How the Red Square almost became a NECROPOLIS for Soviet leaders (PICS) Mos.ru Under one of the designs, the pantheon for Lenin, Stalin and their associates was to be built across from the Kremlin, at the site where the GUM department store now stands.
There was only one moment in history when Lenin’s Mausoleum on the Red Square could have been left without its tomb and there could have also been a string of open graves along the Kremlin wall. That moment came after the death of Joseph Stalin on March 5, 1953.
When Stalin died, there arose the question of what to do with his body. The option of “just burying” it was not even on the table, while the stream of those who wanted to pay their last respects to the late Soviet leader showed no signs of thinning weeks after his death and had even claimed several lives. For a while, Stalin’s body was placed in Lenin’s Mausoleum, with the two tombs standing next to each other and the name STALIN in large letter