August 26, 2004
back in lobnia
July 1st 2004, Canada day! Ahhh! Back in the Dacha after two lovely days in Moscow with family staying at Volodia’s flat. We packed in several trips, including one bus tour around Moscow, and two riverboat cruises, one down the Moscow channel and one down the Moscow river. Incredible scenery.
I saw Lenin’s preserved body! We paid 400 hundred rubles along with about thirty other people to cut into the long line up to see Lenin. It took only half an hour and the old lady that took our money and our foto-aparats, seemed to know a whole lot about red square and gave us the whole history of it and surrounding downtown Moscow as we waited that half hour. We then cut into line and I’m sure the guards letting us in took their cut of the 400-Rubles I and the twenty-nine others gave to the old lady…. “Eta Normale na.” They told me. Normal, it’s the way it’s done in Moscow.
Vladimir Illeech Uolianav Lenin lay patiently waiting for us all to pass. He didn’t move a muscle. His suit was black and he did not wear a cap. He was a short guy. His hair was red. His beard was red. His face was emotionless, serene. His shoes, blackened well and practical for long walks that central Moscow is known for. To me, he looked like a wax figure of Lenin, but my wife assured me that what’s under that glass case is truly a mummified Lenin that they “restore” every couple of years. Where he lies is about three stories underground and it’s very cool down there – a temperature controlled mausoleum. We went down steps and at every corner very serious young Kremlin police officers stood guard in honour of their past. Don’t talk! Don’t laugh! Don’t look left or right! Don’t fart! This is a Mausoleum! Serious, very serious, looks all around.
And there lay the father of the Bolshevik revolution, patiently enduring post-perestroika Russia. And, in direct contravention of Orthodox Christian tradition, laid to rest in full view of many a capitalist - above ground, persevered, not buried six-feet under (as Orthodox worm-wood usually is required to be). I tried to manage a tear or an emotion, padding softly and silently by the icon, but strangely, could not muster anything at all. The tangible emptiness of 100-odd years of forced religious repression in Russia must have swallowed up any and all urges towards emotion, or tears – at least for me.
All I really felt was: “wow, that’s Lenin, he looks like a wax figure. I just now saw Lenin.” And I thought further, what a thing to have done in life! How many of my relatives, my countrymen, can say the same? Not much more thought by me beyond that as I drifted through the surrealistic tomb of this guy, responsible for so much that I know really, very little about.
Further, not to speak ill of the dead or anything, but how is one supposed to shed a tear or lend even a moment’s passionate regret for the loss of the leader of a regime that claimed pure socialist values on the one hand and simultaneously exhibited criminal levels of corrupt bureaucracy and severely debilitating religious suppression at the expense of its own citizenry on the other?
No wonder the empty feeling…. I saw none of the other capitalists, sentimentalists, Non-muscovite Russian citizens who came to pay a visit, behind nor before, make any Russian Orthodox or other genuflections of any sort whatsoever when filing by the Lenin’s mummy. Thousands upon thousands of paying tourists cut in line by paying 400 rubles to old ladies making money, to file by Lenin’s body silently between 7:00 and 13:00 daily. I imagined that the ghost of Lenin probably was hovering above us, ready to swoop and strangle someone, anyone, all of us, for a travesty such as this.
The old lady who took our money and foto-aparats met us as we emerged from the depths of Bolshevik ideology. She didn’t look at all afraid of being severely guilty of crimes against the state – taking money from tourists to cut in line to see the very icon of communism in Russia…. She looked pretty fresh actually, and took us on the rest of the tour near the wall of the Kremlin castle where in are buried the ashes of prominent communists from every country of the world. Yuri Gagarin’s trip into space in 1961 earned his ashes a spot in the Kremlin wall too. Opposite the wall in more conventional burial plots, lie the bodies of past presidents of Russia: Chernyenko, Andropov, & Stalin, along with all the dead Generals who had made their communist marks hither and thither over the years.
All at once the tour was over. We were directed out by our knowledgeable tour guide in to the general non-fenced off area of the huge Red square and handed back our foto-aparats with a stern warning not to use them until we were well outside the Kremlin boundary, for fear of police confiscating our fot-aparats.
I saw Lenin’s preserved body! We paid 400 hundred rubles along with about thirty other people to cut into the long line up to see Lenin. It took only half an hour and the old lady that took our money and our foto-aparats, seemed to know a whole lot about red square and gave us the whole history of it and surrounding downtown Moscow as we waited that half hour. We then cut into line and I’m sure the guards letting us in took their cut of the 400-Rubles I and the twenty-nine others gave to the old lady…. “Eta Normale na.” They told me. Normal, it’s the way it’s done in Moscow.
Vladimir Illeech Uolianav Lenin lay patiently waiting for us all to pass. He didn’t move a muscle. His suit was black and he did not wear a cap. He was a short guy. His hair was red. His beard was red. His face was emotionless, serene. His shoes, blackened well and practical for long walks that central Moscow is known for. To me, he looked like a wax figure of Lenin, but my wife assured me that what’s under that glass case is truly a mummified Lenin that they “restore” every couple of years. Where he lies is about three stories underground and it’s very cool down there – a temperature controlled mausoleum. We went down steps and at every corner very serious young Kremlin police officers stood guard in honour of their past. Don’t talk! Don’t laugh! Don’t look left or right! Don’t fart! This is a Mausoleum! Serious, very serious, looks all around.
And there lay the father of the Bolshevik revolution, patiently enduring post-perestroika Russia. And, in direct contravention of Orthodox Christian tradition, laid to rest in full view of many a capitalist - above ground, persevered, not buried six-feet under (as Orthodox worm-wood usually is required to be). I tried to manage a tear or an emotion, padding softly and silently by the icon, but strangely, could not muster anything at all. The tangible emptiness of 100-odd years of forced religious repression in Russia must have swallowed up any and all urges towards emotion, or tears – at least for me.
All I really felt was: “wow, that’s Lenin, he looks like a wax figure. I just now saw Lenin.” And I thought further, what a thing to have done in life! How many of my relatives, my countrymen, can say the same? Not much more thought by me beyond that as I drifted through the surrealistic tomb of this guy, responsible for so much that I know really, very little about.
Further, not to speak ill of the dead or anything, but how is one supposed to shed a tear or lend even a moment’s passionate regret for the loss of the leader of a regime that claimed pure socialist values on the one hand and simultaneously exhibited criminal levels of corrupt bureaucracy and severely debilitating religious suppression at the expense of its own citizenry on the other?
No wonder the empty feeling…. I saw none of the other capitalists, sentimentalists, Non-muscovite Russian citizens who came to pay a visit, behind nor before, make any Russian Orthodox or other genuflections of any sort whatsoever when filing by the Lenin’s mummy. Thousands upon thousands of paying tourists cut in line by paying 400 rubles to old ladies making money, to file by Lenin’s body silently between 7:00 and 13:00 daily. I imagined that the ghost of Lenin probably was hovering above us, ready to swoop and strangle someone, anyone, all of us, for a travesty such as this.
The old lady who took our money and foto-aparats met us as we emerged from the depths of Bolshevik ideology. She didn’t look at all afraid of being severely guilty of crimes against the state – taking money from tourists to cut in line to see the very icon of communism in Russia…. She looked pretty fresh actually, and took us on the rest of the tour near the wall of the Kremlin castle where in are buried the ashes of prominent communists from every country of the world. Yuri Gagarin’s trip into space in 1961 earned his ashes a spot in the Kremlin wall too. Opposite the wall in more conventional burial plots, lie the bodies of past presidents of Russia: Chernyenko, Andropov, & Stalin, along with all the dead Generals who had made their communist marks hither and thither over the years.
All at once the tour was over. We were directed out by our knowledgeable tour guide in to the general non-fenced off area of the huge Red square and handed back our foto-aparats with a stern warning not to use them until we were well outside the Kremlin boundary, for fear of police confiscating our fot-aparats.
