Introduction

MODERN societies have long sought to marginalize, control, and even deny the experience of death. In contrast, the conditions of socialist modernity in the USSR gave rise to an internal tendency to intensify this experience. In the process of creation and expansion, as well as during the stable existence of the USSR, the presence of death in the everyday life of its citizens was very noticeable. Many have pointed out that before the 1917 Revolution, St. Petersburg experienced an "epidemic of death" that was in tune with the" zeitgeist " of that era and that inspired the search for eternal life and a way to overcome death; it was these ideas that permeated Soviet ideology 1. The cult of death, coupled with victimhood (the image of one's own sacrifice) he also began to characterize the Ukrainian nation. The national anthem of the Ukrainian People's Republic, an independent state that existed until 1920, began with the words " Ukraine has not died out yet." Although

1.In addition to the losses caused by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the Revolution of 1905, Mark Steinberg notes a surge in everyday forms of violence in imperial Russia in the early twentieth century, such as violent crimes, executions, murders, and epidemics, as a result of which, according to the general opinion, "human life has lost its value." Steinberg M.D. Petersburg: Fin de Siecle. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. P. 147. См. также Masing-Delic I. Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.

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the song was banned in the USSR, and in 1992 it was again made the Ukrainian national anthem2.

In 1939, Transcarpathia, Bukovina and Galicia, territories that were part of other European states, became part of Soviet Ukraine. These border regions were seen in the XX century. so much violence and death that the historian T. Snyder called them the "bloodlands"3. Death, and in particular the "bad death" was ubiquitous. During the Second World War, the dead were treated without any respect, often dumping the bodies in mass graves without any memorial signs.4 The monstrous brutality and senseless slaughter of soldiers and civilians during the war was followed by rapid violent political and economic changes (a new ruling party, a new ideology, the launch of socialist redistribution mechanisms).

Another factor that led to the intensification of the experience of death in western Ukraine was the restriction (or, in the case of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the elimination) of the legal functioning of certain forms of organized religion. The ability to openly invoke transcendent and other divine powers through the clergy and on the authority of tradition, obtained through organized religious institutions, was seriously hindered or even excluded, especially under Khrushchev. As a result, informal practices have become particularly important during funerals. Moreover, Soviet anti-religious policies undermined confidence in the structures of organized religion and discouraged access to clergy representatives; and this also led to groups of people and individuals improvising religious practices.-

2. In 2003, the national anthem was changed to emphasize that the glory and freedom of Ukraine, not Ukraine itself, is "not dead yet".

Snyder T. 3. Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. New York: Basic Books, 2010. The book presents a picture of the terror, famine, ethnic cleansing and repression that killed so many people in the western border regions of the USSR.

4. Works on war memorials and funeral rites: Winter J. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998; Merridale C. Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia, London: Ganta, 2000; Women and War in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe/Ed. Wing-field N, Bucur M. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006; Faust D.G. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

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wali with informal rituals when mourning those who were taken away by death.

The clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church shared a different attitude towards these popular religious practices, which were often of an extra-ecclesiastical nature. On the other hand, the predominance of these popular forms of religious practices preserved the religious feeling and worldview of the population after the war, when more formalized ways of religious worship were blocked.5 The persistence of popular religious practices has made it possible for forms of resistance originating in religious symbols and ideals to become entrenched in a wide variety of areas (and most clearly in the late 1980s).

This article is based on 2 ethnographic interviews conducted in Galicia in 2012 and archival materials covering the period from the first post-war years to the end of the Khrushchev period and related to the three regions of Western Ukraine that were captured by the Soviet Union during World War II. The main purpose of the article is to study the practices associated with funeral rituals, as well as to formulate a concept that can be potentially useful for analyzing religious practices in the context of the secularizing effect of modernization and Soviet anti-religious companies. These rituals had important social and performative significance, and also gradually acquired a pronounced gender character - as women increasingly assumed responsibility for expressing collective or individual grief, for organizing rituals and ritualized behavior related to the conduct of funerals and ensuring the well-being of the community. I see these rituals as a form of "experienced religion" In addition to connecting generations and maintaining faith in family spirits, it also weakened the effectiveness of anti-religious campaigns aimed at blocking the transmission of knowledge about religious practices and beliefs.

Beglov A. 5. In search of "sinless catacombs": the church underground in the USSR. Moscow: Arefa Publ., 2008; see also A. E. Levitin-Krasnov's Letter: The Situation of the Russian Orthodox Church//Religion and Atheism. March 1970. pp. 1-17.

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Certainty and uncertainty of death

Death is one of the few human experiences that is universal in nature. It is associated with both absolute certainty and irremediable uncertainty. We are confident that everyone will experience the experience of death. However, there is an almost equally absolute level of uncertainty about what experiences will follow death. Death poses the ultimate challenge to the meaningfulness of human life, especially because of the suffering associated with it.6 Since death is shrouded in mystery and evokes the strongest emotions that lead to certain behaviors, it is the primary area in which social relationships are formed, in particular, the dynamics of memory, oblivion, duty and appreciation. Conscious efforts to honor the dead and decorate graves are among the earliest forms of cultural innovation that have persisted in all times and cultures.

Religion plays a central role in dealing with death. Death destroys as much as it changes, and therefore it requires a response from those who are alive. Rites restore the customs and rhythms of everyday life after death and, by doing so, change what they are supposed to preserve. Like all rites of passage, funeral rites mark a change in the status of their participants. During the rite, the body becomes absolutely dead, and a clear and unbreakable boundary is established between the living and the dead (before the actual burial, there may still be certain doubts about whether the body really died and the spirit rested). Death also changes the status of the living. For example, the wife becomes a widow, the children become orphans, and therefore their social roles change. The rite performed in response to death offers the means by which the social order is reconstructed in the light of the loss suffered. The rite reconnects the living and the dead, body and soul, action and emotion, and, in the process, makes up for the loss.

6. This may explain the enormous attention that anthropologists pay to funeral rites. See Danforth L. The Death Rituals of Rural Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982; Kligman G. The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics and Popular Culture in Transylvania. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988; Huntington R., Metcalf P. Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; Death, Mourning and Burial/Ed. Robben A. Blackwell, 2004.

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Secularization and intergenerational connections

Funeral rites were often a source of tension in post-war Western Ukraine. First, in this multiethnic and multi-confessional region, which was the point of contact between the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires, religion became a key element of identity, implying that the Soviet secular reconstruction of society faced resistance. The majority of Western Ukrainians were Greek Catholics, but there were also significant numbers of Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant, and other religious groups in the region. Conducting rituals that the state (which claimed to promote atheism) considered religious, made their participants ideological opponents and caused reprisals from the authorities. In 1946, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was outlawed, driven underground, and gradually neutralized by the early 1950s. 7 During virtually the entire Soviet period, almost five million Greek Catholics in Soviet Ukraine could only be members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Already in 1956, even before the Khrushchev anti-religious campaign of 1958-1964, approximately 3,215 zoo churches officially functioning in the five western oblasts (Lviv, Drohobych, Stanislav, Ternopil, and Transcarpathian) were transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church8. About 1,000 of the 1,254 priests who served in these churches were former Greek Catholic priests, often suspected by the authorities.9
All of this was in stark contrast to the moral and political authority of the Greek Catholic Church and clergy in the region. During the Second World War, the Soviet government even forced Metropolitan Sheptytsky to use his moral authority in Galicia and beyond to reduce ethnic tensions.

7. This Church, however, thrived in immigrant communities, primarily in North America. See Luciuk L. Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada and the Migration of Memory. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000.

8. ЦДАГО (Центральний державний архів громадських об'єднань України). Ф. 1. Оп. 24. Д. 4263. Л. 227 - 230.

9. TSDAGO. F. 1. Op 24. D. 4263. L. 203-205. These priests were often accused of inaccurately following the traditions of Orthodoxy.

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tension and restore order in the region 10. The importance of religion and the authority of the clergy were due to the changing history of nationalism and constant unsuccessful attempts to maintain an independent status and strengthen cultural autonomy. The constant presence of an unfinished nationalist agenda has fueled a tendency to mix religion and culture, and religious revival with national revival. Accordingly, for the region's more than seven million post-annexation residents, an attack on certain religious institutions was equivalent to an attack on the nation.

In the 1920s, atheist campaigns aimed at closing churches and discrediting the clergy inevitably led to the transfer of some of this spiritual authority to "churchmen", i.e., to convinced, active lay believers.11 The same dynamics were observed in Western Ukraine after its annexation and throughout virtually the entire Soviet period. As a result, religious practices have become more individual and improvised.12 This led to very unexpected consequences, which consisted in the fact that part of the work on secularization of the public sphere was entrusted to the Church itself, which fought for the separation of officially permitted practices from "superstition" and for prohibiting the inclusion of deviant folk practices in the "true religion". In this sense, the goals of Soviet religious campaigns overlapped with the goals of the Church, and this implied that secularization was not always "violent" in nature: sometimes it was about "persuading" and "teaching".

From many sources (and, above all, from archival documents compiled by Soviet officials who sought to oust religion from public space), we know,

Himka J. -P. 10. Christianity and Radical Nationalism: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the Bandera Movement//State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine/Ed. Wanner C. Washington, D.C. and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Oxford University Press, 2012.

Freeze G. 11. Subversive Atheism: Antireligious Campaigns and the Religious Revival in Ukraine in the 1920s//State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine/Ed. Wanner C. Washington, D.C. and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Oxford University Press, 2012.

12. Interestingly, post-war religious practices in Europe and North America were also characterized by increasing individualization and fragmentation. See Davie G. Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1994.

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that removing the religious component from funeral rites was significantly more difficult than reducing the role of religion in other life-cycle rituals (such as birth or marriage). Rites associated with death are among the most conservative and stable of all rites of passage. For example, in 1960, Chernivtsi Oblast was the region with the largest concentration of religious communities in the USSR, even though 32 cemetery churches were closed as a result of Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign, and the number of priests decreased by 13. 13 Although it is estimated that only 10-20% of the population regularly attended church services, up to 77% of funerals were handled by the individual by the authorities as religious 14.

The Soviet government used religious concepts and rituals to enhance its legitimacy; for example, the embalming of Lenin's body was meant to symbolize triumph over death, and numerous military monuments to the Unknown soldier hinted at sacrifice, eternal glory, and transcendent salvation. Indeed, during the Khrushchev campaign, atheist cadres worked to create a system of civil rites, including funerals. It was widely recognized that it was in Western Ukraine that local Soviet authorities should be most vigilant in order to stop "illegal actions of churchmen" .15 Thus, commemoration of the dead (whether at the individual, ethnic-group, or all-Union level) was among the rituals that most stubbornly resisted Soviet attempts to eliminate the transcendent, sacred, and spiritual. other supernatural elements.

In another work, I wrote that the cumulative effect of the Soviet anti-religious policy was the loss of information about the formal side of religious practices due to the destruction of mechanisms for transmitting religious knowledge from generation to generation16. In other words, the doctrinal justification of religious practices is not clear.

13. ЦДАВО України, (Центральний державний архів вищих органів влади та управління України). Ф. 4648. Оп. 3. Д. 269. Л. 5 - 6. Только в самом городе Львов в 1961 году была закрыта 41 церковь. The task was set to separate the churches from each other by at least three kilometers. ЦДАВО України. Ф. 4648. Оп. 3. Д. 269. Л. 39.

14. ЦДАВО України. Ф. 4648. Оп. 3. Д. 269. Л. 11.

15. TsDAVO Ukrainy. F. 4648. Op. 1. D. 324. L. 35 and F. 4648. Op. 3. D. 269. L. 67.

Wanner C. 16. Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. P. 48 - 54.

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certain rituals and symbols, as well as the practice of liturgical traditions, were forgotten over time, and their presence in the minds of believers gradually decreased. By limiting the spread of religious knowledge, reducing the number of clergy, and restricting access to places considered sacred, the Soviet state created a largely secular public sphere. Danielle Hervier-Leger argued that religion is essentially a special case of beliefs that serve as a kind of chain of memory that connects generations. 17 She wrote that the" breaking of the chain of memory " in the field of rituals, as well as the spread of a kind of religious "amnesia" were key features of the secularization of Western European societies. In many respects, the situation was similar in the USSR. Opposition to the transmission of religious knowledge from generation to generation led to a massive oblivion of its formal aspects and generated ignorance in this regard as religion disappeared from everyday life, from the memory and consciousness of Soviet believers.

Ignorance of religion was complemented by the promotion of a policy of fetishizing nationality and emphasizing the connection between certain faiths and national groups. Models of self-identification in Western Ukraine shifted from a confessional identity combined with positioning oneself as a "tutshi" (local), to an identity that increasingly took on a national connotation, while still retaining a pronounced religious component. And as national identities were established, the latent identity of religious and national identities was also established. Soon after the war, questions about how to respond to evil, how to explain suffering, and how to express gratitude to those who sacrificed everything for the sake of the living became widespread. In this era, when many people were killed, when entire ethnic groups were destroyed, when the usual way of life collapsed, the themes of mourning, mourning, atonement and resurrection came to the fore, and funeral rites remained of particular importance.

Hervieu-Leger D. 17. La religion pour memoire. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993.

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Experienced religion

I view funeral rites that were designed to honor the death of relatives and friends as a " relived religion." This conceptualization is based on the early work of Gabriel le Bras, who wrote about the "religion vector"18], and on the later works of Robert Orsi, David Hall, and others.19 The concept of "experienced religion" was formulated in the course of criticism of the more familiar concept of "folk religion" - popular religion or folk religion, which refers to practices that arose in the space between the "official" religion and "pagan" culture 20. "Folk religion" is a concept associated with the idea that between "official" religion and "pagan" culture, the concept of "People's religion" is based on the concept of "people's religion".official "religion and" unofficial " practice, as well as between "religion" (understood in the doctrinal and institutional sense) and "superstition" (understood as beliefs in supernatural forces), there are irrecoverable contradictions. In other words," elite"," real " religion is perceived as something different from the magical practices of the masses.

The correlation of institutionalized religion and superstition automatically establishes a dynamic of juxtaposition and hierarchy that tends to diminish the importance of lay people and their ritual behavior and other practices that guide individual lives on a daily basis. Historical studies of religions tend to favor institutions over improvised practices. But if we take into account the religious landscape of the Soviet Union, it becomes absolutely clear,

Le Bras G., Levy-Bruhl L., Rivet P., Santyves P. 18. Religion Legale et Religion Vecue//Archives de Sociologie des Religions. 1970. Vol. 29. P. 15 - 20. http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/assr_0003-9659_1970_num_29_1_1833.

Orsi R.A. 19. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985; Thank You, St. Jude: Women's Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998; Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice/Ed. Hall D. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

20. 19th-century ethnographers actively used the concept of "folk religion" in their research of peasant practices. Although these early works were very useful in many ways, they were often ahistorical in nature and ignored the relationship of experienced religion to orthodoxy, as well as the socio-political context in which "folk religion"was practiced. As for Ukraine, see Ivanov P. V. Essay on the views of the peasant population of Kupyansk uyezd on the soul and on the afterlife//Collection of the Kharkiv Historical and Philological Society / 1919-N 18. pp. 244-55.

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that in this case the situation is special: in order to understand the religious life of a society governed by an openly atheist state, it is necessary, on the contrary, first of all to consider non-institutional forms of religious practices.

Tamara Dragadze believes that socialism has "domesticated religion." 21 Although this concept avoids the binary juxtaposition of the above terms, it suggests "domestication" of religion, which is not always applicable to funeral rites, given the fear of the capricious evil forces with which they are associated. This concept also implies that the main place of religious practices becomes the home, private sphere. But if we talk about processions and ceremonies held in cemeteries, they include a pronounced public and performative element. And the same applies to pilgrimages, confessions, and many other life-cycle rituals that have public and performative components. However, the concept of "domesticated religion" captures a specific gender aspect of religious practice, which developed during the XX century in the USSR, as well as in other countries.22

Perhaps most importantly, the concept of "experienced religion" suggests that religion cannot be separated from other cultural practices, and it encourages us to rethink what religion ultimately is and what it means to be a religious person. The term "experienced religion" implies a more dynamic and flexible conceptualization of religious experience that is firmly integrated into culture; this means that when considering religious practices as "experienced religion", many other binary oppositions are destroyed, such as private and public, political and everyday, mind and body, practice and text, religion and materiality, the sacred and the profane, religiosity and secularism. These fixed, static categories that fill religious studies should be discarded if we think in terms of "experienced religion." As Robert Orsi wrote, " people use religious idioms to the extent that-

Dragadze T. 21. The Domestication of Religion under Soviet Communism//Socialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Local Practice/Ed. Hann C.M. London: Routledge, 1993.

22. For an argument in support of "domesticated religion" , see Levy Zumwalt R., Levy I. J. Memories of Time Past: Fieldwork among the Sephardim/ / Journal of American Folklore. Winter 2001. Vol. 114. No, 451. P. 40 - 55.

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QoS need them as answers to certain circumstances. All religious ideas or impulses are associated with a certain moment, they are borrowed, appropriated, invented, invented in important life situations. " 23 In other words, individuals use their religion, its practices, symbols, rhythms and palette of emotions to communicate meaning to their lives, based on the circumstances they encounter, and from an assessment of how they can respond to these circumstances. These responses constitute a form of authentic religious experience, but a form invented by the individual, improvised, and changeable.

Therefore, rather than denying the importance of the phenomena of experienced religion due to the irregular nature of their nature, I argue that their study can be particularly useful in the Soviet context and, in particular, in the case of a religion that has suffered from violence and especially from rapid and large - scale political and economic changes. I'll quote Orsi again: "The study of experienced religion frees us from our long-held commitment to order or coherence and turns our attention to tragedy, sadness, and grief. It tracks the explosive consequences for individuals, families, and political worlds at the intersection of internal experience with political and social realities."24. Especially useful here is the ability to abandon the illusory need for"order and coherence."

Thinking about religion in terms of how it was experienced also has the advantage of identifying and thus incorporating into the analysis the level of activity that individuals displayed to create ritual practices or to adapt borrowed practices to local or historically determined circumstances. This approach places these practices in a special socio-political context, suggesting that we consider how and by whom the election of certain elements and forms of religiosity is structured. This approach, therefore, breaks the confessional constraints that bind religion.

Orsi R. 23. Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion//Lived Religion in America: toward a History of Practice/Ed. Hall D. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Orsi R. 24. Is the Study of Lived Religion Irrelevant to the World We Live In?/Special Presidential Plenary Address, Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Salt Lake City, November 2, 2002//Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. June 2003. Vol. 42. No. 2. P. 172.

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It gives a broader interpretation of the experience interpreted as religious, and places and objects considered sacred, as well as introduces them to the context of certain power relations. The appeal to the experienced religion challenges strict periodization, according to which religious life in the USSR was an anomaly that cannot be compared with either the pre - and post-Soviet periods, or with the religious life of other countries of the world. It denies the fundamental projection of difference that separates "them" from "us," however this division may be understood. In this case, archival research begins to look more and more like ethnographic research. Historians are encouraged to "listen to the voices in the archives" and recognize the impact of individuals ' actions, emotions, and beliefs on the broader dynamics of change.25 For historians and anthropologists of an experienced religion, the barriers that separate the familiar from the alien begin to waver-regardless of whether it is a comparison of cultures or historical periods.

Funeral rites as an experienced religion

Ritualized funeral practices conflate Rudolf Otto's notion of "numinous" (i.e., an unspeakable sense of mystery and transcendence) and the ethical element that Kant introduced into religion through a clear definition of the moral order governing social actions. The theological belief in the immortality of the soul, combined with the fear of the dead in their otherworldly state, has given rise - not only in the west of Ukraine, but in all countries of Eastern Christianity - to many living religious practices that the official Church has never sanctioned. When I speak of "ritualized funeral practices," I refer more to a series of rituals and ritual practices incorporated into everyday life than to individual transformative funeral rites. After the war, these rituals followed a three-part model, which included the rite of the body, a public funeral procession, and a funeral rite and general memorial meal. 26 A formal religious service with the participation of clergy-

25. Ibid. P. 174.

26. Некоторые из лучших этнографических анализов: Кісь О. Жінка в Традиційній Українській Культурі. Львів: Інститут Народознавства НАН України, 2006; Woro-

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The meeting was usually only a small part of the event and often took place not in the church, but in the cemetery, which (especially in the Soviet period) was a kind of holy place, which was watched no less than the church. Private homes have become an important place for rituals. In the 1960s, many priests, especially Uniate priests, were suspected of performing clandestine rites in the homes of believers prior to the burial of the dead.27
Despite the fact that Orthodox Christianity, Greek Catholicism and most other denominations present in Western Ukraine carry the message of hope conveyed in the images of heavenly reward, redemption and salvation, funerals are saturated with the fear of the"undead". This fear is based on the belief that the relationship with death does not end; rather, the dead are privileged because they can exert a positive and protective influence on the fate of the living. On the other hand, the dead can bring misery and suffering to those who have not done their duty by not honoring the memory of the deceased as it should be. It shows a belief in the ability of the deceased to influence the living. Funeral rites are essentially a last-ditch effort on the part of the living to recognize these responsibilities, honor the dead, and in the process eliminate the possibility of the dead returning to take revenge on the living for failing to fulfill their duties to them.

Stanley Tambaya wrote that "ritual is not a ' free expression of emotion', but a disciplined reproduction of the 'correct attitude' ".28 In other words, even if improvised, rites are a space where moral order manifests itself. Repeated over and over in the same scenario, this moral order shapes attitudes and inclinations. Ritualized dialogue with the dead in the form of mourning expresses a sense of duty and gratitude. Acceptability of the rite (and its" built-in " moral content)

bee C.D. Death Ritual Among Russian and Ukrainian Peasants: Linkages between the Living and the Dead//Cultures in Flux: Lower-Class Values, Practices and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia/Ed. Frank S. P., Steinberg M. D. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; Hilarion, Metropolitan. Дохристиянсбкі вірування українського народу. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Volyn', 1965.

27. ЦДАВО України. Ф. 4648. Оп. 3. Д. 269. Л. 63 - 66.

Tambiah S. 28. Form and Meaning of Magical Acts//Culture, Thought and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. P 134.

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order) depends on how well the community considers it conducted. If the living do not follow the moral standards associated with paying tribute to the deceased with a proper funeral rite, then they may be attacked by the wrath of the deceased. It is believed that the restless dead can send disease, bad harvest, bad weather and other disasters.

The most ritualized activities took place in the deceased's home, and they were usually performed by an even number of elderly women from relatives or neighbors. The body of the deceased was washed and dressed, while trying to avoid the red color. Then the body was placed on a bench near the window, with its head facing the icons and its feet facing the doors.29 As long as the deceased remained in the house, all work, except those related to the preparation of the funeral, was stopped. Ideally, the body stayed in the house for three days, but this was not always possible, especially in the summer of 30.

Weeping probably reflects, more than other aspects of the funeral rite, the belief that death is not the end of life. It is an appeal to the dead to give protection to the living, which is added to the fulfillment of all that the living are obliged to do in relation to the dead. During the crying, they addressed the deceased directly, begging him to open his eyes, rise from the coffin and answer. Although in the nineteenth century the mourners could have been either men or women, the situation changed in the following century. Mourning has become a moral duty for women who are relatives of the deceased. The community made judgments about the length, content, and volume of mourning. If it was found insufficient, the relatives could be blamed for not paying the dead the proper honors. As the number of small families increased over time, it became common to hire mourners from outside.

The purpose of funeral processions was to influence the fate of the soul of the deceased. Catholic purgatory was conceived as a mountain to climb - something like the Orthodox idea of" ordeals " or spiritual trials. Elderly women read the Psalter or prayers for their departed loved ones

29. The Old Believers, on the contrary, turned the body with their feet to the icons, believing that if the deceased's face was turned to the icons, he could pray.

30. Currently, the body remains in the house for one day. For modern funeral rituals in Ukraine, see Kononenko N. Slavic Folklore: A Handbook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. P. 54 - 57.

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to assist the deceased in their journey through purgatory. In addition, a special prayer ("prokhvdna molitva" or "provodnichok") was read for the admission of the deceased to paradise, which testified that the deceased was a worthy person and had a good reputation in society. 31 Although it was supposed that this prayer should be read by a deacon, in the Soviet period it was usually read by one of the women, who dressed the body and participated in the vigils. The text of the prayer was placed in the hands of the deceased and buried with him. Reading religious texts was one of the ways to "Christianize" the rite, to introduce officially sanctioned religious knowledge (despite the fact that the wake held in the house was purely profane).

The funeral rite began with a service in the house, held, as a rule, in the daytime. Candles were lit and, when they were burned, the stubs were placed in the coffin - to light the path of the deceased. Other material objects were also placed in the coffin, such as a favorite drink, cigarettes, money, and gifts to the deceased's children (if they died earlier), although this practice gradually came to an end.

The funeral procession was the most important public aspect of funeral rites. The body was carried to the grave feet first, while mourners walked so that the deceased could "see" how they expressed their grief. The procession was led by someone of the same sex as the deceased; he or she carried an icon draped with a towel, an icon draped with a towel, and a cross, followed by women with funeral wreaths and a girl scattering flowers or flower petals.32 Kolivo (porridge with honey) was carried in front of the coffin, which then became the first dish at the memorial meal. The coffin, which was carried by people of the same sex as the deceased, was followed first by the priest, then by close relatives, then by distant relatives and friends. Anyone could join the procession, which made the funeral an open, collective event. In the 1960s, the authorities were surprised to find that non-believers also participated in these processions. Measures to stop processions

Kononenko N. 31. Folk Orthodoxy: Popular Religion in Contemporary Ukraine//Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine/Ed. Himka J. P. Zayarnyuk A. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. P. 51 - 54.

32. ЦДАВО України. Ф. 4648. Оп. 3. Д. 269. Л. 6.

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They were particularly determined in Lviv, the largest border city in Ukraine.33
When the coffin was taken out of the house, it was hit three times on the threshold (or simply lowered three times), because the deceased had to say goodbye to his house. Even if the body was taken to the cemetery in a car, the coffin was still carried in their arms for a while to form a procession. The procession could stop at all intersections that were considered dangerous places, so here the coffin could be lowered to the ground. If there were no intersections on the road, the procession still stopped three times.

When the procession reached the cemetery, a church service was held whenever possible.34 If this was not possible, the deceased was mourned for the last time directly at the grave. In the burial ritual, the most important point was the "sealing" of the grave (the absence of a priest in the Soviet period caused the greatest concern precisely in connection with this rite). The priest was authorized to make the sign of the cross over the open grave or its four sides to eliminate the possibility of returning the dead person. If the priest could not be present at the cemetery on the day of the funeral, he could seal the grave the day before or perform the ceremony on the day of burial in the deceased's house. In other words, the grave was sealed, at least symbolically, which should have reduced the potential threat that the deceased could pose. The coffin was lowered into the grave using a special towel35. Relatives threw three handfuls of dirt into the grave before the coffin was finally buried, and the grave was decorated with flowers and a cross.

Of all these practices associated with funeral rites, the secular authorities were the most categorical in prohibiting the practice of sealing the grave. It was seen as the basis, as justification, for superstitions concerning the afterlife, the existence of ancestral spirits, and otherworldly supernatural forces.

33. TsDAVO Ukrainy. F. 4648. Op. 3. D. 269. L. 7 and L. 40.

34. An excellent description of how the participation of the clergy in the rites was restricted is presented in Shlikhta N. Tserkva tich, hto Vizhiv. Радянська Україна, середина 1940-х початок 1970-х рр. Харків: Акта, 2011.

35. Often towels were given to those who helped with the organization of funerals. Material objects symbolized the memory of the event and created a certain mood. In Soviet rituals, material objects were also used: for example, champagne emphasized the joy of the wedding, and photographs were taken when registering newborns. Material objects also served as an incentive to participate in rituals.

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The authorities also prevented the installation of crosses on graves. Family members usually hid crosses near the grave, wrapping them in a towel or covering them with black ribbons with messages written on them.

After the procession, juniper or fir branches were thrown on the road along which it passed to hide the traces of its participants, who returned to the deceased's house by another way - in order to confuse evil spirits and prevent persecution from their side. After returning to the deceased's house, guests were cleansed by washing their hands (sometimes three times) and touching the stove before starting to eat. Traditionally, the first course was kolivo (porridge sweetened with honey); later it was replaced by cookies with honey. At the end of the meal, kisil, a liquid fruit dessert, was served, so that the meal ended the same way it began - with a sweet dish.

The day after the burial, the family returned to the grave to bring food to the deceased; usually it was bread, something from the food prepared the day before, and a glass of pots. If the food remained untouched, it was removed as a sign that the deceased had left this world. After that, the grave was visited on the third, ninth and fortieth day after death. The fortieth day was especially important because it was supposed to be the day when the soul returned home. A large memorial meal was prepared, with one place reserved for the deceased. After forty days of wandering on the earth, the soul had to go to hell or heaven. The prayers that preceded the fortieth day could have a positive effect on the fate of the deceased and, ultimately, decide whether this journey to the afterlife would end with the deceased being among the ancestors, or with him becoming one of the undead tormenting the living. On the first anniversary of the death, the family came to the grave again with food, since the deceased was now formally considered one of the ancestors. Interestingly, the practice of bringing food to the grave mixed life and death and made the cemetery a family space, something like a home where the family could eat and where they first mourned their death. In addition, there were twelve special Saturdays in the calendar (memorial, batkivsky orsuffocating subbots) intended for prayers for the souls of the dead. It was believed that these days prayers have a special power. In rural areas, the prayers of blind wandering musicians were also considered particularly effective, as they were supposed to,

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that they are good intermediaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead 36.

Unbaptized children, unmarried young men and unmarried girls, those who died suddenly, victims of murder and, above all, suicides, were special cases. They were considered to have died a "bad death", and therefore there were special prescriptions for them. People who died violently did not find peace in another life and were inclined to return. As a rule, they did not have time to receive the sacraments of the Church, which once again emphasized the tragic nature of their deaths. Places of sudden, violent and" bad " deaths were marked with special signs. The case of suicide was the most difficult, since suicides were considered sinners who went against the will of God. They were often forbidden to be buried in cemeteries, as the presence of suicides could anger the "clean" dead. Priests often refused to participate in the burial of suicides and pray for their well-being after death. Suicide sites, as well as suicide graves, were considered "unclean" places where the restless dead and other evil forces gathered; therefore, they were usually marked with a pyramid of stones - in order to scare away spirits.

Conclusion

Funeral rituals reduced concerns about the fate of the deceased and their potential to become the undead. While these fears have undoubtedly contributed to the ritualization of death, another factor I have noted that has influenced the development of popular veneration of the dead is a sense of duty. Death evokes very strong emotions and yet remains shrouded in mystery; therefore, it becomes the primary sphere for shaping social relationships and the dynamics of memory, oblivion, duty, and appreciation. Duty dictates action. At the time of death, memory and a sense of duty mix, and the ritual becomes the last opportunity to pay homage. Mourning can lead to positive forms of oblivion that allow the living to re-establish a certain social status.

Kononenko N. 36. Ukrainian Minstrels: And the Blind Shall Sing. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. P. 189 - 190.

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an order that is disrupted after a community member leaves, making oblivion a desirable social goal.

Actually, funerals help to make sure that the soul is saved and that the possible anger of the deceased as an undead person is appeased if the debt on the part of the living has not been symbolically paid. This fear is entirely predictable in light of the fact that death was not seen as an end or departure. Rather, it was a transition - from one form of existence to another. In Western Ukraine, the fear that the dead may affect the living has given rise to many ritualized practices designed to protect the family and community from the potential harm that the dead may cause by returning to the world of the living.

The goal of the anti-religious campaign under Khrushchev was to eradicate these fears and the rituals they inspired. Although these attempts were unsuccessful, the reduction in the number of churches, especially the Greek Catholic Church, and the transfer of some spiritual authority to lay people (usually women) led to the fact that the importance of living religious practices increased as they moved to private homes and other man-made sacred spaces. If the question of certain aspects of the religion experienced was one of the factors that caused disagreement in the churches, then the dominance of living religious practices, as shown by funeral rites, was a key factor that supported the religious worldview throughout the Soviet period, despite secular tendencies, atheist ideology and anti-religious campaigns.

Translated from English by Alexey Appolonov

Bibliography

Archive materials

Центральний державний архів вищих органів влади та управління України (ЦДАВО України).

F. 4648 (Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and its predecessors: authorized representatives of the Council for Religious Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the USSR for the Ukrainian SSR).

Центральний державний архів громадських об'єднань України (ЦДАГО України).

F. 1 (Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine).

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