Stumbling around in the dark to view a pickled corpse is not exactly my idea of fun. But that’s exactly what I did in Moscow when I joined the throngs of Russians and foreign tourists to inspect the preserved remains of Lenin.
A visit to Lenin’s tomb was an included excursion of my guided Russian holiday so I semi-reluctantly joined the queue on the edge of Red Square waiting for the day’s three-hour viewing session in the great necropolis to commence.
While we waited, the tour guides briefed us on the background to the attraction and debate about its future.
The future of Vladimir Ilyich was the subject of much debate (mid-2011). According to my tour guides, the ongoing ‘maintenance’ of Lenin (which is said to include bathing him in a tank of preserving fluid at regular intervals according to the BBC in its 2011 explanation on the embalming of dictators.
The description provided by the tour guide was a little grizzlier. According to her, Lenin is kept in a bath of preserving fluid each night and then each morning the team of scientists get him out, dress him up in his suit and tuck him into to his bed. The public is then allowed to file past him for precisely three hours. He’s then undressed and put back into his tank.
Whatever the details, the guide noted, the preservation of Lenin costs a lot of money, which some people thought could be better spent elsewhere.
Some Russian people believe Lenin should be taken off public view and buried. Apparently before he died in 1924 he said he did not want to be embalmed and put on display. He even nominated a preferred burial site. His comrades, however, ignored his wishes and those of his family.
On one side of the debate there is the case for finally respecting Lenin’s wishes. On the other, some people of the Russian orthodox faith believe that denying Lenin a traditional burial is inflicting on him a version of hell for wrongs done during his life. The most adamant of them argue that Lenin doesn’t deserve a proper burial.
Whatever the future holds, the body of the revolutionary leader remains on public display in the centre of Moscow, where it’s been since 1953.
One thing that doesn’t seem open for debate is the authenticity of the corpse. When I put it to one of our Russian tour guides that some people in the West say that the corpse is not real; that what is on display is really some sort of wax dummy, he looked startled and replied instantly, “never before have I heard this.”
The other tour guide gave a similar reaction. So I continued on my visit on the assumption that Madame Tussaud has played no hand in this bizarre tourist attraction.
Before entering the actual tomb I filed past (in single file with no talking, because talking, nyet) the graves of other important Soviet figures buried inside the Kremlin wall. These include Stalin, (Stalin was himself ‘preserved’, for some time before eventually being buried inside the walls) Brezhnev and Chernenko along with Soviet era heroes including cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin whose ashes were interned here.
Entering the sarcophagus of Lenin is bizarre; rather like going on a ghost train or through a haunted house in a theme park. Picture this if you can. The mausoleum is black marble on the floor, walls and ceilings and there’s almost no lighting. It’s quite disorienting.
I could hardly see where I was going. I had to walk down steps I could barely see. Suddenly a stern-looking uniformed soldier appeared in front of me, making me jump. He pointed silently at some more steps I had to walk down. I nodded and silently obeyed.
Suddenly there was Lenin lying on his bed before me. He was dressed in a suit under a light similar to those that sit on aquariums. He seemed tiny. His hands are very small. He was not a bit man, reportedly standing at only 1.65 metres tall.
I shuffled past, head bowed, and kept walking. Having queued for an hour to get in I was allowed the brief time it took to do a lap of the tiny burial chamber and walk back out, blinking, into the bright daylight of Red Square.
The information contained in this article is based on the author’s personal experience and anecdotes recounted by tour guides. The author cannot guarantee the accuracy of all information provided and claims no expertise in the subject matter.