Chapter 20 Connection Task Lenin

Vladimir Lenin was born a Russian in 1870 and lived until 1924. He is well known as a Marxist revolutionary and communist politician that led a Bolshevik Revolution in Russian in 1917. He became a strong communist leader in Russia and was the founder of the Russian Communist Party known as the Bolsheviks. Lenin was the first leader of the Union of Social Socialist Republican (USSR). After his death in 1924 he was well known as a genius, leader and teacher of people of the world according to the Russian people. They felt that he had accomplished much and had worked to create the Socialist economic system. His body was placed in mausoleum in Red Square, Russia but Lenin wasn’t just put in an ordinary tomb he was embalmed to be preserved forever. Using a special chemical process the Russians found a way to preserve his body in a lifelike appearance. The coffin is sill today incased in glass, cooled at 61 degrees and the humidity is between 80 and 90% 24/7. Every 18 months the mausoleum is closed so that his body can be soaked in a bath of glycerol and potassium acetate for 30 days to bring back the moisture to his body.

Lenin is not the only communist dictator to be preserved. Preserving dictators has become a fashionable thing in some countries. The more of a tyrant they are the better, their bodies are preserved and put on display for the people to view to continue to mourn their loss. Some dictators that have been preserved are Mao Zhedong from China, Ho Chi Minh who was Vietnamese, Kim II Sung from North Korea, Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines and Joseph Stalin from the Soviet Union. Stalin succeeded Lenin and was a dictator and tyrant of the Soviet Union for 25 years from 1936 until his death in 1953 when he also was preserved and placed with Lenin. In 1961 his massive killing to gain and maintain his power became revealed and he was removed from display and buried after being denounced by Khrushchev.

The preservation of leaders is not a new art. Recently the preserved body to go on display for the world to see was King Tutankhamun of Egypt. It is estimated that he was entombed for 3300 years. In 2007, King Tut’s body went on display for the public for the first time since the tomb’s discovery in 1922. The mummy is in a glass case with a humidity and temperature control and the case has a special gas inside that is lethal to bacteria and mold.

Interestingly, Ferdinand Marcos is also embalmed and in a glass coffin since his death in 1989. His wife had him preserved and has asked repeatedly for the government to place him on permanent display but the government refuses. Therefore he and his glass coffin remains stored in the basement of his wife’s mansion with hopes of future approval for public display.

Most recently in January of 2012 Dictator Kim Jong II of North Korea died. His body is going to be embalmed forever as well. His body is being prepared for placement in a glass coffin for future generations to view.