On how Lenin Became Embalmed and on “Stalinism”

On “Leninism” and “Stalinism” – and Cults of Personality
Editors of MLRG.online; June 3 2015

On 2 June 2025, we published Comrade Norberto Steinmayr’s attempt to probe the reasons why the PSRA fell ( See Albania in Retrospect). We pointed out that that article was only the start of several articles over the next year in which we aim to unravel this and lesons for today’s Marxist-Leninists.

Doubtless several aspects of this evolving discussion will provoke counter-views. In that spirit of open discussion, we here we give our own response to one specific item raised by Cmde Steinmayr. That is his point 7 in the article:

“7. STALINISM
Adherence to Stalinism up to the late 1980s, making Stalin’s statues ubiquitous across the country – including a monumental one in Tirana’s main boulevard, opposite Lenin’s – was, in my judgement, a serious mistake that hindered the democratic and popular nature of the people’s state power.”
Steinmayr, at MLRG.online June 2

We would point out to Cmde Steinmayr that “Stalinism” is generally a rubric term used by anti-Marxist-Leninists. It has passed into common parlance as a term of abuse to the USSR up to the year 1953 and to the Marxist-Leninist J.V.Stalin. It is a term that has been extended into a synonym for evil, treacherous government aimed at suppressing dissidence with cruel torture. Moreover a term for any distorted form of revisionist party that poses as a “Marxist-Leninist” party, but in reality are revisionist. For that reason I reject the term. Stalin himself called himself a pupil of Lenin’s. We believe the term “Marxist-Leninist” is more suitable for those taking the revolutionary path.

Indeed the term – “Stalinism” – itself appears to have been coined by Lev Trotsky, and then embellished by various anti-Marxist-Leninists:

“as Trotsky (returning the favor Stalin had bestowed by inventing the derogatory “Trotskyism”) who coined “Stalinism” as an opposition to Leninism and an expression of negative social phenomena. . . Moshe Lewin . . . tracing the deep “social influences” of (peasant) society on the Soviet state. Even though Lewin and other social historians of the 1930s mostly embraced the Bukharin alternative, they in effect completed Trotsky’s project, denying the Soviet view that the socialism built under Stalin was continuous with Leninism and blaming Stalin for a Thermidor while suggesting that the existence of a “backward” peasantry was at the root of the revolution’s “deformation.”
Stephen Kotkin; “Review Article:1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks”; The Journal of Modern History 70 (June 1998): 384–425; p.422

Undoubtedly, the question of the personality cult is an important one. As we have long argued, cults of personality in the communist movement serve the purposes of the revisionists (“Stalin: The Myth And The Reality”, By W.B.Bland At: Marxist Internet Archive  and another version at: COMpass).

Any of those who travelled in the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania can attest to the number of monuments to Enver Hoxha – and many voiced concern about this in the light of the experience of the USSR. One of us travelling there, saw many of those of Hoxha – Yet only one of Stalin – the one in Tirana.

In any case, the people of a country experiencing the construction of socialism – will honour its leaders – that is inevitable. Moreover it is correct.
Amplifying such honour into a ’cult of personality’ is quite another matter and it is that which must be fought.

Because of this two-sided perspective, Cmde Steinmayr’s formulation in his “Point 7” – is too simplistic – in our view. This does not detract from the remainder of his article, which is in our view – a call to examine closely how revisionism took hold in the PSRA.

Nonetheless, we think it is relevant therefore to re-publish – but update with new data – an article that we had originally published in Alliance Marxist-Leninist in 2003. This is about the embalming of Lenin’s body after his death. This article by Hari Kumar, was entitled “Where We Stand: Lenin’s Mummification — Preliminary Step in the Building of the Personality Cult”. It was first printed by Alliance ML Volume 1, Issue 8; October 2003;

Three major additions have been made in 2025, to incorporate new details.
The first is an addition of an opening first section entitled “The Start of the Cult of Lenin preceded his death and was opposed by Lenin“.
The second is more detailed discussions about Lenin’s corpse. These in especial aim at detailing aspects of the ‘Funeral Committee of Lenin’;
Finally – we have added a final poem at the end to mark how we believe a true memorial might work.
Editors of MLRG.online; June 3 2015

“Lenin’s Mummification — Preliminary Step in the Building of the Personality Cult”.
Hari Kumar, 3 June 2025

We have long pointed out that cults of personality in the communist movement serve the purposes of the revisionists (“Stalin : The Myth And The Reality”, By W.B.Bland At: MIA)

We argue here that the decision taken to mummify Lenin’s body, was the beginning of the revisionist attempts to undermine the socialist state by erecting cults of personality. That was not a decision of Stalin. After it happened, it was used to target Stalin, who was blamed for “god worship”. However by the 1930’s the revisionists had extended their attacks on the socialist state by erecting a cult of personality to the living Stalin, in order to disguise their attacks on the state.

1. The Start of the Cult of Lenin preceded his death and was opposed by Lenin

It is incorrect to date the fervent and at times over-wrought high praise of Lenin, to the time of his death. He was revered in his lifetime – much to his own chagrin.

Just how this high praise had taken a hold in Lenin’s own lifetime is shown by the words used by one. . . Trotsky. . . after the attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918:

“The hero-worship of Lenin was manifested in a tendency of his followers to make him the center of a personality cult. It appeared, for example, in the reactions when he was shot on August 30, 1918, and his recovery remained temporarily uncertain. The Soviet newspapers were filled at that time with messages expressing devotion to him and fervent wishes for his recovery. Trotsky, who in later years was to condemn the cult of Lenin, declared in a
speech of September 2, 1918, to the Executive Committee of the Soviets: “Never has the individual life of one or another among us seemed to be of such secondary importance as it does now at a moment when the life of the greatest man of our age is in peril. Any fool can shoot Lenin’s head to pieces, but to create this head anew would be a problem for nature herself.” And Lunacharsky quotes Trotsky as saying, presumably at this same time although not in public, “When you think that Lenin might die, all our lives seem useless and you stop wanting to live.”
Robert Tucker; “Stalin as revolutionary, 1879-1929: a study in history and personality”; Princeton 1973; p.56

Lenin was “horrified” when, after his recovery, he read what the press had been saying about him in the aftermath of the assassination attempt. He insisted to his aide Bonch-Bruevich – that the papers be made never to repeat such high unstinting praise of him:

“when his health improved sufficiently to enable him to return to work, he was horrified to read what had been printed in the Soviet press after the shooting. V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, his aide in the Council of People’s Commissars, recalls being urgently summoned into Lenin’s office and listening to him exclaim: “What is this? How could you permit it? Look what they are saying in the papers. Makes one ashamed to read it. They write that ’’I’m such-and-such, exaggerate everything, call me a genius, a special kind of man.
And look at this piece of mysticism: They collectively wish, demand, and desire that I get well. Next, they’ll be holding public prayers for my health. Why, this is horrible! And where does it come from? All our lives we have carried on an ideological struggle against the glorification of personality, of the individual. We long ago solved the question of heroes, and now we are again witnessing the glorification of personality. This is no good at all.”
Robert Tucker; Stalin as revolutionary; p.57

But his attempt to stop this was quickly seen as being futile.

In fact even his own comrades in the Party were lauding Lenin rather overtly. For example, at Lenin’s 50th birthday celebration. Interestingly in R.C.Tucker’s account, it is Stalin who is somewhat more modest than others, even noting two mistakes made by Lenin. However – in fact Lenin refused to hear any of the speeches that were made! He arrived at the celebration after the speeches were done:

“In speeches at a party meeting in April 1920 in honor of his fiftieth birthday, and in articles published in the Soviet press for this occasion, they acclaimed him as the “vozhd” of the Russian and world revolution. Maxim Gorky compared him as a history-making figure to Christopher Columbus and Peter the Great. Evgeni Preobrazhensky called him “the soul and brain of the October Revolution.” A. Sol’ts portrayed him as a new kind of hero in history, a leader of consciously acting masses whose need was no longer for a hero to whom they could bow but for one who was, like Lenin, “flesh of their flesh, thought, and word.” Trotsky described Lenin as a blend of Marxist internationalist and Russian revolutionary statesman with “something about him that is strongly suggestive of a peasant.” Since Russia had never experienced a great revolution or reformation at the hands of its bourgeoisie, Trotsky said, its national revolution had devolved upon the working class, led by Lenin: “Our historical past knows neither a Luther, nor a Thomas Munzer, neither a Mirabeau, nor a Robespierre. For that very reason the Russian proletariat has its Lenin.” Bukharin paid tribute to Lenin as a teacher who had developed a new theoretical school of Marxism, and on this account spoke of the other party leaders as his “disciples.” Stalin, who was one of the last to speak at the meeting, commented that the others had left him with little to say and then devoted his remarks to the modesty of Lenin, recounting two episodes in which “that giant” had erred (one was in not having wanted to await the convening of the Congress of Soviets in October 1917 before launching the coup)…
Lenin responded to the birthday celebration by registering once again, this time publicly, his aversion to being an object of adulation. He absented himself from the jubilee meeting until the speeches in his honor were over. When he appeared after an intermission and was met by an ovation, he drily thanked those present, first for their greetings and secondly for excusing him from listening to them. Then he pointedly expressed the hope that in time a “more fitting” way of marking anniversary dates would be found, and he concluded his talk with a discussion of routine party prob lems. Even in this part of the short talk, he warned the party against permitting success to go to its head and becoming a “conceited party.”
Robert C.Tucker; Stalin as revolutionary; Ibid; p.58

Tucker notes that Isaac Deutscher saw the adulation of Lenin as having been due to a mystical relic of Stalin’s seminary days :

“In the Lenin cult, with its sacred symbols and elaborate ceremonialism, this view sees something of the Byzantine tradition and the Greek Orthodox style
being assimilated into Soviet Communism; and in Stalin, a Marxist of the East and the product of a Greek Orthodox theological seminary in Tiflis, it sees the principal agent of this process.”
Robert Tucker; Stalin as revolutionary; p.280; citing Isaac Deutscher, “Stalin: A Political Biography, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 269-271

In contrast, Tucker notes that the intense feelings of loss after Lenin’s death were far from restricted to Stalin. He notes the “unsigned proclamation of the Central Committee“:

“Reports describe a mass sobbing scene when Kalinin, on January 22, announced the news of his death to the hundreds assembled in session at the Congress of Soviets. Not only were Bolsheviks grief-stricken; there was a sense of having been orphaned by the event. Imagery expressive of this feeling appeared, for example, in the headline of an article in Pravda on January 24: “The Orphaned Ones.” The same issue—the first one published after Lenin died—carried an article that Trotsky had hastily written in the Caucasus and dispatched by wire. “The party is orphaned,” it said. “The working class is orphaned. Just this is the feeling aroused by the news of the death of our teacher and leader.”
In the leading article, written by Bukharin and entitled “Comrade,” similar imagery appeared: “Comrade Lenin has left us forever. Let us transfer all our love for him to his own child, his heir—our party.”
Still more remarkable was the symbolism contained in the unsigned Central Committee proclamation to all party members and working people. The man under whose leadership the party had raised the red banner of October over the whole country was dead, the proclamation began. The founder of the Comintern, the leader of world Communism, the love and pride of the international proletariat, the banner of the oppressed East, and the head of the dictatorship of Russia, had died. Going on in this vein, the proclamation suddenly struck a quasi-mystical note: “But his physical death is not the death of his cause. Lenin lives. In the soul of every member of our party there is a particle [chastichka] of Lenin. Our whole Communist family is a collective embodiment of Lenin.”
In Trotsky’s farewell article, the same point was made more simply: “In each of us lives a small part of Lenin, which is the best part of each of us.”
Robert Tucker; Stalin as revolutionary; p.286-7

Frankly, this fevered sense of loss is a response that is totally understandable to many following the momentous events in Russia of 1917.

But the extension of this to a permanent installation of his dead body, is a remarkable story and that becomes another matter. How did this come about?

2. Two major conflicting views about why Lenin’s embalming took place

Overall, there are two views about how the mummification – or embalming – of Lenin’s body came about.
The first is the view that this was an attempt to convert Lenin into an icon for Bolsheviks, a religious vestibule where true Bolshevik traditions could be ‘discarded’ by the anti-Leninist Stalin and his comrades.

“Having created their relic, the Bolsheviks had taken the first decisive step towards turning Lenin’s ideas into a secular religion; a religion, moreover, comparable in the unquestioning obedience of its adherents only to the faith of fanatical fundamentalists. . . The first decrees of the Central Committee after Lenin’s death affirmed that the Party leadership in its struggle to build the Communist society’ would make Lenin’s mummy and everything associated with it one of the most important tools for accomplishing the task.”
Volkogonov D; “Lenin – A New Biography”; New York 1994; pp.440, 441.

An extension of this is to blame Stalin for this step. Unsurprisingly, this line takes its cues from Trotsky. It was Trotsky’s view that since Stalin’s first education had been in a Georgian seminary for the priesthood, Stalin was in essence a ‘religious’ and anti-Bolshevik, a crude unsophisticate. This line was more widely popularised by Trotsky’s followers, such as Isaac Deutscher. Deutscher portrays Stalin’s eulogy to Lenin, delivered on January 26, 1924, at the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets as a religious invocation:

“It is perhaps natural that the triumvir who had spent his formative years in a Greek Orthodox seminary should become the foremost agent of that change, that he should give the fullest expression to it. The oath to Lenin, which he read at the second congress of the Soviets, remains to this day the fullest and the most organic revelation of his own mind. In it, the style of the Communist Manifesto is strangely blended with that of the Orthodox Prayer Book; and Marxist terminology is wedded to the old Slavonic vocabulary. Its revolutionary invocations sound like a litany composed for a church choir.”
Deutscher I; “Stalin: A Political Biography, 2nd ed. (New York, 1966)

Deutscher goes on to quote from Stalin’s speech:

“Comrades, we Communists are people of a special cut. We have been cut out of peculiar stuff… There is no loftier title than that of a member of the party, of which Comrade Lenin has been founder and leader. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to hold high and keep pure the great title of member of the party. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall honourably fulfil this thy commandment. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to guard the unity of our party like the apple of our eye. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall fulfil honourably this thy commandment, too. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to guard and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that without sparing our strength we shall honourably fulfil this thy commandment, too. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to strengthen with all our might the alliance of workers and peasants. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall fulfil honourably this thy commandment, too. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to strengthen and broaden the Union of the Republics. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall honourably fulfil this thy commandment, too. . .
In leaving us, Comrade Lenin ordained us to keep faith with the principles of the Communist International. We vow to thee, Comrade Lenin, that we shall not spare our lives in the endeavour to strengthen and broaden the alliance of the workers of the whole world, the Communist International.”
Stalin; Works, Vol VI; pp.46-51

Who made the final decision for embalming of Lenin’s corpse?

According to Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S, authors of “Lenin’s Embalmers”; (London 1998)- the decision was ultimately made by The Funeral Commission.

Zbarsky & Hutchinson suggest that the idea came first from Felix Dzerhinsky, Chairman of the Funeral Commission, who said, apparently on January 23rd:

“Kings are embalmed because they are kings. In my opinion, the question is not so much if we should preserve Vladimir Illich’s body but how.”
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p. 16; Citing the Russian Centre for the Preservation & Study of Contemporary Historical Documents (CRCEDHC); coll.16; inv.2s, un.con.49; f.4.

They also suggest that the other members of the Funeral Commission formed a “committee of three” – Molotov, Yenukidze and Krasin – who had first:

“tried frantically to find a way of saving the corpse from decomposition.. Krasin , a former engineer with no specific qualification in biology, was the first to come up with a solution- refrigeration”;
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p.21 ibid; citing; CRCEDHC; coll.16; inv.2s, un.con.51, f.2.

It is true that Zbarsky and Hutchinson also argue that, the idea was really traceable back to before Lenin’s death, to Stalin. The idea they claim, was:

“first aired by Stalin at the secret meeting of the Politburo in late October 1925”;
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p.21 ibid; p.15.

However, they do not cite a source other than “according to Bukharin”:

“Valentin-Volsky tells us that Stalin took it upon himself to summon a meeting, held behind closed doors, of the Politburo, at which he was the first to moot the idea of embalming Lenin’s body. Held in late October 1923, the secret conference was attended by six of the eleven members of the Politburo: Trotsky, Bukharin, Kamenev, Kalinin, Stalin and Rykov. No minutes of the meeting exist; no decision was recorded. All that is certain, at least, according to Bukharin, is that these discussions took place some time after Lenin’s last visit to the Kremlin on 19 October 1923.”
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p.10-11; ibid; citing: Valentin-Volsky NV, “The NEP and the Crisis in the Party after Lenin’s Death”; California Hoover Institution Press, Stanford U, 1971; pp. 90-93.

Bukharin, of course, was an enemy of Stalin’s. On 19 October, Stalin is supposed to have said:

“Comrades, Vladimir Illich’s health has grown so much worse lately that it is to be feared he will soon be no more. We must therefore consider what is to be done when that great sorrow befalls us. I understand our comrades in the provinces are exercised about this matter. They believe that it is unthinkable that Lenin, as a Russian, should be cremated. Some of them suggest that modern science is capable of preserving his body for a considerable time, long enough at least for us to grow used to the idea of his being no longer among us.”
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p.10-11; ibid;

According to Zbarsky and Hutchinson, the following exchanges thereafter took place, with both Trotsky and Bukharin rebuking Stalin for trying to ensure a ‘reliquary’ would follow Lenin’s death:

“Trotsky angrily replied:
“If I understand Comrade Stalin correctly, he proposes to replace the relics of Saint Sergei Radonezhsky and Saint Serafun Sarovsky with the remains of Vladimir Ilich. This is what, to judge by his lengthy and obscure remarks, he seems to be driving at in his reference to what is and is not fitting for ‘a Russian’. I myself should very much like to know who these ‘comrades in the provinces’ are who imagine that science is capable of preserving Vladimir Illich’s body. I should like to tell them that they have learnt absolutely nothing about Marxist dialectic.”
“Trotsky is right,” said Bukharin.
“To turn Lenin’s remains into a relic would be an insult to his memory. We should not even contemplate such a thing.” Kamenev agreed with Trotsky and Bukharin: “There are other equally effective ways of honouring his name. For instance, to remind people of the role he played in the October Revolution, we could change the name of Petrograd to Leningrad, Or we could print millions of copies of his works. But the embalming idea strikes me as reminiscent of the very ‘priest-mongering’ that Illich himself denounced in his philosophical writings.”
Zbarsky I & Hutchinson S; p.10-11; ibid;

However as Arch Getty Jr writes later in 2013, and contrary to Trotsky’s and Deutscher’s claims, Stalin had little to do with the key decisions. As Arch Getty notes Stalin was “too careful a political tactician” to do this while Lenin was still alive and the idea “borders on the ridiculous”:

“it seems that Stalin had little if anything to do with the decision to permanently display Lenin. He was not on the Lenin Funeral Commission, chaired by Feliks Dzerzhinskii, where such decisions were made, and his associate Kliment Voroshilov, who was a member, bitterly opposed the idea. Stalin was a member of the Politburo, which, as it turned out, approved all the recommendations of the commission, but he seems to have played no active role in the decision. According to rumors that surfaced decades later (in the 1960s), Stalin had been the initiator of the idea to mummify Lenin even before Lenin died, having supposedly suggested it at an informal meeting of Politburo members in 1923, at which time Trotsky vehemently opposed the idea. This story is quite improbable on its face. The idea that such a careful political tactician as Stalin would openly talk about disposing of Ilich’s body while the latter was still alive, and in the presence of his arch-rival Trotsky, borders on the ridiculous. The senior leaders would consider it unpardonably crude to have such a discussion while their dear Lenin lived, and Stalin would certainly not have handed Trotsky such a faux pas on a platter.”
Getty, J. Arch. “Chapter 2 Cults and Personalities, Politics and Bodies”; in “Practicing Stalinism : Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition”, Yale University Press, 2013; p.70

The Second view is a much simpler and pragmatic one. Namely that this embalming was a simple method of ensuring that the USSR and international masses (then and also of later times) who wished to – could pay their own recognition to Lenin:

A.E. Yenukidze, Secretary of the TsK declared at the Commission for Perpetuating the Memory of V.I. Ulyanov Lenin:
‘We did not want to make of Vladimir Ilyich’s remains some sort of “relic”, as a means to popularize or preserve his memory … We … accorded and still accord the greatest importance to preserving the image of this remarkable leader for the rising generation and future generations, but also for those hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, who would be extremely happy to see the image of this man..”
Volkogonov D; “Lenin – A New Biography”; New York 1994, p.442.

To follow this line of argument, we have to delve into further details on the sequence of events.

3. The Death of Lenin and the Funeral Commission

On 21 January 1924, Lenin died. The Central Executive Committee formed a Funeral Commission – headed by Felix Dzerzhinsky, with the following members: Muralov, Lashevich, Bonch-Bruevich, Voroshilov, Molotov, Zelensky and Yenukidze.

In addition to them, three leading Bolsheviks were appointed by the Central Committee to perform some key functions regarding the treatment of Lenin’s body. They were V.D.Bonch-Bruevich, Anatolii Lunacharskii and Leonid Krasin:. These last three had some – for Bolsheviks – curious attachment to religious symbolism:

“Links between religion and Bolshevism and religion and the Lenin cult do exist apart from Stalin and apart from the reverence for Lenin as leader which may have characterized his revolutionary following. These links are provided by three Bolsheviks who valued the spiritual, who were actively engaged with religion at the beginning of this century, and who, upon Lenin’s death, became imaginative contributors to the most mystical aspects of the Lenin cult. They directed his funeral, the construction of his mausoleum, and the preservation of his body. The three men were V. D. Bonch-Bruevich, from 1917 to 1920 the Administrative Secretary of the Council of People’s Commissars; Anatolil Lunacharskii, the erudite Commissar of Enlightenment; and Leonid Krasin, a man of energy, imagination, and talent, a diplomat and, at the time of Lenin’s death, Commissar of Foreign Trade. Each of them chosen by the presidium of the Central Executive Committee to oversee some important aspect of the cult of Lenin’s body.”
Nina Tumarkin; “Religion, Bolshevism, and the Origins of the Lenin Cult”; The Russian Review, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1981), pp. 35-46

Stalin, who also called for steps to maintain calm, informed all regional Party Committees of the death and the formation of the Funeral Commission.

The Funeral Commission first proposed extending an initial lying-in state period at the Kremlin. Consequently, A.I. Abrikosov performed a normal – short-term – embalming. This would suffice to forestall putrefaction for 6-7 days. It was initially very likely that Lenin would be shortly buried near the Kremlin Wall:

“The original idea was to bury Lenin. On 24 January 1924, the Politburo decided to inter him next to Iakov Sverdlov near the Kremlin wall. 9 On 26 January, Bukharin told the Congress of Soviets. . .”
Getty, J. Arch. “Chapter 2 Cults and Personalities, Politics and Bodies”; in “Practicing Stalinism : Bolsheviks, Boyars, and the Persistence of Tradition”, Yale University Press, 2013; p. 70-71; Hereafter Getty J. Arch “Practising Stalinism”

Embalming is a process once performed with spices to preserve it. (“To impregnate a dead body with spices to preserve it from decay”; Oxford English Dictionary 1973; p.643).

The practice was common in ancient Egypt and Peru, and other early societies where reverence for dead leaders was important in maintaining continuity, in a pantheon extending from living humans to dead humans and to gods (Sigerist H; “Primitive and Archaic Medicine”; Yale 1951; p. 268). In modern times, various chemicals are used to achieve the same goal of halting the putrefaction of tissues.

4. The Funeral

An out-pouring of mass grief naturally marked the funeral. Very early on, however, there was a drive to erect statues and memorabilia of Lenin. His widow –  Kruspkaya publicly took a position against this:

“From the day of the funeral,. . .The seemingly unstoppable process started of creating museums, erecting statues, and publishing countless books and miscellanies, of renaming towns, streets, factories, palaces, ships and workshops. . .
Only two days after the funeral, Pravda published a brief letter from Krupskaya in response to the announcement of a Lenin Fund aimed at building monuments to him:
“I wish to make a big request: don’t let your grief for Ilyich run away into outward regard for his personality. Don’t build monuments to him, palaces in his name, grand ceremonies in his memory, and so on. When he was alive, he had no time for such things, he found such things oppressive.”‘…
In one decree after another, monuments to Lenin were erected throughout the period and throughout the Soviet Union, to say nothing of the effort that went into carrying on the practice outside the USSR.”
Volkogonov; Ibid., p.440-441.

5. Nadezda Krupskaia (Krupskaya) opposed any memorials

Despite Krupskaya’s pleas, it was inevitable that some statues would be built, Lenin was simply too loved and had done too much for the peoples of the USSR for it to be otherwise. But the erection of a permanent edifice for Lenin’s embalmed body was another matter. At first, there was only a temporary building to house Lenin’s body:

“the temporary mausoleum… Krupskaya was the first person to visit the temporary resting place, with Lenin’s brother Dmitri, on 26 May 1924. In general, she was to visit it infrequently, not even once a year, preferring to spare herself the emotional upset it caused her. The curator of the mummy, B.I. Zbar¬sky, recalled that the last time Krupskaya visited the tomb was in 1938, a few months before her death in February 1939 She is said to have stood by the catafalque for a while, muttering quietly: ‘He’s just the same, but look how I’ve aged. . . “
Volkogonov, Ibid., p. 441

On the 24th January, the Politburo discussed whether or not to prolong the period of a short-term preservation, to which it was already known that Lenin’s widow – Krupsakaya – and Lenin’s brother and sisters – had objected to even any memorials:

“Lenin’s widow N. K. Krupskaia resisted the idea, famously writing in Pravda, “Do not build memorials to him, palaces named after him. Do not hold celebrations in his memory etc… If you want to honor the name of Vladimir Ilich, build day care centers, kindergartens, homes, schools, and most importantly, try in all things to fulfill his legacy.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism; p.74

As we saw above, Lenin’s own views would have been very similar to his widow’s.

6. The views of Lunarchaski and Krasin

However a strong contingent in the Central Committee argued otherwise.

“In October–November 1924, senior Bolsheviks Lunacharskii and Krasin made the case for monuments. “The question of monuments should be seen from the point of view of the demands of the revolutionary people.” The proletariat, they argued, has a solid sense of history and connection to the past. Proletarian monuments, unlike bourgeois ones, are not mere idols or signposts. Proletarian monuments are “sources of strength taken from the revolutionary masses… A revolutionary monument is an active thing; it is a centralizer and transformer of social strength… Revolutionary society does great deeds and therefore has a need to immortalize itself.” “Lenin’s tomb has already become a magnetic center for the masses, who visit it and whose literal voices of millions of people show that it answers a profound need of the masses.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism ; p. 74-75

Lunarchaskii and Krasin, more so than Bonch-Bruevich – had long made cases for a form of ‘god building’ in the party. Indeed Lenin had polemicised against this tendency in his key work entitled “Materialism and Empirio-criticism – Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy“. (Lenin Collected Works, Moscow, 1972, Volume 14, pages 17-362; and at MIA here ).

Lunarcharskii’s and Krasin’s viewpoint was buttressed by the enormous outpouring of grief and hunger to see Lenin’s body from the masses. This hunger from the masses fuelled many “unauthorised” local monuments:

“Thousands of unsolicited condolence letters and telegrams spontaneously poured in. The very decision to move Lenin’s body from the Hall of Columns to Red Square had to do with crowd control and was the result of thousands of requests from the public, especially from those unable to reach Moscow in time to see the body during the viewing period originally planned. The decision to build the second, “temporary” wooden and then the third permanent stone mausoleum had similar causes: the people kept coming, more than a hundred thousand in the first six weeks, despite bitter cold. Much of the cult came from below. Without demands from the leadership, proposals poured in from the provinces to build local monuments to Lenin and to name all kinds of things for him. Without permission, in Cheboksarai they built an exact replica of the mausoleum to be used as a bookselling kiosk. This caused much consternation in Moscow. Sailing in the wake of popular action, the regime quickly understood that they needed to get control of this process, and arrogated to themselves the right to approve or disapprove such requests; nothing could be built without their approval. Subsequently, much of the work of the Dzerzhinskii Commission consisted of approving (but mostly disapproving) these proposals.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism; p.76

The masses coming to see Lenin’s body activated some on the Central Committee to accept the arguments of the God Builders’. It did not hurt that, as Getty reminds us, many on the CC were themselves from backgrounds conducive to monument making:

“Of ten members of the commission, eight were village born, as were more than half of the members of the Central Committee. It is not so difficult to imagine internal conflict between their newly acquired positivism and the culture they grew up in. When they or some among them had doubts about what seemed natural, about contradicting the scientific rationalism they claimed, they went ahead and did the natural thing, the intuitive thing, the thing that combined science and superstition, while at the same time denying—even to themselves—they were doing it. Somewhere in the back of their minds, Lenin was a saint.”
Getty, J. Arch. “Practicing Stalinism”; p. 73

7. The Central Committee split on long-term embalming – two vocal opposing voices being Voroshilov versus Dzerzhinskii

Once scientists began to suggest the possibility of long-term techniques to ‘preserve’ the corpse, some started to accept this. Muralov first proposed this but was opposed by Voroshilov:

“When Muralov suggested that preserving the body and displaying it could be advantageous ( vygodno ) to the regime, Voroshilov exploded. Muralov’s idea was “nonsense” ( chepukha ), and “disgraceful” ( pozor ).
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism; p.72

“On 23 January, senior Bolsheviks T. Sapronov and K. V. Voroshilov took sharp issue with N. I. Muralov’s suggestion to display the body. According to Voroshilov, “We must not resort to canonization. That would be SR-like… [SR – the Social Revolutionary Party -Ed].
We would stop being Marxist-Leninists. If Lenin heard Muralov’s speech, he would hardly compliment him. Really, cultured people would cremate the body and put the ashes in an urn.” Otherwise, Voroshilov said, we would be hypocrites: peasants would note that we were destroying their god and replacing it with our own sacred relics.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism p.72

In turn, Dzerzhinskii was swayed to accept Muralov’s view, arguing it was not a matter of “principle”:

“Rather than take a firm decision on preserving Lenin, commission members Dzerzhinskii and K. Avanesov avoided taking a principled stand. As Dzerzhinskii put it, “To be principled in this question is to be principled in quotation marks.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism; p.72

Dzerzhinskii went on to argue “why not?” – as follows:

“Lenin was a truly special person. “He is so dear to us that if we can preserve the body and see it, then why not do it?” “If science can really preserve the body for a long time, then why not do it?” “If it is impossible, then we won’t do it.” For Dzerzhinskii, the question was not “why” but “why not?” Although the Voroshilov faction was still unhappy, the Dzerzhinskii group won the day and reported this “why not?” recommendation to the Politburo, which approved it.
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism, p. 72

Zinoviev and Bukharin were deputed to:

“… persuade Nadezhda Konstantinova: if she will not agree not to insist on acceptance of her proposal, the question can be discussed again in a month”;
Volkogonov D; Lenin – A New Biography; New York 1994; p.440; p. 437; citing APRF, f.3, op.22, d.309, il.15, 16, 21.

At the same time the Central Committee instructed that:

“1) The coffin containing V.I.Lenin’s corpse is to be kept in a vault which should be made accessible to visitors;
2) The vault is to be formed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square among the communal graves of the fighters of the October Revolution. A commission is being created today for the construction of a mausoleum (temporary for now). Academician A.B. Shchusev is commissioned to prepare drawings for the mausoleum”;
Volkogonov D; Lenin; Ibid., pp.437-438.

Lenin’s state funeral was held on the 26 January, 1924.

8. Continued debates about Lenin’s corpse

After the State funeral, as mentioned, the two main forces moving towards the preservation of Lenin’s body were the ‘God-Builders’ within the Party led by Lunarcharskii, and the movement from below:

“This cultural upswelling (from below – Ed) was met from the top not only by the crass manufacture and use of the Lenin cult as a tool, but by a section of the Bolshevik elite, the “God Builders,” who believed in an eventual new religion in which humankind would become godlike and immortal. Peasants and some Bolsheviks thought or hoped that Lenin had transcended death. The fight inside the party between the positivist Leninists and the God Builders reflected in macrocosm the inner struggle of Bolsheviks in 1924 about what to do with Lenin’s body.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing Stalinism; p. 77

In the interim, the debate about whether or not, to embalm the body, continued for a significant period. It was only on 26 July that the decision was taken ultimately to entrust the preservation for ever. Lenin’s body was entrusted to Professor Boris Illich Zbarsky and Professor Vladimir Vorobiov.

“The decision to preserve and display Lenin’s body was taken incrementally over a period of years, and it was not until 1929–30 that his resting place was finalized in the stone mausoleum. At first, on 24 January 1924, Lenin was put in the Kremlin’s Hall of Columns for viewing by the public. Professor Abrikosov embalmed the body in customary fashion so it would last the three days until the funeral and burial. Nobody contemplated a longer viewing. Two days later, the huge crowds obliged the Politburo to order moving the display to Red Square near the Kremlin wall. Architect A. V. Shchusev was quickly conscripted to design and build a temporary structure there which was thrown together by 27 January. The crowds kept coming, and soon Shchusev was charged with designing a larger structure that was completed some weeks later. But it was not made to last. It was a wooden structure called the “temporary mausoleum.” Meanwhile, during the extended viewing period, “. . . Lenin’s body began to decay. The Dzerzhinskii Commission was consequently faced with making a longer-term decision about body. In February, commission member and engineer Leonid Krasin claimed that he could preserve the body through freezing, and on seventh, the commission authorized him to buy expensive German machinery for that purpose. By 14 March, the body continued to deteriorate and although Krasin continued to defend the freezing idea, the commission brought in Professors Zbarskii and Vorob’ev with a new chemical procedure for long-term preservation. It was not until 26 July that the commission made the final decision to embalm and display Lenin forever, based on Zbarskii and Vorob’ev’s procedure. Already, while Lenin had been in the Hall of Columns, rumors were circulating that popular pressure and the opinions of some Bolsheviks favored preserving the body “for some time and to build a crypt or vault.” But when the question came up in the Dzerzhinskii Commission, at first in the form of whether or not even to have an open casket, there was sharp debate which A. Enukidze later euphemistically called “fluster about preserving V. I.’s body… There was a lot of hesitation and doubt among members of the Commission.”
Getty, J. Arch. Practicing; p.71

We have no direct evidence of Stalin’s views on the matter.

9. Moves to the Mummification

Shortly after the funeral, decisions now hinged on the practical and scientific possibilities. Discussions continued in the Politburo as to the possibility of longer-term preservation of the body:

“After the . . . funeral, the Politburo set out, with the aid of Dzerzhinsky, Krasin and the scientists, to find ways of preserving the dead leader, and even debated the technical aspects of the problem. On 13 March 1924, having heard reports by Molotov and Krasin, it decided:
‘In view of the absence of other methods for conserving the body of V.I. Lenin, the commission should be ordered to resort to measures for preserving it using low temperature.”
Volkogonov D: Citing APRF, f.3, op.22, d.309, I.38. Ibid; p. 443.

In the space of months, the final decision was taken to proceed to longer-term embalment and the process was completed:

“The Politburo was able to approve a system devised by V.P. Vorobiev, a chemist from Kharkov, and on 24 July 1924 it recognized his achievement by conferring on him the title of Honorary Professor. The embalming process took four months. Meanwhile .. to design the mausoleum ..The Politburo … decided to hold a competition, with prizes for the four best entries: first prize was to be 1000 roubles, second 750, third 600, and fourth 500. . . “
Volkogonov p.444

There was however, a significant delay until the final agreement to proceed with a permanent structure – the ‘Lenin Mausoleum’:

“It was not, however, until 4 July 1929 that the Politburo, after innumerable reviews of the question, finally decided to proceed with the building of the permanent structure.”
Volkogonov Ibid; p.444

In that long intervening time, open disagreement with the plans for embalming became cause for reprisals:

“For all practical purposes, the preservation of the mummy had up to now been handled by political security, the OGPU, and the least hint of criticism of the matter was subject to severe suppression. For instance, in July 1929, when Lazar Shatskin, writing in Kovuomolskaya pravda on ‘Party philistinism’, cast doubt on the idea of the mausoleum, the Politburo at once denounced his position as ‘a crude political error’, and drew the corresponding administrative, i.e. punitive, conclusions: Shatskin was expelled from the Party soon after for ‘factional activity’, and was executed in 1937, his ‘error’ of 1929 no doubt figuring on the charge sheet.”
Volkogonov Ibid; p.444.

This length of delay strongly implies that there was a serious difference of opinion as to the advisability of embalming the body and creating in effect, what might be considered to be a ‘shrine’.

10. The erection of the Cult of Personality around Stalin
It was in the period of about 1930-1937, that the Cult of Personality was being built by hidden revisionists around Stalin. This was well described originally by W.B.Bland (See “Stalin: The Myth And The Reality”, By W.B.Bland At: Marxist Internet Archive
And another version is here )

We draw on those sources for this short description.

Stalin was very angry with these attempts to build a Cult of Personality around himself, and tried to prevent it. Numerous references testify to his overall abhorrence of such a cult. For instance in December 1931, he insisted on a correct understanding of the role of an individual in history, and the meaning of collective decision-making in the life of a party :

“As for myself, I am just a pupil of Lenin’s, and the aim of my life is to be a worthy pupil of his…
Marxism does not deny at all the role played by outstanding individuals or that history is made by people. But . . great people are worth anything at all only to the extent that they are able correctly to understand these conditions, to understand how to change them. If they fail to understand these conditions and want to alter them according to the promptings of their imagination, they will find themselves in the situation of Don Quixote.
Individual persons cannot decide. Decisions of individuals are always, or nearly always, one-sided decisions… In every collective body, there are people whose opinion must be reckoned with… From the experience of three revolutions we know that out of every 100 decisions taken by individual persons without being tested and corrected collectively, approximately 90 are one-sided. . . Never under any circumstances would our workers now tolerate power in the hands of one person. With us personages of the greatest authority are reduced to nonentities, become mere ciphers, as soon as the masses of the workers lose confidence in them”.
J.V. Stalin: ibid.; p. 107-08, 109, 113.

It was the hidden revisionists, such as Khrushchev and Radek who developed the Cult of Personality around Stalin. Khruschev introduced the term ‘vozhd’ (‘leader’, corresponding to the German word ‘Fuhrer’). At the Moscow Party Conference in January 1932, Khrushchev finished his speech by saying:

“The Moscow Bolsheviks, rallied around the Leninist Central Committee as never before, and around the ‘vozhd’ of our Party, Comrade Stalin, are cheerfully and confidently marching toward new victories in the battles for socialism, for world proletarian revolution”.
(‘Rabochaya Moskva’, 26 January 1932, cited in: L. Pistrak: The Grand Tactician: Khrushchev’s Rise to Power, London; 1961; p. 159).

That Stalin himself was not unaware of the fact that the concealed revisionists were the main force behind the ‘cult of personality’ was reported by the Finnish revisionist Tuominen in 1935, who describes how, when Stalin was informed that busts of himself had been given prominent places in Moscow’s leading art gallery, the Tretyakov, Stalin exclaimed: “That’s downright sabotage!”. (A. Touminen: op. cit.; p. 164).

The German writer Lion Feuchtwanger, in 1936 confirms that Stalin suspected that the ‘cult of personality’ was being fostered by ‘wreckers’ with the aim of discrediting him:

“It is manifestly irksome to Stalin to be worshipped as he is, and from time to time he makes fun of it. Of all the men I know who have power, Stalin is the most unpretentious. I spoke frankly to him about the vulgar and excessive cult made of him, and he replied with equal candour. He thinks it is possible even that ‘wreckers’ may be behind it in an attempt to discredit him”.
(L. Feuchtwanger: ‘Moscow 1937’; London; 1937; p. 93, 94-94).

11. During the Second World War

Once the Lenin mausoleum decisions were finally taken on building it, it was maintained by the state. Thereafter, undoubtedly, Stalin and Beria took care to ensure its safety. For instance, the capture of the body by the German Fascist army of Hitler, would have been a major propaganda victory that the USSR could ill afford. Corresponding care was taken to guard against this:

“Stalin was given regular reports by the NKVD on the condition of the mummy and the measures being taken to preserve it, such as its wartime evacuation to Tyumen in Western Siberia, from 1941 until the spring of 1945, Professor Boris Ilyich Zbarsky was responsible to the security services for maintaining Lenin’s body in viewable condition, and in 1934 he and Vorobiev were decorated and each given the use of an automobile, an exceptional privilege at the time. In November 1939, Zbarsky was installed in a new laboratory on the personal initiative of Beria, and in 1944 he was created an Academician not that his work or his position saved him from arrest during the postwar terror. By the early 1970s this laboratory employed twenty-seven scientists and thirty-three technicians, including three Academicians, one Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, three Doctors of Science and twelve Ph.Ds.”
Volkoganov, Ibid., pp. 444-45.

“The embalming specialists watched carefully for any marks on the mummy’s skin, ‘peeling of the nose’, ‘darkening’ or ‘deformation of the dermis’. In February 1940, for instance, Beria had reported to the Politburo that an inspection had revealed ‘deviations’ on the face, ‘a parting of the [autopsy] scar on the head, darkening on the nose’.”… In March 1940 the Politburo approved Beria’s plan for a new sarcophagus. Zbarsky was expected to submit plans and models ‘of an artistic kind’ by 15 April, for completion by 20 October. Special tasks were delegated to the Commissar for Power Stations and Electrical Industry, M.G. Pervukhin, and Commissar for Armaments B.L. Varmikov.”
Volkoganov, Ibid., p.445.

The propaganda value of the embalmed body was certainly understood by the revisionists after the death of Stalin in 1953. The corpse became essential to the mythology that indeed socialism in the USSR was still alive. After all, what could be more socialist than to revere the corpse of Lenin? Care was lavished upon the body by the revisionists:

“In 1972, salaries at the laboratory were increased by twenty-five per cent.’ More care and attention was lavished on it than on the country’s wretched public health service… An improved sarcophagus was made in the 1970s. Ninety six people received medals and dozens more high awards for its creation. The mausoleum was frequently under repair. In 1974, for instance, refurbishment cost 5 5 million roubles, and four hundred people received medals and awards. “
Ibid.

12. Following the Gorbachev Open Capitalist seizure of the USSR State
There have been repeated attempts by the openly capitalist leaders of the state to remove the body from the mausoleum and dismantle the building. The dying wish of Lenin was apparently to be buried in a grave next to his mother, in Leningrad (now again named St Petersburg).

However, opposition from the Russian working class who now see the mausoleum as one of the final surviving relics of the former socialist state have resisted. In fact the capitalists were intent on ‘re-furbishing’ the body.

“After 60 years wearing a suit most people wouldn’t be seen dead in, Vladimir Lenin is getting a fashion makeover.
(with) … a new outfit that may even include a colourful new tie. . . His remains were originally clad in a Red Army military jacket, but he was changed into civvies – the familiar dark, sombre suit – just before the Second World War. A dozen scientists will carry out the re-dressing between November 10 and December 29… But supporters have demanded that he should stay in the mausoleum where tourists used to queue for hours to pay their respects. “In Soviet times, he was the closest we had to a god,” said Ilya Zbarsky, who worked on the preservation team. “Twice a week, we’d soak his face and hands in a special solution and improve minor defects.”
“Lenin to Get New Outfit” By Will Stewart for The Mirror (Link no longer functional as of 2025. -Ed.)

The same article goes on to note that the skills of the embalmers were being more commonly used nowadays to embalm murdered Russian mafia bosses – at £7,500 a time.

After 1991 Russian President Boris Yeltsin began discussions about burying Lenin’s corpse in the Kremlin Wall. But he was opposed by the next President, Putin. On 24 July 2001, Putin said:

“Our country lived under the monopoly power of the CPSU for 70 years. This is the lifetime of an entire generation. Many people associate their own lives with the name of Lenin. For them, Lenin’s burial will mean that they worshiped false values, that they set false goals for themselves and that their lives were lived in vain. I think that actions of this kind can lead to the kind of destructive state that we have already experienced.”
From Russian edition of BBC cited at Wikipedia .

Several subsequent discussions in the State Duma have been unable to resolve this controversy.

13. Conclusions
In the period of 1924-30, it would seem that a ‘preparatory’ phase of the Cult of Lenin was being erected.

We await proof from the archival data – whether or not – Stalin was responsible for the decision to embalm Lenin. Until then, it must be assumed that the benefits of these assertions accrue to the revisionists. We contend that there is no current evidence to convincingly show that Stalin was in favour of embalming Lenin. Nor does Stalin’s aversions to cults of personality agree with Trotsky and Bukharin’s versions.

More broadly – Honouring past socialist heroes(ines) is natural.
However erection of personality cults is a dangerous weapon that is used by hidden revisionists to disguise attacks on socialism.

We are reminded of the words of Enver Hoxha, when in an interview he depicted the revisionists’ use of the Cult of Personality:

“Q: Why, in your opinion, did Stalin not prepare for his succession?
A: Stalin did think about this. At the 19th Congress he enlarged the Central Committee and the Political Bureau in order to consolidate the leadership of the Party after his death. But he was surrounded – a little like de Gaulle – by camouflaged enemies who constantly presented him with false reports. He told them: “After my death, you will sell out the Soviet Union”, but he did not succeed in combating them in time.
Stalin was a great man. I knew him at close quarters: I had five meetings with him. He was a wise and level-headed man. He fought the enemies of the Soviet Union and of communism.

Before and after the Second World War, Stalin consolidated the position of the Soviet Union politically, economically, and militarily. He had noted that his country was being undermined – and undermined gravely. Khrushchev and Mikoyan told me with their own mouths that they had organised a plot against Stalin, that they had had the intention of murdering him in a coup, but feared the people. That is the kind of criminals and assassins they were. Even after Stalin’s death they continued to cry: “Long live Stalin!” and to say: “Stalin was a great man”. But, at a certain moment, after having consolidated their positions, they came out against him in their notorious attack. They accused Stalin of all the crimes and faults which they had committed themselves. That we never accepted, and we declared so openly at the meeting of 81 Communist Parties in Moscow in 1960. That is why they accuse us of being Stalinists. But we are Marxist-Leninist Stalinists and we put into effect all that is good for socialism in Albania.“
Enver Hoxha: An Interview with Enver Hoxha (An interview given in Tirana in December 1984 by Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Central Committee Of the Party Of Labour Of Albania, to Professor Paul Milliez, President of the Franco-Albanian Friendship Association.
From “Albanian Life”; ISSUE 32 No.2 1985 Memorial Issue of Enver Hoxha’s Death;

14. Brecht The Carpet Weavers Of Kuyan-Bulak Honor Lenin

We close with a poem by Bertolt Brecht – that we believe embodies one possible expression of a legitimate honouring of Lenin.

1
Often has he been honoured and lavishly,
Comrade Lenin. There are busts and statues.
Cities are named after him, and children.
Speeches are made in many languages
There are gatherings and demonstrations
From Shanghai to Chicago, in honor of Lenin.
Here now how he was honored by
The carpet weavers of Kuyan-Bulak
A little village in southern Turkestan.
Twenty carpet weavers rise every evening
Shaken by fever from their ramshackle looms.
Fever is in the air: the station
Is filled with the buzz of mosquitoes, the thick cloud
Which rises from the swamp behind the old camel graveyard.
But the railway train, which
Once a fortnight brings water and smoke, brings
One day also the news
That the day in honour of Comrade Lenin is approaching
And the people of Kuyan-Bulak decide
Carpet weavers, poor people
That in their village too a plaster bust,
Of Comrade Lenin should be erected.
Then, when the money is collected for the bust
They all stand there
Shaken by fever and count out
Their hard-won kopeks with swift hands.
And the Red Army soldier Stepa Gamaleev, the
Diligent accountant and attentive observer
Sees their willingness to honor Lenin, and is glad
But he sees also their unsteady hands
And he makes a sudden proposal
With this money for the bust to buy petrol and
To pour it on the swamp behind the camel graveyard
Where the mosquitoes come, which
Breed the fever.
So to combat the fever in Kuyan-Bulak, and so
To honour the departed, but
Not to be forgotten
Comrade Lenin.

Thus it was decided to do this. On the day of the ceremony they carried out
Their dented buckets, filled with black petroleum
One behind the other
And poured them on the swamp.
Thus they helped themselves by honouring Lenin, and
They honoured him by helping themselves, and had therefore
Understood him.

2
We have heard how the people of Kuyan-Bulak
Honoured Lenin. Now in the evening
That the petrol had been bought and poured over the swamp
A man stood up at the meeting, and he demanded
That a plaque be erected at the station
With the report of these events, including
Precisely details the changed plan and the exchange of the
Bust of Lenin for the barrel of fever-blasting petrol.
And all this in honour of Lenin.
And they did this too
And put up the plaque.

(From: “Svendborg Poems”; ca 1930-1938; in” The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht”: Translated and Edited by Tom Kuhn and David Constantine; New York, 2019; 683-685)