St Geneviеve des Bois

Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery

Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery, specifically the one known as Cimetière de Liers, as there are two cemeteries in the city, is a Russian Orthodox cemetery, located on Rue Léo Lagrange in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, département Essonne, France.

This local cemetery became Russian Orthodox in 1926 after a group of White Émigres had settled in the Château de la Cossonnerie, originally an 18th-century farm, which had been enlarged at the beginning of the 19th century. It was bought in 1927 by an English benefactress, Dorothy Paget, who set up a retirement home for Russian émigrés there. In 1938-1939 Albert Benois designed the Dormition Church which serves the cemetery.

Notable burials

It is estimated that between 10,000 and 15,000 Russian emigrants or French people of Russian origin have been buried here. Among those are Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin (with his wife) and other authors including Andrei Amalrik, Gaito Gazdanov, Zinaida Gippius, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Viktor Nekrasov, Aleksey Remizov, Ivan Shmelyov, Nadezhda Teffi and Boris Zaytsev; ballerina Olga Preobrajenska; chemist Aleksei Chichibabin; composer Nikolai Tcherepnin; dancers Serge Lifar and Rudolf Nureyev; journalist Anton Kartashev; painters Konstantin Korovin, André Lanskoy, Serge Poliakoff, Sergey Solomko, Konstantin Somov and Zinaida Serebriakova; philosophers Sergei Bulgakov and Nikolai Lossky; poets Georgy Ivanov and Alexander Galich; politicians Vladimir Kokovtsov, Georgy Lvov and Petr Struve; sculptor Antoine Pevsner; filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky; actresses Natalya Lisenko and Odile Versois; film actors Pierre Batcheff and Ivan Mozzhukhin; photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky; theologian Vladimir Lossky; generals Abram Dragomirov, Alexander Kaulbars, Nicholas Lokhvitsky, Viktor Taranovsky and Zinovy Peshkov and aristocrats Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich of Russia and his wife Mathilde Kschessinska, Prince Gabriel Constantinovich of Russia, Prince Felix Yusupov and his wife Princess Irina of Russia, Princess Vera Meshchersky.

Selected others: Tatiana Botkina, Nikolai Kolomeitsev, Nikolai Pavlovich Sablin, Patrick Topaloff and Eugene Znosko-Borovsky.

There are memorials for Alexander Kutepov and for Russians who died in the War effort (among whom Princess Véra "Vicky" Obolensky (1911-1944), member of the OCM, daughter of Apollon Apollonovich Makarov and wife of Prince Nicolas Alexandrovich Obolensky).

There are military divisions (on the map indicated with CM, which is an abbreviation of carrés militaires) such as for the Alekseyev Division (a division of the White Army founded by Mikhail Alekseyev), the Drozdovsky Division (another division of the White Army founded by Mikhail Drozdovsky) and for the Don Cossacks.

There is also a section for the Cadet Corps.