Sunday, June 03, 2007

Lenin's Tomb

I was in Russia for 10 days (May 21-31) and have many photos to share. The most profound event of my trip was visiting Lenin's Tomb. It was an amazing experience, the design of the interior heightening the anticipation and momentousness of seeing the most important revolutionary in the history of humanity.



Below is a post on Paul Smith's blog in 2005 on "burying Lenin":
There was a bit of talk a few days ago about burying Lenin or not, I've always been pretty neutral on the topic, however I've just punched in Lenin into Google News and have been surprised at the amount of Lenin bashing going on in the capitalist press. So I'm going fully over to keep Lenin where he is until the work of the people is finished.

If they can get so annoyed at an 80 year old corpse then they're obviously [...] scared of what he represents.

I read on one website a comment by Amanda somebody...
As an eighth-grader, we learned about communism in Russia. Personally, I think they should just bury Lenin because he did not do anything helpful for Russia and is certainly not a good reminder of what happened for its people.
Well thanks to Lenin women in the Russian Soviet Republic had the right to vote when they took power, you would have to [have] waited until 1928. And if we really want to get technical the soviets since they formed (1905) obviously had no objections to women being politically involved, because its just stupid - the only kind of stupidity that some backwards feudal lord or fat capitalists could ever have made!

Go and ask some people who were alive then in Russia at the time and actually find out for yourself. I suppose you'd rather have Ivan the Terrible or Nicholas the Bloody in charge, for even asking for the right to vote they would of exiled you to Siberia.

There's a reason they decided to keep Lenin on display - because millions upon millions of people came to see him, and kept on coming to see him, even today.

Zyuganov, the leader of the [...] Communist Party of the Russian Federation:
Irresponsible and provocative [...] With their filthy hands and drunken heads they are crawling into the sanctuary of the state. The desire to rake up remains of the dead is a great sin and a sign of mental pathology.
Indeed there's a reason Putin said in 2001 he had no desire to move Lenin - it could well result in civil war, only this time we wouldn't lose like in 1993.