As you know, the leader of the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin died on January 21, 1924. And on January 25, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the USSR decided: not to betray Lenin's body to the ground, but to embalm and place it “for preservation in a crypt” near the Kremlin wall (the word “mausoleum” was not yet used then). This means that the decision to mummify the leader was made during these four days - between January 21 and 25. What happened during these days?
Butt's idea conquers the masses
The first proposal to embalm the body of the deceased was expressed by Lenin's attending physician, Vladimir Obukh. It happened on January 21, immediately after the death of the leader of the proletariat. I liked the idea. True, at first, members of the newly organized Commission for organizing Lenin's funeral were considering by inertia a plan for a traditional burial (on Red Square, next to Sverdlov's grave). But the idea of Obukh, which by that time had already gone "to the people" (to the Bolshevik lower classes), was rapidly gaining popularity.
The commission received petitions from the working people with a request to save the body of the genius revolution for posterity. The commission promptly responded to the mood of the workers, and already on January 23 began to consider the issue of embalming and placement in a publicly accessible crypt (mausoleum).
Lenin would have preferred a crematorium?
The opinions of the Bolshevik elite on this matter were divided. Felix Dzerzhinsky, Vyacheslav Molotov, Grigory Zinoviev, Joseph Stalin spoke for mummification.
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Against - of course, relatives and friends of Lenin (those old Bolsheviks who were friends with Lenin as a person, and not as a "symbol of the revolution"). The opinion of those who disagree was well expressed by Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich: “I thought how Vladimir Ilyich himself would react to this and speak out negatively, being completely convinced that he would be against such treatment of himself: he always spoke out for ordinary burial or for burning, often saying that it is necessary to build a crematorium here too”.
Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, later wrote: "When ours came up with a project to bury Vladimir Ilyich in the mausoleum, I was terribly indignant - he had to be buried with his comrades, let them lie along the Red Wall …"
Leon Trotsky also spoke out against. He believed that such an attitude towards the body of the deceased was more suitable for ancient religious cults, and not for the victorious revolution.
Ilyich must physically stay with us …
However, the flow of letters from enterprises and from the Bolshevik organizations did not dry up. "It is necessary that Ilyich physically stay with us and that he could be seen by the vast masses of working people," wrote, for example, the workers of the Putilov factory.
“It is under no circumstances to betray the body of such a great and dearly beloved leader as Ilyich is for us. We propose to embalm the ashes and place them in a glass hermetically sealed box, in which the leader's ashes can be kept for hundreds of years,”the workers of the Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district of Moscow echoed the Putilovites.
Such double pressure - from the side of ordinary communists and from prominent Bolsheviks (Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, Zinoviev) - made the relatives come to terms. The funeral commission found it necessary to "preserve Lenin's body for the proletariat" for the longest possible period (they counted at least for centuries).
Egyptian pyramid at the Kremlin walls
On January 25, 1924, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued the same decree on the construction of the Mausoleum at the Kremlin Wall and on the placement of the embalmed body of Lenin in it. The next day, at the II All-Union Congress of Soviets, the resolution was approved.
But even earlier, on the night of January 24, when Lenin's comrades-in-arms had already decided on the fate of the leader's remains, the architect Alexei Shchusev received an urgent task: to build a Mausoleum on Red Square in three days (by January 27, the day of the funeral). Of course, then it was about a temporary wooden structure.
Shchusev fulfilled the party's task on time. It turned out to be a cross between the Egyptian pyramid of Djoser and the Babylonian ziggurats. On January 27, 1924, Lenin's body was placed in this temporary mausoleum. The building itself was opened for everyone who wanted to say goodbye to the leader.
How the crypt became a tribune
On February 26, 1924, a medical commission was created to monitor the state of embalming of the body of Vladimir Ilyin Lenin , since the first embalming could not keep the body of the leader for a long time. Physicians Vladimir Vorobyov and Boris Zbarsky proposed a method of long-term embalming. To re-process the body, the Mausoleum was closed (March 26, 1924). The new embalming was designed to preserve the corpse for decades (there was no talk of centuries - it was clear that this was unrealistic!).
Simultaneously with the re-embalming, the construction of a new (also so far wooden) Mausoleum was taking place - more monumental and representative. The new construction was entrusted to the same Alexei Shchusev. He retained the pyramidal nature of the structure, but gave it an additional function - to serve as a tribune for the leaders of the party and government.
The new - the second in a row - Mausoleum opened on August 1, 1924. From then until the end of Soviet power, the party bosses will greet the festive masses from the rostrum of the Mausoleum.
And, finally, the third, already familiar to us, granite Mausoleum, was built in 1930. Its creator was - by tradition - the same Alexey Shchusev.
"Nikitka" is jealous of the people of the Generalissimo
The next change in the appearance and, most importantly, the status of the Mausoleum took place after Stalin's death in 1953. Flatterers called the ruler: "Stalin is Lenin today." Well, if Stalin is equal to Lenin, then they should rest together - decided in the Politburo. And the body of the secretary general was embalmed and placed in the Mausoleum next to the body of Lenin. The building itself became known as the "Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum".
Moreover, Stalin continued to lie there even after his cult was debunked at the XX Congress of the CPSU. A paradoxical situation has developed. At the ideological level, Stalin was taken out of the host of gods, equated with mere mortals and declared almost a heretic. And crowds of people continued to worship his tomb every day. This began to bother Khrushchev, because the people more and more often began to remember Stalin with a kind word, saying that under him prices fell, but under Nikita they were growing.
And then Khrushchev decided to finish off the cult of the former "owner" finally and irrevocably. In 1961, at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, the people were first promised that the next generation of Soviet people would live under communism. And then they decided that the first thing for this was to get rid of the remnants of the "accursed past."
Communist talks with the spirit of Lenin
On the last day of the congress, October 30, 1961, the 1st secretary of the Leningrad regional party committee, Spiridonov, brought to the audience the proposal of the meeting of workers of the Kirov plant to remove Stalin's body from the Mausoleum.
After that, deputy Lazurkina spoke and announced to the communists: "Yesterday I consulted with Ilyich, as if he stood before me as if he were alive and said: I hate being with Stalin, who brought so many troubles to the party."
This was followed by stormy, prolonged applause and the floor was given to the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine Podgorny, who made a proposal to make a decision to remove Stalin's body from the Mausoleum. As usual, no one dared raise a hand against.
Stalin was carried out through the back door
The execution of the decision of the congress was not postponed indefinitely, and the very next day, as it got dark, Red Square was blocked for the rehearsal of the parade. Two companies of machine gunners were deployed near the Mausoleum and got down to business.
For the burial of Stalin by the decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, a special commission of five people was created, headed by the chairman of the Party Control Commission under the CPSU Central Committee Nikolai Shvernik. It also included the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Georgia Vasily Mzhavanadze, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Georgia Givi Javakhishvili, Chairman of the KGB Alexander Shelepin, First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee Pyotr Demichev and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council Nikolai Dygai. And the work was supervised by General Nikolai Zakharov, who headed the 9th department of the KGB, and the commandant of the Kremlin A. Vedenin.
The operation involved only 30 people, but by morning everything was ready. Eight officers through the back door carried the coffin with Stalin's body out of the Mausoleum, brought it to the grave near the Kremlin wall, at the bottom of which a kind of sarcophagus was made of eight slabs, and placed it on wooden stands. There were no military salutes or funeral speeches.
The next day, a slab with the date of birth and death of Stalin was installed over the grave, and only 10 years later it was replaced with a bust by the sculptor Nikolai Tomsky.
After the removal of Stalin's body from the Mausoleum, rumors spread around Moscow that when he was reburied, he was almost shaken out of his uniform. No, they didn’t shake him out of the jacket, but they deprived him of his golden attributes. They took off the Golden Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor from his uniform, cut off the gold buttons and replaced them with brass ones. The commandant of the Mausoleum Mashkov handed over the removed award and buttons to a special Guard room, where the awards of all those buried near the Kremlin wall were kept.
On the morning of November 1, 1961, a traditional queue lined up in front of the Mausoleum. At first, people were surprised to find that only one surname flaunts on the slab above the Mausoleum - Lenin. And then they noted with amazement that instead of two bodies, only one rests in the Mausoleum …