Embassy calls on Paris suburb authorities to settle Russian cemetery situation
It is noted that according to explanations from the mayor’s office, the issue of payment has been delayed and the demolition of graves is out of the question at this point
PARIS, January 16. /TASS/. The Russian embassy in France told TASS on Monday that it has called on the authorities of Paris’ Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois suburb for cooperation in settling the Russian cemetery situation.
"Last month, the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois municipal council decided to suspend cooperation with us on the cemetery in the city and reject Russia’s payment for expired concessions for compatriots’ burials the Russian side has been regularly paying since 2005," an embassy spokesman said, adding that this move "jeopardized the maintenance of graves."
"The embassy calls on the Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois authorities and activists for cooperation to resolve the situation," the diplomat said.
"According to explanations from the mayor’s office, the issue of payment has been delayed and the demolition of graves is out of the question at this point," the spokesman said, adding that the embassy expresses "profound concern over the unwholesome situation around the hallmark Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery housing the burials of prominent Russian cultural figures and distinguished Russian emigres who fled Russia after the Bolshevik revolution.
"We think it categorically unacceptable that the West’s political games in the context of the Ukrainian crisis are taking such unsightly forms," the diplomat stressed.
Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois
The Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois cemetery is the largest Russian burial ground in France. The first Russian burials here date back to the 1920s.
Among those buried there are Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner in literature Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), painter Konstantin Korovin (1981-1939), French Foreign Legion veteran and French General Zinovy Peshkov (1884-1966), a stepson of writer Maxim Gorky.
The cemetery houses the cenotaph of Princess Vera Obolensky, a French Resistance member during World War II who was executed by the Nazi’s in August 1944.
During his first visit to France as Russia’s President in the autumn of 2000, Vladimir Putin laid flowers at Bunin's grave and Obolenky’s memorial. He also visited the graves of ballerina Olga Preobrajenska, poet and playwright Alexander Galich, writer Viktor Nekrasov, ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, and the memorial for the Don Cossacks.