Kremlin Wall Necropolis

The Kremlin Wall Necropolis is the Soviet Union's state cemetery, set into and in front of the Kremlin wall on the eastern side of Red Square. It opened in 1917 with mass graves of fighters killed in the October fighting and grew into the most prestigious burial place in the USSR. Niches in the wall hold urns for figures including Yuri Gagarin, Sergei Korolev and Konstantin Chernenko, while individual graves behind contain Stalin, Brezhnev and Andropov. Foreign communists like Clara Zetkin and American journalist John Reed are also buried here. The final burial took place in 1985; today the necropolis remains a heavily visited memorial, fully visible from Red Square.