Next month, April 22, marks the birthday of the architect of that cataclysmic “proletarian” revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov — known to the world as Lenin.
These century-old events continue to dominate the news in modern-day Russia, where leaders grapple with how to deal with one tangible legacy of the Marxist past: After his death in 1924 at the age of 53, Lenin’s corpse became the centerpiece of a gargantuan, pyramid-shaped mausoleum in Red Square, where he still lies in artificially preserved repose. Today, many would like his body, and his legacy, buried.
Christian leaders in the United States kicked off the latest row in a March 10 encyclical signed by the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) about the solemn centenary. “We must not under any circumstances justify the actions of those responsible for the deadly revolution,” they wrote. “A symbol of reconciliation of the Russian nation with the Lord would be to rid Red Square of the remains of the main persecutor and executioner of the 20th century, and the destruction of monuments to him.”
...the confessor of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, called Lenin "a villain of villains" who "should have been long ago thrown out of the mausoleum."
Their words echo some inside Russia. The Elder Iliy (Nozdrin) of the historic Optina monastery, the confessor of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, called Lenin “a villain of villains” who “should have been long ago thrown out of the mausoleum. Through him the Lord does not grant us the full development of our Fatherland.” (Patriarch Kirill, while sympathetic, has been non-committal.) The priest of the Kazan Cathedral in Red Square, which looks down on Lenin’s tomb both literally and metaphysically, said the mummified presence “is a kind of brake on the movement of the country forward.”
Burying the Bolshevik leader enjoys the support of the Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Berel Lazar, as well as multiple factions within the Duma, and a sturdy majority of citizens, according to numerous polls.
The big question mark is Vladimir Putin, who has sent a series of conflicting messages on the topic. In 2001, he opposed the burial for fear it would tell too many Russians that “they have worshipped false values.” In subsequent years, his close advisors Georgy Poltavchenko (a former KGB officer) and Vladimir Medinsky publicly raised the prospects of burial, apparently with Putin’s support. But in 2012, Putin said the “people should decide,” before likening Lenin’s mummification to the holy relics kept in Orthodoxy’s holiest site, Mt. Athos.
The president is eager not to alienate the 44 percent of Russians who see Lenin in generally positive terms, nor to pick purely symbolic fights with the Communist Party, which has the second-highest number of seats in the Duma. However, the resurgent Orthodox Church has made it clear that it wants to see Lenin interred, publicly citing his desire to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg.
If Orthodox Christians are eager to bury Lenin, it is less an act of spite than of reciprocation. His decree of October 26, 1917 — one of the first acts of the atheistic Bolshevik regime — ordered the seizure of all church and monastic property for redistribution to “the whole people.” The great famine of 1921-22 — which killed five million people due, in part, to his collectivization of farm land during the time of “war communism” — would give him the excuse he needed.
In a letter to the Politburo on March 19, 1922, Lenin wrote:
With the help of all those starving people who are starting to eat each other, who are dying by the millions, and whose bodies litter the roadside all over the country, it is now and only now that we can — and therefore must — confiscate all church property with all the ruthless energy we can still muster. This is precisely the moment the masses will support us most fervently, and rise up against the … religious conspirators.
“Think of how rich so
If You Not Believed then check
https://acton.org/pub/commentary/2017/03/29/its-time-bury-executioner-lenin-good
