Moscow. (Anatoly Korolev, RIA Novosti commentator) Bernard Weber's New 7 Wonders (N7W) Foundation has called for the list of the Seven Wonders of the World to be updated, as only one, the Giza pyramids, has survived to the present day.
His idea has met with enthusiasm around the globe, and there are more than a hundred tourist attractions on the list of contenders. The Taj Mahal mausoleum in Agra, India, and Machu Picchu, the fortress city of the Incas in Peru, top the list, which also includes two gems of Moscow-Red Square and its Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. Another Red Square edifice, the Lenin Mausoleum, was left off the list of wonders-a pity, to my mind. It is unique in Soviet history, and it is high time to intercede on behalf of the mausoleum now that calls to pull it down are not so insistent as before.
Red Square was a shopping area before the 1917 October Revolution. It hosted huge Palm Sunday bazaars and Easter festivals. A boulevard with stores and market stalls stretched along the Kremlin wall, and tramway tracks crossed the square in 1910.
After the street fighting of October 1917, the victorious Bolsheviks buried 238 victims in Red Square, turning it into a revolutionary necropolis. Public rallies and demonstrations were held near the common grave as mass pledges of allegiance to the new social system.
When the Bolshevik government transferred the Russian capital to Moscow, the square became Soviet Russia's principal cemetery. Prominent Bolshevik Yakov Sverdlov was the first communist leader to be buried there in 1919. The grave of American journalist John Reed appeared next to his in 1920. When Lenin died in 1924, there was not even the slightest doubt of where to bury him. The death of the global proletarian leader demanded a mourning with unprecedented pomp. Architect Alexei Shchusev designed a wooden mausoleum, which was quickly built and completed on January 27. Lenin lay in state in the new structure, while the frost preserved his body for many days.
At first, it did not occur to the Bolshevik Party Central Committee to have the body embalmed. Yet mourners were coming to see it from every part of Russia, and worker activists showered the government with telegrams demanding that they show the dead Lenin to the whole world. That was when the idea appeared to mummify his body and never bury it-much to the shocked indignation of his widow and sisters. The Bolshevik rulers turned a deaf ear to their entreaties: the allure of the propaganda impact the eternalized remains would have was stronger than tact and common sense.
Soviet physicians did an excellent job. A Red pharaoh appeared in Moscow several thousand years after the Egyptians had mummified their pharaohs.
No displays of reverence for the body were too great for the Bolshevik rulers. They ordered Shchusev to build another mausoleum, this time of marble and granite. It was to have a rostrum from which the government would inspect military and athletic parades, regularly held in Red Square.
The present-day stone mausoleum rose on the site of the original wooden structure in 1930. A majestic edifice shaped like a Babylonian ziggurat was faced with granite and Labrador spar. A wide stairway inside it led to the Memorial Chamber, where Lenin lay in an open coffin. The government rostrum crowned the mausoleum, with side rostrums for guests of honor.
That was how the strange symbiosis of a mummy and living leaders emerged. Ceremonial processions marched past the towering structure to declare loyalty to the dead leader and his doctrine-a graveside triumph bringing death and immortality together, making the necropolis the most colorful and cheerful ritual spot in the Soviet Union.
A top-secret research institute dedicated all of its labor to conserving the mummy. A bizarre newspaper account appeared soon after World War II, reporting "Lenin's body currently in a better state of preservation than on his funeral day."
Seventy years of Soviet rule brought the mausoleum more notoriety than reverence. That era is now over, and Russia has returned to the community of civilized countries. The appropriate thing to do seemed to be to pull the ziggurat down and bury Lenin next to his mother's grave in the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg. In addition, another, closely related idea was put forth-to remove the burial place of Communist Party and government leaders, cosmonauts, researchers, generals and other Soviet celebrities from Moscow's heart.
If you ask me, it's not worth the trouble. It is too late to take such radical measures now. Red Square, complete with its necropolis and the Red pharaoh's mausoleum, is now nothing more than a tourist attraction, epitomizing the Soviet way of life. The mausoleum is an architectural masterpiece. Comparatively small, it appears majestic and blends into the ensemble of buildings around Red Square.
The Bulgarians were too quick to bury the remains of Georgi Dimitrov and pull down his mausoleum, robbing the center of Sofia, their capital, of its dominant architectural element. The Chinese exhibited far greater wisdom when the last abode of Emperor Qin Shi Huang was excavated with its terracotta warriors. Now it is China's largest on-site museum, drawing swarms of sightseers from every part of the world. Surrounded by hotels and restaurants, the place brings in fabulous profits.
As I see it, the Lenin Mausoleum-mummy and all-and the satellite Kremlin wall necropolis fully deserve to appear on the N7W list.
