31 1961 October, the
Under cover of night, the body was carried out of the Mausoleum Stalin and reburied near the Kremlin wall.
Stalin's serious violations of Lenin's precepts, abuses of power, mass repressions against honest Soviet people and other actions during the personality cult period make it impossible to leave his coffin in the Lenin Mausoleum.
(from the resolution of the XXII Congress of the CPSU (October 30)
On October 31, at 6:00 PM, Red Square was cordoned off under the pretext of a rehearsal for the November 7 parade. Military vehicles drove through the square the entire time the leader's body was being transported.
6 soldiers and 8 officers were allocated to carry out the operation.
They began by digging a grave, two steps to the left of the Mausoleum. They covered the area with plywood so no one could see.
By 9:00 PM, officers had lowered the sarcophagus into the basement where the laboratory was located. The party leadership, along with the scientists who had overseen Stalin's embalmed body, had gathered there. When the control devices were turned off, many wept.
The glass was removed from the sarcophagus, and the body was transferred to a wooden coffin covered in black and red crepe.
The gold buttons on the leader's uniform were replaced with brass ones. The gold ones were transferred to a special Guard Room, where the awards of all those buried near the Kremlin Wall were kept.
When the coffin was covered with a lid, the party nomenklatura was already crying.
The body was then removed from the laboratory and lowered into a dug grave lined with plywood.
According to the recollections of one of the commanders of the Kremlin commandant's office, the coffin should have been covered with "two reinforced concrete slabs," but it was simply covered with earth.
The inscription "LENIN STALIN", which was on the Mausoleum, was covered with a white tape with a new inscription: "LENIN".
To find out the mood of ordinary people, the commander of the Kremlin Regiment, Fyodor Konev, went out into Red Square in civilian clothes.
As his report shows:
"People in the groups were engaged in excited conversations, the content of which could be reduced to the following: 'Why was this issue decided without consulting the people?'"
He had something in mind. He just took a nap to rest.
And I appeal to our government with a request:
double, triple the guard at this wall,
so that Stalin does not rise and with Stalin - the past
Where else does the wire from that coffin go?
No, Stalin is not dead. He considers death to be reparable.
We carried him out of the mausoleum.
But how can we remove Stalin from Stalin’s heirs?
My homeland told me not to be reassured.
Let them tell me: “Calm down…” – I won’t be able to be calm.
As long as Stalin's heirs are still alive on earth,
It will seem to me that Stalin is still in the mausoleum.
(Yevgeny Yevtushenko, "Stalin's Heirs")
Muscovites reacted to the transfer of Stalin's body relatively indifferently; it did not cause any unrest or protests.
According to one legend, someone brought a wreath entwined with barbed wire to the burial site. The inscription on it read:
"To the posthumously repressed - from the posthumously rehabilitated."
At the same time, a joke appeared among the people: “Don’t lie down in someone else’s Mausoleum.”