Soviet cemeteries

Abstract

© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Peter N. Stearns; individual chapters, the contributors. The article considers the history of the management and attempts to transform the funeral business and funeral culture in Soviet Russia. It shows how the imposed dualism of the Soviet death culture (pathos and pragmatism) was reflected, rejected or adapted in rituals, in prescribed modes of grief, in semantic and semantic codes of cemetery space. Considering the experience of the Soviet transformation of the culture of death in the time continuum - from pre-revolutionary times to the present - the author shows the limited influence of the authorities on this culture, which in many respects preserved its traditional features.