Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin

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Lenin's funeral

Lenin's funeral (1925), by Isaak Brodsky (detail).
Date	27 January 1924; 100 years ago (1924-01-27)
Location	Red Square, Moscow, Soviet Union
Participants	RCP(b) leaders, relatives and followers.

On 21 January 1924, at 18:50 EET, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the October Revolution and the first leader and co-founder of the Soviet Union, died in Gorki aged 53 after falling into a coma.^[1] The official cause of death was recorded as an incurable disease of the blood vessels.^[2] Lenin was given a state funeral and then buried in a specially erected mausoleum on 27 January. A commission of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) was in charge of organising the funeral.

Funeral service

On 23 January, the coffin with Lenin's body was transported by train from Gorki to

Alexei Rykov was also absent from the funeral as he had gone to Italy with his wife and had experienced influenza.^[10] Afterwards the body was placed into the vault of a temporary wooden mausoleum (soon to be replaced with present-day Lenin's Mausoleum), by the Kremlin Wall.^[11] Despite the freezing temperatures, tens of thousands attended.^[12]

Against the protestations of Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, Lenin's body was embalmed to preserve it for long-term public display in the Red Square mausoleum.^[13] The commander of the Moscow Garrison issued an order to place the guard of honour at the mausoleum, whereby it was colloquially referred to as the "Number One Sentry".^[14] During the embalming process, Lenin's brain had been removed; in 1925, an institute was established to dissect it, revealing that Lenin had had severe sclerosis.^[15]

According to Stalin's secretary,

After the events of the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the guard of honour was disbanded. In 2018, Russian MP Vladimir Petrov suggested that Lenin's body be buried in 2024, the 100th anniversary of his death, because it was costing the state too much money to house the body in the mausoleum and proposed it be replaced with a wax or rubber model.^[20]

Gallery

• 
  Transport of Lenin's body to the Gorki railway station.
• 
  Train that carried Lenin's body from Gorki to Moscow (with Locomotive U-127).
• 
  Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Mikhail Tomsky carrying Lenin's coffin.
• 
  Mikhail Tomsky, Mikhail Kalinin, Nadezhda Krupskaya and Jānis Rudzutaks at Lenin's funeral.
• 
  The information poster about Lenin's death, dated 22 January 1924.

See also

• Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin
• Lenin's Mausoleum
• Lenin's Testament

References