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. 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.