury here the people who served in the Tsarskoye Selo special evacuation center hospitals and was known by their special care about wounded men. By October 1917 in the cemetery there were more then a thousand of individual graves with carved wooden crosses. In the cemetery there was a small wooden church, the design of which, approved by the Empress on 3 July 1915, was developed by the architect S.Yu. Sidorchuk in the Russian northern architecture traditions. Trees, felt by a hurricane in the spring 1914 in the Tsarskoye Selo parks, were used as materials for building. The church was built at the earliest possible time: the laying took place on 18 August, and church was consecrated in the name of the icon of the Mother of God “The Healer of Sorrows” on 4 October 1915 in the presence of the Empress and Grand Duchesses. Hieromonk Dositheus (Razumov), a priest of the 131th evacuation hospital that time, became the first dean of the church. At Easter on 19 April 1916 a service for the commemoration of the soldiers perished in battle fields was performed here. Nicholas II, Alexandra Fiodorovna with the Heir Tsesarevich Alexey and daughters Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia as well as other members of the imperial family- the Queen of Hellenes Olga Konstantinovna, Grand Duchesses Yelizaveta Fiodorovna and Yelizaveta Mavrikiyevna -were in presence at the service. In 1938 the church was closed and demolished, the cemetery was destroyed. In 2008 a granite obelisk was constructed on the former cemetery territory in 2008. It was erected in the commemoration of heroes perished in World War I during 1914-1918. Semenova Galina Victorovna
Alexandra Fedorovna, Empress
Alexey Nikolaevich, Tsesarevitch
Anastasia Nikolaevna, Grand Princess
Elizaveta Fedorovna, Grand Princess
Elizaveta Mavrikievna, Grand Princess
Maria Nikolaevna, Grand Princess
Nicholas II, Emperor
Olga Konstantinovna, Grand Princess, Queen
Olga Nikolaevna, Grand Princess
Sidorchuk S.Y.
Tatyana Nikolaevna, Grand Princess
Tatyana Nikolaevna, Grand Princess
Kazanskoe Cemetery