Lenin's Mausoleum is a funerary monument with a structure resembling a stepped pyramid, 12 meters high and 24 meters wide, in which the body of the great Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Il'ič Ul'janov, known as Lenin, is kept.
After his death on January 21, 1924, the body of the "father of the Russian Revolution" was embalmed in order to be shown to the public for a long period of time in Red Square, so that the people could pay homage to the man who liberated them from tsarist oppression. The embalming process was carried out by the pathologist Alexei Abrikosov and the glass sarcophagus was designed by Konstantin Melnikov.
Initially, a wooden structure designed by Alexey Shchusev was built to hold the body of the Soviet leader, but it was immediately enlarged due to the huge influx of visitors.
Five years later, in 1929, the well-preserved body was still visited by millions of people and so the current permanent structure of the Mausoleum was built by a team of architects led by Shchusev himself.
Almost one hundred years after the death of the Soviet leader, Lenin’s Mausoleum continues to attract thousands of visitors, despite the fact that there were those who asked that the body be removed after the end of the Soviet Union.
In 1953, Stalin's body was exhibited alongside Lenin, until his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, had it removed and placed behind the mausoleum, next to the Kremlin walls.
Stalin's was the first of a series of monumental burials carried out in the necropolis of the Kremlin walls: now all the leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the exception of Nikita Khrushchev, are buried there, whereas inside the walls some of the Soviet Union's most famous figures are buried, such as the astronaut Yuri Gagarin and Lenin's wife.
An interesting fact: Given the excellent preservation of Lenin's embalmed body, for some years now, rumor has it that it's been replaced with a wax statue, but no one has ever been able to say so with certainty.
Language: English