SOME THREE DECADES AGO, Yevgeny Yevtushenko published a poem titled ” Stalin’s Heirs.” It was a plea to the leadership of the Soviet Union to prevent the return of Stalinism. At the time, the embalmed corpse of Stalin — once displayed in the Red Square Mausoleum alongside Lenin’s — had been transferred to the Kremlin wall. Despite this deeply important act, there was growing alarm in the country that Stalin’s spirit was alive and resurgent. Yevtushenko’s poem expressed it well:

 

And I, appealing to our government, petition them to double, and treble,

the sentries guarding this slab, and stop Stalin from ever rising again,

and with Stalin, the past . . .

 

And his conclusion:

 

While Stalin’s heirs still walk this earth,

Stalin, I fancy, still lurks in the mausoleum.

So it is now time to ask, Why is Lenin still there, lying in state in his air-conditioned shrine? When Khrushchev in 1961 ordered Stalin out of Lenin’s tomb, his implication was that Lenin was still and always sacred. This was understandable: Lenin was communism’s founder, and Khrushchev and his government were Communist. Mao Zedong’s mummy reposes in Tiananmen Square, and why not? China’s rulers are Communist. But the president of the new Russia, Boris Yeltsin, is not a Communist. In fact, he was almost overthrown by a Communist conspiracy three years ago. Yet Lenin continues to lie in his glass sarcophagus.