Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly collection wherein NPR’s worldwide crew shares moments from their lives and work all over the world.
The reality is, it has been years since I visited the mausoleum. However I am going to always remember the primary time. 30 years in the past. As an alternate pupil. How my eyes struggled to regulate within the darkness. After which … there he was.
Vladimir Lenin. The Russian revolutionary and founding father of the Soviet Union. And since his dying in 1924, a marvel of chemistry, preserved in his crypt — underneath glass, asleep in his swimsuit — barring the occasional elimination for a re-embalming tub.
There have been guidelines. No speaking. No photos. And no holding up the road. As I attempted to take the silent scene in, a gruff guard signaled it was already time to maneuver on.
In Soviet days, hundreds lined up from all around the USSR to pay homage. That reverence gave method to indifference because the Soviet Union unraveled within the early Nineties. There have been much more attention-grabbing — properly, actually extra full of life — issues to see within the new Russia. There nonetheless are.
However information that the mausoleum is quickly closing for repairs — till 2027 — has sparked a renewed surge of curiosity. The strains are again — much less nostalgia for the Soviet Union, I think, than a final peek at a person frozen in time. As a result of who is aware of? There’s been speak of burying Lenin for years.
And so right here I’m once more. Now middle-aged. The solar beats down. The guard indicators that it is our flip. A small group of us — troopers, households, overseas vacationers, me — make the lengthy stroll throughout Purple Sq. towards the darkish chamber. Lenin’s Tomb. A spot the place the thought nonetheless exists that all the things, and nothing, adjustments in our lives. At the very least for now.
See extra images from all over the world:
- Greetings from New Delhi, India, the place performing monkeys spark delight — and ambivalence
- Greetings from Damascus, Syria, the place a crowded bar welcomed post-Assad revelers
- Greetings from Alishan, Taiwan, whose pink cypress forests supply timeless magnificence
- Greetings from Odesa, Ukraine, the place a Black Sea seaside presents respite from conflict
- Greetings from Shenyang, China, the place employees type AI information in ‘Severance’-like methods
- Greetings from Palmyra, Syria, with its once-grand resort named for a warrior queen
- Greetings from Mexico Metropolis, the place these canine trip a bus to and from college
- Greetings from the Galápagos Islands, the place the blue-footed booby exhibits its colours
- Greetings from Afrin, Syria, the place Kurds danced their hearts out to have a good time spring
- Greetings from Dharamshala, India, the place these Tibetan youngsters had been having the perfect time
