Chapter 1 — Moscow: Memory as a Conflict of Eras
Author’s column in philosophical anthropology. An essayistic reflection.
Novodevichy Cemetery is one of the most significant places of memory in Moscow. It holds the graves of artists, writers, scholars. The red walls of the convent have become a symbol of how memory in Moscow takes shape at the crossing point of eras.
I. A Way of Life Broken by Revolution
Before 1917, Moscow had a stable language of memory — Orthodox, visible, built into the very fabric of the city. Cemeteries stood beside churches and monasteries, and each such place was not simply a plot of land, but a sacred center: people came not on anniversaries, but constantly, because remembrance was part of the church calendar, not a personal decision.
II. Function in Place of Ritual
Soviet power saw in this way of life not tradition, but excess. The priorities became saving urban space and rationality: cemeteries were pushed to the outskirts, the rite was simplified and standardized down to a function. Individual memory retreated before the task of burying efficiently.
But it didn’t disappear — it simply moved into the private sphere. People went on remembering, only now in silence, without a city that would help them do it.
III. The Return of a Personal Language
In the late 1980s and 1990s, alongside the collapse of the old model, a demand for individuality returned. At Vagankovo, Donskoye, and Troyekurovskoye cemeteries, markers began appearing unlike one another — not a «return to the old,» but something new: a city dweller’s right to speak of their own memory in their own language, rather than one issued from above.
IV. The Paradox of the Big City
Today Moscow is torn between two logics. On one side — a growing demand to preserve places of memory, well-kept paths and digital archives, careful treatment of the past. On the other — the price of land, the growth of the city, and migration, all pressing on these very spaces from below.
Between the wish to remember and the logic of growth there is no simple compromise. There is a constant search.
V. In Search of Balance
The path of Moscow’s places of memory across the twentieth century runs from a single way of life, through rigid standardization, to today’s search for a new equilibrium — between the private and the public, the monument and quiet remembrance, practicality and respect for feeling.
Perhaps the future architecture of memory in Moscow will be found precisely at this junction — where the personal isn’t sacrificed to the functional.
The route continues.
Before 1917, Moscow had a stable language of memory — Orthodox, visible, built into the very fabric of the city. Cemeteries stood beside churches and monasteries, and each such place was not simply a plot of land, but a sacred center: people came not on anniversaries, but constantly, because remembrance was part of the church calendar, not a personal decision.
II. Function in Place of Ritual
Soviet power saw in this way of life not tradition, but excess. The priorities became saving urban space and rationality: cemeteries were pushed to the outskirts, the rite was simplified and standardized down to a function. Individual memory retreated before the task of burying efficiently.
But it didn’t disappear — it simply moved into the private sphere. People went on remembering, only now in silence, without a city that would help them do it.
III. The Return of a Personal Language
In the late 1980s and 1990s, alongside the collapse of the old model, a demand for individuality returned. At Vagankovo, Donskoye, and Troyekurovskoye cemeteries, markers began appearing unlike one another — not a «return to the old,» but something new: a city dweller’s right to speak of their own memory in their own language, rather than one issued from above.
IV. The Paradox of the Big City
Today Moscow is torn between two logics. On one side — a growing demand to preserve places of memory, well-kept paths and digital archives, careful treatment of the past. On the other — the price of land, the growth of the city, and migration, all pressing on these very spaces from below.
Between the wish to remember and the logic of growth there is no simple compromise. There is a constant search.
V. In Search of Balance
The path of Moscow’s places of memory across the twentieth century runs from a single way of life, through rigid standardization, to today’s search for a new equilibrium — between the private and the public, the monument and quiet remembrance, practicality and respect for feeling.
Perhaps the future architecture of memory in Moscow will be found precisely at this junction — where the personal isn’t sacrificed to the functional.
The route continues.
Photo: Novodevichy Cemetery, one of Moscow’s most significant places of memory.
About the column: Architecture of Memory is an intellectual topography of ritual culture as a universal language. Its subject is how societies encode their relationship with eternity. Its method is comparative research through the lens of design, anthropology, and philosophy. We don’t just describe rites — we read the codes that cultures leave in stone, ritual, and space, drawing a map of their philosophies of life and death. Not content. Not advertising. Dialogue.
P.S. The laboratory is open. The research continues. Every month, new chapters appear on the map of the «Topography of Eternity.»
— Iskandar Kadyrov
P.S. The laboratory is open. The research continues. Every month, new chapters appear on the map of the «Topography of Eternity.»
— Iskandar Kadyrov
Season 3 — The Urban Cycle
Iskandar Kadyrov
See also