Writing in the Moscow Times, Alexei Bayer reminds us that despite the dictatorial power wielded by Vladimir Putin, the lunatic Lenin still lies in a tomb on Red Square. Putin could remove him with the stroke of a pen but he doesn’t, which means he wants him to stay. And that says all you need to know about the prospects for real progress in Putin’s Russia.
During the Soviet era, Vladimir Lenin’s mausoleum was the focal point of Red Square. It sat right in the middle of the square and was watched over by a military guard that changed at the stroke of the huge Kremlin clock in an elaborate goose-stepping ceremony.
It was the center of the country’s political life, too — the only place where the average Russian saw his leaders in the flesh. The Politburo reviewed twice-yearly marches of their loyal citizens while standing, quite literally, upon the founder of the Soviet state.
Communism was supposed to be the creed of the future, but its prophet lay mummified in a pyramid harking back to ancient Egypt or Persia. (The word “mausoleum” comes from Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria from the fourth century B.C.) The long line of waiting visitors matched the countless other lines snaking outside stores across the Soviet Union, as people hoped to buy chronically scarce food and consumer goods.
Writer Sergei Dovlatov put it best when he claimed that so many places in the Soviet Union stank so badly because the country’s main corpse had never been properly buried.
Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...