NO GOD BUT LENIN

NO GOD BUT LENIN
By Dick Meister

We'd been waiting several hours, in a line that stretched out for
eight, nine, maybe ten blocks. Finally the mausoleum was opened. Finally
the line began moving, slowly and quietly, under the careful scrutiny of
soldiers and police. We got within six blocks before the line was cut off.
The tomb would be open just three hours, not nearly enough time for all to
pass through.

Thousands of people, many of them out-of-towners in Moscow for a rare
visit, were cut off. A woman sobbed bitterly to a policeman. But he, who
doubtlessly had heard thousands of similar hard-luck stories, remained firm.
The woman could not get into the line.

Others openly offered the policeman money, but he disdainfully waved it
aside. One man, very much agitated, yanked up his shirt to expose what he
loudly insisted to be the scars of combat wounds from World War II. For him,
the policeman relented.

Waving our U.S. passport high, we pushed through the dense, swarming crowd.
As foreign visitors, we had priority. We were escorted to the head of the
line, just outside the red granite building in Red Square.

Wreaths and bouquets were piled on either side of the entrance. Behind
them stood two army cadets, ramrod stiff. Only their eyes moved, fast and
constantly, as we passed by. It was utterly silent save for the unbroken
sound of shuffling feet as we slowly descended a long winding flight of
steps inside. There were dozens of us, reflected in the highly polished
walls of ebony marble flecked with gold and blue and red. Watchful cadets
lined the way, young men in olive drab hovering within inches of us, closely
monitoring our every move. One of us spoke. A cadet glared at him, then
turned swiftly to another visitor. He pointed accusingly to the man's beret.
Off it came.

Suddenly, a chill hit us. We shuddered. And we knew we were there before
we actually entered the chamber. We heard an eerie thump, thump, thump, the
barely audible whirring of the machinery that put the chill in the air, the
equipment that kept the temperature and humidity just right for him.

There was but one light in the dark crypt. It was focused on the face of
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, lying under glass. His head rested on a red velvet
pillow, his eyes were closed. His receding reddish hair and goatee were just
as in the portraits. He was dressed in a plain black vested suit, plain
black tie and white shirt. His hands were folded before him, resting on a
sheet of black cloth that covered him from the chest down.

He seemed a surprisingly small man. But he didn't look like a man. He
looked like a waxen dummy. Soldiers with fixed bayonets stood rigid at each
corner of the glass sarcophagus in which he lay. It rested on a platform
that enabled us to view him as we circled the room slowly -- very slowly,
but never pausing.

We tried to concentrate on the man, if man he was. But what we mainly
heeded was what we heard. Thump, thump, thump....

I can hear it even now, 40 years later, the sound that has always meant
the Soviet Union to me. Thump, thump, thump. That it could ever be silenced
was unthinkable, particularly at that time of celebration in Moscow. It was
1967, the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin. After
a half-century, the USSR was here to stay forever, a world colossus whose
people pledged fervent and undying allegiance to V.I. Lenin.

He was everywhere, in stores, museums, offices, apartments -- a deity.
Statues, busts, photographs, paintings, other memorabilia. Sheet music of
the many songs written about him, phonograph records. Stacks of his books in
kiosks and bookstores, in Russian and dozens of other languages: Lenin on
youth, Lenin on social democracy, Lenin on revisionism, Lenin on the
importance of physical exercise, Lenin on everything and anything. There was
no God but Lenin, and Lenin was his own prophet.

We saw no signs -- none -- that change might ever come. Yet finally, of
course, it did come. The state founded by Lenin was dismantled and most of
the memorials to him disappeared.

It's been more than a decade since then. But even though former Russian
President Boris Yeltsin and current President Vladimir Putin
and other leaders have moved to close the mausoleum and bury V.I. Lenin at
last, they've backed away under the pressure of popular opinion.

Still the visitors come, many bearing wreaths and flowers. The Soviet
Union has long been dead, but the thump, thump, thump has not been silenced.

Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister

Story ID:	1456
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Foreign
Location:	Moscow USSR
Year:	1967
Person:	V.I. Lenin