The Kremlin Wall Necropolis is the former national cemetery of the Soviet Union, located in Red Square in Moscow beside the Kremlin Wall. Burials there began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolsheviks who died during the Moscow Bolshevik Uprising were buried in mass graves. The improvised burial site gradually transformed into the centerpiece of military and civilian honor during the Second World War.
It is centered on Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–30. After the last mass burial in Red Square in 1921, funerals there were usually conducted as state ceremonies and reserved as the final honor for highly venerated politicians, military leaders, cosmonauts, and scientists. In 1925–1927, burials in the ground were stopped. Funerals were now conducted as burials of cremated ash in the Kremlin wall itself. Burials in the ground resumed with Mikhail Kalinin's funeral in 1946.
The Kremlin Wall was the de facto resting place of the Soviet Union's deceased national icons. Burial there was a status symbol among Soviet citizens. The practice of burying dignitaries at Red Square ended with the funeral of General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis was designated a protected landmark in 1974. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, citizens of the Russian Federation and many other former post-Soviet states continue to pay their respects to the national heroes at the Kremlin Wall.
Site
thumb|240px|As recently as 1800, the site of the Necropolis was a boggy [[moat spanned with stone bridges.]]
The eastern segment of the Kremlin Wall, and Red Square behind it, emerged on its present site in the 15th century, during the reign of Ivan III; the wall and the square were separated with a wide defensive moat filled with water diverted from the Neglinnaya River. The moat was lined with a secondary fortress wall, and spanned by three bridges connecting the Kremlin to the posad.
In 1707–08, Peter the Great, expecting a Swedish incursion deep into the Russian mainland, restored the moat around the Kremlin, cleared Red Square and built earthen fortifications around Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers. From 1776 to 1787, Matvey Kazakov built the Kremlin Senate that today provides a backdrop for the present-day Necropolis.
In the 18th century the unused, neglected fortifications deteriorated and were not properly repaired until the 1801 coronation of Alexander I. In one season the moat with bridges and adjacent buildings was replaced with a clean span of paved square. More reconstruction followed in the 19th century.
In 1812, the stretch of Kremlin Wall south from Senate Tower was badly damaged by the explosion at the Kremlin Arsenal set off by the retreating French troops. Nikolskaya Tower lost its gothic crown which was erected in 1807–1808. Arsenalnaya Tower developed deep cracks, leading to Joseph Bove proposing in 1813 the outright demolition of the towers to prevent the wall's imminent collapse.
Eventually, the main structures of the towers were deemed sound enough to be left in place, and were topped with new tented roofs designed by Bove. Peter's bastions were razed (creating space for nearby Alexander Garden and Theatre Square), The Kremlin Wall facing Red Square was rebuilt shallower than before, and acquired its present shape in the 1820s.
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Burials from 1917 to 1927
thumb|Red Square Mass Graves
Between the 1917 October Revolution and June 1927, the area outside the Kremlin Wall between the Senate and Nikolskaya towers was used for mass and individual burials of people who had to some extent contributed to the socialist revolution or the Bolshevik cause. This included ordinary soldiers killed in battle, victims of the Civil War, militia men fallen while fighting anti-Bolsheviks, noted Bolshevik politicians, and individuals associated with creating the new Soviet society. Burial plots of the 1917–1927 period are organized into 15 landscaped grave sites with the names of the buried inscribed on black marble tablets.
{|class="toccolours collapsible collapsed" width=100%
|-
!Table: List of burials (by grave) in Red Square ground, 1917–1927 John Reed incorrectly mentions 500. Two more victims were buried on the 14 and 17 of November. The youngest, Pavel Andreyev, was 14 years old. Of 240 pro-revolution martyrs of the October–November fighting, only 20, including 12 of the Dvintsy, are identified in the official listing of the Moscow Heritage Commission.
The largest single burial occurred in 1919. On 25 September, anarchists led by former socialist revolutionary Donat Cherepanov set off an explosion in a Communist Party school building in Leontyevsky Lane when Moscow party chief Vladimir Zagorsky was speaking to students. Twelve people, including Zagorsky, were killed and buried in a mass grave on Red Square.
Another unusual incident was the 24 July 1921 crash of the Aerowagon, an experimental and not fully tested high-speed railcar fitted with an aircraft engine and propeller traction. On the day of the crash, it delivered a group of Soviet and foreign communists led by Fyodor Sergeyev to the Tula collieries. On the return trip to Moscow, the aerowagon derailed at high speed, killing 7 of the 22 people on board, including its inventor Valerian Abakovsky. This was the last mass burial in the ground of Red Square.
Yakov Sverdlov, who died in 1919, allegedly from the Spanish flu, was buried in an individual grave near the Senate Tower. This area later included eleven more individual graves of top-ranking Soviet leaders (see Individual tombs section). Sverdlov was followed by John Reed, Inessa Armand, Viktor Nogin and other notable Bolsheviks and their foreign allies. Interment in the Kremlin Wall, apart from its location next to the seat of government, was also seen as a statement of atheism. Burial in the ground at a traditional cemetery next to a church was deemed inappropriate for a Bolshevik.
|-
|
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="100%"
! width="7%" |Year of<br />burial
! Name
|-
| 1918 || Civil war casualties: Ivan Smilga, Anton Khorak, Alexander Kvardakov, Alexander Kuchutenkov, Felix Barasevich, Alexander Gadomsky<br />Militiamen killed in street fights with Zamoskvorechye gangs: Semyon Pekalov, Yegor Shvyrkov, Nikolay Pryamikov
|-
| 1919 || Yakov Sverdlov<br />Civil war casualties: Anton Stankevich, Mark Mokryak, Heinrich Zweinek; twelve victims of Leontyevsky Lane bombing including Vladimir Zagorsky
|-
| 1920 || Inessa Armand, Yakov Bocharov, Vitaly Kovshov, Ivan Khomyakov, Augusta Aasen, John Reed, Mikhail Yanyshev, Vadim Podbelsky
|-
| 1921 || Ivan Rusakov, Lev Karpov, the seven Aerowagon crash victims (Valerian Abakovsky, Paul Freeman, Oskar Hellbrück, John William Hewlett, Ivan Konstantinov, Fyodor Sergeyev, Otto Strupat)
|-
| 1922 || Yefim Afonin, Ivan Zhilin
|-
| 1923 || Vatslav Vorovsky
|-
| 1924 || Vasily Likhachev, Victor Nogin
|-
| 1925 || Mikhail Frunze, Nariman Narimanov
|-
| 1926 || Felix Dzerzhinsky
|-
| 1927 || Pyotr Voykov
|-
|}
|}
Mausoleum, 1924–1961
240px|thumb|The first wooden Mausoleum in 1925
Vladimir Lenin died of a stroke on 21 January 1924. While his body lay in state in the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions, the Politburo discussed ways to preserve it, initially for forty days, despite objections from his widow and siblings. Joseph Stalin gave instructions to install a vault for Lenin's embalmed remains inside the Kremlin Wall. On 27 January, Lenin's casket was deposited in a temporary wooden vault, built in a single day.
The first proper Mausoleum was built of wood in March–July 1924 and officially opened on August 1. Foreign visitors were allowed inside on August 3. In April 1926, a contest to design and build a new permanent Mausoleum was announced. In July 1929, construction of Alexey Shchusev's winning design began and was completed in sixteen months. The Mausoleum has since functioned as a government reviewing stand during public parades.
The glass sarcophagus of Lenin's tomb was twice vandalized by visitors, in 1959 and 1969, leading to installation of a bulletproof glass shell. It was bombed twice, in 1963, when the terrorist was the sole victim, and in 1973, when an explosion killed the terrorist and two bystanders.
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has petitioned Russia to dismantle the cult of personality and bury Lenin's body, seeking to "rid Red Square of the remains of the main persecutor and executioner of the 20th century," although the Russian Orthodox Church demurs.
As of 2025, Lenin's body remains in the Mausoleum, excluding the period of evacuation to Tyumen during 1941–1945.
Stalin's body
thumb|180px|The grave of [[Joseph Stalin]]
Two days after Joseph Stalin's death, the Politburo decreed that his remains be placed on display in the Mausoleum. In November 1953, it officially reopened with Lenin and Stalin side by side. A March 1953 plan, never implemented, called for the construction of a Pantheon in which the bodies of Lenin and Stalin would be eventually relocated.
In 1961, following the de-Stalinization of the Khrushchev Thaw, removal of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum was unanimously sanctioned by the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party. On 31 October 1961, the Mausoleum was quickly covered with plywood. Red Square was closed as a matter of routine, in preparation for the 7 November parade. Stalin's remains were quickly re-interred in a deep grave, lined with concrete blocks, behind the Mausoleum. The ceremony was attended only by the state commission led by Nikolay Shvernik. was installed in June 1970.
Ashes, 1925–1984
thumb|240px|An early burial of cremated ash in the wall
thumb|240px|Section of the Kremlin Wall with urn burials ([[Miron Vladimirov|Vladimirov, Ruthenberg, MacManus, Landler, Haywood)]]
thumb|240px|[[Fyodor Yurchikhin laying flowers at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, 2010]]
The first person to be cremated and interred in an urn in the Kremlin Wall, 45-year-old former People's Commissar of Finance Miron Vladimirov, died in Italy in March 1925. The procedure for dealing with human remains in an urn was still unfamiliar at the time, and Vladimirov's urn was carried to his grave in an ordinary coffin.
Between 1925 and the opening of the Donskoye Cemetery crematorium in October 1927, interments in the wall and burials in the ground coexisted together. The wall was preferred for foreign dignitaries of the Comintern, such as Jenő Landler, Bill Haywood, Arthur MacManus, Charles Ruthenberg.
On 26 April 1967, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died in the crash of his Soyuz 1 space capsule, was given a state funeral in Moscow, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Komarov was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin, for the second time, and the order of Hero of the Soviet Union.
The last person to be buried in the Kremlin Wall was Minister of Defence Dmitriy Ustinov, in December 1984.
{|class="toccolours collapsible collapsed" width=100%
|-
!Table: List of interments in the Kremlin Wall, 1925–1984
|-
|
{| class="wikitable sortable" width="100%"
! width="7%" |Year of<br />burial
! Number of<br /> burials
! Names
|-
| 1925||1||Miron Vladimirov
|-
| 1926||1||Leonid Krasin
|-
| 1927||2||Arthur MacManus, Charles Ruthenberg
|-
| 1928||4||Bill Haywood, Jenő Landler, Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, Alexander Tsyurupa
|-
| 1929||1||Ivan Lepse
|-
| 1931||2||Mikhail Mikhailov-Ivanov, Vladimir Triandafillov
|-
| 1932||5||Kuprian Kirkizh, Yuri Larin, Mikhail Pokrovsky, Alexander Stopani, Pyotr Stuchka
|-
| 1933||8||Pyotr Baranov, Abram Goltzman, Sergey Gusev, Sen Katayama, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mikhail Olminsky, Alexey Svidersky, Clara Zetkin
|-
| 1934||5||Osoaviakhim-1 crew (Pavel Fedoseenko, Ilya Usyskin, Andrey Vasenko), Valerian Dovgalevsky, Sergey Kirov, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, Aleksandr Shteyngart
|-
| 1935||3||Valerian Kuybyshev, Pyotr Smidovich, Ivan Tovstukha
|-
| 1936||4||Maxim Gorky, Fritz Heckert, Sergei Kamenev, Alexander Karpinsky
|-
| 1937||2||Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze, Maria Ulyanova
|-
| 1938||1||Valery Chkalov
|-
| 1939||3||Nadezhda Krupskaya, Polina Osipenko, Anatoly Serov
|-
| 1943||4||Grigory Kravchenko, Konstantin Pamfilov, Marina Raskova, Yemelyan Yaroslavsky
|-
| 1944||1||Klavdiya Nikolayeva
|-
| 1945||2||Boris Shaposhnikov, Aleksandr Shcherbakov
|-
| 1946||1||Vladimir Potemkin
|-
| 1947||2||Vasily Vakhrushev, Rosalia Zemlyachka
|-
| 1949||1||Fyodor Tolbukhin
|-
| 1951||2||Mikhail Vladimirsky, Aleksandr Yefremov
|-
| 1953||1||Lev Mekhlis
|-
| 1954||3||Matvey Shkiryatov, Anatoly Kuzmin, Andrei Vyshinsky
|-
| 1955||1||Leonid Govorov
|-
| 1956||4||Pavel Yudin, Ivan Likhachev, Ivan Nosenko, Avraami Zavenyagin
|-
| 1957||2||Vyacheslav Malyshev, Sergey Zhuk
|-
| 1958||2||Grigory Petrovsky, Ivan Tevosian
|-
| 1959||1||Gleb Krzhizhanovsky
|-
| 1960||2||Igor Kurchatov, Mitrofan Nedelin
|-
| 1961||1||Mikhail Khrunichev
|-
| 1962||3||Boris Vannikov, Andrey Khrulyov, Aleksei Antonov
|-
| 1963||2||Nikolai Dygay, Vladimir Kucherenko
|-
| 1964||2||Otto Wille Kuusinen, Sergey Biryuzov
|-
| 1965||2||Frol Kozlov, Sergei Kurashov.
|-
| 1966||4||Sergei Korolyov, Alexander Rudakov, Nikolai Ignatov, Elena Stasova
|-
| 1967||2||Vladimir Komarov, Rodion Malinovsky
|-
| 1968||6||Nikolai Voronov, Yuri Gagarin, Vladimir Seryogin, Vasily Sokolovsky, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Kirill Meretskov
|-
| 1970||3||Semyon Timoshenko, Andrey Yeryomenko, Nikolai Shvernik
|-
| 1971||1||Soyuz 11 crew (Georgy Dobrovolsky, Viktor Patsayev, Vladislav Volkov)
|-
| 1972||2|| Matvey Zakharov, Nikolay Krylov
|-
| 1973||1||Ivan Konev
|-
| 1974||1||Georgy Zhukov
|-
| 1976||2||Andrei Grechko, Ivan Yakubovsky
|-
| 1977||1||Aleksandr Vasilevsky
|-
| 1978||2||Mstislav Keldysh, Fyodor Kulakov
|-
| 1980||1||Alexei Kosygin
|-
| 1982||1||Ivan Bagramyan
|-
| 1983||1||Arvīds Pelše
|-
| 1984||2||Leonid Kostandov, Dmitry Ustinov
|-
|}
|}
Individual tombs, 1919–1985
alt=Kremlin Wall Necropolis & action, Moscow, Russia|thumb|360x360px|Kremlin Wall Necropolis and action, Moscow, Russia
The row of individual tombs behind the Mausoleum began to acquire its present shape after the end of World War II. Sergei Merkurov created the first five tombs, for the recently deceased Mikhail Kalinin and Andrey Zhdanov, as well as for Yakov Sverdlov, Mikhail Frunze and Felix Dzerzhinsky who had died decades earlier. Grey granite stands that separate Red Square from the wall were built in the same period. In 1947 Merkurov proposed rebuilding the Mausoleum into a sort of "Pergamon Altar" that would become a foreground to a statue of Stalin, placed atop Senatskaya tower. Dmitry Chechulin, Vera Mukhina and others spoke against the proposal and it was soon dropped.
There are twelve individual tombs. All, including the four burials of the 1980s, are shaped similar to the canonical Merkurov's model. All twelve are considered to have died of natural causes, although some, such as Mikhail Frunze, had unusual circumstances associated with their deaths. Konstantin Chernenko, who died in March 1985, became the last person to be buried on Red Square. Former head of state Andrei Gromyko, who died in July 1989, was offered burial in the Necropolis near his predecessors, but was eventually buried at the Novodevichy cemetery at the request of his family.
The Kremlin Wall and the stands erected in the 1940s were traditionally separated with a line of blue spruce (Picea pungens), a tree not occurring naturally in Russia. In August–September 2007 the aging trees, with few exceptions, were cut down and replaced with young trees.
{|class="toccolours collapsible collapsed" width=100%
|-
!Table: List of individual tombs on Red Square, 1946–1985
|-
|
{|class="wikitable sortable" width=100%
! width=7%|Year of<br />burial
! Name of the deceased
! Sculptor of the monument
|-
| 1919||Yakov Sverdlov||Sergei Merkurov, 1946
|-
| 1925||Mikhail Frunze||Sergei Merkurov, 1946
|-
| 1926||Felix Dzerzhinsky||Sergei Merkurov, 1946
|-
| 1946||Mikhail Kalinin||Sergei Merkurov, 1946
|-
| 1948||Andrei Zhdanov||Sergei Merkurov, 1948
|-
| 1961||Joseph Stalin (died 1953) ||Nikolai Tomsky, 1970
|-
| 1969||Kliment Voroshilov|| Nikolai Bratsun, 1970
|-
| 1973||Semyon Budyonny||Nikolai Tomsky, 1975
|-
| 1982||Mikhail Suslov||Iulian Rukavishnikov, 1983
|-
| 1982||Leonid Brezhnev||Iulian Rukavishnikov, 1983 After the climax of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, President Boris Yeltsin removed the honor guard from the Mausoleum (former Post no.1, see Kremlin Regiment) and voiced his opinion that Lenin should eventually be buried in the ground. The decision was supported by the Public Committee of Democratic Organisations. In 1997, he reiterated the claim to bury Lenin.
Proposals to remove the Necropolis from Red Square altogether met with far more public opposition and did not come to fruition. Despite the Russian government's efforts to relocate Lenin's tomb and Soviet monuments from the Kremlin, support of both Lenin and the Soviet Union remained steadfast among the Russian populace. Public opinion on preserving the remains of Lenin in their embalmed state was split but leaned towards burial.
A late 2008 VTsIOM poll found that 66% of the respondents supported a funeral in a traditional cemetery, including 28% of those who believed that the funeral should be postponed until the communist generation passes away. 25% of the respondents thought the body should be preserved in the Mausoleum. In October 2005, 51% of respondents had expressed support for a funeral and 40% for preservation.
See also
- Federal Military Memorial Cemetery
- List of national cemeteries by country
- Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Moscow)