What’s The Bizarre Story Behind Lenin’s Preserved Body?

Why does Lenin’s body remain on display and how is it preserved?

The bodies of both Stalin and his communist predecessor, Lenin, remained beside one-another on display, years after their deaths, until Stalin’s uninhabited corpse was buried during Khrushchev’s period of de-Stalinization. Subsequently, Lenin’s embalmed body remained alone in his Mausoleum, where it has laid for almost a century. But why would a communist regime support what resembles an almost religious deification of the deceased and what led to this seemingly paradoxical tradition?

Shortly after his death, against the will of both Trotsky and Lenin’s wife, the body of the Marxist revolutionary and communist leader, Vladimir Lenin, was embalmed and displayed in Moscow’s Red Square. Looking to inspire an almost religious Leninist ideology, the corpse was embalmed and exhibited under the orders of Joseph Stalin, a man who invariably, had the last word.

Upon his death, Lenin’s corpse was almost immediately drained of all fluids and his organs removed, replaced by a solution which slowed down tissue decomposition.

After initially being placed within a wooden structure, Lenin’s body was soon transported to a far less modest mausoleum, one which paralleled the architecture of ancient temples.

To counter his body’s decay, his corpse has since been bathed in embalming solution every year and a half. Consequently, 95 years after his death, only 23% of Lenin’s body remains in his sarcophagus, with 200,000 dollars per year now allocated to his preservation.

The hypocrisy of a nation which outlawed religion; enforced collectivism and then worshipped one man as if he were a god is something which seems laughable. However, this was no doubt considered, as the body was displayed to ensure that communist Russia would always have a face, and that the man, who played a crucial role in inspiring the Marxist-Leninist ideals of the Soviet Union, would be immortalised, both physically, and in the minds of the 2.5 million annual onlookers.

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Thanks to the following for the use of their images...

[igor_]

Lenin would not have approved of a personality cult of himself ( grate video)

[ThumbSipper]

So the answer was "Iosif was a lunatic", what a surprise...

[monsieur]

Lenin: Religion should not exist in Soviet Russia.

Stalin: Yeah, I purged all religions and sort of deified you by preserving your body and putting it on display.

Lenin: You did what?

[greminem]

that's pretty creepy but great video none the less :)

[ЛилияГарипова-гя]

Lenin got officially Russia from the last Tzar, and Lenin is inheritor. When he is buried, inheritor is buried. So he is kept to be " alive" . When there will be found blood inheritor of Lenin, or some certain time will pass, he will be buried.

[adventure_gamer]

Although I hate Stalin, I really think Lenin was a good man.

[heberpelagio]

The Russians were supposed to do with Lenin's body. something similar to what the Bolsheviks did to Kornilov's body! History connoisseurs will understand me perfectly...

[dachronicalalittlebitofeve]

So russia outlawed religion? Well I didn’t know that, learn something new every day as they say

[athishnirup]

I kept looking at him in the night he suddenly woke up broke the glass and said must crush capitalism I am not lying you have to believe me.