Kremlin Wall Necropolis

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. This improvised burial site gradually transformed into the centerpiece of military and civilian honor during the Second World War. Centered on Lenin's Mausoleum, the Necropolis was initially built from 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 reserved as the final honor for highly venerated politicians, military leaders, cosmonauts, and scientists. Sometime between 1925 and 1927, burials in the ground stopped, replaced by the interment of cremains in the Kremlin wall itself. Burials in the ground resumed with Mikhail Kalinin's funeral in 1946. The Kremlin Wall is the de facto resting place of the Soviet Union's deceased national icons. Burial there was a status symbol among Soviet citizens, and even since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, citizens of the Russian Federation and many other former post-Soviet states continue to pay their respects to Soviet national heroes at the Kremlin Wall. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis was designated a protected landmark in 1974, and the practice of burying d

Cemetery data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).