Lenin's sojourn as curio corpse may be over

Displayed body of Bolshevik revolutionary Lenin, who died in 1924, should be buried, says Vladimir Medinsky. Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin/AP

When the minister Yuri Khariyakin told the Soviet parliament in 1989 that Lenin had expressed a wish to be buried alongside his mother in St Petersburg and that his embalmed body should be removed from the Red Square mausoleum, he encountered incredulity and anger.

Lenin's niece, Olga Ulyanova, even made a public statement to the effect that it was bare-faced lie her uncle had ever wanted to be interred with his mother.

Ever since the Soviet Union began to break apart there have been repeated attempts to put the founding father of Russian communism six feet under. But no political leader has yet dared to take the step many Russians regard as sacrilege.

So, Lenin lies to this day, looking more waxy with each passing year, in the constructivist red marble mausoleum in Moscow beneath the Kremlin's walls, an object of curiosity for tourists whom humourless guards forbid from speaking above a whisper or putting their hands in their pockets.

But the return of Vladimir Putin for a third term as president of Russia in May, could pave the way for Lenin's removal.

This week, Russia's new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, re-ignited the controversy when he told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that Lenin should be buried.

"A body should be interred in the earth," Medinsky said who added that he was in favour of making it a state occasion. "I would observe all the appropriate ceremonies. As [Lenin] was a senior public figure the funeral should happen with all fitting state rituals, distinctions and a military salute in a suitable place."

With this observation, Medinsky was drawing a comparison with the treatment of Stalin, whose embalmed corpse was spirited away from its place beside Lenin one night in 1961 on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev and buried by the Kremlin's walls.

The famous mausoleum where Soviet leaders stood to review military parades, should stay, said Medinsky. "It must remain," he said. "It would be possible to turn it into a museum of Soviet history that would be very well visited and could have expensive tickets."

But the comments created such a furore that Medinsky had to clarify his position.

"It remains exclusively my personal opinion as a citizen," the culture minister, whose appointment Putin approved last month, later wrote on his blog.

While some parts of society, including the Orthodox church, support the idea of a burial, others are vigorously opposed.

The Communist party, Russia's second most popular political party, is particularly outspoken on the issue, which some suggest could be resolved by a referendum.

"Discussions about removal and re-burial have are simply provocative," Gennady Zyuganov, the head of the Communist party, said in 2009. "Any attempt to vulgarise or re-write the Soviet period and diminish the memory of Lenin … is an attempt to undermine the integrity of the Russian federation."

But many Communists are ageing and Medinsky's comments on the subject show that support may be growing for Lenin's final burial.

An April opinion poll suggested that 56% of Russians were in favour of removing the corpse, compared to 46% six years ago.

The head of Russia's National Bookmakers' Association, Oleg Zhuravsky, told the Izvestia newspaper this week that bets on Lenin being laid to rest in 2013 were becoming more and more frequent.