3 Heroes of the Resistance Buried : Victims: Hundreds of thousands mourn in Moscow. Gorbachev tells crowd, ‘I bow low before them for all that they did.’

With eyes swollen from crying and voices quaking with grief and gratitude, the Russian people on Saturday buried their three newest heroes in coffins draped with the white, blue and red flag of free Russia.

Clutching candles, bouquets of flowers and enormous photos of the dead men, hundreds of thousands of people--many of whom had stood with the victims in a dramatic people’s resistance to last week’s reactionary junta--moved solemnly through the streets of Moscow.

A seemingly endless river of mourners followed three trucks that carried the coffins on a four-mile funeral march that had started at Manezh Square next to the Kremlin Wall.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, addressing the public in person for the first time since before Communist Party right-wingers tried to depose him, told the crowd that the victims had been named “Heroes of the Soviet Union.”

“I bow low before them for all that they did,” Gorbachev said, pausing to regain his composure. “And they did everything--they gave their lives.”

Thousands upon thousands of grief-stricken Muscovites lined the streets, perched on roofs and gathered on balconies to watch the funeral march and pay their last respects to the three men, who have come to symbolize Russia’s victory over nearly 74 years of domination by the Communist Party.

The procession paused as it approached the spot near the Russian Federation government building where the men were killed, and a Russian Orthodox priest prayed: “O Lord, take the souls of our brothers who were killed in the fight for the sacred cause.”

Then the mourners converged on the Russian Parliament--where tens of thousands had risked their lives last week to keep from losing their hard-earned freedom to the conservative coup d’etat --to hear the words of their president, Boris N. Yeltsin.

“All of Russia is saying goodby to you, our heroes and saviors,” Yeltsin said from a balcony of the Parliament looking down on the coffins, each covered with flowers and Russia’s newly revived tricolor flag. “Your names will be sacred in Russia from now on. . . . Sleep peacefully, O heroes! Let the soil be feathers for you.”

Visibly moved with grief, Yeltsin addressed the parents of the victims: “Forgive me, your president, that I failed to defend and save your sons.”

The procession continued on to Vagankovskoye cemetery, where many prominent Russians are buried, and split into two religious services.

The families of Vladimir Usov, 37, who had just opened a new business, and Dmitri Komar, 23, a furniture maker and a veteran of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, were ushered into the early 19th-Century Resurrection Church for a final blessing by Patriarch Alexei II in a Russian Orthodox ceremony.

The family of Ilya Krichevsky, 28, however, went straight to the grave site to pay their last respects to the young Jewish architect and amateur poet at a simple service under the birch trees.

Although initial reports had said there were four fatalities during the early morning violence Wednesday in Moscow, actually only three people died here. A fourth man was killed in the Baltic republic of Latvia earlier in the week and a fifth died in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.

Inside the marigold-yellow Chapel of the Resurrection, the heavy scent of incense and wax from hundreds of burning candles filled the air as a choir, singing a cappella, called on God for his mercy and Patriarch Alexei, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, blessed the caskets of Komar and Usov.

“Both the living and the dead are under you, Lord,” intoned Alexei, dressed in white vestments and a jeweled miter. “Accept the souls of the dead men and spread your mercy over the living.”

As Krichevsky’s relatives clung to each other, rabbis officiating at the graveside service explained that although it is strictly forbidden to bury Jews on Saturday, an exception had been made so that Krichevsky could be buried at the same time as the other two victims “because they lost their lives to the tanks together.”

People who had been with Krichevsky when he was shot by the crew of an armored personnel carrier as he tried to prevent it from breaking through barricades gave testimonies before his family and friends.

“I was with him under the bridge,” said an army lieutenant who did not give his name, his body shaking with sobs. “He was so young and so handsome. He should have had a family, raised children and helped us to build a new society.

“But he gave the most precious thing in the world--his own life. I give my soldier’s pledge, and I believe Afghan veterans will support me, that we will do everything so that these murderers, marauders and drunks who seized power will never get it again.”

Yuri Kambalov, 29, who held Krichevsky in his arms as he was dying, addressed the victim’s parents: “Please forgive me that I was the last one to see your son alive (and not you).

“Through his bravery, he showed not only us, but all of Russia that no kind of putsch will ever succeed here,” Kambalov, who wore a black ribbon around his forehead, said in a quaking voice. “We will continue what he started.”

Before being joined by the Christian mourners, the rabbi recited the kaddish, a prayer of mourning, and a violinist played a funeral dirge he wrote for the occasion.

Orthodox priests carrying crosses and swinging censers filled with incense led the procession along a wooded path, and the coffins of Komar and Usov were set down next to the casket bearing Krichevsky’s remains.

The priests continued to chant prayers as gravediggers prepared for the burials.

But as a worker started to hammer nails into the coffin of her son, Inessa Krichevsky, 59, cried out in despair.

“I beg of you to open the coffin,” she said as tears of agony streamed down her face. “I must see my son one last time.”

When the lid of the coffin was removed, Inessa Krichevsky kissed her son’s white face and paused for a moment with her lips pressed over the bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

Many of those who had remained dry-eyed broke into tears at the sight of the mother’s pain.

Then, one after the other, the coffins were nailed shut, the gravediggers lowered them with ropes into the fresh pits, placed a Russian flag over each casket and an orchestra played the Russian national anthem.

Relatives and friends of the victims then threw handfuls of brown soil into the graves and, while the mourners watched, the graves were quickly filled.

The sobbing continued as grieving people covered the fresh graves with evergreen wreaths, flowers and sashes that read: “Thank you for raising a free Russia out of terror.”