Kremlin Wall Necropolis

Stand here on the vast expanse of Red Square, with the State Historical Museum to your side and the magnificent, colorful domes of St. Basil's Cathedral in the distance. …

The visual and ideological center of the Necropolis is the stepped pyramid structure dominating the square. This is the Mausoleum of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Ulyanov, the chief architect of the October Revolution and the…

Immediately behind the Mausoleum, in the most exclusive section of the Necropolis, lie individual graves marked by bronze busts on stone plinths. Find the bust of a man with a heavy mustache, often surrounded by a surprisingly…

Let us move to the older individual graves, focusing on the men who forged the Soviet state in its earliest, most chaotic years. In nineteen nineteen, the very first individual burial in a coffin occurred here. …

The Necropolis serves profoundly as the resting place for the highest echelon of the Soviet military apparatus, the men who orchestrated the grinding, apocalyptic destruction of Nazi Germany during the Great Patriotic War. As you…

We must turn our attention to the wall itself. Notice the rectangular granite plaques embedded directly into the red brick. …

Returning to the individual graves, we confront the markers of the late Soviet period, an era often characterized as the time of stagnation. Look for the bust of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev. …

As we conclude our solemn walk along the Kremlin Wall, take a deep breath of the Moscow air. You have just traversed the physical and ideological center of the twentieth century's most ambitious and devastating political…