PARIS, July 15 (RIA Novosti, Andrei Nizamutdinov) - Ships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet will arrive at the French port of Menton Friday to pick up the ashes of the last naval minister of the Russian Empire, Ivan Grigorovich.
The visit will run through July 17. The agenda's central event will be a ceremonial transferal of the urn with Grigorovich's remains from a Russian cemetery to the Moscow missile cruiser, Russian Navy's press-service said.
The admiral's ashes will be delivered to the southern Russian port of Novorossiisk before being taken by plane to St. Petersburg, where they will be buried at the St. Nicholas cemetery at the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra, as specified in Grigorovich's will.
Rear Admiral Ivan Grigorovich (1853-1930) was commander of the Tsesarevich battleship during the Russian-Japanese war (1904-1905). In early 1911, he was appointed naval minister of Russian Empire. After the communist revolution in 1917, he temporarily worked in the Commission on Naval History, pooling his experience of WWI. In 1923 he was given permission to leave the country and seek exile in France. He died in Menton at the age of 77.
It was impossible to carry out his will to be buried in St. Petersburg during the Soviet era.
The Russian community in the Menton sea resort was established in the second half of the 19th century by Russian aristocrats. A Russian naval base was founded later in the French port of Villefrance.
In 1880 the "Russian House", a tuberculosis sanatorium for war veterans, was founded in Menton. At about the same time, a Russian orthodox church, frescoed by duke Gagarin, was constructed in Menton, and a Russian cemetery appeared.
