Anarchists Protest Atop Lenin Mausoleum
MOSCOW, Dec 10, 1999 --
Reuters
Anarchist protesters climbed onto the Lenin mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square on Thursday, a rare demonstration at the holy of holies of the former Soviet Union.
A Moscow police spokesman said five young protesters climbed onto the squat, red marble building which has housed the mummified corpse of the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, since 1924.
In an apparently pointless prank they climbed to the top of the building to stand where Soviet leaders used to watch tanks, soldiers and missiles parade across Red Square in annual commemoration of the Bolshevik Revolution.
The protesters draped a white banner with the words "Against Everyone" scrawled on it over the large "LENIN" inscription which fronts the mausoleum before policemen hustled them away.
For an offence that once might have landed them in jail for several years, Itar-Tass news agency quoted an official as saying the youngsters would be charged with public mischief and fined just 30 rubles, or around one U.S. dollar.
Russia's NTV television said the youngsters were radical anarchists and showed pictures of them running across Red Square and making it to the top of the mausoleum unhindered.
They stood there for several minutes before a police officer managed to reach them and tear the banner out of their hands. Other police officers seemed to react slowly to an incident which in the Soviet era would have been severely punished.
Although the mausoleum is now as much a tourist attraction as a political shrine, its place on Red Square is strongly defended by Communists, who revere Lenin as the founder of the Soviet state.
President Boris Yeltsin and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church say it should be removed and Lenin buried.
Lenin's embalmed corpse lies in a glass coffin in a chilly, black marble basement hall through which hundreds of visitors still tramp every day.
They can file past and stare at the yellowish figure with a thin reddish beard lying in a dark suit but are not allowed to stand for too long or take photographs.
The mausoleum stands in the lee of the walls of the Kremlin and has become as much a part of the Red Square scenery as the multi-colored onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral or the ornate Tsarist-era facade of the GUM department store.
http://www.russiatoday.com:80/news.php3?id=117495
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