The Kremlin Wall Necropolis is the former national cemetery of the Soviet Union, located in Red Square in Moscow beside the Kremlin Wall. Burials there began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolsheviks who died during the Moscow Bolshevik Uprising were buried in mass graves. The improvised burial site gradually transformed into the centerpiece of military and civilian honor during the Second World War. It is centered on Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–30. After the last mass burial in Red Square in 1921, funerals there were usually conducted as state ceremonies and reserved as the final honor for highly venerated politicians, military leaders, cosmonauts, and scientists. In 1925–1927, burials in the ground were stopped; funerals were now conducted as burials of cremated ash in the Kremlin wall itself. Burials in the ground resumed with Mikhail Kalinin's funeral in 1946.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.