I’m beginning to worry about my friend Vlad Putin, the great leader so many putative British conservatives (otherwise known as ‘useful idiots’) wish we had.
That may still come about, though probably and regrettably not in my lifetime. However, if Vlad ever does find himself at 10 Downing Street, or perhaps Buckingham Palace, I hope his mental health doesn’t deteriorate beyond its present rapidly sinking level.
What gives me cause for concern is Vlad’s latest contribution to the debate about the future of the Lenin mummy. Actually, perhaps ‘debate’ is a wrong word: Vlad is such a strong leader that whatever he says goes (within Russia only, at this point).
So let’s call it discussion instead, and there are some people still extant in Russia who have reservations about Lenin’s role in history. They ungratefully mention the 15 million or thereabouts killed on Lenin’s watch.
Admittedly that only puts Lenin in the bronze medal position, behind Mao and Stalin, who managed to dispatch, respectively, 60 and 45 million. But Lenin still deserves an honorary first place.
First, he only had about five years to run up his score, as opposed to Stalin’s 30 and Mao’s 20. Second, and most important, he inspired the other two, showing them the way. It’s not for nothing that most of the thousands of Lenin statues adorning Russia show him with an extended right arm pointing to the future: way to go, comrades.
Yet some fossils in Russia are less than impressed with Lenin’s achievements. They point out that the great leader, his mind inflamed by syphilis, was consumed with hatred and bloodlust. Lenin, they claim, not just broadened the limits of the allowable but eliminated them.
The syphilitic maniac, they say, beggared the country with his wholesale looting of national wealth. In the process, he created the worst tyranny the world had ever known and even set the scene for the second worst one, by financing, arming and training the extremist and militarist elements in Germany (“the icebreaker of the revolution”, in Lenin’s phrase).
That’s why, insist those Russophobes (the term designating anyone whose position on anything differs from Putin’s), his mummy should be taken out of the Red Square mausoleum and reburied.
That ziggurat-like structure, incidentally, didn’t get off to a promising start when it was built in 1924. At first, while construction was going on, the mummy stayed in a temporary mausoleum. Alas, the builders carelessly punctured the sewer underneath, flooding the sacred remains and giving Patriarch Tikhon, then under house arrest, an opening for a witticism: “The incense fits the relics.”
His Holiness was understandably upset about some of the things the newly canonised saint had done. Lenin was even more atheistic than Richard Dawkins, or at least more prepared to act on his convictions. About 40,000 priests were murdered while he was in power, and God only knows how many lay parishioners.
In addition, Lenin ordered the plunder of church valuables when he felt the time was right, which is to say when the peasants were, in his phrase, “swelling from starvation… and reduced to cannibalism” and therefore too weak to resist.
But it was not all about money: Lenin never ignored the human factor. In his secret order of 19 March, 1922, he wrote that “…removal of valuables… must be carried out with merciless resolve and in the shortest possible time. The more representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and clergy we shall manage to shoot in the process, the better. It is now that we must teach that scum a lesson so that they will not even dare think of any kind of resistance for several decades.”
The lesson was taught, but some descendants of the original pupils still believe that the mummified teacher doesn’t belong in Red Square. And even those who are more ambivalent about Lenin still find the open sarcophagus a tad distasteful.
But Vlad has stopped them in their tracks, explaining, so far good-naturedly, that the plans to re-inter the mummy are barbaric. “While I’m sitting here, there will be no barbarism in Red Square,” said the current Strong Leader.
And he had something to say to the aspiring barbarians, those who have aesthetic and religious objections to what they call an obscene display (those who have moral objections aren’t worthy of a reply, not with words at any rate).
It’s this response that made me fear for Vlad’s psychiatric well-being. Citing the ancient Christian practice of cave burials, Vlad said that the tomb satisfied Russian Orthodox requirements for burial.
Personally, I wouldn’t invoke Christian rituals when talking about Lenin – for reasons that ought to be evident from some of his deeds I’ve mentioned. Christian burial is traditionally reserved for Christians only, isn’t it?
But the conservative in me rejoices: it’s time Russia reverted to her ancient burial rites. Some of them were described by the tenth century Arab envoy Ibn Fadlan in his book Risala.
In broad strokes, when a chieftain died, his numerous wives and concubines were asked to come up with a volunteer to be cremated with him. One would inevitably step forward, after which the lady, before she was incinerated, would be given wine and drugs. She would then, in her semi-conscious state, dance and have sex with all the male relations of the deceased.
It would please me no end to see this ancient custom revived, albeit with mummification replacing cremation to stay in tune with Christian practices. For example, when Vlad goes – and so many ‘conservatives’ pray it never happens – I for one would like to see a reassuringly conservative rite.
Ex-gymnast Alina Kabayeva, widely reputed to be Vlad’s secret wife, should get drunk and high, and then have sex with all of the hundred Russians whom Putin appointed billionaires. She could take her time but, being a fit young lady, she could probably manage the feat in one go. She should then be killed, mummified and placed into the Red Square mausoleum between two Vlads, Lenin and her beloved.
This would tally not only with Vlad’s take on Christianity, but also with the old Russian superstition that finding oneself between two namesakes is a good omen.
The idea may be a bit farfetched, but one should rejoice at the zeal with which Vlad protects the best in Russia’s heritage. He should also be complimented on the forthrightness with which he reminds the world of his political lineage.
” set the scene for the second worst one, by financing, arming and training the extremist and militarist elements in Germany (‘the icebreaker of the revolution’, in Lenin’s phrase).”
German communist revolutionaries defeated by the Freikorps. Those Germans of the Freikorps many of who became prominent Nazi officials. Never thought of that one.
I was referring mainly to the 1922 Rapallo Treaty of cooperation between Soviet Russia and Germany, mainly the army (and you’ll remember that the German General Staff was instrumental in transporting Lenin to Russia in 1917, and financing him thereafter). After Versailles, Germany was banned from having an air force, tanks and chemical weapons, and the Soviets kindly providing their own training facilities in Lipetsk, Ryasan and elsewhere. It was there that the great German tank commanders, such as Guderian and Manstein, learned their craft. Stalin’s 1939 pact with Hitler, which started the Second World War, was a culmination of this process.
‘A huge mouth and no anus – this could be our earliest known ancestor?’ (The Guardian). No it’s only Vlad bringing up the same old stuff. No through-put you see. The reverse anatomical arrangement is quite common among parliamentarians (commonly referred to as ‘bottom feeders’). Helping people who later bite you on the bum is not restricted to Russians, as the lads from the Taliban would attest.