Chess Forum / General Topics / October 2005

MosNews have just reported:-

FIDE Boss Offers to Buy Lenin's Body for $1 Million
Created: 28.10.2005 14:58 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:58 MSK

Head of the FIDE World Chess Federation, and the president of the Russian
internal republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has said he is ready to
allocate $1 million for the shipping of the Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin's
body to the Kalmyk capital of Elista.

"I have officially told Russian communist leader Gennady Zyuganov that if
the question of burying Lenin's body is raised, we are ready to allocate $1
million to bring both the mausoleum and body to Elista," Iliumzhinov was
quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

In recent weeks, several officials spoke of the possibility of removing
Lenin's body from his mausoleum in the center of Moscow.

Georgy Poltavchenko, a regional envoy of President Vladimir Putin, said that
Lenin's body should be buried in a cemetery along with the remains of other
Bolshevik dignitaries. Deputy parliamentary speaker Lyubov Sliska said
Monday that Lenin's body could be laid to rest as early as January. The
governor of St. Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, has also called for
Vladimir Lenin's body to be removed from its Red Square mausoleum and
buried.

Zyuganov warned the Kremlin against agreeing to those calls, denouncing the
intention as ''irresponsible and provocative." Former Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev said the nation isn't ready yet for such a move.

President Vladimir Putin said earlier he was against burying Lenin's body. "Many
people connect their own lives with the name of Lenin," Putin said at the
time. "Burying Lenin would mean ... that they had lived in vain."

According to the poll held by the Levada Analytical Center, 40 percent of
the 1,600 respondents believe the leader of the world proletariat should be
left in the mausoleum on Red Square. 36 percent suggest that he be buried at
the Volkovo Cemetery in St. Petersburg. 15 percent want him to be buried
next to the Kremlin wall, along with many other famous communists. 9 percent
have no particular view on the issue.