The problem of “the wright way of Soviet death” and the organization of civil funerals in the cities of the RSFSR in the late 1930s -early 1950s

Funeral culture and practices of dead bodies disposal were of great ideological significance for Soviet authorities. However, it is generally accepted that the period of stormy utopian reformism ended with the complete assertion of Stalin in power and the transition to forced industrialization. At the same time, if we address to the materials of the pre-war and war period, we will see that the search for new funeral forms and the normalization of funeral services were still extremely important. This article is based on audits conducted by the NKKH RSFSR in Arkhangelsk, Vladivostok, Vladimir, Izhevsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Kazan, Kirov, Kuibyshev, Moscow, Murmansk, Novosibirsk, Penza, Sarapul, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Ufa, Cheboksary, Elista, etc. Despite the extremely unsatisfactory state of funeral services, this area remained an area of intense ideological interest. At the same time, the materiality of the huge number of wartime deaths forced the authorities to put aside new attempts to reform the funeral industry and to focus on the functional improvement of its infrastructure.

Keywords

Authors

References