Cemetery Booze (Donetsk, Ukraine)

Wine, vodka and caviar (engraved marble)...Mushketovskoe cemetery, Donetsk, Donbass (Ukraine)
Don't be surprised to come occasionnally accross a drunkard or a bum in a Russian or Ukrainian cemetery (I did in one of my cemetery visits this time), they're probably looking for booze leftovers....
This hasn't to do with wild parties taking place at night in these unlikeliest settings but it is rooted in one of the most special relation that the people of these regions have with life, death and earthy pleasures. For Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians (actually this is the same extended family) ther's a very important concept named "be together" in Russian translated either in the word Vmiestie (бместе) or Zastolie (застолье) and you can see it embodied everywhere from the friends/family picnics in the trains to the drinking parties on the benches of city parks, but this life philosophy doesn't stop with the end of this present life : survivors will make sure to pay regular visits to the dead in the cemeteries to sort of share with him/her some hearty meal and generously poured vodka.
[for more insights on Russian words through which you'll discover the Russian soul, check this great and insightful Russian-language blog (in English)].
This post is an ode to the simple beauty of cemeteries in this part of the world.

Red star and blue tableThat's why there is hardly any grave in this part of the world without its table and bench, sometimes fixed almost on the grave itself, as if to make the deceased enjoy the crumbs of food and the vapors of the booze. Learning about this curious tradition helps understand the life philosophy of the Slavic people. There is no antagonism between the rest place of the dead and the everyday down-to-earth pleasures here. They're gone but not that far, and they'll enjoy the sausage and the few vodka shots with you.
The woman portraited on the gravestone [picture on top] along with glasses and caviar is Svetlana Alexeevna Kovtun (4 VIII 1948 - 24 IV 1997).Leaves on a blue tableYou want to understand a country and its people ? my answer is, go to the cemetery and feel the way it is arranged and thought. In Russia, Ukraine and the likes, the cemeteries offer a unique glimpse on the wild and free Slavic soul. First, like in most gardens and green zones in towns, the grass is left untamed and unbridled. The trees also grow as they wish, we're not in a squarely organized world here, there are main alleys which show an appearance of order but as soon as you set a foot on the sides, it's a maze of graves and rusted fences in the jungle, a wonder at every step. That's a photographer's dream, for sure, if the right light is there too.Stars, foliage and flowersThe other instructive side of a cemetery visit in this part of the world (if you use your imagination and some intuition) is the reflect on History that these marked tombs offer to the visitor. Donetsk is a major town of Donbass, the land of coal mines and metallurgical industries, a region that was a vital part of the industrial push of the Soviet Union. Wages were higher than elsewhere but pollution was high, many deaths may be related to this sanitary side of the Soviet life. Looking at the pictures posted on most tombs, you end up wondering what type of life all these people had. Some of these people saw the violent takeover of the country in the lathe 1910s' and we can remind that Ukraine paid a particularly high toll for the communist utopia.There were half a dozen pink plastic glasses on this graveApart from empty glasses here and there, I didn't find leftover vodka this time, I guess visitors rarely leave more than a few drops in some bottles when they visit and share a picnic, and the eventual drunkards who come here for that purpose must be really desperate.
The 6 or 8 empty plastic glasses that were strewn on this particular grave weren't there because these people didn't care and left rubbish behind them : this is obviously a way to share drops of the drink with the deceased.A picnic table and bench for five gravesThere was candy bars on the grave on the leftThis grave on the left was the one of a young guy who died in 2007. Speaking of age, I spotted a few graves of young guys elsewhere who died around 1994-1996 and were between 20 and 30 years old in 1986. They could be "liquidators" having died of radioactive exposure. The liquidators are these young soldiers or coal miners who were sent to Chernobyl immediately after the catastrophe to help bury the plant under sand and concrete. Between 600 000 and 900 000 young men worked around Chernobyl in successive waves and many have died since.
Visit Elena Filatova's pages (click at the bottom of each page for the following page) about Chernobyl and the trip that she made on her motorcycle into the forbidden zone. White star and plastic flowers
Vodka glass. Must have been there for a long timeAside from this small vodka glass covered with mould (letting it here is very symbolic I guess) and lots of plastic glasses left over by relatives and friends, I found empty bottles of vodka in a place where faded flowers and other junk was piled up. It didn't make an interesting picture so I didn't post it here.Metal casket painted in blueHas it to do with the metallurgical plants I don't know, but many caskets or tombs seemed to be made in metal, including the monument on the grave. That may have been the burial mode for workers in the region.A grave with a squeezed tableSome graves are squeezed in such a small place, it's like if the deceased was this humble that he didn't care of his home in this side of the world... Look at the table, there's just enough place between the bars...........To reach the Mushketovskoe cemetery in Donetsk (map), take trolleybus # 11 down on Prospect Illicha (a boulevard leaving from Square Lenin toward the river) for quite a long way until the "Motel" bus station. From there, walk along Elevatornaia Ulitsa on the right, the cemetery wall will be at the end of this industrial-suburb street about 800 meters away (you'll find an entry further on the right along this wall).

Comments

[Kim Mühlhahn]

Beautiful post. Inspiring, too, I love the idea of keeping on sharing meals with the people I love sharing meals with in life. Will have to get my food-loving family to bring my mom's urn to the table next time we're together at a holiday meal :-)
Enjoying your blog as usual, and cool following your sovjet discoveries.
The bedst, Kim