Clearly, what follows is not a traditional Nommersland post, in that it doesn't pertain to the minutiae and madness, and mostly merriment, of my mommying. There's been no time for such fodder, as my contract work has picked up at a very steady clip, with my newest gig as editor-in-chief of the BTM Institute demanding most of my typing time. That, and my monthly Better Investing column, and the writing and editing for a boutique PR firm, and any other work that should fall into my laptop. I'm not complaining! It's the demand of my workload that's driven me to nearly finish the first draft of my first novel, Hedgies. I'd originally promised myself to be done by Thanksgiving, but those paying jobs kept getting in the way. Now the Christmas deadline is firm and absolutely achievable.
Meantime, I offer you my musings on a most macabre misanthropist. I wrote it early last month, when the news broke. I'd tried to find a home for it, but it's apparently not the most sought-after fodder by most news organizations. For those who knew me as a teenage Russian lit scholar, or an early 20-something crime beat reporter, or those who just know me for my infinite oddness, this aberrant fascination should come as no surprise.
Dolls of the Dead: A Dostoyevskian Tale in 2011
By Natasha Gural
Home to nearly 1.3 million people, Nizhny Novgorod is the fifth largest city in Russia. The birthplace of Maxim Gorky, it was named after the Socialist Realist author from 1932 to 1990. It's hardly a humble village, though like most of the vast expanse of the motherland, it seems somehow lost in time despite growing into a major global IT hub. Nizhny's most internationally famous resident of the moment, Anatoly Moskvin, is like a character out of classic Russian literature, though more Dostoyevsky than Gorky. Some of the most horrific characters and crimes in Dostoyevsky's novels and short stories were born from contemporary newspaper articles, not a wild imagination. There's the child who is ripped from his mother’s womb and tossed onto a bayonet, another who is locked in a cold outhouse overnight and the boy who is ripped to shreds by his landlord’s dogs. No doubt Moskvin, who decorated his home with oddly adorned stolen corpses of girls and young women, would have inspired a Dostoyevsky character were he alive and robbing graves in the 19th century.
Moskvin, who was arrested last week by police investigating a series of grave desecrations, even looks like a character out of Crime and Punishment. Sloppily dressed, his un-groomed graying hair cropped, save for a tuft sticking up in front, with what appear to be bruises (inflicted by cops?) covering his bearded face, Moskvin's mug shots depict a man who looks at least a decade older than his 45 years. His face exudes the kind of hard-living, suffering and turmoil that afflicted the men of Dostoyevsky's sad, tragic, desperate tales. It's a face only a Karamazov mother might love.
Russian media reports chronicled the police discovery of brightly dressed corpses, or dolls as they've been called, propped up throughout his cluttered apartment. The skeletons were covered in stockings and dresses, some with masks, and one with a teddy bear for a face. Dostoyevsky could have been referring to a creature like Moskvin when he said centuries ago that: "People speak sometimes about the 'bestial' cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel."
Described by Russian police as "well-known in academic circles" Moskvin studied Celtic culture at a prestigious Russian university and has written many books and academic papers. Neighbors called him a "genius," who sometimes sleeps in a coffin or on graveyard benches and speaks 13 languages, according to news reports. Perhaps a criminal genius of Dostoyevskian proportion. Authorities believe he visited more than 750 cemeteries in western Russia to build his macabre menagerie, although it's unclear when he started exhuming graves. Russian media reports say he's a well-known "necropolist", or cemetery expert. Hardly a recluse, Moskvin lectured at a local museum and contributed to a local newspaper. He was discrete (until the embellished remains were discovered) and discerning in his fetish, selecting girls and women between the ages of 15 and 26.
Moskvin's arrest came after an investigation into the desecration of graves at several cemeteries in Nizhny Novgorod beginning in 2010, police spokeswoman Svetlana Kovylina said. Authorities initially blamed the desecration on extremist groups. Moskvin is likely to blame his actions and inclinations on a childhood experience; he said he was forced to kiss the face of an 11-year-old dead girl when he was 12 years old. "An adult pushed my face down to the waxy forehead of the girl in an embroidered cap, and there was nothing I could do but kiss her as ordered," Moskvin wrote last month in Nekrolog, publication on necrology. While this might sound strange to most Americans, who are often detached from death and the dead, it's hardly unusual for a Russian. A first-generation American, I was raised Russian Orthodox, and attended funerals from an early age. In my culture it is normal, and expected, to kiss the corpses of loved ones. My maternal grandmother was waked at my parents' home, her body displayed in an open casket overnight before being transported to the monastery where she lay overnight as monks, seminarians and others read prayers and held vigil until the morning of her funeral.
There is something very Russian about Moskvin. It's difficult for me to imagine this story unraveling anywhere else. In a 2007 interview with the newspaper Nizhegorodsky Rabochy, Moskvin said he'd been wandering cemeteries since he was a young boy, in recent years walking up to 30 kilometers (20 miles) a day and inspecting 752 cemeteries across the region from 2005 to 2007. He said he drank from puddles and spent nights in haystacks, abandoned farms and a coffin prepared for a funeral. Somehow this was not depicted as strange behavior. There were no apparent signs that this obsession was more than academic until Moskvin was arrested. As is common in Russian media, there are conflicting reports of how or why Moskvin was caught. One report claims his parents called police after returning from their country dacha, or second home, to the home they shared with him. Police found photographs and nameplates from graves, along with maps of local cemeteries in the apartment.
Nizhny, located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, is a storied city dating back to 1221 when it was founded originally as Obran Osh by medieval prince Yuri II as a fortress on the Volga River to secure the area from Bulgarian attacks. It withstood many attacks, was destroyed once by the Tatars and rebuilt in the 16th century. By the early 19th century, it emerged as a trade center and host to the major Makaryev Fair, drawing millions of visitors and foreign merchants from India, Iran, and Central Asia. Selected by the Stroganovs, Russia's wealthiest merchant family, as a base for operations, it became renowned for the lavish Stroganov style of architecture and icon painting, developed around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nizhny was closed to foreigners throughout most of the Soviet era to protect military research and production facilities. Street maps of the secret city weren't sold until the mid-1970s. Nizhny is now a IT hub, housing numerous offshore outsourcing software developers, including an Intel software R&D center with more than 500 engineers. It boasts 33 universities and 25 scientific R&D institutions specializing in telecommunications, radio technology, theoretical and applied physics. Still, there is something very medieval about Moskvin's story. It's one that would hardly shock past residents, like Gorky, who famously said, "A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains."
