Putin Likely to Bury Lenin in 2024, Tumarkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 1 – Vladimir Putin is likely to remove Lenin from the mausoleum on Red Square and give the founder of the Soviet state a proper burial in 2024, the centenary of his death and the end of Putin’s latest term as president, according to Wellesley historian Nina Tumarkin.

            She tells historian Aleksandr Gogun that “Putin hates Lenin” because in the Kremlin leader’s mind the Bolshevik destroyed the Russian Empire but adds that there is an additional reason for thinking that the current incumbent in the Kremlin wants to bury Lenin however unpopular that would be with many communists (svoboda.org/a/30298926.html).

            Tumarkin says that the late Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov told her that Yeltsin had three goals when he left office: protecting his family, burying the Romanovs, and burying Lenin. “He was able to do the first two but not the third.” She suggests that “Putin would like to remove Lenin but still hasn’t been able to do so.” 

            In introducing his interview with Tumarkin, Gogun says that “opponents of Vladimir Putin compare him not infrequently with Stalin, and those who hate him compare him with Hitler. But almost no one draws parallels with Lenin despite the fact that it was Lenin who established the dictatorship and created the Cheka, which returned to power” with Putin.

            Tumarkin, author of Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 1983 and 1997), says that despite those parallels, “the two Vladimirs do not have much in common because Lenin was a revolutionary and founder of the Soviet system while Putin is a great power supporter. And the first conducted himself much more modestly than the second.”

            The cults around the two men are very different as well, the historian continues. Lenin’s began first when he survived an assassination attempt and then when he was dying. Putin’s arose when he was at the height of physical wellbeing and celebrated his vigor and manliness, Tumarkin says.

            But what is more important is that “Putin hates Lenin” because he blames him for everything that happened in Russia in the 20^th century although that is far from the truth.  Putin’s admiration for Stalin is a more complicated issue but it largely reflects the overwhelming “cult of victory” in World War II and Stalin’s role in that rather than something broader.

            Despite his hostility to Lenin, Putin has been a leader in opposing the demolition of Lenin statues abroad viewing such actions as anti-Russian.  In Ukraine, statues of the Bolshevik leader were taken down by August 2017, and one village cleverly renamed its Lenin Street for John Lennon, the Beatles singer.

            While many Russians today, including Putin, think about Stalin nearly all the time, ever fewer think about Lenin at all. Even those who come to the mausoleum to mark his various anniversaries often have signs which say “Lenin lives” on one side but feature a picture of Stalin on the other – and they put flowers supposedly for Lenin on Stalin’s grave, Tumarkin notes.