'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
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Finally, Russians are considering burying Vladimir Lenin. Since his death in 1924, the Bolshevik leader's embalmed body has been lying in a glass coffin in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square. For many, he is the shining symbol of Soviet communism - a martyr to the utopian cause of socialist revolution.
The embalmed body of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin has lain in a glass coffin in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square since his death in 1924. But recent comments by Russia's new culture minister have brought closer the possibility that the father of the Bolshevik Revolution could finally be laid to rest, signaling an end to the cult of Lenin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin named a new Cabinet on Monday that retained some of the outgoing government's key figures but added a few fresh faces, cementing his grip on power as he begins his third presidential term.
"I have always believed that a body should be entrusted to the earth," Mr. Medinsky said. "And Lenin's relatives begged the authorities not to place him in the mausoleum."
"I have always believed that a body should be entrusted to the earth," said Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky late last month. "And Lenin's relatives begged the authorities not to place him in the mausoleum."
