Scouts suddenly on the neighboring hill

saw a stern monument:

The graves of friends and Kutuzov’s heart

by the old Saxon road.

“Obelisk” by M. Fradkin and E. Dolmatovsky

Emperor Alexander I fulfilled his ambitious dream: in the spring of 1814, Russian troops entered Paris. However, Mikhail Illarionovich did not live to see this parade; he died in April 1813 in the Prussian town of Bunzlau (now Bolesławiec), on the border of Poland and Germany, less than a year before the complete victory over France. By order of Alexander I, Kutuzov’s body was embalmed and brought to Saint Petersburg. At the Narva Gate, those who met the procession unhitched the six horses and themselves pulled the hearse to the Kazan Cathedral. For two days, the people of Petersburg said farewell to Kutuzov’s remains. On June 13, 1813, the field marshal was solemnly buried in a crypt in the northern chapel of the cathedral. The grave was designed by A. N. Voronikhin himself — the last thing the architect did in the Kazan Cathedral.

Later, many trophies from the war against Napoleonic France were placed in the cathedral: 107 French banners, keys to 8 fortresses and 17 cities captured by Russian troops, as well as Marshal Davout’s baton, seized in battle. The embalmed heart of the commander was placed in a cylindrical silver vessel with a solution. The internal organs remaining after embalming were buried by Kutuzov’s closest associates in a cemetery three versts from Bunzlau, in the village of Tillendorf. A monument was erected on the grave, with an inscription on the pedestal: “Prince Kutuzov of Smolensk, departed from this life to sleep on April 16, 1813.” Emperor Alexander I refused to attend that solemn ceremony.

After the liberation of Poland from the German occupiers in 1944, Soviet Army soldiers placed a plaque with a new inscription at the foot of the monument: “Here rests the heart of Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, great Russian patriot and commander, whose troops liberated their homeland from the Napoleonic invasion of 1812–1813.” Later, a similar text appeared in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. However, according to the canons of the Russian Orthodox Church, the heart is the keeper of the soul and cannot be buried separately from the body. But what can withstand the canons before the military-political interests of the empire, especially during a victorious war and the impending division of Europe? Perhaps Alexander I counted on a long-term strategic partnership with Prussia and therefore ordered the heart of Kutuzov to remain there as a symbol of Russian presence in this part of Europe? Thus, the legend was born…

In 1977, “Leningradskaya Pravda” published the memoirs of former OGPU officer B. S. Sokratilin. He recounted how in 1933, by the order of S. M. Kirov, their group inspected the condition of M. I. Kutuzov’s tomb in the Kazan Cathedral: “We entered the crypt and saw the vessel with the heart. The vessel was filled with a transparent liquid, in which the well-preserved heart was clearly visible. The vessel was tightly sealed and placed back in its original place.” This means that Kutuzov’s heart was brought to the capital along with the coffin and rested in the Kazan Cathedral since the field marshal’s burial there. Other internal organs remaining after embalming were buried in the cemetery in Poland. And to give the symbolism proper weight, it was announced that the heart of the Russian commander was buried in Bunzlau. By the way, today there is no such clarification on the pedestal of the monument in Poland, just “Prince Kutuzov of Smolensk.”