Elena Valerievna Kardash,
Candidate of Philology, The Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia, е‑mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Funeral Business in St. Petersburg in the 1800s–1860s: From Pushkin’s “Coffin Maker” to Historical Realities
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-5-12
The article is devoted to a little-studied topic ‒ the history of funeral business in pre-reform Russia. The direct subject of the study is the activity of St. Petersburg undertakers as an entrepreneurial community. The article deals with the issues of their numbers and social status, the range of trade assortment, services, pricing, and relations with church and secular state institutions; several separate dynasties are also traced. Data were collected from the files of several archival fonds (s.s. Petrograd Ecclesiastical Consistory, Petrograd Crafts Administration, the Economic Department of the Interior Ministry, the Chancellery of the Synod), statistical reviews (by A.P. Zablotsky-Desyatovsky, A.P. Bashutsky, etc.), address and guild books, analytical and historical articles from 19th century magazines, such as “Istoriko-statisticheskie svedeniya o Sankt-Peterburgskoi eparkhii”, “Russkaya Starina”, “Zhurnal Ministerstva vnutrennikh del”, announcements in “Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti”; historical data are considered in comparison with the descriptions of undertakers’ business activities in the literary texts written by A.S. Pushkin (1830), A.P. Bashutsky (1840) and I.I. Pushkarev (1841). In 1800‒1860, undertakers occupy a borderline position in St. Petersburg's commercial landscape: they produce goods to supply the market and provide services for the decoration and organization of the funeral ceremony. The increase in the number of St. Petersburg undertakers from the beginning to the middle of the century (11 in 1813, 58 in 1848, 54 in 1849, 59 in 1850) correlates with population growth and the dynamics of the workshop community development; the later decrease (42 in 1867) correlates with the consolidation of enterprises and the high inner competitiveness of the industry. The competition with ecclesiastical institutions for the funeral paraphernalia rental market (traceable as early as 1813), and resistance to price regulation within the framework of state social policy, demonstrate the capacity of the entrepreneurial community to establish and codify trade practices conflicting with the legislative norm. The peculiarities of undertakers’ entrepreneurial activity described in literary texts receive documentary confirmation: particularly, we can confidently say that the depiction of the funeral enterprise in Pushkin’s story correlates with the realities of Russian everyday life during the 1830s, rather than being the result of an European narrative samples transfer.
Publishing: 28/10/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 01/08/2023
How to cite: Kardash E.V. Funeral Business in St. Petersburg in the 1800s–1860s: From Pushkin’s “Coffin Maker” to Historical Realities // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 5 (31), pp. 173–190. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-5-12.pdf]
Links: Issue 5 2023
Keywords: entrepreneurship; merchants; craftsmen; St. Petersburg; funeral supplies; burial; undertakers; Smolensky Orthodox Cemetery