"A Funeral for Ten Thousand Rubles?": How the State Unsuccessfully "Fights" the Mafia

In March 2024, State Duma deputies adopted amendments to the law "On burial and funeral business". They affected both financial and organizational issues related to the funeral of the deceased.

After the amendments were approved by the president in April 2024, most of the document's provisions entered into force on January 1, 2025.

"The funeral reform in the country has been long overdue, and many problematic issues are reflected in the law. Compared to the original version, the size of the basic social benefit for burial has almost doubled. In the old version of the law, its maximum size was 4,000 rubles with subsequent annual indexation from February 1, in the new version it is already 7,793.48 rubles with indexation within the same time frame. But this change is not the main one," lawyer Anna Smirnova told NI.

According to her, the main adjustments affected the procedure for assigning social funeral benefits and some other issues.

Perhaps the main innovation in organizing funerals since 2025 is that now you can receive a guaranteed list of burial services only on the basis of a special extract, which is issued through the social fund.

"From now on, issuing an extract on the organization of a funeral is considered a state service. Only a specialized organization can conduct the burial itself, and you can now get an extract to contact this organization not only in person, but also online - through the "Gosuslugi" portal. Previously, there was no such rule," the interlocutor of "NI" explained.

When a person dies, the state guarantees a minimum of funeral services at the expense of the budget.

It includes free preparation of documents required for burial, provision and delivery of a coffin and ritual items required for burial, transportation of the body or remains of the deceased to a cemetery or crematorium, as well as the burial itself or cremation with subsequent issuance of an urn with ashes.

At the same time, it is practically impossible to obtain a “free funeral” in the Russian Federation if the deceased has relatives.

But if a person has no family or close people, then the burial of the body is handled by a specialized service, which is compensated from the budget for the minimum set of funeral services stipulated by law, costing 7,793.48 rubles .

What “free graves” at the expense of the budget look like can be seen at any unpopular cemetery.

According to funeral agencies, today the real cost of a funeral is dozens of times higher than the legally stated cost. Depending on the region, it ranges from 50 to 70 thousand rubles. In "rich" regions, seven thousand rubles are asked for just digging a grave. At the same time, there is no upper limit on the cost of a burial.

As Kommersant notes, over the past year, due to the sharp rise in the price of coffins, Russians have begun to economize on funerals. Instead of traditional burial in the ground, they increasingly choose cremation, which costs almost half as much.

In large cities, cremation is preferred by up to 70% of clients. Some cities do not have their own crematoriums. But even taking into account the transportation of the deceased's body to another region, this method is cheaper. This has led to the emergence of "funeral migration" in Russia.

"Six months ago, my close friend Marina died of cancer. She was alone, had no children or relatives. I was organizing the funeral. She knew that she would not be able to overcome the disease. Marina found out all the prices in advance and gave instructions regarding her funeral. In order not to inconvenience anyone financially, she asked to be cremated, since it is much cheaper. We do not have a crematorium in Kostroma - only in Yaroslavl. I fulfilled her last will," Kostroma resident Elena Serkova told NI.

The media is increasingly reporting stories from the regions where people bury their loved ones in remote and abandoned cemeteries because they cannot afford the services of funeral agencies.

Those citizens who, for various reasons, are not ready to cremate their deceased relatives, often have a problem with choosing places in cemeteries. There is not enough land in many cities that is properly registered for burials: sanitary standards for organizing cemeteries are quite strict, and it is not easy to comply with them.

Many people try to "stake out" a place in the cemetery for a family burial in advance; this is permitted by law. But many people have problems using these plots.

Federal legislators have delegated the issue of allocating land for burials to the local level. Despite the appearance of registers of free plots for burials, this work is not being actively carried out everywhere. As a result, conflicts arise, leading to litigation and even criminal cases.

As the head of the Kostroma public organization “ Council of Soldiers’ Mothers ” Lyudmila Khokhlova told “NI”, she had to face a catastrophic situation.

According to her, cemetery workers illegally buried a stranger in the grave of her son, who died while serving in the army. The grief-stricken mother had to go through seven circles of hell to achieve the exhumation and reburial of the stranger from the family grave.

And recently a new grief befell the woman: her daughter died tragically. In order to bury her sister with her brother, the mother, having documents and an electronic burial passport in hand, contacted the municipal cemetery administration, but was refused.

The cemetery workers told her that the previously paid burial passport issued to her allegedly does not apply to the entire family grave, but only to the part of the fence where her son lies. And for the second, empty part, they demanded "additional payment."

"Our undertakers started openly extorting money for a place in the cemetery. The deadline for the farewell was pressing, so I had to pay them. When I went to the mayor's office to complain, I received the answer: "Was the money transferred in cash, not in front of cameras? Then you won't be able to prove anything." The situation is, of course, outrageous. Perhaps you should complain not to the mayor's office, but to the prosecutor's office," said Lyudmila Khokhlova.

As NI previously reported, the funeral business continues to be one of the most corrupt areas.

Despite the efforts of the authorities and security forces , crime in the funeral industry is thriving in many regions of the country.

In Kurgan, for example, an underground crematorium was discovered where medical waste, amputated human organs and animal corpses were secretly burned at night.

In Samara, an illegal morgue was found in one of the garages, where people's bodies were illegally stored in refrigerators for food products under the signs "meat" and "ice cream".

And in Kostroma, officials were caught not only in illegally trading land in a municipal cemetery, but also in secretly planting severed human organs in coffins " unclaimed " lonely old people who died in nursing homes.

As practice shows, the issue of protecting citizens from abuses in the funeral industry, despite the changes made to the laws, has not yet been fully resolved.

You can read more about the peculiarities of the Russians’ fight against the “cemetery mafia” in the material from Novye Izvestia.