Tempus
|
Tidskriften
|
tidigare veckor: |
The poll, organised by Vladimir Putin's
ruling United Russia party, comes after a senior figure in the
party sparked a lively debate on the issue, saying the time had
come to respect Lenin's last wishes and bury him in St Petersburg
alongside his mother.
"Lenin was an extremely controversial political figure and
his presence as the main figure in a necropolis in the heart of
our country is absurd," Anatoly Medinsky, an MP and member
of the party's governing committee, said.
Only 10 per cent of Lenin's corpse remained, he said, alleging
that the rest had been "ripped out and replaced a long time
ago". The body's presence in a purpose-built mausoleum on
Red Square had turned the country's central square into a cemetery
and was "blasphemous", Mr Medinsky added.
Lenin's waxy corpse remains a popular tourist attraction and is
regularly treated with a special cocktail of chemicals to stop
it from degrading.
But with a parliamentary election looming later this year and
a presidential poll next year, analysts believe that the ruling
United Russia party may be considering closing the Red Square
mausoleum in order to show the world it is serious about modernising
the country.
The poll, organised online at a specially created site mischievously
named Goodbye Lenin suggested that most Russians agreed. As of
Sunday afternoon, almost 200,000 votes had been cast with more
than two-thirds saying they favoured Lenin being buried.
It was possible to vote more than once however and the Russian
Communist party, which is staunchly opposed to Lenin's removal,
claimed the results were being rigged in order to pave the way
for a bill ordering his burial.
"This is about distracting people's attention from social
problems and genuine issues concerning the Russian Federation,"
Valery Rashkin, a Communist MP, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
Lenin, who died in 1924, is still revered by the Russian Communist
party as an ideological genius who laid the foundations for the
world's largest superpower.