Interesting Moscow: The Church of Seraphim of Sarov, it is... model

In general, in Russia, the first oven for burning corpses was rebuilt from a bath in 1920 in Petrograd. The name of the romantic was "Metallurgist furnace". She wasn't very powerful, and she was happy with one corpse in a couple of hours. But there were too many corpses and more wood was needed. And Moscow took the initiative!

The competition for the best crematorium was won by D.P. Osipov; he proposed to use the building of the Church of Seraphim of Sarov in the Donskoy cemetery. This is economical and justified from the point of view of scientific atheism - no one was particularly stressed. It is said that the oven for cremation, which stood there, was popularly nicknamed "Lucifer's furnace" and "Hell's furnace of the Bolsheviks." All those buried at the Kremlin Wall were cremated there.

The temple was remodeled and did not have to! Disassembled the dome and built the tower, decorated with stained glass and painted in mourning color. On the first floor of the building there was a farewell hall, there was an organ, and after the farewell ceremony, the coffin with the deceased was lowered into the underground floor, into the cremation hall. There was also a burial urn. It was so new that the progressive Society of Cremation Lovers was founded with an annual membership fee of 50 kopecks.

Tours were organized to popularize the topic of cremation. It is not known whether it is possible to go there now, but there are the first urns with inscriptions "Bolshevik-chekist", "steadfast Bolshevik" and so on. The ashes of the author of the idea, Osipov. And besides him - Meyerhold, Blucher, Tukhachevsky. And Yezhova.

It was a very strange couple - an insanely beautiful woman and a half-meter, angry and always drunk Yezhov. Eugene got the nickname "Dragonfly" - for the crowds of lovers, Yezhov, of course, was very dissatisfied, but this is another matter. Wanting to please Stalin, the "bloody People's Commissar" will order to destroy so many "enemies of the people" in each region, but will not receive any benefit: soon Stalin will publicly call Yezhov a scoundrel, Beria will occupy his office, and Yezhov will be shot and burned. Shortly before his arrest, Yezhov will order the shooting and burning of his wife’s very famous lovers: Isaac Babel and Mikhail Koltsov. The fate lies in the fact that the ashes of Yezhov will be laid next to the ashes of his wife (who took her own life because of persecution) and her lovers: Koltsov and Babel.

In the early 50s, just under 1,000 Germans were shot on Stalin’s personal orders and burned in that crematorium. Why is still under discussion. The ashes in buckets were transferred to a mass grave, dumped and layered the ground.

And in December 53, he was tough. A horror movie. When Beria was shot as an English spy in December (it is still not known whether it was him, even a doctor was not allowed to visit the corpse), he was to be cremated in Lucifer’s Furnace. And here comes the cremation, and to the glass, like in the zoo, clung party leaders. And suddenly Beria moved!! Moreover, he began to come alive and rise!! Many were baptized, shame on atheists! Beria Sel on the stove! And then he fell on his back. It turns out that the maintenance staff in a hurry did not cut the tendons of the corpse, and from the temperature they began to shrink, which led to frightening body movements.

But here's the "Fairy Tale" end! "That is the end of this fairy tale, and there are others" ("Winnie the Pooh and all-all-all").

The work of the crematorium was stopped in 73, and in the late 90s it was naturally destroyed and returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. The organ was replaced with an altar, the pedestal with an elevator was replaced with salt. That's it! It's a place of prayer!

Maxim Shvedov