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Fresh debate on Lenin's burial with new online poll

Last Updated 03 May 2018, 05:36 IST

The poll of the 'goodbyelenin.ru' website of the United Russia party has only one question "Do you back the idea of burying the body of Vladimir Lenin?" The question requires a "Yes" or "No" as answer, 'Ria Novosti' reported.

So far over 70 thousand people have expressed their opinion on the website, with over 70 per cent supporting the idea of burying Lenin.

However, a Communist Duma member Valery Rashkin has accused the ruling party of "manipulating" the poll.

In an interview to Ekho Moskvy (Moscow Echo) radio, Rashkin noted that in the morning on Sunday, only 20 thousand had voted on the pro-Kremlin website, but within a couple of hours their number swelled to over 70 thousand and an overwhelming majority favouring Lenin's burial.

Lenin, the founder of the erstwhile Soviet Union, died on January 21, 1924 and his body was embalmed and placed in a specially-built mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square. The body is kept in a glass casket for public viewing.

However, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there had been demands that his body be removed from the red granite tomb on Red Square.
A prominent Russian lawmaker recently dubbed Lenin as an "extremely controversial political figure."

"Lenin is extremely controversial political figure and his presence in the necropolis in the heart of our country is extremely silly," Vladimir Medinsky, a State Duma Member from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-led United Russia party said in a statement published on the UR party's official website.

Lenin had led the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and set up the world's 'first state of workers and farmers'.

"We have something stupid, pagan, corpse- worshipper's mission on the Red Square. There nothing left of Lenin's body, specialists know that only 10 percent of the body is left, rest has been removed long ago and substituted," Medinsky said.
The issue of removing body of the Bolshevik leader from near the Kremlin wall has split the society.

Former Russian Patriarch Alexi-II had demanded a fitting 'Christian' burial for Lenin by the side of his mother in St Petersburg as per the last wish of the Soviet leader.

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(Published 23 January 2011, 13:15 IST)

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