Funeral of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin

Plaques of Gagarin (left) and Seryogin on the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow

The funeral of Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Seryogin on 29–30 March 1968 consisted of a joint farewell ceremony, a funeral procession and the burial of their funerary urns in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow. A national mourning was declared, the first time in Soviet history for a person who was not a sitting country leader.^[1] Funeral wreaths were sent by all Soviet republics and some foreign countries.^[1] In the funeral procession at the Kremlin Wall, the urns were carried by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and senior Communist Party members – Alexei Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny.^[2]

Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, died in a training flight at the age of 34 with his instructor Vladimir Seryogin on 27 March. Both received the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union in their lifetimes.