Tacky Tombstones of the Russian Mafia

[Archaic]

These egotistical tombstones strike me as a last desperate effort to resist the fact that you can't take it with you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2258445/Tombstones-Russian-gangsters.html

Archaic

[lynn cates]

grave measures

Hello Bunny. Thanks for posting this. Looks like they have taken some grave measures. (heh-heh)

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

Hi Lynn.

Here's another photo of tacky tombstones, though I'm not sure we're supposed to interpret it.

- Is it perhaps allegorical? You know, like sheaves of wheat on a Victorian tombstone?

Or maybe they just watched too many re-runs of 'My Mother The Car'???

But why is the car placed between the two men? Future archeologists will be baffled. They'll probably theorize that a strange 'car cult' existed in Siberia.
I nominate it for the Vulgar & Tacky Hall of Fame.

Archaic

[lynn cates]

motive

Hello Bunny. Thanks.

"They'll probably theorize that a strange 'car cult' existed in Siberia "

Quite. Or perhaps that the two men planned to get into the car but were interrupted? (sorry, could not resist)

Cheers.
LC

[Archaic]

Hello Bunny. Thanks.

"They'll probably theorize that a strange 'car cult' existed in Siberia "

Quite. Or perhaps that the two men planned to get into the car but were interrupted? (sorry, could not resist)

Oh, I get it... it's the getaway car!

Good thinking to bring one. Hope it gets very good gas mileage, they have a long drive ahead of them.


Archaic

[RivkahChaya]

I lived in Russia when I was 10, so I've been to some Russian cemeteries, and I've also been to some cemeteries in other Slavic countries, as well as Slavic cemeteries in the US. Having an image of the person on the marker isn't all the unusual. Practically from the time photography was available, people put pictures under glass on markers, and before that, they had etchings or some sort of wood cut, or icon protected by being inset. People who could afford it had sort of hutches to protect oil-on-wood paintings. What's unusual about these images is there size, and the choice of medium, and the huge, freaking size, did I mention? not so much the fact of an image in the first place.

It was practically a superstition to have an image on the grave marker. My father, who was an expert on the Soviet government, and secondarily, Russian history and culture, said it was sort of an extension of the belief that the bodies of saints not decaying. He said that's also the reason the government went to such lengths to preserve and display Lenin's body (the line of people waiting to see Lenin's body every day was the stuff of legends; there were not lines like that the opening week of Star Wars, nor at Disney World when a new ride premieres).

If you go to the great old cathedrals in Russia, or even the Slavic countries that are Catholic, but really prominently in Russia, and even Soviet Russia, because it was a source of revenue, they had mummified saints' bodies on display. That may not be most people's idea of "not decaying," since they aren't exactly pristine, or life-like, but they're arguably not rotting (I think actual mold is removed when spotted, but whatever). There are also effigies of the saints, in spite of the general prohibition against graven images-- the Orthodox Christian tradition of having lots of painted icons, but no statues comes from the prohibition against graven images.

Anyway, a desire to somehow preserve the dead person symbolically manifests in a gesture that's a representative of what is really supposed to happen to the greatest people in history. It shows how much these people meant to you, and I guess suggests to people who see the marker, and didn't know the person, that they were saintly. Even gangsters were usually loved by their mothers. It might even be an attempt to erase their sins by making them appear saintly.

Yes, they look really tacky to us. In a US cemetery, and I assume a UK one, they would look awful. I'm not sure how "sore-thumb" they might look in a Russian cemetery. Some markers have painted markers with a lot of bright color. I wouldn't call them tacky, because they are obviously meant to copy the style of the icons in the old churches, even if the artists generally aren't as skilled. Someone who isn't familiar with the context might call them tacky.

But one cultures funerary customs can look awful to someone from another culture. I was aghast the first time I saw an open-casket funeral, but this is how most US funerals are in the US, just not Jewish funerals. I know people who think the Jewish custom of everyone tossing a handful of dirt into the grave as they leave the cemetery is ghoulish, but I personally find it touching and meaningful.

[RivkahChaya]

Here's the sort of tombstones non-mafia people have. Airbrushed granite images are for everyone. It's just the size and full-body image, with the displays of wealth in clothing, and cars in the background, etc., that mark the mafia stones: