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110-698: The Kremlin Wall was the de facto resting place of the Soviet Union's deceased national icons. Burial there was a status symbol among Soviet citizens. The practice of burying dignitaries at Red Square ended with the funeral of General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. The Kremlin Wall Necropolis was designated a protected landmark in 1974. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, citizens of

220-605: A Pantheon in which the bodies of Lenin and Stalin would be eventually relocated. Eight years later, following the de-Stalinization of the Khrushchev Thaw , removal of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum was unanimously sanctioned by the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party . On 31 October 1961, the Mausoleum was quickly covered with plywood. Red Square itself was closed as a matter of routine, in preparation for

330-910: A far-left faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Bolshevik party, formally established in 1912, seized power in Russia in the October Revolution of 1917, and was later renamed the Russian Communist Party, All-Union Communist Party, and Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The party's ideology, based on Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist principles,

440-904: A propagandist . In 1933 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Novosyolovsky District Party Committee. A few years later he was promoted to head of the same department in Uyarsk Raykom. Chernenko steadily rose through the Party ranks, becoming the Director of the Krasnoyarsk House of Party Enlightenment before being named Deputy Head of the Agitprop Department of Krasnoyarsk's Territorial Committee in 1939. In

550-601: A trade deal with China . Despite calls for renewed détente , Chernenko did little to prevent the escalation of the Cold War with the United States. For example, in 1984 the Soviet Union prevented a visit to West Germany by East German leader Erich Honecker . However, in late autumn of 1984, the U.S. and the Soviet Union did agree to resume arms control talks in early 1985. In November 1984 Chernenko met with Britain's Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock . In 1980

660-409: A backdrop for the present-day Necropolis. Throughout the 18th century the unused, neglected fortifications deteriorated and were not properly repaired until the 1801 coronation of Alexander I . In one season the moat with bridges and adjacent buildings was replaced with a clean span of paved square. More reconstruction followed in the 19th century. The stretch of Kremlin wall south from Senate Tower

770-471: A ballot box to vote. On 28 February 1985, Chernenko appeared once more on television to receive parliamentary credentials and read out a brief statement on his electoral victory: "the election campaign is over and now it is time to carry out the tasks set for us by the voters and the Communists who have spoken out". Emphysema and the associated lung and heart damage worsened significantly for Chernenko in

880-567: A bust and was marked only by a tablet with the name I.V. Stalin and dates of birth and death". The existing tomb of Stalin carved by Nikolai Tomsky was installed in June 1970. The first person to be cremated and interred in an urn in the Kremlin wall, 45-year-old former People's Commissar of Finance Miron Vladimirov , died in Italy in March 1925. The procedure for dealing with human remains in an urn

990-465: A core group of professional revolutionaries who would devote their full time and energy towards developing the party into an organization capable of leading a successful proletarian revolution against the Tsarist autocracy . The base of active and experienced members would be the recruiting ground for this professional core. Sympathizers would be left outside and the party would be organised based on

1100-555: A fruit garden around the Mausoleum, but the proposal was rejected in fear of fruit flies . Public discussion on closing the Mausoleum emerged shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union , with opinions ranging from simply burying Lenin in Saint Petersburg as he had requested, to taking the mummy on a commercial world tour. After the climax of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis , President Boris Yeltsin removed

1210-563: A higher budget. One of the common methods the Bolsheviks used was committing bank robberies, one of which, in 1907, resulted in the party getting over 250,000 roubles, which is the equivalent of about $ 125,000. Bolsheviks were in constant need of money because Lenin practised his beliefs, expressed in his writings, that revolutions must be led by individuals who devote their entire lives to the cause. As compensation, he rewarded them with salaries for their sacrifice and dedication. This measure

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1320-633: A member of the commission that revised the Soviet Constitution in 1977. In 1979 he took part in the Vienna arms limitation talks . After Brezhnev's death in November 1982, there was speculation that the position of General Secretary would fall to Chernenko, but he was unable to rally enough support for his candidacy within the Party. Ultimately, KGB chief Yuri Andropov , who had been more mindful of Brezhnev's failing health, eventually won

1430-461: A more organized revolutionary work. After the proposed revolution had successfully overthrown the Russian autocracy, this strong leadership would relinquish power and allow a Socialist party to fully develop within the principles of democratic centralism . Lenin said that if professional revolutionaries did not maintain influence over the fight of the workers, then that fight would steer away from

1540-577: A rigid political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution. This idea was met with opposition from once close allies, including Martov, Plekhanov , Vera Zasulich , Leon Trotsky , and Pavel Axelrod . Plekhanov and Lenin's major dispute arose addressing the topic of nationalizing land or leaving it for private use. Lenin wanted to nationalize to aid in collectivization , whereas Plekhanov thought worker motivation would remain higher if individuals were able to maintain their own property. Those who opposed Lenin and wanted to continue on

1650-688: A separate Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists ) and then again after 1917. The Bolsheviks ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The Bolsheviks, or Reds , came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the 1917 Russian Revolution , and founded the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). With the Reds defeating the Whites and others during

1760-598: A separate party, convincing pro-Bolshevik workers within Russia to follow suit proved difficult. When the first meeting of the Fourth Duma was convened in late 1912, only one out of six Bolshevik deputies, Matvei Muranov (another one, Roman Malinovsky , was later exposed as an Okhrana agent), voted on 15 December 1912 to break from the Menshevik faction within the Duma. The Bolshevik leadership eventually prevailed, and

1870-415: A son, Vladimir. In 2015 archival documents were published, according to which Chernenko had many more wives, and many more children with them; this circumstance, perhaps, was the reason for the slowing of Chernenko's career growth in the 1940s. Bolshevik The Bolsheviks ( Russian : большевики , bolsheviki ; from большинство, bolshinstvo , 'majority'), led by Vladimir Lenin , were

1980-677: A televised election rally in Kuibyshev Borough of northeast Moscow, where the General Secretary stood as candidate for the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR , when Politburo member Viktor Grishin revealed that the General Secretary was absent in accordance with doctors' advice. Two days later, in a televised scene that shocked the nation, Grishin dragged the terminally ill Chernenko from his hospital bed to

2090-515: A tentative agreement, and one of its provisions was to make Trotsky's Vienna-based Pravda , a party-financed central organ. Kamenev, Trotsky's brother-in-law who was with the Bolsheviks, was added to the editorial board; but the unification attempts failed in August 1910 when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations . The factions permanently broke relations in January 1912 after

2200-464: A viewpoint that Bogdanov had been exploring and developing as Empiriomonism . Having worked as co-editor with Plekhanov, on Zarya , Lenin had come to agree with the Valentinov's rejection of Bogdanov's Empiriomonism. With the defeat of the revolution in mid-1907 and the adoption of a new, highly restrictive election law, the Bolsheviks began debating whether to boycott the new parliament known as

2310-537: Is known as Bolshevism . The origin of the split was Lenin's support for a smaller party of professional revolutionaries, as opposed to the Menshevik desire for a broad party membership. The influence of the factions fluctuated in the years up to 1912, when the RSDLP formally split into two parties. The Bolsheviks' political philosophy was based on the Leninist principles of vanguardism and democratic centralism . After

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2420-730: The Allied powers in order to resolve her internal conflict. Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, Lenin's assumptions were incorrect. Despite his and the party's attempts to push for a civil war through involvement in two conferences in 1915 and 1916 in Switzerland, the Bolsheviks were in the minority in calling for a ceasefire by the Imperial Russian Army in World War I. Although the Bolshevik leadership had decided to form

2530-711: The February Revolution of 1917, Lenin returned to Russia and issued his April Theses , which called for "no support for the Provisional Government " and "all power to the soviets ". In the summer of 1917, especially after the July Days and Kornilov affair , large numbers of radicalized workers joined the Bolsheviks, which planned the October Revolution which overthrew the government. The party initially governed in coalition with

2640-714: The Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , but increasingly centralized power and suppressed opposition during the Russian Civil War , and after 1921 became the sole legal party in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union . Under Joseph Stalin 's leadership, the party became linked to his policies of " socialism in one country ", rapid industrialization, collectivized agriculture, and centralized state control. Lenin's political pamphlet What Is to Be Done? , written in 1901, helped to precipitate

2750-732: The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic . There, he met and won the confidence of Leonid Brezhnev , the first secretary of the Moldavian branch of the Communist Party from 1950 to 1952 and future leader of the Soviet Union. Chernenko followed Brezhnev in 1956 to fill a similar propaganda post in the CPSU Central Committee in Moscow. In 1960 after Brezhnev was named chairman of the Presidium of

2860-652: The Red Guards buried the victims of a terrorist bombing in Dorogomilovo . In the same January White Guards fired on a pro-Bolshevik street rally; the eight victims were also buried under the Kremlin wall. The largest single burial occurred in 1919. On 25 September, anarchists led by former socialist revolutionary Donat Cherepanov set off an explosion in a Communist Party school building in Leontyevsky Lane when Moscow party chief Vladimir Zagorsky

2970-535: The Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union (USSR) in December 1922. The average party member was very young: in 1907, 22% of Bolsheviks were under 20 years of age; 37% were 20–24 years of age; and 16% were 25–29 years of age. By 1905, 62% of the members were industrial workers (3% of the population in 1897). Twenty-two percent of Bolsheviks were gentry (1.7% of

3080-620: The Russian Federation and many other former post-Soviet states continue to pay their respects to the national heroes at the Kremlin Wall. The eastern segment of the Kremlin wall, and Red Square behind it, emerged on its present site in the 15th century, during the reign of Ivan III ; the wall and the square were separated with a wide defensive moat filled with water diverted from the Neglinnaya River . The moat

3190-573: The Russian Orthodox Church , was preferred to burial in a coffin and favored by Lenin and Trotsky – though Lenin expressed the wish to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg. The new government had sponsored the construction of crematoria since 1919, but the first burial of cremated remains in a niche in the wall did not take place until 1925. Vladimir Lenin died of a stroke on 21 January 1924. While his body lay in state in

3300-703: The Siberian village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District , Krasnoyarsk Krai ) on 24 September 1911. Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1929. By 1931 he became a full member of the ruling Communist Party. From 1930 to 1933, he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet–Chinese border. After completing his military service, he returned to Krasnoyarsk as

3410-758: The Third Duma . Lenin, Grigory Zinoviev , Lev Kamenev , and others argued for participating in the Duma while Bogdanov, Anatoly Lunacharsky , Mikhail Pokrovsky , and others argued that the social democratic faction in the Duma should be recalled. The latter became known as " recallists " ( Russian : otzovists ). A smaller group within the Bolshevik faction demanded that the RSDLP Central Committee should give its sometimes unruly Duma faction an ultimatum, demanding complete subordination to all party decisions. This group became known as " ultimatists " and

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3520-658: The Tula collieries , but on the return trip to Moscow, the aerowagon derailed at high speed, killing 7 of the 22 people on board, including its inventor Valerian Abakovsky . This was the last mass burial in the ground of Red Square. Yakov Sverdlov , who died in 1919, allegedly from the Spanish flu , was buried in an individual grave near the Senate tower. This area would later include eleven more individual graves of top-ranking Soviet leaders (see Individual tombs section). Sverdlov

3630-547: The eulogy . Chernenko represented a return to the policies of the late Brezhnev era. Nevertheless, he supported a greater role for the labour unions , and reform in education and propaganda . The one major personnel change Chernenko made was the dismissal of the Chief of the General Staff , Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov . Ogarkov was subsequently replaced by Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev . In foreign policy , he negotiated

3740-558: The honor guard from the Mausoleum (former Post no.1 , see Kremlin Regiment ) and voiced his opinion that Lenin should eventually be buried in the ground. The decision was supported by the Public Committee of Democratic Organisations. By 1995, Yeltsin had "moved to the nationalist center", using the Mausoleum as a government stand like previous state leaders; in 1997, he reiterated the claim to bury Lenin. Proposals to remove

3850-456: The socialist mode of production path towards complete socialism and disagreed with his strict party membership guidelines became known as "softs" while Lenin supporters became known as "hards". Some of the factionalism could be attributed to Lenin's steadfast belief in his own opinion and what was described by Plekhanov as Lenin's inability to "bear opinions which were contrary to his own" and loyalty to his own self-envisioned utopia . Lenin

3960-414: The 2nd Congress vote, Lenin's faction won votes on the majority of important issues, and soon came to be known as Bolsheviks , from the Russian bolshinstvo , 'majority'. Likewise, Martov's group came to be known as Mensheviks , from menshinstvo , 'minority'. However, Martov's supporters won the vote concerning the question of party membership, and neither Lenin nor Martov had a firm majority throughout

4070-861: The 40th Victory Day Parade, the city of Volgograd would be renamed to Stalingrad. In his letter to Stalin 's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva , he wrote about "the upcoming restoration of justice in relation to the memory and heritage of I.V. Stalin", which presumably referred to Stalin's political rehabilitation. Chernenko started smoking at the age of nine, and he was always known to be a heavy smoker as an adult. Long before his election as general secretary, he had developed emphysema and right-sided heart failure . In 1983 he had been absent from his duties for three months due to bronchitis , pleurisy and pneumonia . Historian John Lewis Gaddis described him as "an enfeebled geriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not" when he succeeded Andropov in 1984. In early 1984 Chernenko

4180-405: The 7 November parade. Stalin's remains were quickly re-interred in a deep grave, lined with concrete blocks, behind the Mausoleum; the ceremony was attended only by the state commission led by Nikolay Shvernik. Harold Skilling , who visited the Mausoleum in November of the same year, noted that "everyone was so curious to see the new grave of Stalin... Unlike others, his [grave] was not yet graced by

4290-539: The Bolsheviks formed their own Duma faction in September 1913. One final difference between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was how ferocious and tenacious the Bolshevik party was in order to achieve its goals, although Lenin was open minded to retreating from political ideals if he saw the guarantee of long-term gains benefiting the party. This practice was seen in the party's trying to recruit peasants and uneducated workers by promising them how glorious life would be after

4400-479: The Bolsheviks organised a Bolsheviks-only Prague Party Conference and formally expelled Mensheviks and recallists from the party. As a result, they ceased to be a faction in the RSDLP and instead declared themselves an independent party, called Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) – or RSDLP(b). Unofficially, the party has been referred to as the Bolshevik Party. Throughout the 20th century,

4510-516: The Bolsheviks' split from the Mensheviks . In Germany , the book was published in 1902, but in Russia , strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the main points of Lenin's writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by a strong, professional leadership with deep dedication to Marxist theoretical principles and an organization that spanned through the whole of Russia, abandoning what Lenin called "artisanal work" towards

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4620-405: The Bolsheviks. He remained a self-described "non-factional social democrat " until August 1917, when he joined Lenin and the Bolsheviks, as their positions resembled his and he came to believe that Lenin was correct on the issue of the party. All but one member of the RSDLP Central Committee were arrested in Moscow in early 1905. The remaining member, with the power of appointing a new committee,

4730-784: The CPSU in 1964, Chernenko was appointed to head the General Department of the Central Committee . In this capacity, he became responsible for setting the agenda for the Politburo and drafting Central Committee decrees. By 1971 Chernenko became a full member of the Central Committee and later a full member of the Politburo in 1978. Following the death of Brezhnev and his successor Yuri Andropov , Chernenko

4840-545: The Civil War, militia men fallen while fighting anti-Bolsheviks and noted Bolshevik politicians, as well as individuals associated with creating the new Soviet society. Burial plots of the 1917–1927 period are currently organized into 15 landscaped grave sites with the names of the buried inscribed on black marble tablets. In July 1917, hundreds of soldiers of the Russian Northern Front were arrested for mutiny and desertion and locked up in Daugavpils (then Dvinsk) fortress. Later, 869 Dvinsk inmates were transported to Moscow. Here,

4950-411: The Congress as delegates left or switched sides. In the end, the Congress was evenly split between the two factions. From 1907 onward, English-language articles sometimes used the term Maximalist for "Bolshevik" and Minimalist for "Menshevik", which proved to be confusing as there was also a "Maximalist" faction within the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1904–1906 (which, after 1906, formed

5060-436: The Letter Bureau, dealing with correspondence. In 1976 he was elected secretary of the Letter Bureau. He became Candidate in 1977, and in 1978 a full member of the Politburo, second to the General Secretary in the Party hierarchy. During Brezhnev's final years, Chernenko became fully immersed in ideological Party work : heading Soviet delegations abroad, accompanying Brezhnev to important meetings and conferences, and working as

5170-429: The Mausoleum began to acquire its present shape after the end of World War II . Sergei Merkurov created the first five tombs, for the recently deceased Mikhail Kalinin and Andrey Zhdanov , as well as for Yakov Sverdlov , Mikhail Frunze and Felix Dzerzhinsky who had died decades earlier. Grey granite stands that separate Red Square from the wall were built in the same period. In 1947 Merkurov proposed rebuilding

5280-578: The Mausoleum into a sort of " Pergamon Altar " that would become a foreground to a statue of Stalin placed atop Senatskaya tower. Dmitry Chechulin , Vera Mukhina and others spoke against the proposal and it was soon dropped. There are, in total, twelve individual tombs; all, including the four burials of the 1980s, are shaped similar to the canonical Merkurov's model. All twelve are considered to have died of natural causes, although some, such as Frunze , had unusual circumstances associated with their deaths. Konstantin Chernenko , who died in March 1985, became

5390-669: The Mensheviks made an alliance with the Jewish Bund , the Bolsheviks found themselves in a minority. However, all factions retained their respective factional structure and the Bolsheviks formed the Bolshevik Centre , the de facto governing body of the Bolshevik faction within the RSDLP. At the 5th Congress held in London in May 1907, the Bolsheviks were in the majority, but the two factions continued functioning mostly independently of each other. Tensions had existed between Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov from as early as 1904. Lenin had fallen out with Nikolai Valentinov after Valentinov had introduced him to Ernst Mach 's Empiriocriticism ,

5500-466: The Necropolis from Red Square altogether met with far more public opposition and did not come to fruition either. Despite the Russian government's efforts to relocate Lenin's tomb and Soviet monuments from the Kremlin, support of both Lenin and the Soviet Union remained steadfast among the Russian populace. Public opinion on preserving the remains of Lenin in their embalmed state was split but leaned towards burial. A late 2008 VTsIOM poll found that 66% of

5610-405: The October Revolution in Saint Petersburg, Dvintsy became the strike force of the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Late at night on 27–28 October, a detachment of approximately two hundred men marching north to Tverskaya Street confronted the loyalist forces near the State Historical Museum on Red Square. During the fighting, 70 of the Dvintsy , including their company commander, Sapunov, were killed at

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5720-401: The Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions , the Politburo discussed ways to preserve it, initially for forty days, despite objections from his widow and siblings. Joseph Stalin gave instructions to install a vault for Lenin's embalmed remains inside the Kremlin wall, and on 27 January, Lenin's casket was deposited in a temporary wooden vault built in a single day. The first proper Mausoleum

5830-437: The Politburo's "Old Guard" time to choose an acceptable candidate from the next generation of Soviet leadership. In the interim, he was forced to govern the country as part of a triumvirate alongside Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko . This became a growing problem as Chernenko's illness led him to miss meetings with increasing frequency. At Andropov's funeral, Chernenko could barely read

5940-497: The Russians if they keep dying on me?" Chernenko was honored with a state funeral and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis , in one of the twelve individual tombs located between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall . He is the last person to have been interred there. The impact of Chernenko—or the lack thereof—was evident in the way in which his death was reported in the Soviet press. Soviet newspapers carried stories about Chernenko's death and Gorbachev's selection on

6050-572: The Supreme Soviet (titular head of state of the Soviet Union), Chernenko became his chief of staff. In 1964 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, and succeeded by Brezhnev. During Brezhnev's tenure as Party leader, Chernenko's career continued successfully. He was nominated in 1965 as head of the General Department of the Central Committee, and given the mandate to set the Politburo agenda and prepare drafts of numerous Central Committee decrees and resolutions. He also monitored telephone wiretaps and covert listening devices in various offices of

6160-450: The United States led an international boycott of the Summer Olympics held in Moscow in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . The following 1984 Summer Olympics were due to be held in Los Angeles , California . On 8 May 1984, under Chernenko's leadership, the USSR announced its intention not to participate in the Games , claiming "security concerns and chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in

6270-402: The United States". The boycott was joined by 14 Eastern Bloc satellites and allies, including Cuba (but not Romania ). The action was widely seen as revenge for the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games. The boycotting countries organised their own " Friendship Games " in the summer of 1984. Before his death, Chernenko signed preliminary documents stating that on 9 May 1985, on the day of

6380-527: The aging trees, with few exceptions, were cut down and replaced with young trees. A Federal Protective Service spokesman explained that the previous generation of spruce, planted in the 1970s, suffered from the dryness of the urban landscape; 28 old but sound trees were handpicked for replanting inside the Kremlin. New trees were selected from the nurseries of Altai Mountains , Russian Far East and "some foreign countries". The FPS spokesman also mentioned that in Nikita Khrushchev's period there were plans to plant

6490-406: The barricades. The following day, loyalists led by Colonel Konstantin Ryabtsev succeeded in taking over the Kremlin. They gunned down the surrendered Red soldiers at the Kremlin Arsenal wall. More Red soldiers were killed as the Bolsheviks stormed the Kremlin, finally taking control on the night of 2–3 November. Street fighting tapered off after claiming nearly a thousand lives, and on 4 November

6600-458: The beginning of World War I loomed near. Joseph Stalin was especially eager for the start of the war, hoping that it would turn into a war between classes or essentially a Russian Civil War . This desire for war was fuelled by Lenin's vision that the workers and peasants would resist joining the war effort and therefore be more compelled to join the socialist movement. Through the increase in support, Russia would then be forced to withdraw from

6710-446: The concept of democratic centralism . Martov, until then a close friend of Lenin, agreed with him that the core of the party should consist of professional revolutionaries, but he argued that party membership should be open to sympathizers, revolutionary workers, and other fellow travellers. The two had disagreed on the issue as early as March–May 1903, but it was not until the Congress that their differences became irreconcilable and split

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6820-459: The country was announced. India , Iraq , Syria and Nicaragua all declared three days of mourning; Pakistan declared two days of mourning; East Germany and Czechoslovakia declared one day of mourning. Chernenko became the third Soviet leader to die in less than three years. Upon being informed in the middle of the night of his death, U.S. President Ronald Reagan is reported to have remarked, "How am I supposed to get anyplace with

6930-411: The crash of his Soyuz 1 space capsule, was given a state funeral in Moscow, and his ashes were interred in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. Komarov was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin (for the second time) and the order of Hero of the Soviet Union . The last person to be buried in the Kremlin wall was Minister of Defence Dmitriy Ustinov in December 1984. The row of individual tombs behind

7040-448: The crew of a MiG-15UTI crash in 1968 ( Gagarin and Seryogin ), and the three-man crew of the Soyuz 11 spacecraft in 1971. In total, the wall accommodates the graves of 107 men and 8 women. No remains interred in the wall were ever removed from it, including those of the people posthumously accused of "fascist conspiracy" ( Sergei Kamenev ) or political repressions ( Andrey Vyshinsky ). Under Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev ,

7150-411: The early 1940s, he began a close relationship with Fyodor Kulakov and was named Secretary of the Territorial Party Committee for Propaganda. By 1945 he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow then later finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers in 1953. The turning point in Chernenko's career was his assignment in 1948 to head the Communist Party's propaganda department in

7260-445: The end of the Soviet state. Burials initially took place to the north of the Senate tower, switching to the south side in 1934 and returning to the north side in 1977 (with a few exceptions). Interments in the wall were strictly individual; spouses and children of those interred in the wall had to be buried elsewhere. There were only three instances of group burials: the three-man crew of the Osoaviakhim-1 high-altitude balloon in 1934,

7370-496: The formation of Party Schools as Proletarian Universities at a Bolshevik mini-conference in Paris organised by the editorial board of the Bolshevik magazine Proletary . However, this proposal was not adopted and Lenin tried to expel Bogdanov from the Bolshevik faction. Bogdanov was then involved with setting up Vpered , which ran the Capri Party School from August to December 1909. With both Bolsheviks and Mensheviks weakened by splits within their ranks and by Tsarist repression,

7480-508: The honor of interment in the Kremlin wall was awarded posthumously by the Politburo . When members of the Politburo were not available immediately, Mikhail Suslov had the first call. Brezhnev overruled Suslov's decision at least once, voting to bury Semyon Budenny in an individual grave. There were also at least two known cases when groups of professionals pressed the government to extend special honors to their deceased colleagues: On 26 April 1967, cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov , who had died in

7590-492: The idea of a completely classless society . This pamphlet also showed that Lenin opposed another group of reformers, known as " Economists ", who were for economic reform while leaving the government relatively unchanged and who, in Lenin's view, failed to recognize the importance of uniting the working population behind the party's cause. At the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP , which was held in Brussels and then London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over

7700-427: The jailed soldiers launched a hunger strike ; public support for them threatened to develop into a citywide riot. On 22 September, 593 inmates were released; the rest were left behind bars until the October Revolution . The released soldiers, collectively called Dvintsy , stayed in the city as a cohesive unit, based in Zamoskvorechye District and openly hostile to the ruling Provisional Government . Immediately after

7810-449: The last person to be buried on Red Square. Former head of state Andrei Gromyko , who died in July 1989, was offered burial in the Necropolis near his predecessors but was eventually buried at the Novodevichy cemetery at the request of his family. The Kremlin wall and the stands erected in the 1940s were traditionally separated with a line of blue spruce ( Picea pungens ), a tree not occurring naturally in Russia. In August–September 2007

7920-546: The last three weeks of February 1985. According to the Chief Kremlin doctor, Yevgeny I. Chazov, Chernenko had also developed both chronic hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver. On 10 March at 15:00, Chernenko fell into a coma and died later that evening at 19:20, at age 73. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a combination of chronic emphysema , an enlarged and damaged heart, congestive heart failure and liver cirrhosis . A three-day period of mourning across

8030-542: The latter was granted only to top Party executives ( Mikhail Frunze , Felix Dzerzhinsky , Nariman Narimanov and Pyotr Voykov ). Initially, the bodies of the deceased were laid in state in the Kremlin's halls, but with the tightening of security in the late 1920s, the official farewell station was relocated to the House of the Unions ' "Pillar Hall" on Okhotny Ryad (where Lenin lay in state in 1924) and remained there until

8140-661: The less significant Moscow Soviet was dominated by the Bolsheviks. These Soviets became the model for those formed in 1917. As the Russian Revolution of 1905 progressed, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and smaller non-Russian social democratic parties operating within the Russian Empire attempted to reunify at the 4th Congress of the RSDLP held in April 1906 at Folkets hus , Norra Bantorget , in Stockholm . When

8250-517: The light of huge fires. A young student spoke to us in German. "The Brotherhood Grave", he explained. – John Reed , Ten Days that Shook the World . A total of 238 dead were buried in the mass graves between Senate and Nikolskaya towers in a public funeral on November 10 ( John Reed incorrectly mentions 500); two more victims were buried on the 14 and 17 of November. The youngest, Pavel Andreyev,

8360-532: The new Bolshevik administration decreed their dead would be buried at Red Square next to the Kremlin Wall , where indeed most of them were killed. Voices reached us across the immense place, and the sound of picks and shovels. We crossed over. Mountains of dirt and rock were piled high near the base of the wall. Climbing these we looked down into two massive pits, ten or fifteen feet deep and fifty yards long, where hundreds of soldiers and workers were digging in

8470-667: The old Moscow State University building near Kremlin; thirty-seven dead were interred at the Vsekhsvyatskoye Cemetery (now demolished) in the then-suburban Sokol District . Mass and individual burials in the ground under the Kremlin wall continued until the funeral of Pyotr Voykov in June 1927. In the first years of the Soviet regime, the honor of being buried on Red Square was extended to ordinary soldiers, Civil War victims, and Moscow militia men killed in clashes with anti-Bolsheviks (March–April 1918). In January 1918,

8580-579: The party adopted a number of different names. In 1918, RSDLP(b) became All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and remained so until 1925. From 1925 to 1952, the name was All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and from 1952 to 1991, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As the party split became permanent, further divisions became evident. One of the most notable differences was how each faction decided to fund its revolution. The Mensheviks decided to fund their revolution through membership dues while Lenin often resorted to more drastic measures since he required

8690-523: The party membership rules. Lenin, who was supported by Georgy Plekhanov , wanted to limit membership to those who supported the party full-time and worked in complete obedience to the elected party leadership. Martov wanted to extend membership to anyone "who recognises the Party Programme and supports it by material means and by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the party's organisations." Lenin believed his plan would develop

8800-419: The party was the Russian police. The police were able to infiltrate both parties' inner circles by sending in spies who then reported on the opposing party's intentions and hostilities. This allowed the tensions to remain high between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and helped prevent their uniting. Lenin was firmly opposed to any reunification but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership. The meeting reached

8910-502: The party's objective and carry on under the influence of opposing beliefs or even away from revolution entirely. The pamphlet also showed that Lenin's view of a socialist intelligentsia was in line with Marxist theory . For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist ideal of social classes ceasing to be and for the eventual " withering away of the state ". Most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral and were loyal to

9020-693: The party. At first, the disagreement appeared to be minor and inspired by personal conflicts. For example, Lenin's insistence on dropping less active editorial board members from Iskra or Martov's support for the Organizing Committee of the Congress which Lenin opposed. The differences grew and the split became irreparable. Internal unrest also arose over the political structure that was best suited for Soviet power . As discussed in What Is To Be Done? , Lenin firmly believed that

9130-513: The position. Yuri Andropov died on 9 February 1984 at age 69 in Moscow Central Clinical Hospital of kidney failure . Chernenko was then elected to replace Andropov even though the latter stated he wanted Mikhail Gorbachev to succeed him. Additionally, Chernenko was terminally ill himself. At the time of his ascent to the country's top post, Chernenko was primarily viewed as a transitional leader who could give

9240-525: The remains of the main persecutor and executioner of the 20th century," although the Russian Orthodox Church demurs. As of 2022, Lenin's body remains in the Mausoleum, excluding the period of evacuation to Tyumen during 1941–1945. Two days after Joseph Stalin's death , the Politburo decreed that his remains would be placed on display in the Mausoleum; it officially reopened in November 1953 with Lenin and Stalin side by side. Another plan decreed in March 1953, but never implemented, called for construction of

9350-563: The respondents supported a funeral in a traditional cemetery, including 28% of those who believed that the funeral should be postponed until the communist generation passes away. 25% of the respondents thought the body should be preserved in the Mausoleum. In October 2005, 51% of respondents had expressed support for a funeral and 40% for preservation. Konstantin Chernenko Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985)

9460-477: The revolution and granting them temporary concessions. Bolshevik figures such as Anatoly Lunacharsky , Moisei Uritsky and Dmitry Manuilsky considered that Lenin's influence on the Bolshevik party was decisive but the October insurrection was carried out according to Trotsky's, not to Lenin's plan. In 1918, the party renamed itself the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) at Lenin's suggestion. In 1925, this

9570-418: The same day. The papers had the same format: page 1 reported the party Central Committee session on 11 March that elected Mikhail Gorbachev and printed the new leader's biography and a large photograph of him; page 2 announced the demise of Chernenko and printed his obituary. After the death of a Soviet leader it was customary for his successors to open his safe. When Gorbachev had Chernenko's safe opened, it

9680-500: The top Party members. Another of his jobs was to sign hundreds of Party documents daily, a job he did for the next 20 years. Even after he became General Secretary of the Party, he continued to sign papers referring to the General Department (when he could no longer physically sign documents, a facsimile was used instead). In 1971 Chernenko was promoted to full membership in the Central Committee: overseeing Party work over

9790-502: The total population) and 38% were uprooted peasants ; compared with 19% and 26% for the Mensheviks. In 1907, 78% of the Bolsheviks were Russian and 10% were Jewish ; compared to 34% and 20% for the Mensheviks. Total Bolshevik membership was 8,400 in 1905, 13,000 in 1906, and 46,100 by 1907; compared to 8,400, 18,000 and 38,200 for the Mensheviks. By 1910, both factions together had fewer than 100,000 members. Between 1903 and 1904,

9900-402: The two factions were in a state of flux, with many members changing sides. Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, who at first allied himself with Lenin and the Bolsheviks, had parted ways with them by 1904. Trotsky at first supported the Mensheviks, but left them in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals and their opposition to a reconciliation with Lenin and

10010-462: The two factions were tempted to try to reunite the party. In January 1910, Leninists, recallists, and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the party's Central Committee in Paris. Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea; but under pressure from conciliatory Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin , they were willing to give it a try. One of the underlying reasons that prevented any reunification of

10120-689: Was 14 years old. Of 240 pro-revolution martyrs of the October–November fighting, only 20, including 12 of the Dvintsy, are identified in the official listing of the Moscow Heritage Commission. As of March 2009, three Moscow streets are still named after these individual victims, as well as Dvintsev Street named after the Dvintsy force. The loyalists secured a permit to publicly bury their dead on 13 November. This funeral started at

10230-622: Was a Soviet politician and the seventh General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . He briefly led the Soviet Union from 1984 until his death a year later. Born to a poor Ukrainian family in Siberia , Chernenko joined the Komsomol in 1929 and became a full member of the party in 1931. After holding a series of propaganda posts, in 1948 he became the head of the propaganda department in Moldavia , serving under Leonid Brezhnev . After Brezhnev took over as First Secretary of

10340-696: Was badly damaged in 1812 by the explosion at the Kremlin Arsenal set off by the retreating French troops . Nikolskaya tower lost its gothic crown which was erected in 1807–1808; Arsenalnaya tower developed deep cracks, leading to Joseph Bove proposing in 1813 the outright demolition of the towers to prevent the wall's imminent collapse. Eventually, the main structures of the towers were deemed sound enough to be left in place, and were topped with new tented roofs designed by Bove. Peter's bastions were razed (creating space for nearby Alexander Garden and Theatre Square ), The Kremlin wall facing Red Square

10450-554: Was built of wood in March–July 1924 and officially opened on August 1 (foreign visitors were allowed inside on August 3). The contest to design and build a new, permanent, Mausoleum was announced in April 1926; construction of Alexey Shchusev 's winning design began in July 1929 and was completed in sixteen months. The Mausoleum has since functioned as a government reviewing stand during public parades. The glass sarcophagus of Lenin's tomb

10560-672: Was changed to All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). At the 19th Party Congress in 1952 the Party was renamed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at Stalin's suggestion. Bolo was a derogatory expression for Bolsheviks used by British service personnel in the North Russian Expeditionary Force which intervened against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Adolf Hitler , Joseph Goebbels , and other Nazi leaders used it in reference to

10670-525: Was elected General Secretary in February 1984 and made Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in April 1984. However, due to his rapidly failing health, he was often unable to fulfill his official duties. He died in March 1985 after leading the country for only 13 months, and was succeeded as General Secretary by Mikhail Gorbachev . Chernenko was born to a poor family of Ukrainian ethnicity in

10780-410: Was followed by John Reed , Inessa Armand , Viktor Nogin and other notable Bolsheviks and their foreign allies. Interment in the Kremlin wall, apart from its location next to the seat of government, was also seen as a statement of atheism , while burial in the ground at a traditional cemetery next to a church was deemed inappropriate for a Bolshevik. For the same reason, cremation , then prohibited by

10890-414: Was found to contain a small folder of personal papers and several large bundles of money; more money was found in his desk. It is not known where he had obtained the money or what he intended to use it for. Chernenko had a son with his first wife, Faina Vassilyevna Chernenko, named Albert . With his second wife, Anna Dmitrevna Lyubimova , who married him in 1944, he had two daughters, Yelena and Vera, and

11000-458: Was generally allied with the recallists. With most Bolshevik leaders either supporting Bogdanov or undecided by mid-1908 when the differences became irreconcilable, Lenin concentrated on undermining Bogdanov's reputation as a philosopher. In 1909, he published a scathing book of criticism entitled Materialism and Empirio-criticism (1909), assaulting Bogdanov's position and accusing him of philosophical idealism . In June 1909, Bogdanov proposed

11110-404: Was hospitalized for over a month but kept working by sending the Politburo notes and letters. During the summer, his doctors sent him to Kislovodsk for the mineral spas , but on the day of his arrival at the resort Chernenko's health deteriorated, and he contracted pneumonia. Chernenko did not return to the Kremlin until later in 1984. He awarded Orders to cosmonauts and writers in his office, but

11220-539: Was lined with a secondary fortress wall, and spanned by three bridges connecting the Kremlin to the posad . From 1707–08 Peter the Great , expecting a Swedish incursion deep into the Russian mainland, restored the moat around the Kremlin, cleared Red Square and built earthen fortifications around Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers . From 1776 to 1787, Matvey Kazakov built the Kremlin Senate that today provides

11330-464: Was rebuilt shallower than before, and acquired its present shape in the 1820s. Between the 1917 October Revolution and June 1927, the area outside the Kremlin wall between the Senate and Nikolskaya towers was used for mass and individual burials of people who had to some extent contributed to the socialist revolution or the Bolshevik cause. This included ordinary soldiers killed in battle, victims of

11440-599: Was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow-minded and unable to accept criticism that he believed that anyone who did not follow him was his enemy. Trotsky , one of Lenin's fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre . The two factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) were originally known as hard (Lenin supporters) and soft (Martov supporters). In

11550-468: Was speaking to students. Twelve people, including Zagorsky, were killed and buried in a mass grave on Red Square. Another unusual incident was the 24 July 1921 crash of the Aerowagon , an experimental (and not fully tested) high-speed railcar fitted with an aircraft engine and propeller traction. On the day of the crash, it delivered a group of Soviet and foreign communists led by Fyodor Sergeyev to

11660-529: Was still unfamiliar at the time, and Vladimirov's urn was carried to his grave in an ordinary coffin. Between 1925 and the opening of the Donskoye Cemetery crematorium in October 1927, interments in the wall and burials in the ground coexisted together; the former was preferred for foreign dignitaries of the Comintern ( Jenő Landler , Bill Haywood , Arthur MacManus , Charles Ruthenberg ) while

11770-411: Was taken to help ensure that the revolutionaries stayed focused on their duties and motivated them to perform their jobs. Lenin also used the party money to print and copy pamphlets which were distributed in cities and at political rallies in an attempt to expand their operations. Both factions received funds through donations from wealthy supporters. Further differences in party agendas became evident as

11880-411: Was twice vandalized by visitors, in 1959 and 1969, leading to installation of a bulletproof glass shell. It was bombed twice, in 1963, when the terrorist was the sole victim, and in 1973, when an explosion killed the terrorist and two bystanders. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia has petitioned Russia to dismantle the cult of personality and bury Lenin's body, seeking to "rid Red Square of

11990-487: Was unable to walk through the corridors and was driven in a wheelchair. By the end of 1984, Chernenko could hardly leave the Central Clinical Hospital , a heavily guarded facility in west Moscow, and the Politburo was affixing a facsimile of his signature to all letters, as Chernenko had done with Andropov's when he was dying. Chernenko's illness was first acknowledged publicly on 22 February 1985 during

12100-591: Was won over by the Bolsheviks. The lines between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks hardened in April 1905 when the Bolsheviks held a Bolsheviks-only meeting in London, which they called the 3rd Party Congress . The Mensheviks organised a rival conference and the split was thus finalized. The Bolsheviks played a relatively minor role in the 1905 Revolution and were a minority in the Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies led by Trotsky. However,

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