We Remember, We Love, We Grieve

Mortuary and Memorial Practice in Contemporary Russia

Elizabeth Warner, Svetlana Adonyeva

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780299330705
• eBook ISBN: 9780299330736
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Russian History
• Index: Social Sciences

This is a book about death, comprehensive in its discussion of strategies for coping with loss and grief in rural northern Russia. Elizabeth Warner and Svetlana Adonyeva bring forth the voices of those for whom caring for their dead is deeply personal and firmly rooted in practices of everyday life. Thoroughly researched chapters consider lamenting traditions, examine beliefs surrounding natural symbols, and parse sensitive and profound funereal rituals.

"We remember, we love, we grieve" is a common epitaph in this part of the world. As contemporary Russia contends with the Soviet Union's legacy of dismantling older ways of life, the phrase ripples beyond individual loss—it encapsulates communities' determination to preserve their customs when faced with oppression. This volume offers insight into a core cultural practice, exploring the dynamism of tradition.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Archive References and Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration and Translation
• Introduction: People, Places, and Approaches
• 1. Beliefs about the Soul, the Living Dead, and the Afterlife in Contemporary Rural North Russia
• 2. Ritual Feeding and the Cult of Ancestors
• 3. The Lament: A Language for Communicating with the Dead
• 4. The Cross, the Birch, and the Kawasaki Motorbike: The Visual Rhetoric of Russian Rural Cemeteries in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
• 5. The Russian Semik-Troitsa (Trinity) Ritual Complex: A Deconstruction of the Public and Private Faces of Ritual, or “A Festival of Life and Death”
• 6. The Story of the Eternal Flame: Ritual Memorial Sites of the Soviet Era
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index