Funerals for Leaders around the World
In Great Britain, state funerals must be ordered by Parliament. The body of the deceased lies in state for three days either in Westminster Hall in Westminster Palace. For prime ministers, an honor guard is mounted around the coffin by soldiers from elite military units, while men from the royal family mount the guard around the coffin of a monarch in a tradition that has become known as the Vigil of the Princes. The funeral service is held either in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's Cathedral, and the coffin of a monarch is delivered in a gun carriage drawn by sailors from the Royal Navy. Members of the royal family are buried in the Chapel of St. George, the royal mausoleum in Windsor Palace, or in Westminster Abbey, while prime ministers are buried according to the wishes of the deceased. The funeral of a monarch is an occasion for a 21-gun salute, while former prime ministers are honored with a 19-gun salute.
Presidents of the United States are required to draw up funeral plans before the end of their terms in office. Funeral processions always start at the White House and proceed either along Constitution Avenue, for former presidents, or along Pennsylvania Avenue, for presidents who died in office. In either case, the coffin is carried on a gun carriage accompanied by an honor guard comprised of representatives from all five branches of the American armed forces to the Capitol Rotunda, where the deceased president lies in state on a catafalque built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. The memorial service takes place either in the National Cathedral in Washington or at another church in the capital, according to the wishes of the deceased and his family. The deceased president's body is transported to the burial site immediately after the funeral, usually aboard one of the jets used as Air Force One.
The president and his family have the right to introduce any changes that they wish into the ceremony. Gerald
Ford, for example, who died in 2006, was carried to the Capitol in a Cadillac hearse instead of a gun carriage. Ronald Reagan, a former governor of California, requested to be carried into the Capitol Building with his face to the west, in the direction of California. Reagan's coffin was brought from the White House to the Capitol on a wooden caisson drawn by six horses and followed by a single riderless horse with Reagan's cowboy boots turned backwards in the stirrups.
The one tradition that is consistent at all funerals of American presidents is the ceremonial salute: on the day following the death of a current or former president, or on the following day if this day falls on a Sunday or a holiday, every US Army base fires a single gun salute every half hour from morning reveille until evening retreat. At noon on the day of the funeral, every military base salutes 21 times, and after the flag is lowered on the evening of that day, a 50-gun salute – one round for each state – is fired. A three-rifle volley is fired after the coffin has been lowered into the grave.
French presidents have tended to shy away funerary displays of pomp and circumstance. Although General
Charles de Gaulle, the first president of the Fifth Republic, was honored after his death with the traditional ceremony at Notre Dame Cathedral to which foreign dignitaries are invited, he was buried without an official ceremony in the cemetery in the village of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where he had lived after retiring from public life. Similarly, Georges Pompidou was interred after a simple service in the suburban Parisian village of Orvilliers, and Francoise Mitterrand was seen off by his friends and family in his hometown of Jarnac.
In 1956, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong introduced the rule that all government leaders must be cremated, although Mao himself was embalmed and placed in his mausoleum in the center of Beijing. In 1997, the funeral of former president Deng Xiaoping was broadcast on national television, but on his request it was attended only by a handful of state officials and members of his family. For a short time the urn containing the former leader's ashes was placed in state in Beijing, where it was visited by 10,000 people, and his ashes were then scattered at sea. In 2005, the urn containing the ashes of former Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang, who died while still under house arrest for his break with the Party's leadership over the crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, was buried quietly without official honors on the outskirts of Beijing.
Funerals for Russian and Soviet Leaders in the Twentieth Century
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (1917-1924) Vladimir Lenin was immediately embalmed following his death on January 21, 1924. His body was placed in the House of Trade Unions in Moscow, where more than 50,000 people came to pay their respects to the first Soviet leader. On January 25, it was decided that a mausoleum would be constructed to display his body. A temporary wooden tomb was quickly erected according to a design by the architect Alexei Shchusev that was later realized in marble in 1930. On January 27, Lenin's memorial procession set off at 16:00 for Red Square, where, after a brief public demonstration in his honor (the temperature in Moscow was far below freezing), the coffin was placed in the mausoleum. A permanent honor guard was then stationed at the entrance, a tradition that continued until 1993.
Communist Party General Secretary (1922-1953) Joseph Stalin died on March 5, 1953 and was mourned officially for four days. The line to file past his coffin where he lay in state in the House of Trade Unions stretched for several kilometers, and hundreds of people were crushed to death by the surging crowds on Red Square on the day of his funeral. After the ceremony, which was attended by members of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and representatives of foreign delegations, Stalin's embalmed body was placed alongside that of Lenin in the mausoleum. It was quietly removed on the night of November 1, 1961, as part of Khrushchev's policy of de-Stalinization, and buried next to the Kremlin wall.
The burial of former first secretary (1953-1964) and Soviet premier (1958-1964) Nikita Khrushchev took place on September 13, 1971 in the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. The modest funeral and wake were attended by only a few dozen people, mostly Khrushchev's close family and friends. The authorities distanced themselves from the fallen leader even after his death, and the only announcement of his passing was a tiny notice in
Pravda mentioning the death of "pensioner Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev." In order to avoid crowds at the cemetery on the day of his funeral, entrance to the cemetery was closed, ostensibly for regular maintenance of the grounds, transportation links to the surrounding regions of the city were temporarily suspended, and people were forbidden to walk near the cemetery. In August 1975, a monument by the sculptor Ernst Neizvestny was erected to mark Khrushchev's grave.
After the death of Communist Party General Secretary (1964-1982) and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1960-1964 and 1977-1982) Leonid Brezhnev, a four-day period of nationwide mourning was announced. On November 15, 1982, the day of his funeral, classes in schools and universities were cancelled and all roads into Moscow were closed. The ceremony was broadcast on every television channel and was attended by several hundred foreign guests. Like Lenin and Stalin, Brezhnev also lay in state in the House of Trade Unions before his body was removed to be buried under the Kremlin wall. The coffin was carried across Red Square on a gun carriage and proceeded by hundreds of wreaths and emblems of the deceased general secretary's numerous awards. The burial ceremony was attended by the full leadership of the Communist Party and the USSR, and at 12:45, as the coffin was lowered into the grave, all of Russia's major towns resounded with artillery salutes, factory bells, train whistles, and automobile horns. The nation came to a standstill for five minutes before a final parade on Red Square.
The funerals of General Secretary (1982-1984) Yury Andropov on February 14, 1984 and General Secretary (1984-1985) Konstantin Chernenko on March 13, 1985 followed a similar pattern.
By contrast, Tsar Nikolai II, who ruled Russia from 1894 to 1917, initially received no such respectful treatment following his death. After he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, their bodies were doused with sulfuric acid and burned before being thrown into a mine shaft near Yekaterinburg. The remains were uncovered in 1991, and on July 16, 1998 they were brought to St. Petersburg, where the coffins were met by a squadron of honor guards and a military orchestra. They lay in state in the church in the Peter and Paul Fortress for a day, and access was restricted to visitors with special passes. On July 17, 1998, artillery salutes were fired as the tsar and his family were ceremoniously laid to rest among Russia's other imperial rulers in a service attended by President Boris Yeltsin.
Television Coverage of Yeltsin's Funeral
Journalists from newspapers and magazines will not be allowed access to today's memorial service for the former president of Russia. First deputy Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov referred to "protocol" and explained that the ban is necessary because "there will be so many people there." The funeral service will be broadcast live on several television channels: coverage will start at 13:15 on the channels Rossiya and Vesti-24 and is expected to last for approximately three hours. "If the service gets excessively slow-paced, it will be 'interrupted' by direct links with correspondents and archivists," said the channel's management.
NTV's coverage will start at 13:30 and end at around 16:30, but NTV management has said that the broadcast may be extended. Perviy Kanal also intends to show Boris Yeltsin's funeral live, but representatives of the channel could not say for certain how much airtime will be devoted to it. The Russian State Television and Radio Company will be recording the event from inside the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the territory of the Novodevichy Cemetery, and the other television channels will have to rely that footage when repackaging and relaying the broadcast on their own networks.
The broadcast of Yeltsin's funeral was a topic of discussion late into the night yesterday at the headquarters of Russia's leading television channels, although only the state-owned English-language channel Russia Today, which will also broadcast the funeral on live television, was able to comment further yesterday: Russia Today spokeswoman Yulia Yermolina said that the network will be relying on ten reporters and two satellite antennas to broadcast the events in the cathedral and the cemetery. Ms. Yermolina also informed
Kommersant that Russia Today will preface the broadcast of the ceremony with a short presentation by Evgenia Polishchuka, the deputy chairwoman of the Russia Orthodox Church's publishing house, that explains Orthodox burial rites for an English-speaking audience. "After all, this is the first time since the days of [Tsar] Alexander III that Russia's top leader has been buried as a Christian," said Ms. Yermolina.
International Reaction: Who is Coming to Moscow
The funeral today for former Russian president Boris Yeltsin will be attended by numerous former and current heads of state and government from around the world. Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, and Estonia are all sending their highest representatives: Presidents Alexander Lukashenko, Robert Kocharian, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Valdas Adamkus, and Toomas Hendrik Ilves will all rub shoulders in Moscow today. Lithuania is also sending former president Algirdas Brazauskas. Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, who arrived in Moscow for an official visit on the day of Yeltsin's death, has stayed for the funeral, and he will be joined by Tajik Prime Minister Akil Akilov and Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev. The representative from
Georgia will be Georgian parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze.
The question of who will represent Ukraine at the events in Moscow occupied Kiev all day yesterday. In the morning, a government press release stated that Ukrainian
President Viktor Yushchenko will be attending the funeral, but that afternoon Yushchenko's press secretary Irina Vannikova said that a trip to Moscow to attended Boris Yeltsin's funeral "does not appear on Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's schedule for April 25." Instead, Ukraine will be represented by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga will also not make it to Moscow, since she has a meeting scheduled for today with Belgium's King Albert II and Queen Paola. The Latvian delegation will be headed by Latvian ex-president Guntis Ulmanis.
Representatives from more distant countries who will come to pay their respects today include Germany's ex-president Horst Koehler, former US presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W.
Bush, former British Prime Minister John Major, Polish ex-president Lech Walesa, Finland's retired president Mauno Koivisto, and former Bulgarian president Zhelyu Zhelev, as well as Swedish and French Foreign Ministers Carl Bildt and Philippe Douste-Blazy, respectively. The memorial service will also be attended by Japanese Ambassador Yasuo Saito in the place of Japan's other political leaders, who were unable to make it to Moscow in time for the funeral. Many other countries from around the world are also expected to be represented at today's events by their ambassadors.
EU High Commissioner for Foreign Policy and Security Javier Solana had expressed his wish to pay his respects to Mr. Yeltsin in person, but yesterday he announced that he was needed at a meeting today in Ankara with Iranian National Security Council secretary Ali Larijani. The EU's leadership will now be represented by European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
