Talk:Donskoy Monastery

Common Grave No.1 section

The bit on the Stalin-era/NKVD common grave states that the pit was dug in 1930 "for the cremated ashes of executed political prisoners from Joseph Stalin's Great Purge" - and so puts the cart before the horse. Long-standing general usage both among scholars and in Russia puts the beginning of the great purge around 1934/35, after the murder of Kirov. No, the great purge is not simply equal to Stalin's era of autocracy in general, and there's no indication that anyone, even Stalin, knew in 1930 that there was going to be that kind of a massive purge in a few years' time, and that key players like Yezhov, Bucharin and Tukhachevsky were going to be shot. There are other strange and muddled statements in this section (like, the bit about this place being specially shameful to people in the 1930s because it had been an Orthodox cemetery, as if there weren't many thousands of disused former Russian orthodox cemeteries in the USSR at the time - and also, quite a few cemeteries and churches which were still in use!). Not very surprising to find it muddled, since the only source cited is a popular book on cultural sites in Moscow. 83.254.151.33 (talk) 19:02, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

People buried both in Old and New Cemeteries...

The article states that Faina Ranevskaya, Ivan Ilyin, Anton Denikin are buried in the Old Cemetery, as well as in the new one... Could somebody find out more? --Ivannah (talk) 15:15, 3 November 2014 (UTC)