The idea to resign the former leader of the world's proletarians to the earth is often revisited by Russian public and politicians. Just recently the head of the Russian Patriarch’s press-service Vladimir Vigilyansky offered to take Lenin’s body out of the Mausoleum right after the President Putin's inauguration and to give it to the communists. The VTSIOM latest poll shows that today 56% of Russian citizens support the idea of burying the body of our communist leader.
According to Elena Zelinskaya, ‘Media-Union’ vice-presiden,'this is a very important figure, because it is 10% higher than it used to be in previous polls. It means that public opinion in our country is developing, that people think about what’s happening in our country and where we are all going. Some say that we have much greater concerns than addressing the spectres of the past. I don’t agree with that. If such symbols were indeed meaningless, why would they create them? Why would they fight to keep them? One can say that it’s unimportant, but it is our past that stands in the way of our future development. We use Red Square for parades, for skating, for entertainment, for rallies, and as a necropolis as well.
Apart from these figures, which are very interesting to discuss, there is yet another reason for our meeting today. The opponents of the idea of Lenin’s burial usually offer yet another argument: it would cost a lot, according to them. Just like with the remaining streets: when the issue of replacing Soviet street names in Petersburg with their historical names, they say it would take a lot of money to change the street signs'.
Andrei Poklonsky, the head of the Russian Orthodox Patron Club board of administration
'I called my mother yesterday, she’s 71. And she said a very interesting and correct phrase to me: “Yes, nothing good will come out of Russia while he lies there’. I would like to say that there are a lot of different opinions on this historical figure, this leader or genius, call him whatever you like. When we were getting ready for this announcement we monitored all these opinions. I’ve personally seen one order signed by Lenin ordering the killing of 25,000 priests. I’ve read a lot about it, I’ve heard the witnesses who saw the priests being driven to barges – 5,000 on one barge – which sailed to the White Sea, and then the sailors left the barges there to drown. Should we believe this information or not? You know that during our lifetime – and I’m 47 – history has been rewritten more than once. When I was at school our textbooks told us a lot about the Great Patriotic War, we were brought up on these stories. And today’s history textbooks don’t attribute much attention to it. So you see that history has been rewritten, and today it’s very hard to say what was and what wasn’t – it’s like trying to determine the direction of the wind with your finger.
'But today we see a major substitution of notions. There is the notion of ‘burial’ and ‘reburial’, and there’s the notion of ‘interment’. Today 80% of Russian citizens identify themselves as orthodox people. And the Orthodox Church has strict rites regarding interment (father Vladimir will correct me if I’m mistaken), as well as the Muslims and the Jews. Almost all religions have these interment rites. So what does it mean to bury a body according to the Orthodox rite? The interment starts with the priest pouring out soil on the deceased’s chest in the shape of the Cross. After that, in the cemetery, the relatives of the deceased throw lumps of soil in the grave first, to show that the rite of interment is complete. And what do we see on the internet (and not only there) about Lenin’s burial? They say he’s already interred. But it’s like digging a grave but leaving the deceased to lie on top of it. He’s not really interred. As Christians, we are not allowed to judge where his soul is now, only the Lord knows it, and no one has a right to judge such things, but we see that a body has been lying on our central square, in the heart of our country. for many years, a body of such an ambiguous historical figure. So what does it make us? Are we following the pagan rites of ancient Egyptians? Or what? We are modern people, and we need to treat the issue of interment accordingly.
'This unburied body at the very heart of our country shows an ambiguous point of our attitude towards our history. We are Russians, we are a great nation, and we should do all we can to show the world that we are a normal contemporary nation, that we move only forward. We are offering a very simple thing: we don’t ask to act rashly, we don’t ask the Duma to adopt any laws right away. We offer a discussion. We’ll open the poll on our site, and if a majority votes for the project we’ll address the President and ask him to issue a special order and a bill for Duma. That is what we plan to do. We are ready to finance the project. I think our statehood will only win here. It is high time we finished this necropolis on Red Square. And we will be very glad if the majority of Russian citizens would prefer to close this page of our history and move on, instead of waiting for new shocks'.
