Rites of Protest: Populist Funerals in Imperial St. Petersburg, 1876–1878

Abstract

Focusing on the funerals of two populist political prisoners, this article examines how Petersburg's radical youth expropriated an allegedly unchanging, sacred ritual to extend the parameters of public discussion and social critique in late imperial Russia. Drawing on their experiences of Russia's religious and revolutionary past, the youth who accompanied their peers to the grave used the special, “sacred” time and space effected by the performance of customary burial rituals to offer their fellow citizens revolutionary alternatives to the existing regime.