Let’s turn here from Bhutan to one of the giants of the last century, V.I. Lenin, revolutionary anti-capitalist and all-around nasty Bolshevik.
Apparently, no one’s quite sure what to do with him — or, rather, no one’s quite sure what to do with his body, which continues to lie in state long after his regime collapsed and his ideology fell into disrepute — happily so, in both cases. Here’s what’s going on:
For eight decades he has been lying in state on public display, a cadaver in a succession of dark suits, encased in a glass box beside a walkway in the basement of his granite mausoleum. Many who revere him say he is at peace, the leader in repose beneath the lights. Others think he just looks macabre.
Time has been unkind to Lenin, whose remains here in Red Square are said to sprout occasional fungi, and whose ideology and party long ago fell to ruins. Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved?
I suspect it might be best for Russia to bury him — for good. For additional comments, see my post here.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.