Elite Russian military guards at Lenin's tomb in Moscow's Red Square
Lenin died on January 21, 1924. Two days later architect Aleksey Shchusev was charged with building a structure suitable for viewing of the body by mourners. A wooden tomb, in Red Square by the Kremlin wall, was ready on January 27, and later that day Lenin's coffin was placed in it. More than 100,000 people visited the tomb in the next six weeks.[1] By August 1924, Shchusev had replaced the tomb with a larger one, and Lenin's body transferred to a sarcophagus designed by architect Konstantin Melnikov. Pathologist Alexei Ivanovich Abrikosov had embalmed the body shortly after Lenin's death, but by 1929 it was determined that it would be possible to preserve the body for much longer than usual; therefore, the next year a new mausoleum of marble, porphyry, granite, and labradorite (by Alexey Shchusev, Frantsuz and Yakovlev) was completed. In 1973 sculptor Nikolai Tomsky designed a new sarcophagus. On January 26, 1924, the Head of the Moscow Garrison issued an order to place the Guard of Honour at the mausoleum. Russians call it the "Number One Sentry". After the events of the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, the Guard of Honour was disbanded. In 1997 the "Number One Sentry" was restored at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Garden. The body was removed in October 1941 and evacuated to Tyumen, in Siberia, when it appeared that Moscow might be in danger of capture by German troops. After the war, it was returned and the tomb reopened. More than 10 million people visited Lenin's tomb between 1924 and 1972. Joseph Stalin's embalmed body shared a spot next to Lenin's, from the time of his death in 1953 until October 31, 1961, when Stalin was removed as part of de-Stalinization and Khrushchev's Thaw, and buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis outside the walls of the Kremlin. Lenin's body was to have been transferred to the Pantheon upon its completion but the project was cancelled in the aftermath of de-Stalinization.
Size: 3631px × 5687px
Location: Red Square, Moscow, Russia
Photo credit: © Ken Hawkins / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
Keywords: army, body, cadaver, cccp, ceremonial, ceremony, changing, crypt, drill, elite, embalm, embalmed, engels, grave, guard, guards, kremlin, lenin, lenins, march, marching, marx, mausoleum, men, military, moscow, patrol, precision, preserved, red, republic, rifle, russia, russian, socialist, soviet, square, tomb, tourist, uniform, vladimir, wall
