Spaces of Memory: Historical Cemeteries of Ural Cities in the Context of Cultural Politics

This article examines historical burials and memorial ensembles included in the lists of cultural heritage sites in cemeteries of the Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk and Perm regions. The role of the cemetery is considered as an important socio-cultural urban space that preserves the memory of key historical events, significant historical figures, as well as crafts characteristic of specific territories, such as Kasli casting. It is shown that the way in which cemeteries and burials are included in the lists of cultural heritage sites varies from region to region. Thus, in the Chelyabinsk Region the most significant group of “necropolitan” cultural heritage objects is formed by many burials from the Civil War; at the same time, in the Perm Region, more often than in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions, the graves of outstanding historical figures of the region were included in the lists of these objects. The article identifies the potential for the development of cemeteries as a kind of open-air museums, an important resource for the cultural economy of cities. The author substantiates the need to include these “lieux de mémoire” (using the concept proposed by P. Nora) in the cultural policy of cities, and in particular to create guides to the Ural necropolises, continuing the traditions of pre-revolutionary reference publications on the one hand, and rethinking cemeteries as platforms that participate in the formation and consolidation in the collective memory of narratives about local identity and the era as a whole, uniting the individual and the public. It is proposed that cemeteries and memorials, as objects of cultural policy, require special accounting and the development of a special system of management and conservation due to their specific qualities.