TOURIST ATTRACTION
When Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) died on Jan 21,1924, Soviet authorities on the behest of Stalin started embalming his physique and constructing a mausoleum.
The crimson and black polished stone temple has stood on the coronary heart of Pink Sq. since October 1930, and briefly housed Stalin’s stays till 1961.
Large crowds of individuals queued to pay their respects to Lenin in Soviet instances, however at the moment, ceremonies honouring the revolutionary are attended primarily by these nostalgic for the communist period, flags and crimson carnations in hand.
His embalmed physique has turn into, primarily, a vacationer attraction. As soon as each 18 months, the mausoleum is closed to permit scientists to re-embalm his physique and restore the injury brought on by time.
Solely 23 per cent of Lenin’s physique stays intact, housed in a glass sarcophagus at a relentless temperature of 16 levels Celsius, the TASS state information company has reported.
For the reason that collapse of the USSR in 1991, a debate about whether or not to shut the mausoleum and bury his physique has repeatedly cropped up in Russian media.
However the proposal has been met with fierce resistance from communists and has by no means critically been thought-about by the authorities.
PUTIN, LENIN AND UKRAINE
Putin hardly ever mentions Lenin. So his assault on the instigator of the October Revolution, days earlier than ordering his troops into Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022, was notable.
In a vitriolic speech questioning Ukraine’s statehood three days earlier than the assault, the Kremlin chief accused Lenin of getting “invented” Ukraine when he based the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
By giving the Soviet republics a level of autonomy, Putin argued, Lenin allowed the emergence of nationalism and the eventual implosion of the USSR.
“It was due to Bolshevik coverage that the Soviet Ukraine got here into being, which (one) can be completely justified to name Lenin’s Ukraine,” Putin raged.
“He’s its inventor, its architect,” he continued.
“And now,” Putin stated, “grateful descendants have torn down Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine.”
