LENIN'S MAUSOLEUM TO OPEN ON APRIL 19 AFTER MAINTENANCE WORK

MOSCOW, April 18 (RIA Novosti) - Lenin's Mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square is to open on April 19 after two months of maintenance work. The proletariat's leader has remained in the suit he got put on in 2003, Yury Denisov-Nikolsky, Deputy Director of the Biomedical Technology Scientific Research Center of the Russian Scientific Research Institute of Herbs and Aromatic Plants, reported.

Experts of this institute have always been involved in the work of Mausoleum.

According to Denisov-Nikolsky, the maintenance work was carried out as scheduled.

The scientist believes that Lenin's body can remain in the mausoleum for another hundred years if properly attended to.

The body has already been returned to the mausoleum, and the pantheon "will open at a fixed date", Denisov-Nikolsky said.

The mausoleum has been closed since February 14 in order to do scheduled biochemical work to maintain Lenin's embalmed body. "The practice has existed since the mausoleum was established," Head of the Press and Public Relations Center of the Federal Guard Service (FSO) Sergei Devyatov was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

The mausoleum is regularly closed for maintenance operations, and the work usually lasts for a month and a half to two months, less often for several days. Maintenance work was last done last summer.

Previously, maintenance work was financed by the state. Now a science foundation assigns funds for this purpose.