Le cimetière russe de Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois : histoire et enjeux identitaires d’un coin de Russie en France.
Abstract
In 1927, the Russian princess Vera Mestchersky founded at the small town of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois a nursing home for the Russian emigrants that had fled from revolutionary Russia and found refuge in France. Shortly after, when the oldest residents passed away, their bodies were buried at the local cemetery, not far from the nursing home. Gradually, a genuinely Russian area was formed inside the cemetery.As time passed, not only the residents of the nursing home but also the Russian emigrants from the entire region of Paris as well as other places in France were buried at the cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. The local cemetery thus became the greatest Russian necropolis outside Russia.Today, close to the Orthodox church of the Dormition of the Mother of God, which is built next to the cemetery, lay approximately twelve thousand people of Russian origin, among which we find numerous famous writers, artists, aristocrats etc.An important place of remembrance for the Russian emigration worldwide, the “Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois” is a visible trace of the Russian presence in France, a witness of its particular identity as well as a symbol of an entire society that collapsed in its motherland but managed to survive and successfully become a historical and cultural part of its new homeland.A common cultural heritage of both France and Russia, this necropolis is a place of reconciliation but also of ideological confrontation. The visit at the cemetery of President Putin in 2000, and that of Patriarch Alexy II in 2007 are evidence of the importance of the symbolism surrounding this unique memorial.
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