extreme makeover on Lenin
from AntBlog701

extreme makeover on Lenin

According to this News.com.au report Lenin is going to have another extreme makeover.
Well, I am not a historian, I don't know much about Vladimir Lenin, but the preservation of Lenin's corpse is something interesting.

He died some 80 years ago, and they use an untested chemical process on him, and it worked very well, I have to add.

Stalin was with Lenin for 8 years. Stalin's body was in the Red Square mausoleum, then Stalin was officially discredited and was quietly taken away and buried under the Kremlin wall.

The skin is examined closely each week, using precision, Russian-made instruments that measure its moisture, colour and contour. Dehydration and time are the principal enemies.

...

Lenin's blood, bodily fluids and internal organs were removed as part of the initial embalming. His eyebrows, moustache and goatee are his original hair - no moulting. And his genitals are intact.

The report has two pictures.

Lenin undergoes extreme makeover (News.com.au 1 March 2004)

VLADIMIR Lenin has been dead these 80 years, but the founder of Soviet communism has never looked better. Just ask his curator.
"He looks quite fine, as good as he did 30 years ago," said Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky, the Russian doctor who just supervised an extensive makeover of Lenin's corpse.

...

When Lenin died of a stroke and heart attack on January 21, 1924, his widow said he'd wished to be buried next to his mother in a simple cemetery plot.

But the communist elite had other ideas.

They originally planned to freeze their beloved leader, but his body began to deteriorate badly as a super-freezer was being built.

Instead, using an untested chemical process, Lenin was embalmed and his skin carefully treated to preserve a lifelike appearance.

...

Specially filtered lighting gives Lenin's face a warm glow. Botox, collagen and modern cosmetics aren't used, Denisov-Nikolsky said, with a polite harrumph. A mild bleach is employed to combat occasional fungus stains or mould spots on Lenin's face.

The skin is examined closely each week, using precision, Russian-made instruments that measure its moisture, colour and contour. Dehydration and time are the principal enemies.

Lenin gets an extreme makeover every 18 months or so. The mausoleum is closed for two months and the body is immersed in a bath of glycerol and potassium acetate for 30 days. The skin slowly absorbs the solution, regaining its moisture and pliancy.

With current techniques, the body could last "many decades, even for 100 years," said Ilya Zbarsky, 90, a doctor who worked on the body from 1934 to 1952. His father, Boris, participated in the original embalming in 1924.

Lenin's blood, bodily fluids and internal organs were removed as part of the initial embalming. His eyebrows, moustache and goatee are his original hair - no moulting. And his genitals are intact.

No one seems to know what's happened to Lenin's heart, but Soviet ideologists were sure that his brain was something special. They brought in a renowned German scientist to examine it for clues to the great man's genius, but nothing came of it.

The brain is still kept at a Moscow institute. "But it's not easy to see it," Zbarsky said. "It's mostly dissected."

...