Birth And Death of Funeral Industry

This paper discusses a history of funeral infrastructure development in Russia from the end of nineteenth century to the present day. Following Tony Walter’s approach to the diversity of the corpse management systems, the authors state that the Russian case does not fit any of the models suggested by Walter. Authors trace changes in Russian funeral management over the past century to show that the peculiarity of contemporary funeral culture has its roots in Soviet ideology and command economy with a specific frame of infrastructure (dys)functionality. The paper is based both on archival materials on Soviet funeral management and an ethnographic study, conducted in eight regions of Russia from 2016 to 2018.