Professor Ilya Zbarski mummified Lenin two months after his death to maintain the Soviet founder's body in perpetuity. Between 1924 and the fall of communism in 1991, hundreds of millions of visitors paid their respects to the embalmed bodies of Lenin and later, Stalin. This text reveals the story of Zbarski, his family and of those who worked in the mausoleum laboratory. Lenin's body was plunged into a secret solution based on glycerine and potassium acetate. This story, unthinkable except in a totalitarian regime, is also that of the burgeoning Soviet Union and those who, disregarding Stalin and his growing antisemitic paranoia, believed that working in the shadows of the mausoleum would protect them forever. Abandoned by the State since 1991, the laboratory can only survive through the patronage of the "nouveaux riches" and the Russian mafia dynasties. The text includes both archival and contemporary photographs.
This is a nifty little book written by one of the Russian scientists who kept Lenin's embalmed body fresh for public viewing for decades. It has a much more broad scope than the title suggests; the author provides a first-hand account of growing up in the USSR and his experiences swinging back and forth between poverty and affluence depending on the whims of the government. His description of how the Soviet government's attitude toward science affected his education and work are both amusing and maddening. It was a quick read at just over 200 pages and provided a perspective into Russian history I haven't read before.
Reading updates
-
Started reading
-
9 August, 2014:
Finished reading
-
9 August, 2014:
Reviewed