Burials in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution were buried in mass graves on Red Square. It is centered on both sides of Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–1930. After the last mass burial made in 1921, funerals on Red Square were usually conducted as state ceremonies and reserved as the last honor for the notable 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 only resumed with Mikhail Kalinin's funeral in 1946. The practice of burying dignitaries on Red Square ended with the funeral of Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis was designated a protected landmark in 1974.
| Timeline of burials on Red Square |
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Read more about Kremlin Wall Necropolis: The Site, Mass Graves of 1917, Graves of 1918-1927, The Mausoleum, 1924–1961, Burial in The Kremlin Wall, 1925–1984, Individual Tombs, 1948–1985, Debate and Preservation
Famous quotes containing the words kremlin and/or wall:
“Next week Reagan will probably announce that American scientists have discovered that the entire U.S. agricultural surplus can be compacted into a giant tomato one thousand miles across, which will be suspended above the Kremlin from a cluster of U.S. satellites flying in geosynchronous orbit. At the first sign of trouble the satellites will drop the tomato on the Kremlin, drowning the fractious Muscovites in ketchup.”
—Alexander Cockburn (b. 1941)
“I discovered
the colors in the wall that woke
when spray from the hose
played on its pocks and warts....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)