There are only three marked graves in Moscow's former Brethren cemetery, where the bodies of thousands of soldiers and officers who perished in the first World War were laid to rest beneath the aged oak and lime trees.
For most of the last 100 years Russia has tried to bury memories of the conflict of 1914-1918 and the even more disastrous civil war that followed in its wake.
However, as the centenary of the outbreak of the first World War approaches, Russia has begun to delve into its history and talk about the so-called forgotten war.
Russia commemorated the outbreak of the war for the first time last year in what was seen as a milestone in the complicated rediscovery process. At the same time the Kremlin announced a competition to design a memorial to the millions of Russians who rose up in 1914 “to protect the motherland”.
Andrei Kovalchuk, president of the Russian Artists’ Union, made the winning sculpture, of a soldier brandishing a huge Russian flag. It will be unveiled on August 1st at Poklonny Hill park in Moscow, where there are already memorials to other wars – including the second World War and the 1812 defeat of Napoleon – about which Russia feels more proud.
Statues by the two runners- up in the competition will be unveiled on the same day at Gusev in the Kaliningrad region and Pskov in western Russia, both scenes of important battles fought by the Russian imperial army against the central alliance.
The reasons why the Kremlin sought for so long to bury memories of the first World War go much deeper than the obvious fact that Russia suffered a humiliating defeat in 1918 and lost control of large swathes of territory in the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine.
Shot as traitors
Many of the soldiers who survived the battles went on to fight for the White army in the bloody civil war that tore Russia apart after the Bolsheviks or “Reds” seized power. Men who in other circumstances would have been hailed as heroes were rounded up in large numbers by the Soviets and shot as traitors.
In the Soviet encyclopedia the 1914-1918 war was dismissed as “an imperial struggle between capitalist powers for the redivision of a divided world.” Information about the war disappeared from the official historic narrative, which highlighted the rise of Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik revolution and the foundation of the first communist state.
Russia has struggled to come to terms with its history and establish a new identity since the Soviet Union collapsed.
President Vladimir Putin, who has set out to restore Russia's great power status, understands the consolidating role history can play. Huge crowds attended an exhibition in Moscow honouring the 400th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty that the Russian president opened last year. A special commission founded by Putin is organising a series of exhibitions and educational events to mark the centenary and bring the first World War into the mainstream of Russian history and cultural life. Among the highlights will be the Last Battle of the Russian Empire at the State Historical Museum in Moscow's Red Square – the first exhibition dedicated to the first World War staged in Russia.
Politicised
“We live in a different country now and can look at the war more widely,” says Kirill Meerov, head of multimedia projects at the Historical Museum. “It was all so politicised before.”
An even more ambitious endeavour is under way in St Petersburg, where the authorities are restoring the first World War Museum founded at the Ratnaya Palata, or Armoury, by Tsar Nicholas II in 1915. Most of the original exhibits either disappeared or were hidden in archives when the Soviets took power and destroyed the place. Curators have appealed to the Russian public to donate any first World War memorabilia they can find, from old photographs, clothing to binoculars and gas masks.
Soviet and more recently Russian directors have made countless films about the second World War and are now looking to the first World War for inspiration. With the support of the Russian culture ministry, Igor Ugolnikov is producing Death Battalion, which tells the story of a woman who joined Russia's first female combat unit founded by the provisional government in 1917.
It was essential that Russia produced a film about the war to coincide with the centenary, Ugolnikov told the Vecherny Petersburg newspaper. "Few people want to talk about the first World War, it's understandable that there is nothing to be proud of . . . Patriotism is not only about saying 'Hurrah'; it's about showing human tales from the war."
Russians have mixed feelings about the revival of the war’s history. In recent years the Moscow authorities have installed war memorials in the former Brethren cemetery and allowed the descendants of White army soldiers to reinstate tombstones torn down in the Soviet era.
However, Tatiana Bartsova, a local pensioner who grew up at a time when it was forbidden to talk about the cemetery, said it was best not to dig up the past. “Everyone died – even officers – in that meat grinder, and the civil war was even worse. All over Moscow we are walking on bones.”