Atlas Obscura provides a Guide to Communist Mummies, and there's plenty more online. Visit
Lenin's Mausoleum, where he has been
kept since 1924, defying his wishes to be buried next to his mother in St. Petersburg. He wasn't alone forever, as
Stalin's body was kept in the mausoleum after his death in 1953, until
his body was quietly removed in October, 1961. Just under eight years later,
Hồ Chí Minh died, and against his wishes to be cremated, a
very large state funeral was held and
Uncle Ho's embalmed remains were placed in a mausoleum. Chairman Mao Zedong made
A Proposal that all Central Leaders be Cremated after Death in 1956, but his wishes were overlooked when
he died in 1976, and he joined the growing ranks of the preserved communist leaders in
his own crystal casket, housed in a grand mausoleum.
If you're looking for more on the preservation of famous bodies,
here's an interview with the doctor who leads the team who preserves Lenin's body and have helped with Hồ Chí Minh's body. If you're looking for more,
here are pictures of Lenin's annual bath in a soup of formaldehyde, methanol and ethanol.
As of
January 2011, the Kremlin decided to bury Lenin, claiming it is "just a question of when." In contrast,
Hồ Chí Minh's body was inspected in 2009 by a joint team of Vietnamese and Russian embalmers. "The embalmers will evaluate the situation and status of the body of President Hồ Chí Minh and how to maintain the corpse in the years to come," said prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung, in a statement at that time. In that linked article, various visitors stated that they were skeptical that the body on display was the same Uncle Ho from years prior. Mao's remains have been the subject of similar suspicions, with
rumors of Mao's leaking corpse, or that he was replaced by a waxy body double following an extended period of renovation on his mausoleum in 1998.
Here's a longer list of once-pickled dictators, including a few more names and details than Atlas Obscura's article.
posted by JHarris at 11:23 AM on November 21, 2011 [1 favorite]