The church was closed with the rest of the cemetery in 1923, and for a time served as a warehouse for storing monuments and gravestones brought from other cemeteries that were being demolished. With the establishment of the necropolis museum in 1932, the church interior was heavily remodelled. The iconostasis was dismantled and the walls and ceiling were painted over. Most of the icons were removed, though many of the historical monuments were retained. With the demolition of the Lavra's Dukhovskaya Church in 1937, a number of monuments were transferred to the museum, and over the next few years the remains of several famous historical figures were transferred and interred in the Church of St Lazarus, including; Prince Ioane of Georgia, Viktor Kochubey and Ekaterina Ilyinichna Kutuzova, the wife of Mikhail Kutuzov. Other monuments were brought from the Feodorovskaya Lavra Church, the Smolensky Armenian Church and the Catholic Church in Tsarskoye Selo. The remains of Count , the father-in-law of Decembrist Prince Sergei Petrovich Trubetskoy were reburied in the church, but his monument was never installed.