The queue in front of Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square is about 100 meters long. And foreign tourists are definitely a minority among those waiting, ARD reports in its report from Moscow. Before entering the mausoleum, one goes through a security check with three metal detectors. Bags and backpacks are prohibited.
The entrance is through a black-paneled vestibule, from where a dimly lit staircase begins. Everywhere is full of uniformed officers who immediately rush if a person stops or tries to take out their mobile phone.
Lenin has been lying there for over 100 years
When entering the cold mourning hall, only two things are allowed - to walk forward and to quickly look to the left at the glass sarcophagus. Under dim lighting, Lenin lies inside, looking like wax, dressed in a dark suit and with his characteristic reddish beard, continues his story Frank Eichmann, a correspondent for the German public media.
Not a minute passes, and the path already leads again up the steps and the graves on the walls of the Kremlin. Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Gagarin, Stalin, Klara Zetkin, Russian and foreign communists, heroes of the Soviet Union, former political and military leaders - more than 120 people have been buried there since 1917.
Back in the bustling square, you are left with the strange feeling that you have just seen a dead man who, after his death in 1924 and subsequent embalming, seems in good shape, Eichmann says.
The Russian Church wants the mausoleum removed
But since the end of July, visits to Lenin have no longer been possible. The mausoleum will remain closed for renovation until 2027. The Russian Orthodox Church would like it to stay that way - since the end of the Soviet Union it has been insisting that Lenin be buried, that the cult of the dictator be ended and that the mausoleum be removed.
"It may not be completely destroyed - it may be moved somewhere far from the center and become a museum. To serve as a warning to our descendants about what monstrous forms false religiosity can take", says Orthodox priest Alexander Timofeev in a documentary shown in Moscow cinemas at the end of June. But the mausoleum should not remain in the center of Russia next to the Kremlin wall, Timofeev is convinced.
In the film "The Mummy", author Andrei Afanasiev has gathered everything that speaks in favor of closing the mausoleum. The film was produced and broadcast by the Russian Orthodox Church channel - "Spas TV".
"Lenin is Forever Alive"
There are many conspiracy myths associated with the building, which was designed by architect Alexei Shchusev - according to them, it resembles an occult, even a satanic place, or a pagan temple. In the film, the author explains: "After Lenin's death, the cult of him in the Soviet Union became one of the foundations of Soviet ideology. Lenin is presented as a kind of superman who came to Earth to discover the path of the Soviet people to eternal happiness."
ARD also recalls a popular Soviet song, which says: "Lenin is forever alive, Lenin is always with you, Lenin is in your spring, in every happy day of yours, Lenin is in you and with you." Such words show that in the atheist state it is not a question of abolishing faith, but of replacing it, explains the German public media.
Lenin's Bolsheviks brutally fought against the church, seeing in it a support of the old reactionary regime. Church property was confiscated, churches were desecrated, clergy were persecuted and killed. This is just as little analyzed as the fact that during and after the October Revolution, Lenin purposefully resorted to terror and mass shootings to maintain his power.
In current polls, Lenin has been steadily holding third place for years among the most important figures of all time - after President Vladimir Putin and far behind Stalin, notes ARD.
Lenin unlikely to be buried soon
Will Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, as Lenin was born, really be moved and buried? In today's Russia, the crucial question is what the president thinks about it. ARD quotes Putin as saying last December: "As for the burial of Lenin's body - perhaps society will come to that someday. But today, today, we in Russia must not take a single step that would split our society."
And "today" Russia is the country that has been waging war against Ukraine for more than three years and whose leadership supports a return to so-called traditional values. Moreover, since the beginning of the war, for Putin Lenin is no longer the proud founder of the Soviet Union, but a statesman who made a big mistake, writes the German public media.
She quoted Putin's words from his interview last year with the ultra-conservative American commentator Tucker Carlson: "Soviet Ukraine received a huge territory that had nothing to do with it - mainly the northern Black Sea coast, which was won by Russia in the Russo-Turkish War. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet state, created Ukraine in this way."
Historians may have a different opinion on the matter, but that doesn't matter to Putin. Still, he is in no hurry to bury Lenin. And it is unlikely that a documentary on the church television channel will change anything in this regard. The final closure of the mausoleum is simply not considered an important topic in Russia, ARD summarizes.
Author: Frank Eichmann