Russia Running Out of Cemeteries, Duma Deputies Complain

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 10 – Because of rising death rates and the failure of the authorities to invest in crematoria and cemeteries, Svetlana Razvorotnyeva, the United Russia vice chairman of the Duma committee on communal services says, Russia is currently suffering “a severe shortage” of such facilities.

            She says that the situation is particularly bad with regard to crematoria. Russia has only 27 such facilities, or one for every five million citizens. Japan has one for every 79,000, the US, one for every 159,000, and the United Kingdom  one for every 242,000 (pnp.ru/politics/v-rossii-kriticheski-ne-khvataet-kladbishh-i-krematoriev.html).

            Because of the impact of the pandemic and more recently fighting in Ukraine, the number of deaths that Russian crematoria and cemeteries must hand has jumped by four percent during the first half of 2024 as compared to the same period a year earlier, to 921,100, she says, citing official Rosstat figures.

            Rozvorotnyeva and other Duma deputies say that the only solution is to update the 1996 law governing funerary services and the expansion of investment in this sector so that Russians can be laid to rest with dignity.