Historian’s Doll Collection of Exhumed Corpses

Silver casket with rose bouquet in a cemetery.

A respected Russian historian turned 29 exhumed corpses of young girls into life-sized dolls he kept in his apartment, believing he could resurrect them through an ancient folk ritual gone horrifically wrong.

Story Snapshot

Anatoly Moskvin, a cemetery folklore expert, exhumed 29 bodies of girls aged 3-29 from graveyards across Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, over nearly a decade
He mummified the remains using ancient preservation techniques and encased them in handmade dolls with button eyes, makeup, and music boxes, displayed openly in his parents’ apartment
Anti-terror police discovered the macabre collection in August 2011 during an unrelated search, shocking his elderly parents who lived among the dolls unknowingly
Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Moskvin avoided prison and remains confined to a psychiatric hospital, claiming his acts were respectful attempts at resurrection rather than desecration

The Scholar Who Slept With the Dead

Anatoly Moskvin built a reputation as one of Russia’s foremost experts on cemetery folklore and Slavic death rituals. Born in 1966, the linguist and journalist mastered 13 languages and published extensively on burial customs across Nizhny Novgorod’s vast graveyards. His academic obsession took a sinister turn rooted in childhood trauma: relatives forced him to kiss a deceased girl at a funeral, an experience that haunted him into adulthood. During research expeditions, Moskvin began sleeping on the graves of young girls, a practice he justified as authentic folklore study. This bizarre ritual evolved into something far darker as he transitioned from observer to grave robber.

The historian’s expertise in ancient mummification techniques, gleaned from studying cultures worldwide, provided the gruesome blueprint for his crimes. He targeted recently deceased girls whose bodies remained suitable for preservation, exhuming them under cover of darkness. Back in the apartment he shared with his elderly parents, Moskvin dried and treated the corpses using folk methods before encasing them in elaborate paper mache shells. He dressed each doll in women’s clothing, applied makeup, attached button eyes or toy faces, and installed music boxes inside some. His parents noticed nothing unusual, mistaking the dolls for quirky artistic projects scattered throughout their home.

Discovery Behind the Dolls

The unraveling began not through detective work but pure chance. By 2009, police had logged increasing reports of disturbed graves across the region but lacked any leads connecting the desecrations. The break came in August 2011 when anti-terrorism officers searched Moskvin’s apartment on unrelated suspicions of extremist activities. What they found defied comprehension: 29 life-sized dolls, each concealing mummified human remains. The meticulous preservation revealed Moskvin’s twisted logic. He conducted a mock wedding ceremony with an 11-year-old victim’s corpse and gave each doll a name, treating them as resurrected companions rather than victims of grave robbery.

Moskvin confessed immediately, expressing no remorse but rather pride in his preservation skills. He insisted his actions were respectful, designed to spare grieving families additional trauma by “reviving” their loved ones. Prosecutors charged him with grave desecration and corpse abuse, though the case took an unexpected turn. Psychiatric evaluation diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, and in 2012, courts declared him mentally unfit for prison. The families of 29 girls faced the unimaginable horror of identifying their loved ones’ remains for reburial, their grief compounded by years of unknowing desecration.

Justice Denied or Mental Illness Recognized

The Moskvin case exposed glaring weaknesses in Russia’s approach to mentally ill offenders who commit grotesque but non-violent crimes. His indefinite psychiatric confinement sparked national debate: should delusion excuse such profound violations of human dignity? Unlike typical grave robbers motivated by profit or sexual perversion, Moskvin displayed no evidence of physical abuse beyond exhumation itself. Psychiatrists emphasized his genuine belief in resurrection through folklore ritual, a delusion rooted in schizophrenia rather than malice. Yet this clinical perspective offered little comfort to devastated families who viewed his acts as unforgivable desecration regardless of mental state.

Reports through 2021 indicated Moskvin petitioned for release, claiming psychiatric recovery, but remained institutionalized without clear timeline for freedom. His case influenced cemetery security reforms across Russia, prompting better monitoring and overnight patrols in vulnerable graveyards. The broader impact reached beyond policy: trust in academics and experts suffered when a respected scholar proved capable of such horror. True crime media seized on the “death dolls” narrative, sensationalizing the case in documentaries that oscillated between psychological analysis and gothic horror storytelling, ensuring Moskvin’s crimes remain a cautionary tale about the thin line between scholarly obsession and pathological delusion.