Travel Notes

Good Bye, Again?

The question of moving Lenin’s body from its mausoleum on Red Square arose again this year, after lying dormant for several years. This time, however, it was the ruling United Russia party that pushed the idea, going so far as to construct the website goodbyelenin.ru in order to poll whether Russians think it’s time to lay Vladimir Ilyich to rest in a cemetery.

The debate was set in motion by United Russia deputy Vladimir Medinsky, who said, in an interview (and reproduced on the polling site): “I believe that every year we should raise the question of removal of Lenin’s remains from the mausoleum. It is obvious that Lenin himself did not plan to build himself any kind of mausoleum,* and his living relatives [at the time] – his sister and brother, were categorically against it. They wanted to bury him in St. Petersburg, along with his mother. But the Communists simply spat on this wish, on the leader himself, and on his relatives.”

At press time, according to the site, out of over 300,000 respondents, 68 percent feel that Lenin should be buried.

As expected, Russia’s communists fumed that Lenin deserves more, saying that the government is simply trying to distract Russians by raising the issue of Lenin’s removal, and accused United Russia of artificially upping the vote count on the website. A Communist deputy from St. Petersburg, Yury Karpenko, who timidly proposed that the body be interred at the city’s Volkovskoye cemetery, alongside Lenin’s mother, was quickly ostracized by other party members.

Icon Collection Finds a Home

A private icon museum has opened its doors in Moscow, exhibiting some 4,000 pieces of ancient Russian art, including 600 icons. Comprised of the private collection of businessman Mikhail Abramov, the works have been exhibited in incomplete form both in Moscow and elsewhere, but now the collection has its own address in the capital’s central Taganka neighborhood.

The collection covers four floors in two interconnected buildings, and includes icons from various centuries. It includes items that hail from Ethiopia, and from Orthodox Churches in Russia and abroad. The most valuable icon, a work by Simon Ushakov, was found neglected and covered in soot in a small Russian village.

3 Goncharnaya ulitsa.

Open daily except Wednesdays 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. russikona.ru

Historic Theater Reopens

After three years of restoration work, an historic wooden theater on St. Petersburg’s Kamenny Ostrov has been reopened, Itar-TASS reported. The classical building was constructed in 1827 and last restored about 50 years ago. It will be used by the Tovstonogov Theater, which received the dilapidated building in 2005.