In Eastern Europe , exhumed bodies have been used as symbols by political parties , as anthropologist Katherine Verdery explains in her forthcoming book , The Political Lives of Dead Bodies in the Postsocialist Transformation . For instance , liberal reform parties have disinterred Communist leaders from their mausoleums while reburying pre-Communist nationalist heroes in elaborate sarcophagi .
Verdery researched political traditions in Eastern Europe in the 1890 's .