Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Morbid But Fascinating

Lenin Undergoes Extreme Makeover

"Specially filtered lighting gives Lenin's face a warm glow. Botox, collagen and modern cosmetics aren't used, Denisov-Nikolsky said, with a polite harrumph. A mild bleach is employed to combat occasional fungus stains or mould spots on Lenin's face."

Eww.

But anyway :

"A poll last month by the Public Opinion Foundation in Moscow found that nearly 60 per cent of Russians younger than 50 want Lenin to be removed and buried."

I hope they don't. Though I have no illusions about Lenin, what he initially fought for was righteous (because it was an INTERNAL revolution that overthrew a most despotic and antisemitic regime) until he went too far, as against the sailors of the Kronstadt. Of course everyone knows what Stalin did after. But the point is that he's so historically significant, even iconic. His uniqueness to the world is one thing, but as a national icon to Russia his importance is the main concern here. His significance merits an unusual monument, just as Cromwell's did in England. I just hope the Russians to make the mistake that the English did, who took Cromwell's body from its special intombment among the Kings at Westminster and promptly decapitated the corpse a year or so later, burying the body under a jail's floor (if I remember correctly).

Simply burying Lenin wont bury the monster, good and bad, that he created; but it will consign him to something he doesn't deserve, mediocrity.