The Cradle of Horror: Inside the Disturbed World of Anatoly Moskvin
At first glance, Anatoly Moskvin seemed an educated and reputable man. A well-known historian in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, he authored several local history books and worked as a freelance translator. But behind closed doors, Moskvin harbored a dark obsession – communing with the dead.
Over many years, he raided cemeteries across central Russia, unearthing predominantly little girls’ corpses. He lovingly mummified their bodies and dressed them up, keeping them as gruesome dolls inside his cramped apartment. When arrested in 2011, police extracted 29 mummified children from Moskvin’s home. So who was this monster hiding in scholarly garb?
The Making of a Monster
As a studious child in the 1960s, Moskvin spent much time reading at the library or researching history alone since he struggled to make friends. He published his first book in 2007 – a guide to local cemeteries. This intense interest in graveyards seems to have marked the genesis of Moskvin’s morbid compulsions.
He became enthralled by the idea of communing with dead children’s spirits, especially girls – referred to only by initials in court papers. Moskvin has said he felt great sympathy for them. He claimed they visited him in dreams, asking him to bring them home.
So in as many as 750 nocturnal cemetery expeditions, Moskvin located graves, digging beneath them to extract his ‘dolls’. He crept back to his flat with the corpses, keeping them for years. He dressed the bodies and even restored some faces using plastic, cloth and metal plate masks.
The Necromancer’s Process
Moskvin’s apartment essentially served as a ghoulish crypt. Twenty-nine mummified girls aged between 3 and 12 were discovered occupying armchairs or beds when police raided it. The historian sat among them, ‘communicating’ through a form of séance.
In his writings, Moskvin outlined the meticulous, almost loving process of digging up a child’s body. First identifying a subject through cemetery records or childhood memories, he described exhuming their coffin using a shovel, hook and rope.
Back home, his labor would continue for months using cotton wool, bandages and vodka to mummify chosen girls. Moskvin restored some doll-like faces in detail; others he merely safety-pinned a cloth around. He dressed the bodies and even inserted dried hearts or other organs removed from additional disinterred kids.
Understanding the Madness
What motivated a seemingly intelligent man to desecrate children’s graves and keep their corpses as his ‘friends’? Moskvin maintains he communed with dead girls’ spirits, but not through violence. He stresses his acts didn’t constitute necrophilia or cannibalism.
Nonetheless, Moskvin apparently identified several of the mummified children as girls he knew and visited at orphanages during research. He had supposedly planned to adopt one named Natalia, even preparing a room for her in his flat before learning she died aged 12.
Some psychologists have suggested Moskvin may have viewed securing dead children as a means of gaining friendship and control he lacked socially in life. Keeping their bodies can be interpreted as a distorted expression of attachment from a desperately lonely man.
Inside the Mind of Evil
During his 2011 trial, psychologists analyzed Moskvin’s disturbed mental state. His cognition displayed severely disordered thinking dominated by an all-consuming idea that the dead could communicate with the living.
He expressed grandiose ideas about his historical expertise qualifying him uniquely to ‘rescue’ dead children. Moskvin’s writings contain elaborate fantasies of becoming a spiritual leader using necromancy.
Assessors found Moskvin detached from reality and normal social mores. He showed a concerning absence of remorse, justifying his acts as ‘saving’ children from indifferent adults. Experts considered him psychotic yet fit to face justice.
Trauma and Heartache
While Moskvin merrily conducted his ghoulish tea parties, families endured heart-wrenching trauma from his crimes. Graves meant to preserve beloved daughters’ memories were found smashed open, their children vanished. It felt like losing them all over again.
When 12-year-old Olga Cherdymova disappeared from her village grave after a decade rotting underground, her mother Natalia was utterly distraught. Only by chance was Olga’s mummified corpse spotted among 29 others during Moskvin’s 2011 arrest.
“He took her from the grave like a dog,” Natalia told reporters, “Why are people like this born at all?” Many relatives felt similar distress. But authorities proved unable to link all 29 child bodies to specific graves targeted by Moskvin over 20 years.
The Sentence
Arrested and charged with ‘violating graves’ and ‘abusing bodies of the dead’, Moskvin denied accusations of murder, necrophilia or cannibalism. Found mentally unfit, he avoided Russia’s harshest sentences. However, prosecutors sought a custodial psychiatric hospital term to protect society.
Judges ultimately directed Moskvin be held indefinitely in a secure psychiatric facility for enforced treatment. There he remains today, with little hope of ever being free again. Experts assess his deeply disturbed state means he poses an enduring, high risk of repeating such acts.
Inside the mind of Anatoly Moskvin lies a revolting wonderland where mummified dead girls speak, welcoming his friendship. But it’s a cruel fantasy that discounts real children’s shortened lives and families’ suffering. His case surely serves as a grim cautionary tale against irrationality detaching us from humanity’s shared moral code.