The Soviet Cemetery of Constanta - fragment of a forgotten history

Photo source: Wikimapia – user: fcserban 

I see that  nowadays people have a sort of shyness when it comes to talking about death and remembering our dead. This is understandable to some extent, taking in to consideration that TV channels are the producers of most of today’s death porn, which we know under the name of news bulletins. It is important to admit that mass media, especially with the power that it holds today, shaped our death culture; or we can even state, that it encouraged us to back down on our interest for the culture of death and memorial practices. I think it’s time to see history in a more multidimensional matter, not only through history books, not only through research papers. Maybe it’s time to go and explore history in places like cemeteries and graveyards, places which usually weren’t the subject of alterations, or at least, not as much as others.  

I think that it is the time to reconsider the way in which we regard our local cemeteries and graveyards as physical reminders of our recent or distant past. Cemeteries and graveyards are full of symbolism, of shapes and ornaments which make connections with certain moral values and feelings which are essential aspects of human existence, It is interesting to notice the way in which every culture has created over time a specific way of remembering the dead, some preferred to do so through the construction of elaborate crypts and mausoleums, some managed to do it through complex rituals, and some did them both.  Channeling our attention towards the study of the death costumes of the culture that we are part of is beneficial in many ways, the first thing that comes in to my mind is that we can build a good knowledge base about our family’s history and about the history of the community in which we live. The biggest problem with public schools nowadays, and this is very easy to spot in Romania, is that they concentrate too much on national history and totally ignore the importance of knowing our local history, which many times can be more relatable to the majority of kids.

We must think of our local cemeteries and graveyards as open ear museums with physical relics which depict certain dimensions of our local history, we should also stop telling our children that cemeteries and graveyards are places that we should avoid going in to, or that they cannot contribute in any way to local culture.

Constanta’s Central Cemetery is a good example on how civilian and military history can reunite under a single roof; the cemetery has certain sectors which are reserved only for the soldiers who lost their lives in the battles that took place in WW1 and WW2.

Here I can make a shortly make a few references to the sector which is reserved to the soviet soldiers from WW2, back in the days of communism the name would be that of “The Cemetery of the Soviet Heroes”, kind of ironic nowadays taking in to consideration the fact that they were directly involved in the installment of communism which lead to the Stalinization of Romania.

The headstones from this sector are quite modest, they don’t have any Christian symbols on them, the whole sector is quite well put in place, the graves are symmetrically positioned one both sides of the alley that makes the access possible there. Unlike the rest of the cemetery, the soviet sector, which is quite tiny by the way, receives shade from the trees that are planted there, which is not the case for the rest of the cemetery where there is a total lack of shade during the summer period. 

The modesty of the headstones has two main symbolism, the first can be linked to the idea of military sacrifice, the sacrifice that those men did for a cause in which they believes, even thou in the case of the soviets was one that may be easily labeled as morally corrupt in its essence. So the modest shape suggests the lack of interest for the self and the idea of channeling energies for obtaining a higher socialistic ideal – the ideal which is higher then any craving for individual material gain. The second perspective may be linked to the secular-atheistic nature of the Soviet Union, do to this, there is not an actual mortuary culture liked to this ideology which would also contain norms regarding the aesthetics of Soviet burial places.

The atmosphere in the soviet sector is quite pleasant, maybe to do the rich vegetation that it has and also do to the modest graves which are not in the form or crypts, like the case of the rest of the cemetery. This sector of the Central Cemetery tells us a story of a past that is not really that distant, by any means a bright past, rather one filled with suffering, restrictions and misery, but in the same time one that should be acknowledge.