Moscow: Russia`s ruling party`s online
poll on the burial of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin has
sparked a fresh debate on the future of the embalmed body of
the Bolshevik leader.
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 percent 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.
PTI
