The mummification of the body of Vladimir Lenin marked the beginning of the practice of embalming the deceased communist (and not only) leaders in the countries of the world. Georgy Dimitrov, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, Clement Gottwald, Evita Peron - all of them shared the posthumous fate of the leader of the October Revolution. However, Lenin is not the only mummy in Russian history. Whose bodies were preserved contrary to the laws of nature?
Pirogov
The famous Russian surgeon Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov became famous as the founder of military field surgery. He operated on the wounded during the Crimean War and during the fighting in Bulgaria in 1877-1878.
The scientist died on November 23, 1881 from cancer. His students and wife - Baroness Alexandra von Bystrom - decided to embalm his body for posterity. On this account, an official permission was received from the Holy Synod, which said that the surgeon was an "exemplary Christian", and his "bright appearance" would inspire the followers of his work.
The mummification procedure on the fourth day after the death of the surgeon was carried out in 4 hours by his colleague David Vyvodtsev, who had previously published a book on embalming. At that time, this was the only description of this kind in Russia. Vyvodtsev, as described in an article published by the Pirogov Estate Museum in Vinnitsa, suggested using a mixture of alcohol, distilled water, glycerin and thymol to preserve the corpses. It was this antiseptic composition that was tested on the body of the surgeon.
Its effectiveness can be judged by the fact that for more than 135 years the mummy has not collapsed and retained its original features, although negligibly little was spent on maintaining its appearance in comparison with Lenin's body. For more than half a century, there was no leaving at all.
For the first time, Pirogov's coffin was opened in 1940 - it turned out that in some places the body was covered with mold. In part, it turned into a fat wax. In 1945, for 115 days, rebalancing was carried out, which significantly slowed down the decay of tissues. This was a unique result for world science. Similar work was carried out several times in the Soviet and post-Soviet times. Currently, the body of Nikolai Pirogov can be seen by everyone - it is in a glass sarcophagus in a necropolis church on the territory of his family estate.
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Kotovsky
If the body of the surgeon Pirogov was saved for posterity for his Christian virtues, then Grigory Kotovsky was mummified for directly opposite qualities. A revolutionary raider from Bessarabia, famous for his bank robberies, Kotovsky served the Bolsheviks loyally during the Ukrainian Civil War. In 1925, the red commander was killed at his own dacha near Odessa.
The Soviet authorities gave him almost the same magnificent funeral as Lenin, who died a year earlier. It was decided to place Kotovsky's body in a mausoleum in the city of Birzula, which was later renamed Kotovsk.
The body was embalmed by Professor Vladimir Vorobyov, who had previously received a similar experience during the mummification of the leader of the world proletariat. The work was carried out for several days.
The fate of Kotovsky's mummy turned out to be very sad. On August 5, 1941, German and Romanian invaders entered Kotovsk, and the very next day they pulled Kotovsky's body out of the sarcophagus and threw it into a trench dug for the burial of the executed Jews and Communists.
The body parts of the "Bessarabian Robin Hood" were collected in a sack by one of the local residents and kept until the arrival of the Red Army. The mausoleum was restored in 1965, albeit on a smaller scale. In the 1990s, it was locked, and the premises were regularly flooded with water.
Currently, Kotovsky's body is in a deplorable state. Blogger Denis Kazansky published photographs in 2016 showing that the mummy is a skeletonized remains. Vandals ravaged the mausoleum and broke the window of the coffin, so the exposed bones of the skull lie almost without any protection.
Stalin
Like Kotovsky's mummy, Stalin's body, since 1961, when it was taken out of the mausoleum and reburied, has probably already undergone severe decomposition.
Meanwhile, the initial conditions for embalming were quite favorable - experts began mummification almost immediately after the death of the "father of nations". According to eyewitnesses, it was possible to achieve the impression that the almighty dictator was simply sleeping in a coffin - outwardly, unlike Lenin, he looked almost like living.
Meanwhile, the technology of embalming was completely "Leninist" - before the mummification, the internal organs were removed and burned. The contents of the skull were transferred to the Brain Institute. Ironically, it was Stalin's body, which could have been preserved better than other domestic mummies, that was on public display for an extremely short time - only 8 years.
Christina Rudic