Time to read: 20 minutes(s)

More than 100 people took to the streets of Moscow in December 1989 to pay their last respects to academic and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov. People queued for six hours to approach the coffin, and the funeral hall was kept open until three in the morning. There was almost no police presence: the people themselves maintained order. Among those who came to pay their last respects was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

There wasn't even a hall available for the funeral service for Russian opposition leader and President Putin's main opponent, Alexei Navalny, in 2024. Thousands of people who attended the funeral and burial in Maryino were prevented from approaching the politician's body and kept behind a fence until the coffin was lowered into the grave.

How famous political and public figures who were in opposition to the government were bid farewell between these two dates is in the NeMoskva review.

• Andrei Sakharov - 1989
• Galina Starovoitova - 1998
• Anna Politkovskaya – 2006
• Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova - 2009
• Natalia Estemirova – 2009
• Valeria Novodvorskaya – 2014
• Boris Nemtsov - 2015
• Irina Slavina - 2020
• Sergey Kovalev - 2021
• Andrey Babushkin - 2022
• Alexei Navalny – 2024

Andrei Sakharov was an academician, theoretical physicist, and one of the creators of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Since the late 1950s, he actively advocated for the end of nuclear weapons testing; in the late 1960s, he became one of the leaders of the human rights movement in the USSR, attended trials of dissidents, and spoke out against the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In January 1980, he was exiled to Gorky and stripped of his awards and titles. He was released in late 1986 by order of Gorbachev. In 1989, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet. He drafted a new Constitution based on the protection of individual rights.

He died at the age of 68 in his office. Officially, he died of a heart attack. However, his associates, including Anatoly Sobchak, claimed he was murdered.

The funeral took place on December 18, 1989, the fifth day after his death.

Over 100 people attended the farewell ceremony for Sakharov, which began the day before the funeral. The line at the Youth Palace, where Sakharov's coffin was kept, stretched for four kilometers. People stood for six hours to reach the coffin. Residents of nearby houses brought out hot tea in thermoses.

According to eyewitnesses, there was no sign of the police – the situation was completely self-organized.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev came to pay his last respects to Sakharov. He asked his widow, Elena Bonner, "What can I do for you?" Thus, the Memorial Historical and Educational Society received official status.

On the day of the funeral, a rally was held at Luzhniki Stadium, where Yeltsin, Kovalev, Likhachev, Yavlinsky, Starovoitova, and Sobchak spoke before the coffin. Passing trains slowed down and blew their horns.

At one point, there were so many people that a stampede broke out. Elena Bonner stopped her: "What are you doing?!" she screamed into the microphone. "For the sake of Andrei Dmitrievich, don't let Stalin's funeral [when thousands of people died in the stampede] repeat itself! Everyone stay where you are!"

At her request, only her closest relatives went to Vostryakovskoye Cemetery. Roads in Moscow were closed to allow thousands of people to follow the coffin.

Galina Starovoitova is a politician, human rights activist, and PhD candidate in history. In 1989, she was elected as a member of the Supreme Council of Armenia.

In the new Russia, she worked on interethnic relations and opposed the deployment of troops to Chechnya. In 1995, she won the State Duma election representing St. Petersburg. In 1996, she ran for president of the Russian Federation but failed to register with the Central Election Commission. She twice attempted to introduce lustration laws. She developed laws on the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, alternative civilian service, freedom of conscience, and religious associations.

She was killed on November 20, 1998, in the entranceway of her own home, shot twice in the head. She was 52 years old.

The organizer of the murder and the hired killers were in the dock. It remains unclear exactly who gave the order to kill the politician and why.

The funeral took place on November 24, 1998, the fifth day after the murder.

More than 15 people came to pay their last respects to the politician, with the line stretching several kilometers. As soon as the allotted two hours expired, they attempted to close the doors in front of everyone. Panic broke out among those remaining outside, and the organized line turned into an angry mob.

"What a disgrace!" the people shouted. "When it came to burying the general secretaries, they spent three days saying goodbye. But when it came to Starovoitov, they shut the door in his face!"

As a result, the memorial service dragged on for another hour. Because of this, the funeral service was rushed, and outsiders were no longer allowed into the church. The guards responded to the old ladies who had been guarding the entrance since early morning: "You'd be better off voting than attending a funeral."

As the funeral cortege moved along Nevsky Prospect, not only cars but also pedestrians stopped.

President Yeltsin did not attend the funeral, sending a two-person delegation in his place. Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev, and St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev also sent aides in their stead.

Anna Politkovskaya is a journalist and human rights activist. Since 1999, she has worked as a columnist for Novaya Gazeta, traveling to war zones in the North Caucasus, reporting on issues in Chechnya, investigating the killings of civilians, and helping the mothers of fallen soldiers defend their rights in court.

In October 2002, she participated in negotiations with the terrorists who had taken hostages at the Dubrovka Theater Center. In September 2004, she flew to Beslan for negotiations, but was poisoned by "unknown toxins."

She was killed on October 7, 2006, Putin’s birthday.

Killer Rustam Makhmudov and the organizer of the murder, Lom-Ali Gaitukaev, were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Former police officers Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov and Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, who were monitoring Politkovskaya, were sentenced to 11 and 20 years in a maximum-security prison colony. Khadzhikurbanov volunteered for the war in Ukraine and was pardoned by Putin's decree.

The person who ordered the murder has not been found.

The funeral took place on October 10, 2006.

Between 2000 and 3000 people attended the farewell ceremony at the Troekurovskoye Cemetery funeral hall. Only 500 people fit inside. The rest waited outside in the rain.

Of the officials, only Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin, the Deputy Minister of Culture, and an advisor to the head of Rospechat attended the funeral. It was said that many were afraid because the Kremlin had never commented on the journalist's shooting.

Journalist Alexander Minkin was the last to speak at the coffin. He stated that in times of censorship, a graveside rally becomes the only way to speak the truth.

Putin spoke out about Politkovskaya's murder an hour after the funeral. While in Dresden, he called it "a crime disgusting in its cruelty." He said that "this murder itself inflicts far greater damage and harm on the current government than her [Politkovskaya's] publications." As Putin's delegation moved through the city, one resident stood up with a placard and shouted, "Murderer!"

Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika stated that he had taken personal control of the murder investigation.

On the day of the funeral, one of the entrances to the cemetery was closed. The number of buses providing access was also reduced.

Memorial events in several regions were disrupted. In Kurgan, police broke up a picket and detained its organizer. In Nazran, one of the picketers was taken to the hospital with a broken nasal bone and a concussion.

Stanislav Markelov is a lawyer and human rights activist. He has worked on criminal cases related to war crimes, terrorism, torture, and environmental issues. He represented in court the interests of those who suffered at the hands of security forces, including Ramzan Kadyrov's forces. His clients included Anna Politkovskaya and other Novaya Gazeta journalists, anti-fascists, and environmentalists. He spoke out against neo-Nazis.

He represented the interests of the family of Elza Kungaeva, who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in 2000 by Russian Army Colonel Yuri Budanov.

On January 19, 2009, he spoke at a press conference regarding Budanov's early release from prison. As Markelov left the press center, a man with a scarf pulled over his face approached him and shot him in the back of the head with a pistol. The next bullet hit the head of 25-year-old journalist Anastasia Baburova, who published articles on ecology and neo-Nazism in Novaya Gazeta.

The killer turned out to be 29-year-old Nikita Tikhonov, the founder of the Combat Organization of Russian Nationalists (BORN). Over four years, its members committed 10 murders and two failed assassination attempts. Their victims included anti-fascists, migrants, a police officer, and a federal judge. Tikhonov was sentenced to life imprisonment, and his accomplice, Evgeniya Khasis, was sentenced to 18 years in a penal colony.

Stanislav Markelov's funeral took place on January 23 in Moscow, five days after his murder. Around 300 people attended the funeral.

Fearing possible provocations and further attacks by neo-fascists, security for the event was ensured by 50 police officers, riot police, and dog handlers on duty at the cemetery grounds.

At the request of the deceased's relatives, the farewell ceremony was shortened to a minimum, and most of those gathered never made it to the coffin. There were no formal speeches. People spoke in hushed tones and silently laid flowers and wreaths.

That same day, a memorial service for Anastasia Baburova was held in the Central Clinical Hospital's funeral hall. Just over 100 people attended. The event was also guarded by police officers.

Baburova was buried in Sevastopol, her birthplace. Her parents received condolences from Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remained silent about the murder of a lawyer and journalist in central Moscow. Only 10 days later, Medvedev explained his silence by his "unwillingness to influence the investigation."

Natalia Estemirova is a journalist and human rights activist from Chechnya. She has been collecting information on human rights violations since 1992, when the Ossetian-Ingush massacre occurred in the Prigorodny District of North Ossetia.

After the First Chechen War, I interviewed those caught in the grinding mill of the penal system and who had lost their health as a result of torture. I helped them seek compensation and benefits.

During the Second Chechen War, she smuggled information about the events in Grozny through checkpoints and documented the aftermath of shelling of civilians. She visited virtually every hospital in Chechnya and Ingushetia, where she took hundreds of photographs documenting the numerous child casualties.

Since 2001, she has been compiling "Chronicles of Violence," publicizing cases of kidnapping and murder. She has received statements from thousands of women whose sons and husbands were kidnapped, tortured, and disappeared. She has reported on extrajudicial executions and the falsification of criminal cases.

She regularly published articles in Novaya Gazeta and was a personal enemy of Ramzan Kadyrov.

In early July 2009, she reported on the public execution of two residents of the village of Dzhugurty, which was carried out by armed men.

On the morning of July 15, shortly before a meeting with the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, who had arrived in Ingushetia, she was abducted near her home. That evening, her body was found in Ingushetia, near the Kavkaz highway. Estemirova had been shot in the head and chest.

The murder remains unsolved.

The funeral took place on July 16th in his ancestral village near Gudermes. At the request of the relatives, who wished to observe Muslim customs, it was held the day after the murder, as soon as the body was released from the morgue.

The deceased's colleagues had a hard time persuading her relatives to travel through Grozny. There, people whom Natalya Estemirova had helped and worked with gathered at the monument to the fallen journalists. Between 100 and 500 people dared to come out. According to Osama Baysayev, head of the Chechen Memorial organization, this was a very large number for Grozny, where even three people can gather.

No one made any speeches—everyone was crying. A photograph of the murdered woman hung at the memorial, along with the caption, "Who's next?"

She was then carried along the former Victory Avenue, which was renamed Putin Avenue after the war. The symbolism lay in the fact that after the renaming, Estemirova herself never walked or drove along it, as a matter of principle.

President Dmitry Medvedev "expressed outrage at this murder and instructed the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, to take all necessary measures to investigate the murder."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov promised to conduct an unofficial investigation "in accordance with Chechen traditions" and avenge the "violence against a defenseless woman." However, just three weeks later, responding to suspicions of involvement in her murder, Kadyrov stated that he "had no reason to kill a woman who no one needed."

Valeria Novodvorskaya was a Soviet dissident, Russian publicist, politician, and founder of the opposition right-wing liberal party "Democratic Union". Her father is Jewish. Valeria was given her mother's surname due to the Soviet Union's rejection of Jewish surnames following the Doctors' Plot and the case of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. Novodvorskaya herself said she considered herself Russian.

In 1969, at the age of 19, she scattered leaflets with her anti-Soviet poems in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. She was prompted to do so by information about the existence of the Gulag, as well as the entry of Soviet troops into Czechoslovakia.

"Thank you, party, to you
For all the denunciations of informers
For the torches on Prague Square
Thank you, party!

Novodvorskaya was placed in a cell in Lefortovo Prison, where she called a KGB officer an inquisitor and a sadist. She was transferred to Kazan, where she was "locked up" in a specialized psychiatric hospital with a diagnosis of "sluggish schizophrenia." Upon her release in 1972, she began distributing samizdat. She attempted to create an underground party to fight the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, for which she was again placed in a psychiatric hospital and systematically interrogated and searched.

In the 1990s, she opposed Mikhail Gorbachev and supported Boris Yeltsin. She has always been a supporter of democracy and fair elections, so in 2010, she signed the Russian opposition's statement "Putin Must Go."

In 2014, she predicted that the Ukrainian border territories would not achieve independence, but would be annexed, and that the residents would become "cannon fodder." She called Putin "Chekist rabble" and the government "political maniacs whose place is in The Hague Tribunal."

She died on July 12, 2014, and her funeral took place on July 16. President Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, former President Mikhail Gorbachev, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and other politicians expressed their condolences to her family and friends. More than 16 people came to the Sakharov Center to pay their last respects. Entry into the memorial hall required at least an hour of waiting in line. Her ashes are buried in the Donskoye Cemetery.

Formerly the first governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region, deputy prime minister, co-founder of the Union of Right Forces party, and State Duma deputy. Co-chairman of the People's Freedom Party (PARNAS) and deputy of the Yaroslavl Regional Duma.  And a harsh critic of Putin.

Nemtsov was shot dead on February 27, 2015, on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, where he was walking with an acquaintance, Ukrainian model Anna Duritskaya. He was shot in the back. Three hours before the murder, Nemtsov was on Ekho Moskvy radio. He spoke about the "Spring" anti-crisis march, fair elections, corruption, and accused Putin of starting the armed conflict in Ukraine.

Boris Nemtsov was buried at Troekurovskoye Cemetery on March 3, five days after his death. Before the funeral, a civil memorial service was held at the Sakharov Center in Moscow, attended by thousands of Moscow residents. The line of those wishing to pay their last respects stretched for a kilometer. People asked for an extended memorial service, but they were refused, as Nemtsov's relatives were so tired. Then, people began passing flowers to the coffin in a chain.

Among those who came to say goodbye to the deceased were the wife and daughter of the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin - Naina Yeltsin and Tatyana Yumasheva, politicians, businessmen, public figures - Irina Khakamada, Nikita Belykh, Grigory Yavlinsky, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Genri Reznik, Mikhail Prokhorov, Mikhail Abyzov, representatives of foreign countries, including US Ambassador John Teft and former British Prime Minister John Major.

Putin also responded to Nemtsov’s murder: “This brutal murder bears all the hallmarks of a contract killing and is purely provocative in nature.”

Irina Slavina is the stage name of Irina Murakhtaeva, a journalist, public figure, and founder of the online publication "Koza.Press." She was born and lived in Nizhny Novgorod.

She graduated from the Faculty of Philology and taught Russian and literature at a school. After receiving a journalism degree, she worked at Nizhegorodskaya Pravda. In 2015, she founded Koza.Press, where she wrote on socio-political issues.

In 2016, she ran for the regional Legislative Assembly and the State Duma from the Yabloko party, but did not win.

She fought “for everything good, against everything bad”: against the development of a nearby park, against the glorification of Stalin, against the humiliation of human dignity, for the observance of laws.

Slavina was first fined in 2019 for organizing an unauthorized march in memory of Boris Nemtsov. At the same time, she was fined 70 rubles "for disrespect for the authorities and society." The reason for the fine was a Facebook post:After they hanged someone on a house in Shakhunya, Nizhny Novgorod [memorial plaque] Stalin's face, it is proposed to rename the settlement to Shakhuynya".

On October 1, 2020, at 6 a.m., 12 security officers broke into her apartment to conduct a search. It was humiliating: they watched the naked journalist get dressed and confiscated all her electronics, including those of her husband and daughter.

On October 2, Slavina arrived at the Nizhny Novgorod Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, sat on a bench next to the sculpture "Guarding the Law at All Times," and set herself on fire at 3:30 PM. Ten minutes earlier, she had written on Facebook: "I ask that the Russian Federation be blamed for my death." She was 47.

Despite the ban on public gatherings during the pandemic, Slavina's funeral took place on October 6 at the House of Scientists. Hundreds attended. Presidential Press Secretary Peskov and Governor Nikitin expressed their condolences to the family. Putin stated at the Human Rights Council that he "does not understand the reasons for Slavina's suicide."

Residents set up memorials at the site of the self-immolation and at the "Merry Goat" sculpture in Nizhny. Security forces destroyed them until the governor ordered the removal of the flowers.

The regional Investigative Committee refused to open a case under the article “incitement to suicide.”

Sergei Kovalev was a Soviet dissident, human rights activist, and biologist. He joined the human rights movement in the fall of 1968 and was a leading contributor to the Chronicle of Current Events, a newsletter for Soviet human rights activists.

In December 1974, he was arrested on charges of "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." He received a seven-year prison sentence and three years of exile in Kolyma.

In the Supreme Council, he headed the Human Rights Committee (1990), and in 1994, he became the first human rights ombudsman in the Russian Federation. He was one of the authors of the 1993 Constitution.

He worked in Chechnya from December 1994. After the Budyonnovsk hospital was seized by Shamil Basayev's militants, the "Kovalev group" managed to secure the release of 1,500 hostages, taking their place alongside other volunteers.

In January 1996, in protest against the continuation of the war in Chechnya, he resigned as chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights, after which he never again held any government positions.

In 2000, he did not support Vladimir Putin's rise to power, stating that he feared "an authoritarian police state, where the secret services would be in power, either explicitly or, worse, not so explicitly."

He died at the age of 91.

The funeral took place on August 13, 2021, four days after his death. No Russian government officials attended the ceremony.

"Ambassadors from various countries read condolences from their leaders, and Russia left two wreaths—one from Moskalkova and one from Fadeyev. That's all!" politician Leonid Gozman wrote after the funeral.

Many independent media outlets noted that Bogdan Borusewicz, Deputy Speaker of the Polish Senate and a personal friend of Kovalev, was barred from attending the funeral in Russia. The Polish Ambassador to Moscow laid a bouquet of flowers on his behalf at the funeral. "Are the Russian authorities really still fighting against their opponents who have already departed this world?" Borusewicz commented.

Andrei Babushkin is a public figure, human rights activist, publicist, poet, and writer. He is the Chairman of the Committee for Civil Rights and a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights.

He worked as a school teacher. In 1990, he was elected to the Moscow City Council, and in 1991, he chaired the Moscow Commission on Prison Affairs and the Prevention of Violations. He also began working on the issue of child homelessness. After the dissolution of the Moscow City Council, he was elected director of the Society of Trustees of Penitentiary Institutions. He participated in the development of legislative norms and draft laws, including those on public oversight of pretrial detention centers and other penitentiary institutions, and on the right to make a phone call after arrest. He supported Federal Penitentiary Service initiatives to establish correctional centers and online stores for prisoners.

About the judicial system говорил: «All the imperfections of the system are focused on the defendant: from the escort technique to the tightening of the handcuffs. Until the escort or judge actually puts themselves in the defendant's shoes, it will be very difficult for them to understand them."

On criminal penalties for involving minors in unauthorized protests:

"Instead of reducing the number of reasons that push young people to participate in protests, the legislation has become more repressive by holding accountable those who involve young people in peaceful protests."

By the 2020s, Babushkin had become a major nuisance to the authorities. The Committee for Civil Rights, which he headed, was stripped of all grants and premises.

He died on May 14, 2022, at the age of 59. The funeral service took place at the Moscow Human Rights House, with the state covering the funeral expenses. Present were Valery Fadeyev, head of the Human Rights Council, representatives of the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner and the Federal Penitentiary Service, Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of Yabloko, and journalists. Several hundred people attended.

Human rights activists requested a burial plot at Troekurovskoye Cemetery, but authorities refused. He is buried at Mitino Cemetery.

Alexei Navalny is a political and public figure. He is the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the author of numerous investigative reports.

Perhaps the only politician who conducted a full-fledged election campaign ahead of the 2018 presidential elections, but was never registered as a candidate.

He has been prosecuted for criminal cases since 2010.

In August 2020, he was poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok. He survived thanks to the efforts of German doctors. In January 2021, he returned to Russia and was arrested at the airport. Since then, he has been in prison, placed in solitary confinement 27 times, where he spent a total of 296 days.

According to the official version, he died on February 16, 2024, in a maximum-security penal colony in the village of Kharp (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug). The official report stated that the 47-year-old politician's cause of death was "natural."

The funeral took place on March 1st—the 15th day after his death. And the seventh day after his body was released to his relatives.

According to Alexei Navalny's mother, the investigator gave her ultimatums and demanded that she hold a "quiet family funeral."

No funeral hall could be found for the civil funeral service. The funeral service took place in a church in Navalny's hometown of Maryino. The politician was buried in the Borisovskoye Cemetery, which is also located there.

Despite the fact that security forces detained countless people for 15 days simply for laying flowers at makeshift memorials, thousands came to pay their respects to Alexei Navalny. The line outside the church was over three kilometers long. People chanted, "Navalny!", "Russia will be free!", "We will not forgive!", "No to war!", "Russia without Putin!"

People queued for 8-10 hours to pay their last respects to Alexei Navalny at Borisovskoye Cemetery. The cemetery, which was supposed to close at 5:00 PM, remained open until almost 10:00 PM.

Putin himself has remained silent on the death of the politician, whom he has never named. On the day of the funeral, presidential press secretary Peskov stated that "the Kremlin has nothing to say to Navalny's family."

Photos used: Dmitry Borko, RIA Novosti, Obozrevatel, Kvadra-Media, AFP, Radio Liberty, RIA SCANPIX, Forbes, P.Golovkin, NN.ru, Kommersant, Fyodor Rendnitsky, "NotMoscow Speaking"