Hello Lenin

Vladimir Illich is chilling. Outside it’s hot; the water cooler is doing overtime and I’m already getting weird suntan sandal lines (or perhaps that’s the pollution). But inside this morgue is as cold as Kvas, the chilled, non-alcoholic, malty beer that Moscovites drink in summertime in order to cool down.

Lenin’s dressed in his Sunday best; dark suit, spotty tie, but unlike a trip to your Auntie Hilda’s there’s something rather bizarre, even grotesque, about visiting many Soviet’s favourite uncle. Inside his dark chamber, fiercely protected by young, spotty automaton guards, he lies in a glass casket. His skin is pale and waxy, like a once-loved Russian doll cast aside by a little owner who has long since grown up.

There’s plenty of barmy theories about this diverting freakshow; some even question whether this curious cadavar is the real Mr Ulyanov. One thing’s for certain though: L’Oreal or the Body Shop could learn a trick or two from the brilliant scientific minds who have kept him nicely pickled here for nigh-on eighty years.

Or maybe he’s kept here in order to prevent him turning in his grave. Given the amount of change that has taken place here in Moscow the earth would be seriously disturbed.

Indeed the city and the habits of its inhabitants has changed so radically that Lenin’s large red ziggarat, poking out onto the cobbles of Red Square in a manner which might lead Prince Charles to call it ‘a carbuncle’, has become an embarrassment to some, yet one that they keep deferring what to do with.

Is a visit to Ebay in the offing?