Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Immediately after that, the question arose - what to do with the body of the leader? A variety of options were proposed, while the majority of the members of the Politburo of the Communist Party were against embalming the leader of the world proletariat.
Experiment on the dead
Initially, they tried to save Lenin's body at least for the duration of the farewell. The leader had to look as if he was alive. For this purpose, alcohol, formaldehyde and glycerin were introduced into his body through the aorta.
With the onset of the thaw, the body of the leader began to crack. At a meeting with members of the Politburo, scientists Boris Zbarsky and Vladimir Vorobyov lobbied for the idea of chemical embalming, which would keep Ilyich in a presentable state for decades.
The medical plan was accepted. The entrails were pulled out of Lenin's body, soaked in a solution of formaldehyde, which destroys fungi and bacteria. Incisions were made throughout the body so that it was better saturated with the balm. Since then, Ilyich has been placed in a bath every two years with a special solution of potassium acetate, glycerin and chloro-quinine, which allows him to further preserve his body.
Red God-building
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However, initially the idea of embalming the support of the party members did not find. It was opposed by Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and many other influential members of the Politburo. According to Trotsky, embalming Lenin's body and exposing it to a general display will resemble the cult of church relics. He called the veneration of the body of the leader of the proletariat "madness."
As the Soviet historiography says, the idea of placing the leader in the sarcophagus was expressed by “numerous working people and ordinary party members,” while Mikhail Kalinin officially voiced the “popular position”.
But most historians believe that the idea came from Joseph Stalin. Its roots lie in the desire of a part of the Bolsheviks to create a new "god-building" - the communist religion of the victorious proletariat, with its "relics" and "saints." As a result, it was decided to "meet the wishes of the working people of the entire Soviet Union".
Freezing Lenin
Embalming was far from the only option discussed in the party. Freezing the body was one alternative. According to the historian Evgeny Antonyuk, the author of the idea, Leonid Krasin, assumed that sooner or later science would learn to resurrect frozen people, which means that Ilyich could be brought back to life.
Nowadays, such technologies no longer seem to be something super-fantastic. Sociologist and futurologist Valeria Udalova notes that a frozen person must be stored at a temperature of 130 degrees. In turn, the candidate of medical sciences Andrei Stepanov emphasizes that there was a theoretical possibility of freezing Lenin, and then cloning him, as they are now trying to clone mammoths.
Cremation
Instead of embalming, Lenin could be cremated. Moreover, in 1919 Ilyich himself signed a decree on the preference of cremation of the deceased. This found support from Trotsky.
Thus, Lenin would be cremated, and the ashes would be buried in the Kremlin wall. Maksim Gorky, Valery Chkalov, Sergei Korolev, as well as prominent members of the party are now buried there.
To bury
In the 80s, the historian Akim Arutyunov allegedly distributed the will of Lenin, who asked to be buried next to his mother. Meanwhile, the leader was excommunicated during his lifetime and was subject to anathema, which deprives him of the possibility of burying the earth according to Christian traditions.
However, traditional burial by the Soviet leaders was practiced. Joseph Stalin, Yakov Sverdlov, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov rest in the necropolis near the Kremlin wall. There are also buried revolutionaries - victims of the battles of December 1917 in Moscow. Instead of embalming, Lenin could be put in the ground.
Sacred body
Would a cult of Lenin worship appear in the USSR if his body had not been embalmed and put on public display as the main relic of the first socialist state? Hardly. So, anthropologist, professor at the University of California at Berkeley Alexei Yurchak notes that the figure of the leader went far beyond politics alone, and his body, lying in the center of the capital, was a symbol of socialist ideas on which the state was built.
Buried, frozen or cremated Lenin, thus, would lose its sacred meaning. Therefore, the cult may have existed, but on a much smaller scale.
Ivan Proshkin
