Forever Lenin: The Secret Story of a Mummy (2010)

The adventures of Lenin's mummy throughout the 20th century reflects the history of the Soviet Union. This program charts the journey Lenin's embalmed body has made throughout Russia and explores the trend of mummification that has reappeared in recent times. In the 1920s several mausoleums appeared in Red Square. In 1941, before the German army reached Moscow, Lenin's mummy was hidden in the Ural Mountains. In the 1950s many communist politicians were embalmed. Stalin himself was embalmed and for a time shared the mausoleum with Lenin. In October 1961, in the Khrushchev years, the Communist Party ordered that Stalin's sarcophagus be removed from the mausoleum. With the fall of Communism, the mausoleum laboratory went bankrupt and was later resurrected when eternal life became fashionable among Russian Mafia gangsters and nouveaux riches.