Vladimir Lenin’s 145-Year-Old Corpse Continues To Improve With Age, But How?

Earlier this week, Vladimir Lenin turned 145-years-old, and despite the fact that he died in 1924, Lenin continues to look better with age. How? Because of the revolutionary embalming methods that have improved his corpse over the decades.

Lenin would have turned 145 on Wednesday, and ever since his death, Russian scientists have used experimental preservation techniques to maintain Lenin’s appearance. In fact, they’ve insisted that Lenin’s body actually continues to improve with age.

Lenin’s body has now been on show for 90 years, and the Moscow’s Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies’s doctors and scientists are the team that are in control of preserving it and making sure that it doesn’t disintegrate beyond repair.

But how does this ensemble keep Lenin’s body in order? According to the Scientific American, they usually have to change the former Bolshevik leader’s skin and tissue with plastics and other artificial materials. This is a different style to maintaining a corpse than usual, as the likes of mummification would look to maintain the individual’s original cells. Because of this, an expert has revealed that “the body is less and less of what it used to be.”

When it’s on public display, Lenin’s corpse is also encased by a thin rubber suit that is caked in embalming fluid, while it’s also re-embalmed every two years. This process takes about six weeks to complete. Lenin’s corpse is currently away from public eyes, as the embalming team are working on his body in preparation for his 145th birthday next April.

Vladimir Lenin, who, when he died, was labelled by Communists as “the greatest genius of mankind” and “the leader and teacher of the peoples of the whole world,” led the Russian revolution and renamed the country the Soviet Union. When Lenin died, it was reported that his death was the result of several strokes. However, it has since been alleged that he died as a result of syphilis.

Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov originally proposed that they would resurrect their leader when the necessary equipment became available. Instead, Lenin was embalmed and then exhibited in Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow, where he has been visited by millions of people over the last 9 decades. However, a poll in 2012 revealed that 48 percent of Russian citizens believe that Lenin should now be buried.

[Image via Time News Feed]