Vladimir Kappel, who died at the end of the war while his army was retreating under a Bolshevik onslaught in Russia's Far East, will be laid to rest in the Donskoy Monastery's cemetery, a little more than a year after the reburial there of another anti-Soviet general, Anton Denikin.
Kappel's remains were discovered in December of last year at a rundown Orthodox church cemetery in Harbin, a Chinese frontier city where tens of thousands of Russian emigres found refuge in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
"We expect a large inflow of members of the general public [at the reburial ceremony for Kappel] as this will not be an invitation-only event, as was the case with the reburial of Gen. Denikin in the fall of 2005," said Alexander Alekayev, an organizer.
Analysts see the repatriation and reburial of Kappel and other prominent anti-Soviet figures as part of an effort by modern-day Russia to reconcile with its past.
The nation's last monarch, Nicholas II, was reburied in the former imperial capital St. Petersburg in 1998, 80 years after he, his wife and children were slain by the Bolsheviks in an execution-style killing in the Russian heartland.
The remains of Nicholas II's mother, Maria Fyodorovna, who died in exile 78 years ago, were brought to St. Petersburg from her country of origin, Denmark, in September of last year, to be re-interred alongside other members of the Romanov dynasty in their crypt in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.
