Posted on 06/21/2013 2:21:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Shortly after the Soviet Union was officially dissolved on December 26, 1991, Russia’s doors opened to private enterprise in an explosion of capitalist activity. Fresh money flowed in to the country, of course still tightly regulated by a still highly controlling government. As such, most of the money tended to pool within the government. Since the Russian mafia and the Russian government were basically the same thing, the mob grew very rich, very quickly. And when there’s new money flowing through the mafia, people start dying.
The mid 1990s unleashed a full-scale mafia war. A former FBI director once called the Russian mafia the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid 90s. Flush with cash and muscle to flex, the mob started a new trend of building idols to their fallen crew in the form of some of the ritziest gravestones imaginable.
Oddity Central points out that from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, to Yekaterinburg, Russia, the styles were much the same—gaudy, highly detailed, featuring cars, booze—sometimes booze on cars. And apparently Mercedes was the car of choice for the Russian mob in the mid 90s. Check out a few below.
It kind of makes sense that gaudy memorials would have been in vogue in the 1990’s given that before the fall of the USSR the memorials to the communist gangsters were typically garish obscenties, too.
Good observation.
Those are really something!
Very detailed nice work I guess if one has the money.
I think they’re laser-carved with computer controls, like a gravestone version of a high-end embroidering sewing machine.
I see the same kind of work in cemeteries here, although not as big, and usually not portraits of the deceased.
You can’t take it with you.
But you can let people know you had it!
ya know, seeing these obelisks rising toward the sky, I can’t help but think of the album cover of “Who’s Next.” Of course, that might prove to be quite unhealthy.
Ozymanida by P.B. Shelley
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Ozymanida by P.B. Shelley
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn NY has all this and more. Check it out if you are in the neighborhood.
Is it just me or does this one look like a fat GW Bush?
gag me.
with a gravestone.
what... no guns and fists full of money???
What is with Russians and worshiping the dead?
IIRC, Al Capone’s is an obelisk with “CAPONE” on the base. Somebody was letting neatly trimmed bushes grow around the base, obscuring the name.
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