He lived, he lives. Will live... Why is it impossible to close Lenin's mausoleum

The YouTube channel of the "Redaction" project in one of the issues tells about how the main atheist of Russia "turned out to be the deity of the new religion", who has been keeping his body all these years, and why all attempts to bury Lenin have failed.

At the very beginning of the film, journalist Alexey Pivovarov recalled that the Union of Architects of Russia (UAR), within the framework of the Zodchestvo festival, announced an All-Russian competition for the best concept for the “re-use” of the Vladimir Lenin Mausoleum.

Novye Izvestia found out that the works of the participants were to be accepted until October 19 of last year. However, soon after the spread of this news, the President of the Union of Architects of Russia Nikolay Shumakov was forced to officially announce the cancellation of the National Competition of Ideas for the concept of the possible use of the building of the Mausoleum of V.I. Lenin on Red Square.

Here is a statement in this regard was published on the UAR website.

“And again about the Mausoleum. Announcing a competition to create a bank of ideas, we did not expect such a resonance in society. From the point of view of common sense, this is nothing more than a sociological or any other survey, of which there are many in our society - only expressed in the language of architecture. We suggested, without touching on either the person (V.I.Lenin) or the place (the Mausoleum), to discuss how this space can be used in the future. It is the space - which has been done for several years on Red Square: an ice rink is open in winter, and flower, book and other exhibitions in summer.

It seemed to us perfectly normal to collect opinions on a topic that has been discussed for a long time in society and has arisen at regular intervals in recent decades. Of course, holding a competition in the wake of such a frenzied and groundless condemnation of the Union of Architects for blasphemous actions in relation to history and personality is a completely meaningless step, devoid of a creative approach and moral attitude to the profession, which we all profess.

"Under the current conditions - yes, the only right decision to refuse this competition. But not from a discussion of a topic in which there is not a hint of what the organization is accused of”, - Nikolay Shumakov, President of the Union of Architects of Russia, addressed everyone.

In his address, the President of the UAR of Russia Nikolai Shumakov has already said that the Heritage Council will surely bring together everyone who is concerned about the further fate of the historical building of Alexey Shchusev.

In memory of the great architect and his work, we are simply obliged to do this, so that after years a shopping or entertainment center, a souvenir shop, a coworking, a cafe or a skate rental shop are not opened in the Mausoleum building. We quote all these assumptions in the wake of the speeches of some media outlets, which happily seized on the "hot" news.

“And this is what saddens me most of all. Some of our colleagues shamelessly distort the phrases of comments, take quotes out of context, although these days none of them was denied meetings, comments, or discussion of a situation of interest to everyone. In this regard, the Union of Architects of Russia officially announces the cancellation of the competition announced earlier. The question is closed", - Nikolay Shumakov summed up.

Meanwhile, Alexey Pivovarov tells extremely interesting things in the video:

“The last attempt at burial of Lenin's body known to us, which was almost completed, dates back to 1999. The other day I specially met with a man who at that time held a very high post in the Kremlin administration and was directly related to what was happening then.

He said that it was really already clear that Yeltsin was leaving, and it was decided that he, as the outgoing president, who, in fact, buried communism, could, so to speak, drive the last nail into the lid of this coffin and bury Vladimir Lenin.

Everything was discussed, everything was almost worked out. As this man said, "we were going to bury him with dignity, asceticism and quickly".

There was a plan - to take the body out at night, and when this is announced, the body will already be delivered to St. Petersburg and buried at the Volkov cemetery.

Why didn't it work? Because when they began to study the legal subtleties, it turned out that only the head of the municipality could make a decision on reburial under the funeral law, and that was then Yuri Luzhkov, who was in tough opposition with Yeltsin and would never have supported such a decision. And if Yeltsin had done this by his decree, he would certainly have received a lawsuit from the communists, possibly from the mayor's office. This is a criminal responsibility. And so, in the end, no one then dared to take out Lenin's body. It was decided that even the outgoing president does not need such a lawsuit. "

Edward Radzinsky, writer, historian:

“It was absolutely fantastic. The main fighter against religion, the greatest atheist Lenin was turned into incorruptible relics, with which he fought all the time and which he hated.

The more I deal with this strange story, the more the smile is visible. Let's call it the smile of the Lord, the smile of fate, the smile of history.

And in order to put an end to the questions - why Lenin ... We turn to Lenin's favorite - and he has two of them, Marx and Engels - to Engels. He wrote the greatest lines that Ilyich would have heard in advance. He wrote that people who are proud of the fact that they made a revolution already on the second day begin to understand that they did not know what they did. That the revolution that happened is not at all like the revolution they dreamed of. This, Engels writes, is the Hegelian irony of history.

...We live in a unique capital where the Kremlin is surrounded by a cemetery. He is surrounded by this new Kremlin wall, as the poet writes arrogantly, that is, with corpses burnt in the crematorium, which are squeezed into this very wall. And the center of this cemetery is an Assyrian-style building called the Mausoleum. And this is not just a building, it is the supreme temple of religion. When Joseph Vissarionovich spoke, the party is the Order of the Swordsmen, he spoke the absolute truth, it was a religious Bolshevik sect.

Where, as it should be in a sect, there is a doctrine that is an absolute dogma, therefore it was adopted with the help of Ilyich (resolution) - on the inadmissibility of factionalism. What does it mean? On the inadmissibility of a different opinion, which runs counter to the opinion of the party leadership. As it should be in religion.

…He must be given rest, this is not possible!

I never perceived this (Lenin's burial - editor's note) as revenge. I took it as an act ... Well, it's impossible ... That empire perished, this one, the Bolshevik one. I don’t know if it will be reborn, it will not be reborn, this is the second question. And now this Mausoleum stands... That is, before, it really was the center of the country, this is the beginning and end of the country. and now it's for tourists. You see, the first thing that a normal Western person does is he finds out when the Mausoleum is working. It's a little far to go to China and Vietnam, only there you can see something like that, but this is Asia, and we are Europe after all”.

Alexey Yurchak, anthropologist:

“When Lenin died on January 21, 1924 at the age of 53, before he reached the age of 54, there was no idea of preserving the body. That is, this idea was expressed, like, for example, by Stalin at one of the party meetings, even before Lenin's death. But, by and large, the bulk of the leaders were against it. From that point of view, it seemed completely anti-materialistic, such an anti-Marxist approach. And, since it was really very cold, the body did not deteriorate for a long time. It was embalmed by Professor Abrikosov in order to be exhibited in the former Assembly of the Nobility, in the House of Unions, where crowds of people went to say goodbye, because Lenin was a very important figure".

Yelizaveta Likhacheva, Director of the Museum of Architecture named after A. V. Shchusev:

“It was necessary to build some kind of temporary pavilion in which the body was to be stored for some time. Let's say for two to three weeks. Unheated, of course. And then Shchusev hastily put together what had stood there for two years, this wooden structure. Which he put - and this is quite important - on the border of the former moat. There was also a moat where the Kremlin cemetery is now, these are not the boundaries of the square. The mausoleum stands exactly on the border of the square, that is, it does not enter the historic Red Square. The first Mausoleum stood a little closer to GUM, that is, it stood on the square. In fact, it is a wooden shed.

Never forget that Aleksey Viktorovich Shchusev is a knight of the Order of the Holy Synod, and that he built the Pochaev Lavra, the Martha-Mariinsky monastery, he knew very well what worship of relics is.

When the final decision is made to preserve the body of the leader, Shchusev does something more decent. He takes a rather interesting shape as a basis, he takes a ziggurat. This is a typology that came to us from the Middle East. The most famous such building is the ziggurat in Ur.

The main beauty of a ziggurat is that no one knows what it is.

When in 1927 he wins the competition for a permanent Mausoleum, he builds this, what we now know as the Mausoleum".

Lev Danilkin, author of Lenin's biography:

“The beginning of the 20s is a fashion for everything Egyptian. Carter excavates the tomb of Tutankhamun. The theme of mummies, everything Egyptian was fashionable in design. The newspapers constantly wrote about this excavation site. It was such a constant informational background.

And this is what Krasin and Bonch-Bruevich could be guided by. Especially from Bonch-Bruyevich, this strange idea of such alternative relics could have appeared, which was superimposed on this fashion for everything Egyptian associated with mummies and on the quasi-religious cult of Lenin, which already existed at the time of his illness. "

Alexey Uminsky, rector of the Holy Trinity Church in Khokhly:

“I was brought up in an ordinary Soviet family, my dad was a member of the Communist Party, my mother was a teacher at school. And this whole story with the pioneer heroes, with grandfather Lenin, when he was little, " with a curly head, he also ran in felt boots on the ice hill." All this was a completely natural hagiography of such communist Orthodoxy, which was quite canonical, let's say.

And, of course, it was the destruction of this faith, this religion, when I became a Christian. When I understood my path to Christ, of course, I was rewinding, rewinding and rewinding all this tape then.

But then I did not understand that this is a religion, that's the point. I did not understand this path as a religion. But nevertheless, I (over time) realized that it was a religion, that it was an anti-church with its anti-saints, with its replaced martyrs, with its replaced Great Ecumenical Council in the form of congresses of the CPSU, with its dogma, with its prophets. There was such a religious substitution that worked splendidly for the consciousness of the masses".

Alexander Nevzorov, journalist, author of a book on the work of the brain:

“There is not a single drug or sample of the brain in the world that would be studied in the same way as Lenin's brain was studied. The study lasted 50 years. 32,000 micropreparations of Lenin's brain were made. The entire brain, of course, was before preparation, before dividing into the thinnest layers, magnificently mapped (map - reflect on the map), calculated. The area of the cortex, at least of the right hemisphere, was fully calculated. The left one was so affected (as a result of a stroke) that its study was not possible at all.

Always, having familiarized itself with the results of the book and these works, the People's Commissariat of Health forbade publication, because nowhere were any extraordinary and special properties of this brain revealed.

The detected variability is inherent in absolutely all brains; roughly speaking, every third person has it.

Having done a histology, even among those present, we will probably find extremely large pyramidal neurons, but this does not mean at all that one of us is ready to climb on an armored car”.

Yelizaveta Likhacheva, Director of the Museum of Architecture named after A. V. Shchusev:

“Imagine, the preservation of the flesh for almost a hundred years, practically unchanged - well, this is just a unique scientific history. It cannot be buried, if only for these reasons.

I do not feel any reverence for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as for a shrine. I, of course, respect him as a politician, he, to be honest, was a talented person. And, from the point of view of history, the memory of him must be kept.

Maybe I would have removed it from the Mausoleum, it seems to me wrong that the body is, as it were, a social part of the city's life, but I would definitely leave the Mausoleum, I think this is an absolutely brilliant piece. This is a monument of its time. I would open a museum there. Lenin's Body Museum.

...I can tell why he is still there. Because the Soviet power has not ended yet.

Listen, no matter how we feel about ourselves, we, of course, are very different from our parents at our age, but let's be honest: we all come from there.

The moment of burial will be the final point. I think this will happen in 15-20 years. The historical pendulum, forty years old...".

Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation:

“This will not happen (we are talking about the burial of Lenin - editor's note). The Russians have not yet become Ivans who do not remember their kinship. Much depends on the people. Although, of course, the leaders of the state play a decisive role. And, fortunately, the current head of state does not support the position that his predecessor adhered to. Because both the youth and the middle generation, not to mention our generation, basically, more and more turn there and look, but how did they live before and why we live like this today. "

Sergey Firsov, historian:

“Lenin is always alive, Lenin is always with you In grief, in hope and joy. Lenin is in your spring, In every happy day, Lenin is inside you and inside me!".

It is a pity that Sigmund Freud did not live to see this song. Soviet song, official, beautiful. Wonderful. Psychoanalysts could say a lot about this, remembering Sigmund Freud again. Alas, they did not say. And in vain. So Lenin still dwells “inside you and inside me”!”

You can watch the entire issue about Lenin here.