Why do many Communist nations embalm their deceased leaders and put them on display? I have heard it suggested that it’s because they did it with Lenin first and discovered his body would be presentable for longer than expected, and then some of the other later Communist countries thought that if the USSR did it, they ought to as well. But that seems a bit thin to me.
The precedent obviously showed them it was possible and practical. But the desire from two areas: legitimacy and the cult of personality. Basically, every successful Communist leader required those to stay in power (and stay alive to weild it). You had to build an aura of omnipotence around yourself - tell everyone how great you were, and that your rule was inherently right. As a consequence, all Communist leaders afterward would try to “inhereit” your mantle once you’d finally shuffled off. So having Lenin on display gave legitimacy to any Communist who claimed to be his “true heir” or whatever.
Who else does thios, besides Lenin in Russia? I’'ve never heard of other cases.
As I’ve remarked before, keeping Lenin in a glass case as if he’s asleep seems to imply that someday a Hero of Communism is going to come along and kiss him with Love’s True Kiss, and he’ll wake up. They’ll then go off to the great Worker’s Paradise in the sky.
Ho Chi Minh and Mao are the two others I can think of.
Along with Kim Il Sung. Stalin was also preserved for a few years alongside Lenin, before he fell out of favor.
I visited Mao in 1985 and still have the tourist brochure somewhere. If I can dig it up I’ll scan it and post some pictures.
Kim Jong-Il is getting the same treatment. I think a Bulgarian leader was also put on display, but given a normal burial after Communism fell. I’ve heard the original plan re Lenin was to simply freeze him in hopes of a future revival, but everyone quickly realized how ridiculous that was. Lenin’s wife was opposed to plans to embalm him and wanted him cremated.
I’ve seen Ho Chi Minh. They have him under the most flattering yellow-y orange-y lights, but he could have been a wax dummy for all I could tell. The mausoleum is a national shrine; you need to be respectfully dressed and well-behaved, and have to wait on a long, long line to get in.
It’s because Communism is essentially the State religion, and the head of the party/dictator is treated as a deity on Earth, not just to be admired but worshiped as a god who literally makes the sun rise & set.
And even if not everyone actually believes that (and sadly, a lot of them do), they damn sure better ***pretend ***they do!
There has been speculation that Lenin’s corpse went bad in the 1930’s (bad embalming job). It was replaced with a wax dummy (better looking and less smelly).
A quick search failed to turn up the brochure but this looks to be the same as I remember: Chairman Mao Memorial Hall Brochure | The brochure handed ou… | Flickr
I think there are also probably political reasons to make sure everyone knows that the great leader is really dead. In a state where information is often limited, warped, or inverted by the government, rumors that seem really far-fetched on the outside can gain real traction. Russia, in particular, has a history of pretendersto the throne.
I saw Mao in 2010 and he was looking a little waxy, but still there. Even nowadays, the line-up was huge to see him.
Why don’t they switch to plastination now? The bodies in the Body Worlds exhibition keep remarkably well without refrigeration, maintaining colour, shape and texture.
The Russian Orthodox Church has at least one of their revered Metropolitans preserved in the town of Zagorsk. I visited in the '80s. Not sure if he was “sainted” by the church or not. And I also don’t remember if he died before or after Lenin.
He didn’t want to be preserved like that either IIRC.
There’s a long history in Christianity (or at least in Catholicism) of displaying Saints’ corpses or parts thereof.
There’s a monastery in Sicily where the some town locals were mummified and put on display when they died, dressed in their Sunday finery. I saw a short interview in the TV travelogue, where they talked to one old lady who used to play with one a little girl who’s on exhibit there, back when they were children.
No, this wasn’t a reliquary. It was a preserved body. Quite different than the veneration of relics in the Roman Church, at least as far as I know. And I’m sure it’s rare. In my experience, the Orthodox venerate the icon, not the actual body. And the Romans bury the body, don’t they? Most relics are ancient, and arise because of modern, or relatively recent (in historical terms) accidental disturbance of the burial ground. Except, I guess, for locks of hair taken in life or shortly after death, etc.
Do we have any liturgical experts around here to set us all straight? Lord, I hope so.
Eva Peron also comes to mind but apparently her body was preserved because her husband wished it so