The late Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, and his waxy preserved corpse has been displayed in a mausoleum on Red Square ever since. But Russia's new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, insists the time has come to give Lenin a proper burial and consign the Soviet era to the past. Russians have been debating what to do with the body of the leader of the Communist revolution since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago. More than half the population now says Lenin should be buried, although the idea is sacrilege to the country's many Communists. Is Russia ready to say goodbye to Lenin?
Russia will bury Lenin soon: Twenty years ago, a dissident who proposed burying Lenin would have been condemned with "incredulity and anger," says Howard Amos in Britain's Guardian. By 2006, 46 percent of Russians were open to the idea, and now 56 percent favor removing Lenin's "curio corpse" from Red Square. The old man is "looking waxier every year," and Moscow bookies bet he'll be buried in 2013. If Nikita Khrushchev could bury Josef Stalin in 1961, the muscular Vladimir Putin can handle Lenin.
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