Shortly after her grandmother died, Yulia began receiving phone calls from an undertaker offering his help to arrange the funeral for 47,000 roubles ($800). After travelling to Moscow’s Khovanskoe Cemetery, Yulia was offered a steep discount on a gravesite so long as she was willing to pay in cash and sign a receipt for half the amount. In Russia, such practices are quite common, and the death of a loved one often entails descending into a shady world beset by red tape, bribery, and corruption. Sergei Mokhov, editor of the academic journal The Archaeology of Russian Death, notes that impending changes may soon upturn the industry: “Earlier when there was lots of oil money, no one wanted to bother with foul-smelling funerals.” New governmental interest aims to shed light on the industry and provide more regulation.
See Russia’s Dysfunctional Funeral Business Gets a Makeover, The Economist, December 23, 2017.
Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.) for bringing this article to my attention.
