REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
Since 1924 visitors from around the globe have flocked to Moscow’s famous Red Square to view the body of former revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin. But now, the Bolshevik could be relocating six feet under–if the Russian people have their way with him.
Seventy percent of Russians voting in an online poll support the removal of the former revolutionary’s body and his burial–totaling 178,022 votes.
To mark Lenin’s 87th anniversary of his death, the goodbyelenin.ru online poll, which attracted votes from 270,000 people, was organized by Russian Prime Minister Putin’s ruling party after one of its members of parliament, Vladimir Medinsky, last week strongly backed Lenins’s burial. “It’s well known that Lenin himself did not plan to put up any mausoleums to himself, and his living relatives, his brother and sister, were categorically against,” Medinsky was quoted as saying on the poll’s website. “Communists could not care less about what Lenin himself or his relatives wanted.”
Yet, Russia’s Communist Party had their own views and said that the poll was skewed and criticized the initiative as “grave-digging”. Literally! (Read Putin’s Alleged Mistress to Grace the Cover of Vogue)
But this isn’t the first time Russia mulled over the emotive question as to whether they should say ‘Goodbye Lenin’. Each year on 21 Jan., the anniversary of Lenin’s death prompts a national debate. Next month the mausoleum, which is still open to the public free of charge, will close for a regular spruce-up of Lenin’s body and his clothing.
So what will happen to Lenin’s body? Mr Putin has said it should be up to the people to decide. And perhaps, in true Communist spirit that is exactly what Lenin would have wanted…(See Photos from The Bolshevik October Revolution)