Paper short abstract:

The ideological changes that followed the post-WWII political changes resulted in the reform of Czechoslovak funeral practices. The presentation stresses the importance of cremation and committees for civil issues in the propagation of secular (socialist) funeral ceremonies in Czechoslovakia.

Paper long abstract:

The Communist era in Czechoslovakia (1948-1989) was characterised by a huge expansion in the popularity of cremation and a significant increase in the proportion of secular funerals. By the end of the 1980s, more than half of the dead were being cremated, and three-fifths of funerals were civil ceremonies. The presentation shows how cremation spread from 1950 onwards hand-in-hand with the new socialist version of the civil funeral ceremony. The author stresses the role of ideology as well as so-called committees for civil issues in the funeral reform process. Three data sources were used: statistics on cremation; in-depth interviews with funeral professionals and former members of committees for civil issues who conducted funerals in the time period under study, and handbooks produced for funeral organisers and civil funeral orators concerning the funeral speech and acceptable forms of the civil (socialist) funeral ceremony. The author argues that the widespread use of cremation helped to disseminate new secular forms of the funeral ceremony hand-in-hand with the work of the committees for civil issues that created them, and played a key role in establishing the prominent position of civil funerals in today’s Czech Republic. The significant differences in terms of the success of efforts towards funeral reform between the various countries of the former Eastern bloc were due principally to their differing cultural histories and attitudes towards both religion and cremation, and the availability of the infrastructure required for conducting civil funerals.