After Dark In Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery

The grave of Andrei Tupolev, one of the Soviet Union's top aircraft designers.

The final resting place of Vasily Margelov, the Red Army general who was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in 1990.

A headstone to Tatyana and Vladimir Kerbel, the wife and son of famous sculptor Lev Kerbel. These long-exposure images were shot in the darkness at Novodevichy.

Founded in 1898, the cemetery lies alongside the Novodevichy Monastery in southwest Moscow.

Every December, Moscow's winter sun sets at around 4 p.m. But the cemetery -- with its some 27,000 graves -- can be explored under the faint glow of the city outside until 5 p.m when it closes. 

This is the grave of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The cemetery is the last resting place for many people who were household names in Russia and the Soviet Union, including Anton Chekhov, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Bulgakov, Sergei Prokofiev, and Boris Yeltsin.

The burial site of Valery Legasov, who led the investigation into the Chernobyl disaster before his suicide in 1988. The plot now reportedly receives more than 100 visits each day, after the broadcast earlier this year of the immensely popular HBO miniseries about the 1986 nuclear disaster.

The elaborate grave of actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov, who played a spy in a famous Soviet television series.  

A bust of composer Reinhold Gliere sits atop a pedestal on his burial space.

The grave of cosmonaut Pavel Belyayev, who commanded the Voskhod 2 mission that completed the first-ever spacewalk in 1965.

The grave of Semyon Afonin, a major general of the Red Army who was involved in tank design until his death in 1944, reportedly in a traffic accident.

A smaller-than-life statue of Sergei Anokhin, a test pilot who led a high-risk career flying some of the Soviet Union's experimental aircraft including the A-40 "Flying Tank."
 

A row of Soviet-era burials. During the Soviet period, only internment around the walls of the Kremlin was seen as more prestigious than being laid to rest in Novodevichy.

The dog-loving actor and clown Yury Nikulin represented as smoking alongside his giant schnauzer.
 

The final resting place of Soviet politician Nikolai Skvortsov.
 

A woman walks past Novodevichy's walls after 5 p.m., when the cemetery gates close. Only the occasional patrol of a security guard breaks the stillness inside until it reopens at 9 a.m. the next morning.