Care for the dying in contemporary Russia: the hospice movement in a low-income context

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper offers a brief social history of the hospice movement in Russia. The author explains why the hospice movement has become so relevant over the last five years in modern Russia; who the people are who lead this movement; how their ideas collide with ‘reality’; and what consequences of this collision can already be observed. The author presents the Russian hospice movement as a dynamic social process which arises in the particular context of the political protests of 2011–2012. The paper is based on the first results of ethnographic research conducted in several hospices in Siberia, as well as on data from in-depth interviews with hospice movement activists and archival materials. The author argues that the hospice movements in contemporary Russia serve a social function as grassroots mediation for social and economic care between local bureaucracy and patients.