Lenin’s Embalmers Now a Profit Center for Russia Today

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 16 – The skill of scientists at Moscow’s Lenin Laboratory, the institution which keeps the embalmed Lenin in the Red Square mausoleum in good shape, has attracted customers from North Korea and Vietnam, thus making it into a new profit center for the Russian state.

            The North Koreans are reportedly paying about 400,000 US dollars a year for the Russian specialists to keep the bodies of the father and grandfather of the current dictator in good shape, and the Vietnamese government is paying equally well apparently for the maintenance of Ho Chi Minh’s remains.

            Unfortunately for Moscow, the Chinese have decided to take care of Mao’s body on their own, Ukrainian commentator Sergey Ilchenko says; but there are plenty of other candidates for the special “Lenin treatment” whose heirs could help the Russian government to earn money (dsnews.ua/world/nezabvennye-pochemu-rpts-skoro-soletsya-s-gaityanskim-vudu-15032019220000).

                Rumors abound that the embalmers did more than keep Lenin’s body in good shape. Some even believe they’ve kept him alive. After all, in 1961, a communist party functionary said that Lenin had appeared to her and said he didn’t like having Stalin lying next to him, a report that helped power the decision to removes the one Soviet dictator from the grave of another.

            According to a report by one Duma member, the annual cost of maintaining the mausoleum is approximately 260,000 US dollars, so with the money coming in from Pyonyang and Hanoi, it is already very much a paying proposition.  But Ilchenko suggests that Moscow might be creative and offer its “VIP-Lenin” service to others – and make even more.

            This would be even easier, the Ukrainian commentator suggests, if the Moscow Patriarchate dropped its objections to Lenin being in the mausoleum and even declared him a miracle-working saint.  That could happen if Kirill seeks to recover the favor of the Kremlin after losing so many parishes in Ukraine.

            But even without that, there would be a market among the wealthy in Russia and in other countries; and the Kremlin could pursue this in the best and most shameless act of capitalism, taking money not only from those who are living but also from those who are about to die and want to be celebrated after that event.