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I'm still amazed that this incredibly ghoulish display survived the fall of Communism all the way to this day.
Lenin, Stalin are huge figures in Russia history. Many men worships them. They are generally not considered like evil in Russia. Lenin made communism under which USSR became the most powerful empire in the world and Stalin won second world war.
PS I'm not exactly agree to above statements. History is complex thing. But many men I know think the way I described.
What do they think about the men they killed? Especially Stalin.
History is always written by the victors. What does the western world think of colonisation, wars etc?
They are not proud of it, but they generally emphasize on his achievments.
Lenin was genuine. He did things out of perceived neccesity that many are critical of in hindsight, but few historians would argue Lenin wasn't actively trying to improve the lives of men. Many around the world have much respect for the man. This is a way that people honor him. The only reason to seriously object would be if it somehow went against his wishes.
In 1921, Lenin had his soldiers steal nearly all the grain produced on peasant farms, then distributed it amongst his soldiers and cronies while five million people died of starvation: https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+famine+of+1921&source...
When America donated enough grain to relieve the famine, Lenin deliberately prevented it from reaching the starving rural peasants.
Lenin, by the way, purchased no fewer than nine Rolls-Royce cars during his brief reign.
I'll give you that he was genuine. So was Hitler.
You imply that Lenin caused the famine, that's a stretch, a fatal one. I'll accept fully that war communism made an existing food situation worse, but no man controls the weather.
> I'll give you that he was genuine. So was Hitler.
I would say Lenin was more comparable to Robespierre than Hitler. There is no doubt they were all ruthless mass murderers, but for different reasons.
all wealth including land, industry and business was confiscated
Right. No one rich, well off, or even well fed except him. Sounds genuinely like all absolute dictators ever. Leaders around the world respect a glorified, scrubbed version of an idealistic man, not the real Lenin.
So was Sir Winston Churchill, by whose policy 10 mln Bengali people died from starvation. I see no difference between one greedy self-important politician and another. Its a pity we are defenseless in front of them.
I think they confirmed Lenin bought one Rolls-Royce? There was an embargo in effect, and no Industrialized nation would sell to the Communist. Britian caved, and let Rolls-Royce sell Lenin air plane engines. They Sweetened the deal by selling him a Rolls at a 15% discount. Maybe he had more? It was a horrid time. I have found conflicting information on Lenin. I don't think there were too many historians(especially American) who weren't writting a narrative condemning anything remotely related to communism?
I know communism has not worked, but sometime's I wonder, "Do I need three automobiles, or more water/food than my family needs?"
Do I have a right to more inorganic and organometallic compounds, or carbon atoms just because our current system says I can--if I obtained them legally? I just don't know. Would I be a willing participant in order to find out--no. What I'm trying to say is I just don't feel the ideas of communism are evil. I still can't even talk about it because of the McCarthy era.(No, I'm not that old. The fear of anything different than Capitalism was just drilled into me as a kid.)
> He did things out of perceived neccesity that many are critical of in hindsight, but few historians would argue Lenin wasn't actively trying to improve the lives of men.
I bet most (all?) tyrants genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. Murderers in prison mostly believe their crimes were justified.
It's hard to imagine, given your characterization of him, that Lenin would support this at all.
I think people who wish to honor the dead will do so regardless of whether there is a mummy or memory to honor. I think the preservation and display of Lenin, at the time, was a political stunt for political goals. I think they continue to do it today because for everyone involved, it's just something they've always done. There's no real purpose for it at this point.
Lenin specifically requested no memorials to him. However the needs of the state superseded the wants of the individual, in the end (with a dose of broad over simplification), its what sunk soviet style communism in eastern europe.
I'd imagine it helps with tourism, money is a good motivator
This sums my own thoughts in the matter:
"If you are truly convinced that there is some solution to all human problems, that one can conceive an ideal society which men can reach if only they do what is necessary to attain it, then you and your followers must believe that no price can be too high to pay in order to open the gates of such a paradise. Only the stupid and malevolent will resist once certain simple truths are put to them. Those who resist must be persuaded; if they cannot be persuaded, laws must be passed to restrain them; if that does not work, then coercion, if need be violence, will inevitably have to be used—if necessary, terror, slaughter. Lenin believed this after reading Das Kapital, and consistently taught that if a just, peaceful, happy, free, virtuous society could be created by the means he advocated, then the end justified any methods that needed to be used, literally any."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/23/message...
I know this buzzfeed generation prefers 'top fives' and '20 mosts', but if you look at the history of Russia from ~1224 to now, it is hard to not think that Stalin has the top score solely because of technology, not brutality. if killing loads of people for vague reasons were in the olympics, russia would always win.
I read somewhere Mao screwed his nation pretty badly, topping some chart way above hitler and stalin (something around 60 million?)
"but few historians would argue Lenin wasn't actively trying to improve the lives of men."
So was Hitler. He wanted to improve the lives of Aryan Germans (at the expense of everyone that was not, like Polish, or Jews).
Lenin remains the biggest killer of nuns and religious people of the wold ever. He had a real problem with people deciding on their own not to follow him, so he killed a big part or Russian society.
While he did not dirty his hands directly, he gave the dirty orders that other people would follow. The dirty jobs pal of Lenin was called Stalin. Lenin wanted money, let's make Stalin rob a bank, Lenin wanted to remove someone, let's call Stalin again.
Of course, If you lie down with dogs, you'll wake up with fleas. Lenin was probably poisoned by Stalin, and the rest is History.
Indeed, Lenin however was an absolutist, and absolutists rarely come to a long term solution.
The only reason to seriously object would be if it somehow went against his wishes.
It did go against his wishes.
He is in good company. There is not much communism left in China, but Mao is still embalmed in his mausoleum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mausoleum_of_Mao_Zedong
Not much communism? Seems to me that the media plus almost every bank plus every square inch of land being entirely state-owned is quite a lot.
Just because the state owns lots of stuff does not mean the state is being communist. State capitalism is also a thing.
As far as enterprise goes, after finding out that keeping everything in house was not working, nearly all state enterprises were incorporated and the government mostly got out of the running of the businesses, while still holding onto a majority of shares.
There are also privately owned enterprises, which first equaled the number of people in employment in the public sector in 2001, and has been growing fast since, with China today having about the same balance of private sector to public sector jobs as Alaska.
Also, the state does not own all the land, for the past ten years private land ownership and property rights have been established in law, hence the nail houses - http://www.danwei.org/bbs/property_rights_the_coolest_na.php
Communism is about public ownership of the means of production. Given that the Chinese state is pretty much an extension of the party elite, state ownership in China does not have much, if anything, to do with public ownership.
Is the working class controlling these things? No. Has class struggle been eradicated? No. So it's not communism.
(Arguably at least in a marxist sense the very existence of a state wielding political power is incompatible with communism, but fundamentally the one key definition is that communism is a society without class differences - one would be hard pressed to argue that is the case in China)
There'd be a better basis for arguing it's socialism of some form, but state ownership does not automatically mean socialism either, nor does socialism require state ownership (but it also does not preclude it).
Similarly Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) is in a mausoleum, modelled after Lenin's infact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh#Death
Look at it from another perspective: it is a tourist attraction, that may bring some money to Moscow, just like mummies in the British museum.
Legacy of communism can and must be commercialized in all possible ways: Soviet Union produced amazing quantity of artifacts, cultural objects and scientific data that is possibly yet to be rediscovered and re-thought, just like the ideas used by PreVu mentioned in the article.
In case you were as curious as I was to see a picture of Lenin's body: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01809/Vlad_18094...
I've seen it in person. Rather than being ghoulish, it's thought-provoking - it's odd to see an actual historical figure in the flesh, if not the spirit.
It seems like a bit of a Ship of Theseus. Even at this point I wonder how much of what you see of his face can be said to be 'original'. But still people visit, as if Lenin is still there.
I wouldn't be surprised if nothing you can see on the exhibit is "original". First, they clearly admit in the article that they focus "on preserving the body's physical form—its look, shape, weight, color, limb flexibility and suppleness—but not necessarily its original biological matter. After 145 years, it's quite possible that everything was substituted. Second, Russia has a long tradition of creating a PR-pumped image of healthy, almost immortal leaders. That could be a natural part of such cult practices.
Lenin died 1924, he was born 145 years ago.
>Second, Russia has a long tradition of creating a PR-pumped image of healthy, almost immortal leaders.
Well, North Korea probably yes. But I haven't noticed such tradition in Russia.
Perhaps the immortality part was an exaggeration, but I was thinking about the way the Kremlin avoids admitting any health problems of the leaders. That happened in case of Yeltsin and allegedly in case of Putin's absence in March this year. Recently there was an interesting article about this "health PR" dating the tradition back to the USSR era, but I can't find it right now.
People still go there to visit because it still is as much Lenin you can get!
If they could get him just fit enough to ride a horse shirtless, he could run against Putin ;)
He reportedly wanted a private funeral and to be buried next to his mother.
I do wonder how they keep him from spinning.
Wow theres a german article on a swiss site called "20 minutes" that is a complete rip of this article, it came out yesterday and is even titled the same. Unbelievably bold plagiarism.
complete non sequitur but in the same vein (boosh) if you are into weird body stuff check out this guy:
I wonder what their endgame is here. Seems like Sisyphus has met his match.
> I wonder what their endgame is here
MechaLenin.
Hey, it worked for Nixon and they only had his head in a jar, not the whole body.
No need to worry, if that happens we will just reactivate Jeremy Bentham.
I think they're hoping he'll just wake up and walk away eventually.
Simpsons did it. https://vimeo.com/87962641
Reminds me to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNuy12-cxPw
Lenin is basically a love doll.
"Now, I am become love doll, the destroyer of men's opression" - Vladimir Lenin, 2015