Karthick Arvinth
Preserving the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin will cost the
Russian government up to 13m roubles (£140,000; $200,000) this year,
according to the Federal Protective Service (FSO). A notice published by
the agency said that it had contracted a supplier to perform
"biomedical work for the conservation of the Soviet founder's body as it
looked in life".
Lenin's body was mummified following his death in 1924 and has been
on public display at a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square ever since.
An institute known as the Centre for Scientific Research and
Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies in Moscow has been
responsible for maintaining the remains of the Communist revolutionary.
Scientists from the institute also helped preserve the body when it was
briefly evacuated to Siberia during the Second World War.
Lenin, who laid the foundation for the Soviet Union as a
one-party communist state, is the subject of much historical debate. He
led the Russian – and later Soviet – government from 1917 to 1924,
generating mass social and economic upheaval to recreate Russia.
Divisive issue
Russian scientists have preserved Lenin's body by focusing on maintaining its physical form over its original biological matter.
"They
have to substitute occasional parts of skin and flesh with plastics and
other materials, so in terms of the original biological matter the body
is less and less of what it used to be," Alexei Yurchak, professor of
social anthropology at the University of California, told Scientific American last year.
"That makes it dramatically different from everything in the
past, such as mummification, where the focus was on preserving the
original matter while the form of the body changes."
Russian President Vladimir Putin was guarded when asked about the future of Lenin's body
in Moscow's Red Square in January, saying the issue must be "approached
carefully" so as to avoid steps that might split Russian society.
A 2012 poll revealed more than half of Russians wanted his body to be removed from display at the mausoleum and laid to rest.
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