Editing Red Square (section)

=== Kremlin Wall Necropolis ===
{{main|Kremlin Wall Necropolis}}
Right behind Lenin's Mausoleum, along the walls of the Kremlin, there is a large [[Ehrengrab|cemetery of honour]]. This was created in November 1917, when around 250 soldiers had fallen during the [[October Revolution]] in Moscow. They found their final resting place in two collective graves near the Senate tower. The tradition of burying revolutionaries on Red Square, the ultimate symbol of the Bolshevik Revolution, continued immediately: as early as the spring of 1919, Lenin's leading comrade [[Yakov Sverdlov]] was buried on the Kremlin wall and received with Lenin's Mausoleum, which was completed in 1930 the burial place is its central element. Since then, the mausoleum and the surrounding cemetery have been collectively referred to as the Revolutionary Necropolis.

From the 1920s to the 1980s, hundreds of people were buried in Red Square who were considered to be the most deserving sons and daughters of the Soviet Union, that is, revolutionaries, [[heroes of the Soviet Union]], statesmen and military leaders of the highest order. The burial in the Kremlin wall necropolis was in fact considered the highest posthumous honour that was reserved for only a few. A total of twelve statesmen; including Sverdlov, [[Mikhail Kalinin]], [[Kliment Voroshilov]], [[Leonid Brezhnev]] and Stalin, who was laid out in the mausoleum until 1961, were buried in individual graves, and a large number of the revolutionaries rest here in a total of 15 collective graves. Most of the burials here, however, are niches in the Kremlin wall, in which over 100 [[urn]]s with the remains of revolutionaries, heroes or main ideologues are walled. The people whose urns are in the Kremlin wall include, among others, Lenin's companion [[Nadezhda Krupskaya]], the first cosmonaut [[Yuri Gagarin]], the revolutionary writer [[Maxim Gorky]], the nuclear weapon developer [[Igor Kurchatov]], but also foreign politicians [[Clara Zetkin]] and [[Fritz Heckert]].

The necropolis on the Kremlin wall has been a memorial since 1974. After the 1985 funeral of the head of state [[Konstantin Chernenko]], there have been no further burials. The tombs of the necropolis can now be visited at the same time as the mausoleum.