For almost a century after his death, Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s carefully preserved body has lain in a purpose-built mausoleum on Red Square — a glaring reminder of Russia’s communist past.
However, the father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that founded the Soviet Union — and the 100th anniversary of his passing — have largely been ignored by ordinary Russians.
Few official events have been scheduled to mark the centenary yesterday, beyond a Russian Communist Party ceremony at his tomb in the shadow of the Kremlin.
Photo: AP
For Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has publicly chided Lenin for his supposed role in dividing the Russian Empire into nation states like Ukraine, this is convenient.
Putin, now mired in an almost two year assault against Kyiv, has instead championed Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin — the man who led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II and who purged all his political opponents in a years-long reign of terror.
When Lenin died on Jan. 21, 1924, Soviet authorities at the behest of Stalin began embalming his body and building a mausoleum.
The red and black polished stone temple has stood at the heart of Red Square since October 1930, and briefly housed Stalin’s remains until 1961.
Huge crowds of people queued to pay their respects to Lenin in Soviet times, but today, ceremonies honoring the revolutionary are attended mainly by those nostalgic for the communist era, with flags and red carnations in hand.
His embalmed body has become, primarily, a tourist attraction. Once every 18 months, the mausoleum is closed to allow scientists to re-embalm his body and repair the damage caused by time.
Only 23 percent of Lenin’s body remains intact, housed in a glass sarcophagus at a constant temperature of 16°C, the TASS state news agency has reported.
Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a debate about whether to close the mausoleum and bury his body has regularly cropped up in Russian media.
However, the proposal has been met with fierce resistance from communists and has never seriously been considered by the authorities.
Putin rarely mentions Lenin. So his attack on the instigator of the October Revolution, days before ordering his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, was notable.
In a vitriolic speech questioning Ukraine’s statehood three days before the attack, Putin accused Lenin of having “invented” Ukraine when he founded the Soviet Union.
By giving the Soviet republics a degree of autonomy, Putin argued, Lenin allowed the emergence of nationalism and the eventual implosion of the USSR.
“It was because of Bolshevik policy that the Soviet Ukraine came into being, which [one] would be perfectly justified to call Lenin’s Ukraine,” Putin said.
“He is its inventor, its architect,” he continued. “And now, grateful descendants have torn down Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine.”
However, Lenin has not been completely erased. His likeness still dominates many city centers in Russia, even though most of the statues were removed when the USSR collapsed.
In Moscow, a 22m Lenin monument still looms over Kaluga Square.
In Antarctica, at the Pole of Inaccessibility, there remains a bust of Lenin outside a defunct Soviet research station — now mostly buried in the snow.
Of all the Soviet leaders, it is Stalin that Putin refers to most often — not to denounce his appalling record of repression, but to praise the statesman and wartime leader who defeated Adolf Hitler’s Germany.
Putin has always sought to frame his military campaign against Ukraine through the lens of World War II, comparing Ukrainian authorities to the Nazis and presenting the conflict as an existential struggle for Russia’s survival.
For the Kremlin, Stalin remains a model of victory and power, while Lenin is a loser.
“The current leadership needs Stalin because he is both a villain and a hero,” said Alexei Levinson, a sociologist at the independent Levada institute. “He won the war, so all his atrocities are erased.”
In contrast, Lenin’s achievements have been undone or never materialized, he said.
“Lenin is the leader of the world revolution — it never happened. Lenin is the leader of the world proletariat — it doesn’t exist. Lenin is the creator of the socialist state — it is no more,” he said. “And no one wants to build it anymore either.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including