Six volunteers grapple with a burial casket which needs to be removed from an apartment near Moscow’s Red Square and delivered to the House of Composers. The route will be by way of lanes and alleys, since all of the city’s main thoroughfares have given over to mayhem. The two-kilometre journey by foot will take them five hours. It is a tiresome task. Often, their burden must be clumsily deposited onto the frozen ground to enable them to rest. The mass grief for Joseph Stalin cannot be constrained by police blockades. The thrust and shove of unprecedented crowds has had…