The Mausoleum was the iconic site for viewing parades, especially those held on Victory Day so that the spectral presence of Lenin accompanied Soviet leaders as they stood over his preserved sovereign body.
Once every eighteen months, his body undergoes lengthy re-embalming procedures lasting for up to two months — with treatments include attention to joints, hair and the skeletal system. Throughout the decades, doctors have developed new techniques for preserving his body, requiring regular re-embalming, baths and the substitution of organic material with artificial ones Yurchak Tumarkin 3 , In the Russian Orthodox religion, a person is considered a saint if their body does not decompose or putrefy.
The cult of Leninism helped to shore up the continuity of the Soviet state. Lenin is not only venerated as the first leader of the Soviet Union but is symbolically linked to the October Revolution of and the continuity of the Russian state with the Soviet Union. He is associated with revolutionary time, as well as the lineage of the state from Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, through Stalin and present-day Vladimir Putin.
Moreover, the extraordinary circumstances of his afterlife link him with religious relics and the immortal presence of the sovereign. His preserved body has become a state-sanctified relic linked to the legitimation of the Soviet Union and its warped mourning for communist repressions. After the city of Leningrad returned to its original name of St Petersburg, Boris Yeltsin removed the honour guards from the Mausoleum in He also suggested that Lenin should be buried, and raised the issue again in ; however, political forces were opposed to his burial for the sake of tradition and continuity.
In , Putin argued against the removal of Lenin by suggesting that because many people in the older generation continue to identify with Lenin and Communism, his burial might dislodge their sense of stability.
The Mausoleum, like the Soviet melody to the Russian national anthem, maintains national continuity and social stability during times of loss, difficult transition and political change. In contemporary Russia, legitimized by the Great Patriotic War and antifascism, there is little political will to bury Lenin. As a place of warped mourning, his open coffin is a reminder of his political presence and mythical role in the Russian Revolution.
His physical and spectral presence near the Kremlin highlights veneration rather than critical reflection. If Soviet leaders could bury Stalin in , they could not bury Lenin because of his founding role in the Revolution and the canonization of Leninism as a doctrine. The first leader of the Soviet Union has an unusual afterlife. As Medinsky has noted, Lenin and his relatives were never keen on the idea of public displays.
The pharaonic element in Bolshevism was introduced by Stalin. Walter Rodgers, writing in the Christian Science Monitor , has warned against removing Lenin's corpse. In his view,. Interring Lenin beside his mother in St. Petersburg may paper over, but will not expunge, the bloody Bolshevik past. Shakespeare reminds us that "the evil men do lives after them.
But it's also possible that an interment might prompt Russians to confront his sanguinary legacy, to reexamine his misdeeds, to recognize that his actions continue to shape modern Russia in profoundly destructive ways. Lenin's burial need not be an occasion for burying the past.
In removing Lenin from Red Square, Russia would be saying that he no longer serves as a father figure.
It could come one step closer to confronting its past honestly. So far, Putin has seemed disinclined to face up to it.
By maintaining the immortal remains in the center of Moscow, they permit nostalgia for Lenin, but keep Leninism, and revolutionary ideas in general, as quiet as a corpse. The Kennan Institute is the premier U. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, and the region through research and exchange. Read more. Close Search Search. The Russia File. Explore More. Blog post. Babyn Yar: 80 Years after the Tragedy.
A full century since seizing the reigns of the Russian state from the grip of a weak cabinet and an ousted royal dynasty, Vladimir Lenin can still draw a crowd in Russia's capital, Moscow. But the citizens of Russia no longer gather in Red Square to hear the leader of the revolution give a rousing speech, rather they queue for a glimpse of Lenin's inanimate body, embalmed and laid to rest in his public tomb.
Whether or not Lenin should remain on show in front of the Kremlin is a debate that began even while he was alive. As his health declined, Lenin's acolytes discussed whether his body should be displayed in a masoleum. His contemporaries Leon Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Bukharin famously opposed the idea of his embalming, while his late wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wrote for the Pravda newspaper in the year of his death: "Do not build for him monuments, castles in his name, hold opulent receptions in his memories etc.
To all of this he assigned such little significance in life and it saddened him so. Multiple biographers of Lenin have claimed that Krupskaya found the the sight of her husband inside his tomb upsetting. He passed a major milestone on his way. On the face of it, it is baffling that Lenin's year posthumous residence at Red Square has lasted this long. Numerous polls over the last 25 years have shown that most Russians would prefer to see the founder of the Soviet Union buried.
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