Death and Funeral Meats, Moscow Style (An Investigation into the Soviet Way of Death)

Abstract

Except for the pomp and ceremony of official state funerals, death was not a prominent feature of public or official Soviet reality. The death of general secretaries and marshals and high-ranking Party members was important because it signaled change in the relationships of power. The death of leading writers, artists, or actors often attracted many mourners to their funerals, but the event was never officially advertised or televised. Otherwise, there was little visible evidence to indicate that death and funerals were a fact of Soviet life. This ethnographic article investigates the Soviet way of death in Moscow in the mid-1980s, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union.