Zvuky Prahy / Sounds of Prague

In the 1920s, the Prime Minister of the Czechoslovak Republic, Karel Kramář, helped to found the Orthodox Church in the Olšany Cemetery. Many thousands of Russian emigrants at the time, who fled here before the Red Army and the Civil War lived in Prague. The Byzantine-style church was consecrated on November 22, 1925 on the celebration of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and was built on the model of the Novgorod-Pskov tradition. Karel Kramář and his wife Naděžda Nikolajevna, who was from the Russian aristocratic Chlup family, are also buried here, together with 600 soldiers who died during the First World War. According to the cemetery administration, there is currently a storing room in the crypt. There are currently around 44,000 Russians in Prague, but not only Russians but also people from Ukraine, Bulgaria or Romania attend the services here.