Russian Burial Practices
"Very rarely do you hear the dead spoken of; nay, the mention of them is considered extremely indecorous. The phrases, "my dear late husband," the late Mr. N." were never…
From: 1842 C.E. To: 1842 C.E.
Location: St. Petersburg, Russia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Russia and the Russians, in 1842 by J.G. Kohl.
In Russia, a man must be alive to be thought anything of. Whoever is unlucky enough to die, with him it is all over; for it is a very unamiable trait in the character of the Russians, that they think so little of deceased relatives and friends. They respect that only which, hale and hearty at the moment, is able to assert its claims, and are strangers to that delicate sentimentality with which other nations cling to their recollections. With them, the past is gone and done with; and ancient usage and the custom of their forefathers have little influence upon their life. In their Janus, the face that looks backward seems to be wholly wanting.
Very rarely do you hear the dead spoken of; nay, the mention of them is considered extremely indecorous. The phrases, "my dear late husband," the late Mr. N." were never used in my presence, so that I fairly doubt their existence in the Russian dictionary. Of course, this indifference does not prevent the Russians from attending their dead with as much mourning pomp as possible on their last earthly journey, and from dismissing them at parting with as many church ceremonies as they received them on their coming into the world. The world praises the mourning; the ceremonies support the priests. Far be it from us, however, to deny that there are deaths in Russia which occasion sincere sorrow, and that many Russians have a much more faithful memory than the generality of them are accustomed to have.
If we would take a complete view of what the Russians do for the dead, we might aptly divide the subject under three heads, what takes place at the time of interment, and what is done before and afterwards.
As soon as the spirit has departed, they dress the body and place it in an open coffin in a room decorated for the purpose. Numerous lights are kept burning day and night; and, while the relations take turns to watch and pray by the coffin, the friends come to pay the last visit to the deceased. Such is the custom with the lowest as well as the highest; and, though a man in his life-time perhaps had no visitors, he is sure to have plenty of them between his death and his burial.
Some time back there died in Petersburg a very old gentleman, who was born in the first half of the last century. He had occupied important posts under all the sovereigns in whose reigns he had lived; hence, while he lay in state, he had visitors belonging to all the different periods of modern Russian history. Many aged persons came forward and claimed acquaintance with him, men whose name was forgotten while the person still lived, old retired generals, who in the time of Elizabeth had been cadets with the deceased; others, who acknowledged themselves indebted to him for favours done during Catherine's reign; others, again, who had shared banishment with him in the time of Paul.
On the decease of such extraordinary persons, the Emperor and his successor are accustomed to visit the corpse; while the poor, on the other hand, never fail to lament at the door the loss of their benefactor, and to be dismissed with a handsome donation. Total strangers, too, come of their own accord to offer a prayer for the deceased; for the image of a saint hung up before the door indicates to every passenger the house of mourning.
Black coffins are not customary among the Russians. Those of children are always painted of a rose colour; young unmarried females have an azure blue coffin, and to elderly women the violet colour is generally allotted. I did, however, once see a very old lady in a coffin covered with dark red velvet. The men only have sometimes black coffins, but more frequently they are of a different colour, usually brown. The poor merely paint the wood ; the rich have them covered with coloured stuffs.
For the rest, however, black is the colour of mourning with the Russians, as well as with us. The hearse, the torch-bearers, the priests, are all arrayed in black. The tree of death and mourning is the northern cypress, the pine. The poor strew the coffin, at the time of exhibiting the corpse, with pine twigs, and, at the funerals of the wealthy, the whole way from the house to the churchyard is thickly strewed with branches of the same tree. Hence those streets of Petersburg through which funerals frequently pass are almost always covered with this sign of mourning.
The time of showing the corpse lasts in general only three or four days, and then follow the blessing of the deceased and the granting of the pass. The latter is to be taken literally. The corpse is carried to the church, and the priest lays upon the breast a long paper, which the common people call the pass for heaven. On this paper is written the Christian name of the deceased, the date of his birth and that of his death. It then states that he was baptized as a Christian, that he lived as such, and before his death received the sacrament, in short, the whole course of life which he led as a Greek Russian Christian.
To receive this pass and blessing, the corpse is carried uncovered to the church, that all acquaintance in the street may take a last look at the face of the deceased. The lid is borne before it. The coffin is always attended, even in the day-time, by a party of torch-bearers in broad-brimmed hats and loose black cloaks. A long train of relations generally follows. For persons decorated with titles there is of course no want of pomp. Among other things, they have all their orders borne before them on splendid cushions, each on a separate one. As they have in general a tolerable number of them, these order-bearers alone present an imposing sight. All who meet a funeral take off their hats, and offer a prayer to Heaven for the deceased: and such is the outward respect paid on such an occasion, that it is not till they have entirely lost sight of the procession that they put on their hats again. This honour is paid to every corpse, whether of the Russian, Protestant, or Catholic communion.
In the church the deceased is again exhibited in state; and the priests, dressed in black and white, and provided with tapers surrounded with crape, are busily engaged in furnishing him with all that, in their opinion, he needs for the journey. Over his forehead is placed a bandage, on which are painted sacred texts and figures of saints. A cross of wax or some other material is put into his hand. He is then supplied with the above-mentioned pass. A plate with food is even set beside the coffin. This mess for the dead is called kutja. It usually consists of rice boiled with honey, and formed into a sort of pudding. By way of ornament, raisins are stuck into this pudding, and there is a small cross made with them on the top of it. Instead of raisins, the rich use small lumps of refined sugar; but the priests are better pleased when the lumps are rather large, for when the ceremony is over the whole becomes their perquisite.
After the corpse is duly prepared, the priests sing a funeral mass, called in Russian clerical language, panichide. Meanwhile, the relatives take their last farewell of the deceased. They all kiss his hand, and among people of the lower class the most affecting and eloquent addresses are often made to him. If it is a married man, the widow indulges in the most touching and highly poetical effusions of her grief. She wrings her hands, and, looking steadfastly in the face of the deceased, as though he were still living, she exclaims, sometimes in a loud, at others in a low tone, “Golubotschik moi! Druschotschik!" Alas! my dove, my friend, why hast thou left me? Have I not done all that I could at home to please thee? and yet thou puttest away thy wife in this manner. Ah! how well and hearty thou wert a month ago, sitting among thy children and playing with thy little Feodor, and now thou art so lifeless, so silent, and sayest not a word to thy wife and thy weeping children! My husband, my master, awake, awake! Did I not wait on thee incessantly during thy illness, and give thee everything that was necessary for thee! Oh, why, why then couldst thou not recover?" Amidst endless lamentations of this sort the lid of the coffin is fastened down, and the procession moves to the churchyard.
With persons of the higher class this poetical scene of loud lamentation is of course transformed into silent sorrow. Before the closing of the lid, however, the ecclesiastics, the relatives, servants, and dependants of the deceased approach the coffin and kiss his hands and feet with abundance of tears.
At the interment itself the proceedings are very brief. The corpse is deposited, without any more singing, in the grave, into which each of the persons present then throws a handful of sand. This ceremony takes place when the body is not buried in the earth, but in a vault. When the metropolitan himself officiates at the funerals of important personages, everything of course is pompous; the singing of the choir is admirable; and the sand is thrown with small silver shovels belonging to the funeral equipage of the metropolitan.
After the interment, the poor set up a simple Greek cross upon the mound raised over the grave. The wealthy have all sorts of monuments erected, as among us. It is not customary to wear mourning for a deceased person; and the practice is confined to the highest classes of society, who have borrowed it from the Germans. The Russians have even adopted the German word Trauer for mourning. The Russian mourning equipages, which are used for several months, have a very solemn and handsome appearance, especially the footmen, coachmen, and outriders, who appear in wide cloth dresses bordered with black fur, which fall in rich folds from seat and horses. Not a single silver-headed nail is suffered to be seen either in carriage or harness, and the whole is so raven-black that it would well befit the king of the nether world himself.
J. G. Kohl, Russia and the Russians, in 1842, vol. 1 (London: H. Colburn, 1842).
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