The history of the USSR is often measured in tens and hundreds of millions of tragic and violent deaths from hunger, repression, wars, as well as the catastrophic costs of the social and economic policies of the Soviet government. But a huge number of victims of the Soviet experiment was surrounded by an even more immense death: it is about millions and millions of people who died from old age, diseases and accidents. The book of historian and anthropologist Anna Sokolova is an analysis of state policy regarding death and burial, as well as bizarre metamorphoses of funeral culture in major cities of the USSR. This theme has long been overshadowed by studies on political repression and wars, as well as works on traditional village funeral culture. If these aspects of Soviet moralism are well studied, then the question of what the death and funeral of an ordinary Soviet citizen were in the material and symbolic dimensions has been little studied. Meanwhile, it is very important to understand who was (or should have been) the “new Soviet man” proclaimed by the revolution. Analysis of the transformations in the field of funeral culture sheds light on another issue: Whether the experience of radical reformation of society in the USSR was absolutely unique or not In spite of his radicalism, ... was it part of a large-scale modernization transition to industrial societies? Anna Sokolova Candidate of Historical Sciences , Research Fellow of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences , Lecturer of the program "History of Soviet Civilization" .