Remembering V.I. and the Mausoleum movement

Today is the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin near Moscow in l924. Even more important, from the standpoint of Twilight Zone fans, it is the beginning of the Mausoleum Movement, the apparent compulsion that everyone in the Communist world felt about embalming for the long haul and displaying their deceased leaders under glass for permanent public viewing. Lenin's mausoleum made possible the Mao mausoleum in China, Pyongyang's Dear Leader I mausoleum, the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum in Vietnam, the Dmitrov mausoleum in Bulgaria and several others. For a time, there were TWO corpses in the Moscow mausoleum--during the Lenin/Stalin dual occupancy, l953-61. You can see this incarnation of the mausoleum in the photo above.

Of course, political changes have taken their toll: Stalin was removed unceremoniously in the dead of night in October l961 and buried out back, near the Kremlin wall. The end of Communism in Bulgaria saw Dmitrov's corpse evicted from his place of honor and replaced with a public toilet--a low blow, to be sure. On the other hand, in some places, the corpse's stock has only risen. For example, it was reported in the Russian papers a few years ago that Lenin corpse embalmer specialists are working in Pyongyang by order of Dear Leader II on not just the periodic touching-up of, but the ACTUAL PHYSICAL RESURRECTION of DL I(!).

Putin is renowned for his tough talk, but he hasn't so far summoned the courage to put an end to this spectacle by burying old V.I. I've long thought he should send him on a world tour, a farewell to the world as it were, and then arrange for his interment in St. Petersburg, which is what V.I. wanted in the first place. At that point, Red Square could begin its transition from a graveyard to the vibrant, multi-purpose space it was for hundreds of years before January l924.