We work for the dead

The magazine "Archeology of Russian Death" appeared in St. Petersburg

The Russian philosophical tanatology after the dead Soviet period revived in the 90s of the last century. In the early 90s, the Association of Tanatologists of St. Petersburg, later reorganized into the St. Petersburg Society of Tanatological Studies, whose permanent leader was Professor Mikhail Uvarov. This society has a merit in the publication of six issues of the Almanac " Figures of Tanatos ", which also included the materials of the two international conferences "Theme of Death in the Spiritual Experience of mankind." They took place in St. Petersburg in 1993 and in 1995.

By 2001, the Almanac “Figures of Tanatos” ceased to exist, and the Russian tanatology, having lost its printed organ, continued its existence in the form of articles or books, such as the monograph by Alexander Lavrin “ Chronicle of Haron. The Encyclopedia of Death ” or an article by Olga Brednikova in the journal “Infinite Sociology”, one of which is called “ Sociological Walking in the Cemetery ”.

Now, in St. Petersburg, the magazine " Archeology of Russian Death " has appeared. Says its publisher and editor -in -chief Sergei Mokhov :

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Sergey Mokhov in the program "Cultural Diary"

- The history of the magazine began more than three years ago with a small blog. My friend and I walked around the cemetery, and I already began to show interest in this topic, write on this topic. It is clear that any search in Google suggested sad thoughts that this field was absolutely not investigated. Very few texts. Very little work, institutionally united. Then the idea of creating a blog arose, where we could aggregate those texts that were previously published on this subject. We made a blog, which was called " the sky as coffee ." On it, we still post the texts that we find, read, we love very much. When I came to the school of the "writing researcher" in 2013, I was struck by the fact that some of my colleagues had already seen this blog, they knew him. Then I realized that this idea deserves attention. Then, in the school of the "writing researcher" Alexei Kupriyanov from the St. Petersburg branch of the Higher School, told a story about one American sociologist, who is much published in scientific, academic magazines, but leads his blog, where all his thoughts, research results, etc. laid out. This was my first, struck me, acquaintance with the Open Site format, with the new model of the presentation of scientific information. Our blog functioned with various options for success and failure until this spring, when the American sociologist Sergei Kan wrote to me. His message began with the words: "Hello! You do not know who I am, but I will tell you!" Sergey Kan is a professor of Dartmund College, he teaches Death Studies there and is studying the Indians. He is a classic field researcher who devoted his whole life to the Indians, their rites of the transition. It turned out that he was reading our blog. He rejoiced for us. And then I realized that I had to switch to a higher level and try to make a magazine. Start collecting and writing original content that was not published.

- Your magazine positions itself as "The First Russian Journal of Death Studies." Does the meaning of this term differ in Russia from the one that it has in the West?

- Of course, Death Studies in the Western scientific tradition is a fairly wide topic. To be honest, our magazine in such an understanding is not at all Death Studies, but sociology and anthropology related to death because Death Studies is the inclusion of anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. And if we turn to the classic English -speaking magazines, primarily to Omega , published since 1980, then we will see that these are magazines directly dedicated to death and dying. They explore the work with hospices, they investigate how death is perceived in society, discuss ethical problems, bioethics problems. And what we are doing is more anthropological studies associated with mordinal things. Actually, for Western anthropology, this topic is also not fully worked out, formulated, formed because it so happened that field anthropologists worked directly with Savage, with savages, and not with representatives of modern modern societies. They investigated the rites, the position of parts of the body - arms, legs, investigated manipulations associated directly with bodily. In the 70s, there is a dispute about how we should engage in such research in modern communities. It was clear that we first faced the fact that anthropologists and sociologists are exploring how people die in those communities in which they live, and this causes serious methodological problems because death concerns each of us and we cannot speak outside it, we cannot be indifferent to it. From my point of view, we are not studying death as such because this process itself is impossible for study, and the deceased person cannot inform us of death about death, we study how dying is found in the community, how it is experienced.

- What materials are published in the first issue of the magazine "Archeology of Russian Death"?

If life is so worthless, then at least somehow complete it, at least somehow show it-to put a big monument to yourself

- Our conversation with Sergey Kan opens the magazine. We did not discuss any specific topic, but most importantly, after this conversation, he gave a list of English-language texts for those who want to navigate in this topic. The second text is Svetlana Yeremeeva, associate professor of the Department of History and Culture theory of Department of Sociocultural Studies of the Russian State University. "What are we silent about ... Why are Death Studies not popular in modern Russia?" She had big problems with a doctoral dissertation now because she is engaged in this particular topic, but she is not accepted. She writes about the impossibility of assessing the living, assessing life in Russia, about the lack of form of language, the culture of speaking about death, serious taboo. Mikhail Alekseevsky presented the memorial lamentations collected by him in the Vladimir region. Denis Ermolin, employee of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great, presented an article about the boundaries of the confessional, ethnic and regional in the funeral rite of the Albanians. Our Ural colleague Yevgeny Safronov wrote about pets cemeteries, tried to systematize. Then there is my disgusting text about the funeral in the Gulag. Then my colleague Kirill Sherstobitov, who has been working with cemeteries of Kimr and Dubna for more than a year, wrote an interesting article. There is a curious situation. Kimra was for a long time for the transshipment point of drug trafficking, there was a very high mortality rate of the young and not only, and the local mayor, as we suspect, participated in this and owned all the funeral local agencies. And Cyril studies how the whole culture of these tombstones was formed there because there, for example, girls go to study for an accountant, but go to study for engravers. And there is a culture of creating lifetime monuments, work on them. Further, the small text of Andrei Grechko and Michael Rochlits about the graves of the authorities of the criminal world of Yekaterinburg, about the monuments that play the role of a posthumous presentation. The last text is Daniil Zhitenev "War and death by the eyes of Otto Dix.

- The study of death inevitably affects politics. There is no policy without death. From this point of view, the last calls of Ramzan Kadyrov and Gennady Zyuganov look from this point of view to return the death penalty to Russia ...

Death is the only way of social symbolic representation

- It seems to me that the political aspect is most relevant here: power over the body, power over death and various manipulations. That is, about, for example, as reburial and death delimits the society of the living. We see the death of Boris Nemtsov, the war in the Donbass, in Syria ... This very clearly draws the line between those who really are humanly related to the topic of mormalness, the topic of death, and those who are neglecting. It is amazing how Western Mortology sees Russia in this regard. There is a wonderful book by Nina Tumarkin, which is indicatively called IVAN 'S Death, dedicated to the life and death of soldiers in the Second World War. This is also a demonstrative thing that, unfortunately, is hushed up in Russia because the authorities, indeed, does not know how to work differently.

- Sergey, does it feel how the state attitude to death has changed recently, after the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine?

Cover of the magazine "Archeology of Russian Death"

- Certainly. As the death of absolutely depersonalized and human life was not of any interest, it does not represent it now. We are ready to sacrifice thousands of soldiers, and to silence, and not talk about their death. We saw hidden burials, we remember that when there was an Afghan war, it was impossible to talk about it either. The soldiers did not die. Nothing happened. Here today is the same. With the indicative indifference with which our citizens react to this. It seems to me that death in Soviet Russia and in Russia today has become so everyday, some kind of practice of powerlessness. If we talk about this, for example, in the context of palliative medicine, we can say that we are already so trusting in domestic medicine that we carry our cancer patients to Germany, Israel, somewhere else. Just because we are convinced that our medicine can no longer help. Although, as far as I know, paid medicine in Russia is at a high level. Or a common practice, when our grandparents put it off for ten to fifteen years in a row for a funeral, accumulating huge conditions. I know the story when my grandfather living in Khrushchev bought grandmother a coffin for 400,000 rubles, although they could travel with this money, be happy people. Death is the only way of social symbolic representation. If life is so worthless, then at least somehow to complete it, at least somehow show it-to put a big monument to ourselves that we see in the cemeteries, to order lush funerals. This, of course, is an indicator. The dead work for us, and we work for the dead.