The funeral rite and the «Architecture of Death» in the USSR in the late 1940s – 1950s

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify new approaches in Soviet policy in the field of funeral and funeral rites, starting in 1941 and up to the end of the 1960s, which made it possible to correct the generally accepted periodization of the transformation of socialist rites in the USSR. The analysis of such sources as decrees, rules, instructions, regulations and their projects concerning cemeteries and funerals, as well as the identification in the field of new types of "death architecture" that appeared in the 1950s shows that under the influence of the Great Patriotic War, new approaches were formed not only in the purely utilitarian sphere of funeral services but also in the ritual and ceremonial field. During the war years, the need to develop a solemn funeral service for ordinary citizens as an alternative to the Christian funeral rite was discussed on the sidelines of the authorities. Further, at the end of the 1940s, standard designs of monumental funeral pavilions were already being adopted, their architecture resembling Christian temples and ancient churches and ancient pantheons, in which the ceremony should be conducted based on national and religious traditions, but in a socialist version; and in the early and mid-1950s at least three such pavilions had already been built, including in the city of Volzhsky. But Khrushchev's "thaw" again changes ideological approaches, including in funeral rites, and the need for majestic pantheon Mortuaries disappears, they are replaced by modest funeral sites that are being built all over the country to hold a civil memorial service, but with a different semantic load.