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Echoes of Civil War in Reburial of Russian Former General Honored By All Sides

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 12:00 CDT

By Sophia Kishkovsky

A shower of golden autumn leaves swirled past the cupolas of a centuries-old monastery in the Russian capital as a Russian Civil War general who fought the Bolsheviks was reburied to the accompaniment of czarist marches and the music of the Soviet national anthem. In a simultaneously elegiac and surreal scene intensified by cinematically placid weather, Cossacks, monarchists bearing icons of Czar Nicholas II, former Communists, government ministers and emigres came to honor General Anton Denikin. He was buried with military honors at the Donskoi Monastery, where in Soviet times the monks' cells were turned into communal apartments and a crematorium was used to turn victims of the Bolsheviks into ash. The search for a post-Soviet identity has consumed Russia since the fall of communism and resulted in paradoxical pairings of symbols that have become a hallmark under Vladimir Putin, the former KGB lieutenant colonel whose presidency has often been compared to czarist rule and who has developed a remarkably close rapport with many whose families fled Russia after the revolution. One of his first acts upon taking office in 2000 was to install two symbols of modern Russia: the imperial double-headed eagle and the music of the Soviet hymn with new lyrics invoking God rather than Stalin, who was heralded in the original version. It was by Putin's decree that Denikin's daughter, Marina, who lives in Versailles, outside Paris, was granted Russian citizenship in April, and although Putin did not attend Monday's ceremony, the reburial clearly had his stamp of approval. The reburial of Denikin might be used as a steppingstone for finally laying Lenin's body to rest. On Monday a leading legislator who had attended the service said it was time. "It would be absolutely right to bury Lenin according to Christian traditions, and I think it should be done in January on the third day after death, meaning Jan. 24," Lyubov Sliska, vice speaker of the Duma, the lower house of Parliament and a leader of United Russia, the pro- Putin political party, told the Interfax news agency. Denikin, who spent most of his years in exile in France, died in Michigan in 1947 and was buried in New Jersey, was finally laid to rest in the homeland he was forced to flee. The end of his long march home began with memorial services in New York last week. "I am very grateful to the Russian people," his daughter said, beaming, as she entered the monastery's cathedral for the service. Patriarch Aleksei II, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, began by blessing a cornerstone for a chapel in front of the cathedral that will commemorate all who died in Russia's civil strife. Invitations to the event called it an "action of national reconciliation and accord." Officials ranging from the minister of culture to Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of Moscow and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a nationalist legislator known for his clownish behavior, attended. Aleksy referred to the reburial as a symbol of the end of the Russian Civil War, which divided the country into Reds and Whites, Bolsheviks and monarchists, and ravaged the country between 1918 and 1921. The chapel, he said, will be "a symbol of our unity and reconciliation, so that the divisions that separated us over 80 years will disappear into the past."

Nikita Mikhalkov, the Oscar-winning film director, was instrumental in returning Denikin's remains to Russia. "The civil war was fought over truths, but there is only one higher truth," Mikhalkov told the crowd of flower-bearing mourners. "The higher truth is in not surrendering." Mikhalkov is a living symbol of Russia's split personality: He is a monarchist whose blue-blooded father served the communist regime and wrote all three versions of the Soviet anthem, including the most recent. There was an audible gasp in the cathedral as the military marching band outside struck up the music of the anthem. A message was also read by a German bishop of the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, an emigre group that split from the Russian Church in the 1920s in condemnation of its cooperation with the Soviet regime. Putin has facilitated reconciliation between the churches.

Gruff police officers and burly commandos in camouflage, fearing a stampede, kept the hundreds of mourners at bay as the coffins containing the remains of Denikin, his wife, the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin and his wife were carried out of the cathedral to their final resting place near the monastery wall. Ilyin was expelled from Russia in 1922 along with other ideologically threatening intellectuals; he died in Switzerland. "Today is just the beginning," said Lyudmila Selinskaya, a member of the emigre church who traveled from New York for the reburial. Her grandfather served under Denikin. "To see such festivities brings joy to the heart of any Russian person, like me," she said.

Denikin and Ilyin have been praised by the Russian media in recent days for having refused to cooperate with the Nazis during World War II, one of the sore points in emigre relations with Russia. Many emigres cooperated with Germany in hopes of toppling Stalin. Perhaps not coincidentally, the ceremony came nearly 12 years to the day after a standoff between intransigent legislators and Boris Yeltsin, then the president, turned violent and nearly tipped Russia into a new civil war in 1993. For some who were in the crowd, the civil war of 1918-21 continues. "The civil war won't end until czarist power is restored," said Pavel Vasilyev, 28, a Muscovite in Cossack uniform who looked on as other Cossacks took turns taking pictures of each other at Denikin's grave. "We are living in internal exile." Sergei Pyanikin, 18, a medical student who stood outside the monastery walls waiting for the VIPs to leave and the police cordon to be lifted so he could pay his respects, held out hope for a new page in Russian history. "With the laying to rest of the remains of Denikin, Russian history should find peace," he said.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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