So the leader of Russia’s Communist Party (KPRF) Zyuganov and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov have gotten into a bit of a spat over whether or not Lenin should be buried.
Zyuganov thinks calls to bury Lenin are “idle chatter,” and apparently believes that the Great Revolution “ended in a practically bloodless manner.”
Kadyrov begged to differ on his Telegram, citing opinion polls from Levada and Superjob that showed 60% and 80%, respectively, of Russians supporting such a step.
He also further pointed out: “So the murder of the Tsar’s family, the Civil War, repressions, hunger – this was all nothing according to the “historian” Zyuganov? The leader of the KPRF lives in hiw own imagined world. How many more generations must Lenin’s body lie on Red Square for Zyuganov to calm down?”
At the end, he suggested Zyuganov apologize to the people whose opinions he had dismissed as “idle chatter,” as well as to the victims of the Revolution and of the ensuing Soviet period.
Normally, I’d consider a spat between commies and Kadyrov to be a viper vs. toad contest (i.e. would hope they swallow each other). Nor do I care much for this retarded culture war, which pops up with depressing regularity every year.
Still, in this particular case, most normal, non-Communist (but I repeat myself) people would sympathize with Kadyrov, who made his argument civilly, and cited statistics in support of it. This is coming from a man who otherwise spends his time running a parallel Islamist foreign policy and calling for a Homocaust (and implementing one, if rumors are to be believed).
There must be some kind of achievement trophy for this.
But things get even better.
Earlier today, the KPRF official account posted this message on Twitter, implicitly attacking Kadyrov (a no-no in Russian politics):
In light of the many provocations, it worth noting: An attack on Lenin and Zyuganov is either a sign of mental retardation, or of diversionary work against Russia.
Impressive. Have the commies finally grown a spine?
Guess not – they unpersonned their own Tweet. Though I suppose this is oddly appropriate for the 100th anniversary of Red October.
So, not just stupid, morally degraded liars… but cowards to boot. In other words – sovoks.
EDIT: Hard to imagine how this could get even better, but it just did.
There are more and more provocations against Lenin and Zyuganov. Many experts believe this to be either a sign of mental retardation, or of diversionary work against Russia.
I must have missed it when Kadyrov became a liberal in the past 24 hours.
Alternatively, being too cowardly to insult Kadyrov, commie “experts” blame it on teh liberals instead.
Interesting about the technical aspects:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lenin-s-body-improves-with-age1/
Apparently the bodies of Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il have been embalmed with similar methods.
Is Kadyrov wanting to get rid of Lenin equivalent to tearing down confederate statues in the USA?
No, I don’t think that’s an apt comparison.
Most Russians want to bury him (it was actually something of a political priority for Yeltsinite liberals during the late 1990s, to score points against the KPRF, but it fell out of the limelight once Putin came to power and the KPRF became irrelevant). My preference would be to deconstruct and reassemble the tomb in some non-central part of Moscow. The Communists can continue maintaining the body (if they want to pay for it).
When Mao died, the CCP sent a team of doctors to Moscow to find out about Lenin’s corpse. If I recall correctly, they were told that his nose and ears had rotted off and been replaced with wax. That was from the book “The Private Life of Chairman Mao.”
It is amazing how naive HG Wells was when he believed, among other lies, that Lenin had not intended that the Czar and his family be killed.
Hmm, according to that
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/11/preserving-chairman-mao-embalming-a-body-to-maintain-a-legacy (wouldn’t normally link to the Guardian…but this seems credible)
the Chinese didn’t get Soviet assistance for embalming Mao’s body, due to the Sino-Soviet split, and had to come up with a procedure themselves (with interesting results: “Mao’s former doctor Li Zhisui published a ghoulish account of the process, describing the former ruler’s head swelling up “like a football”).
I find it fascinating though that parts of Lenin’s body have been replaced with plastics or whatever they use…if this process continues, the body might eventually be mostly artificial. Pretty grotesque.
When I was in Moscow earlier this year this girl I was seeing was quite insistent that it’s a wax dummy and the real Lenin was quietly buried somewhere behind the MKAD in the early 60s.
I must have misremembered. Li Zhusui, of course, wrote the book.
But, I agree, it is so amazingly bizarre and grotesque. Though there may be many other tangential examples, like the embalming of some saints, or even the erection of buildings dedicated to statesmen in the US, it nevertheless seems to reveal something especially visceral and disgusting about communism.
sounds like a bit of Cold War or liberal-dissident propaganda, like lost cosmonauts, kindergarteners dying of rat poison etc. (not that the mistrust of the government wasn’t unwarranted, everything in the USSR being hush-hush.)
Lenin a wax copy and the original just dumped somewhere? Man, they’re good.
speaking of copies…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_decoy#Boris_Yeltsin.2Funknown_.281996.E2.80.932000.29
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Dmitry_III
Russia, you weird.
Yes, it sounds like exactly the same thing to me. As the classic said: those who control the present control the past and those who control the past control the future.
Ramzan Kadyrov’s statement in regards to gays is ironically super-homo: “We will put the whole world on its knees and screw it from behind.”
It’s not even remotely comparable assuming that they actually want to give him a proper burial with a marked grave somewhere in a normal graveyard. It’s a corpse, not a monument.
Me, personally I think communists belong in an unmarked mass graves, but there’s value of in having Lenin there in a grotesque monument that he rather likely would have disapproved to remind us all about how the atheist who wanted to force “progress” by destroying “oppressive” structures of his civilization in the end only ended up creating another religion and taking his country 3000 years backwards into a pharaonic cult.
It’s all a great reminder that leftists have been wrong about the innate nature of man for hundreds of years. The natural state of man is superstitious, irrational and authoritarian and statecrafting in the absence of a more complicated framework built over the centuries defaults to a primitive God-king cult.
Have you ever read the Brothers Karamazov (“Stink of putrefaction”) or been to the Pecherskaya Lavra in Kiev? The commies desperately needed to have a saint. Nietzsche said the building of a new altar requires the tearing down of the old. But the converse is true as well.
We need good hard evidence before we can celebrate the Homocaust.
Yes, let’s replace statues of Lenin with those of Sri PERUNA Ji 🙂
America doesn’t seem to have the number of statues (of people) like Europe. The national symbol is a Gypshun obelisk. seems like a legacy of Age of Enlightenment sensibilities cum prot aniconism.
I always liked that one. Some of my other favourites: Rudolf Hess fake, Perkin Warbeck really royal.
[calling for a Homocaust (and implementing one, if rumors are to be believed]
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
would that they had PCR machines, lol
If he wanted to fell all the Lenin statues like a svidomite, it would be.
Surely the obvious solution is a fraternal swap. Send all the confederate general statues and Christian shaped monuments to Russia, and replace them with all the statues of Lenin and other commie memorials, along with Lenin’s body. The SJWs would surely love to have a more accessible Lenin corpse to pilgrimage to. Not sure what the Russians would make of a statue of Robert E Lee, mind.
Of course, not everything was conserved in the first place. I remember reading years ago that they cut salami- like sections of Lenin’s brain for study. The aim was to find physical evidence of Lenin’s “genius”. Other Soviet “geniuses” were also considered for such treatment, apparently.
I’ve always wondered what, if anything, resulted from this project.
Well, first of all, it is definitely a monument, it’s a mausoleum.
Second, there is no problem with any proposal to relocate or even to dismantle this (any other) monument; the problem is the justification offered; in this case (to quote from the post) that he “cited statistics in support of it.”
For any historical figure (Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, FDR) there’s always a group of people who despise the person and the ideology he represents. Unless there’s a wide consensus within society (certainly not the case with Lenin), paying attention to their demands just ignites culture wars and weaken society. They need to be told to shut up, and engage in some useful activity.
I think it started out differently, but, to take a more recent example, I think it is pretty bizarre that there is a large Ted Kennedy museum (some would say mausoleum, even though he is not buried in it) in Boston, which was constructed in part with millions of tax dollars. Plus there is the naming of a lot of public infrastructure after more modern politicians.
Of course, the greatest communist example,which puts all these things in the shade, would probably be the Envar Hoxha pyramid.
@telegram>Anatoly, do you have a content presence on telegram? If not, do you plan to? I don’t use twitter and at this point, I think it’s too late for me to get on board. If I decide, I may just use the Twittergram bot. I just ‘subscribed’ to kadyrov and Расовая антропология. Do you have any good follow suggestions?
I have never read it, nor been to Kiev.
I am absolutely not a fan of Lenin, but his mummy should be left in place to show tourists (for money). The struggle with the monuments of a century ago (a La the South of the US) is stupid.
I think with Lenin there’s the little issue that his body is still there, and that he didn’t wish for his body to be embalmed, instead I think he explicitly wished to be buried somewhere (maybe close to his family or somewhere similar), and his widow was also opposed to this and would’ve supported a proper burial instead.
So a case could be made that whatever you think of him, the proper course of action is to remove him. If you respect him, then you should bury him out of respect for his and his widow’s will. Or if you don’t, then of course you don’t want that bizarre monument.
I think the income is minuscule, close to nothing, especially compared to the symbolic importance of having this person’s body preserved right next door to the Kremlin.
But isn’t entrance at the mausoleum free? Would changing that be accepted?
Also pretty morbid as a tourist attraction.
The mummy of Lenin which show for the money – will have even more of symbolic importance
There is a story that Lenin’s widow wanted him buried until Stalin eventually told her that they could find another widow; she then shut up about it.
I don’t know free or not. But now Capitalism in Russia, Lenin has to earn money himself, instead of sitting on the neck of the oppressed classes
It is a unique tourist attraction; I’ve seen it.
Wikipedia claims it’s free:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin%27s_Mausoleum
I guess there would be a certain irony in using Lenin’s corpse for generating revenue…but quite apart from considerations of what the man stood for, it just feels bizarre and wrong imo. It’s still a corpse after all, and those shouldn’t be publicly exhibited.
If there’s a documented proof that he did, it’s certainly a valid argument.
Otherwise, displaying embalmed corpses in mausoleums doesn’t seem particularly eccentric. It happened to Lincoln, iirc.
A (for example) Egyptian mummy in the Hermitage?
I see your point, though I actually think public exhibitions of ancient mummies are also somewhat disrespectful. But at least in that case it’s about ancient cultural practices and real historical interest…what are the arguments for preserving Lenin’s body? At best it’s a freakish curiosity piece, at worst a manifestation of commie personality cult.
I have not made it a secret that I am anti jewish and thus I am anti Lenin and Trotsky, but in this case there is the argument of trying to see how long one keep preserving the body for the sake of human curiosity. Imagine he is still preserved like that in a 100 or 500, it would be a remarkable achievement being preserved that long, and it would not make it morbid anymore, no more that hardly anyone cares if they display ancient preserved (relatively preserved) Egyptian mummies.
If transhumanism ever becomes a thing, one could also try to bring him back to life. That would be an even bigger achievement.
Maybe some of the commies are secretly hoping for such a 2nd coming of Lenin.
Lenin is the personified Avantgard, the future of mankind, ethnically mixed and increasingly artificial.
Again Kadyrov comes off as more of a Russian nationalist than a depraved communist swine-dog, although on second thought that is not surpising.
Although to be fair, the entire existing communist party of Russia of today would have been repressed as petty bourgeois revisionists and/or chauvinists if they existed during the Soviet Union as they have deviated significantly from the tenets of communism of that time.
Zero chance of that. There’s even major questions about whether the brain’s neural networks can be meaningfully preserved in the short period between death and the Alcor cryopreservation process. And this is based on modern technologies with the specific goal of maximizing the chance that the “patient’s” cognitive profile is saved.
You are right on both points.
They would likely ask “who is this?” then study Lee’s biographies. And reach a conclusion that he was a great man. Other questions about the state of things in the USA would follow.
“Communism” in the USSR changed very much during the USSR existence. “Communists” of the Brezhnev era had little in common with the Communists of the days of Lenin
It was more intended as a joke, not a serious proposal (and bringing back Lenin…not a good idea). I don’t expect something like this to ever become possible (though if I understand correctly something like this was an idea of that precursor of transhumanism Fyodorov).
Not one of my most productive kites I’ve ever flown. It looks like it went nowhere. After all, nobody’s ever heard of a Lenin Salami on Rye. There are no Lenin Genius Awards either.
Bury him deep and elect Sobchak. She is a real enough threat for Gordon to be set up as a vote splitter.
Maybe it hasn’t been sliced and diced, but it was liquified.
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4142/4872271555_5dbebc03ef_b.jpg
Here is the original article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/lenins-brain-they-took-it-out-to-understand-the-source-of-a-revolution-they-now-reject-but-they-tend-1501441.html
For those disturbed by ” Visceral Communism” – like ( half ) german_reader and songbird, it’s best if you don’t read it. But as a tripe eater, it didn’t bother me much.
Woah woah woah…..
Whats wrong with a homocaust?
I agree with the tourism and money angle. Think how much Great Britain (a misnomer if there ever was one) makes every year from maintaining the monuments and ceremonials from Victorian England and the British Empire … which by the way includes the current Royal Family. Indeed, Britain does the best job of any country in the world in maintaining museums of its historical artifacts.
I imagine that someday there will be formal tours in Russia of abandoned factories, cosmodromes, and gulags. It would create more tour stops if there were impressive mausoleums for Lenin, Stalin, etc., because, as a practical matter, tourists have to go somewhere and see something.
It creates a lot of liberal whining.
If you can’t remove them too, why bother?
The same thing that was wrong with the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, the murder of the untermenschen, etc., etc.,
or not.