Botkin Cemetery, Tashkent

A Visit to Botkin Cemetery, Tashkent

     I enjoy visiting cemeteries in different cities. I'm not morbid, or death-obsessed. I find cemeteries peaceful, and often beautiful. But they are also windows into a culture that you don't often see otherwise. It is always interesting to see how different groups of people deal with death, something that every single culture has to face. 

     Today I visited an enormous cemetery in Tashkent. I know very little about it, it is not mentioned in my guide book to Central Asia. I do know that St.Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which is situated in the cemetery, was built in 1905. There is a little street which separates the 'Communist' part of the cemetery from the rest. There is also a forlorn Jewish section tucked in the back. 

The star indicates that the person was a Communist. 

Many of the graves had little benches, and little tables, for relatives to rest, and maybe share a meal or a drink with their deceased loved ones.

I got seriously lost at one point. I may have been walking in circles. I finally asked for direction 'to the street.'

The sad Jewish section. Maybe all of the people who would have tended the graves have left the area.