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Janaline's World Journey “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”

Visiting Lenin's Mausoleum on the Red Square!!

RUSSIAN FEDERATION | Sunday, 10 June 2012 | Views [2125]

Lenins Mausoleum

Lenins Mausoleum

You cannot visit Moscow and not visit Lenin!!!
Yes its a dead body but believe me he looks like a wax statue!And its FREE!!!
The Red Square is rich in symbols of Russia's turbulent and intriguing past and one of the first things that drew my attention was the constructivist pyramid of Lenin's Mausoleum. I stood in line early Wednesday morning to get a chance to see Lenin. You are not allowed to take anything in with you; I had to check in my phone and bag I was carrying.
They definitely don't want us to take a photo of Lenins body!!!
 
 
Under communism, Red Square also came to serve as a cemetery. Immediately after the Bolsheviks took control of Moscow in 1917, two identical tombs were built beneath the Kremlin wall to hold the remains of 240 casualties of the October Revolution. The Russian Orthodox Church was against the plan, but it made no difference. Red Square became a necropolis. It became a tradition to bury Soviet heroes by the Kremlin walls. 
 
 
Space beneath the walls soon ran out, and from 1925 VIPs were buried within the wall itself. More than 100 people are now interred there, including Charles Rutenberg, the first General Secretary of the US Communist Party, Maksim Gorky,Yuri Gagarin, and a host of marshals and ministers.
 
 
As I moved towards the mausoleum I passed the graves of all the state figures and even the grave of Yuri Gagarin the first Russian in Space.
 
Once I was inside though I couldnt stop and have a good look, I had to keep moving, so we shuffled along before the watchful eyes of a couple of guards. Do they think if we have a good look we would dispute the fact that it is his body? It looks like a wax body to me though.
 

Tags: janaline smalman, lenin, moscow, red square, russia, sightseeing, travel

 

 

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