We stood in line yesterday for over an hour just outside of Red Square. We were there just long enough to see the changing of the guard at the eternal flame over what I think is a memorial to the unknown soldier. The guards were goose stepping and were as deliberate as any marine procession I’ve seen. Behind us was a McDonalds, actually. When we were thirsty while in line one of us would walk over to McDonalds to stand in a much shorter line to get a coke. I spent my time in line reading a book that I found at the Moscow Christian Library where we are based during this project, that is, when we were not being pestered by a street vendor peddling wares or someone asking for a bribe to move us to the front of the line.
We had been to Red Square the day before, and walked all over. On one side of the square is the State Museum, the most important museum in Russia. To the right of the museum from the center of the square is a long mall, with a face reminiscent of any other great European city, Amsterdam and Paris. The stores inside are overpriced, as could be expected. To the right of the mall is the impressive and other-worldly St. Basil’s cathedral, with it’s onion domes and rainbow of colors. To the immediate right of St. Basil’s is a gate to inside the Kremlin, where Mr. Putin often commutes via motorcade. Along the Kremlin wall are the graves of the heroes of Soviet Russia. The first man in space, Yuri Gargarin, is there. Joseph Stalin is there as well.
Bisecting the Kremlin wall in Red Square is the tomb of Vladimir Lenin. This was the attraction at the end of our line. The building looks bizarre on the outside, large blocks of black and maroon marble stacked on each other, obtrusive and jarring—different than the majesty of St. Basil’s or the spires of the State Museum.
We finally made it to the end of the line. We passed through metal detectors and checked our bags and found ourselves standing in front of the tomb. The doorway was wide between the cool marble slabs. As I came closer to the opening, something in me was hesitating and wanting to turn back from descending into the tomb. Perhaps for fear I denied the impulse of turning away. I passed under the doorway and entered a more sinister realm.
I suddenly sensed the gravity of my surroundings. This was the memorial like many other memorials I’ve been to, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, but with a seriousness much more somber. The Memorials in Washington, as an illustration, are lit by the sun and made from white marble in Classic styles and open. Lenin’s Mausoleum, on the contrary, is made from dark, cool stone, is underground and lit dimly, and oppressive. The silence I was entering into, like a fog, was reminiscent of the silence of the holocaust museum I visited a few years earlier.
The hallway was dark. We were instructed strictly simply to follow the person in front of you, and not to linger. We shuffled down the hallway, and down some marble stairs. Everything was dark. At the bottom of the stairway, there seemed to hang the olive-green and red uniform of a soldier. As I came closer, I noticed under the brim of the head there was a pale face and eyes staring back at me. At the bottom of the next two flights there were the same uniforms with eyes.
I knew that I was nearing the main chamber because the silenced seemed to come to a crescendo—since perhaps the people in front of me were gasping or holding their breath. I turned to the right and entered a room. Ahead of me and to the left was a glass-enclosed, open casket. And there was Lenin, with lights shining down on him, as he’s been for the past 80 years. He was wearing a dark black suit; the cloth around him matched the marble of the walls, black and dark maroon. His skin looked plastic. I was wondering if it was really a body in front of me. I kept my eyes on him, as if I was keeping him from moving the way a boy might watch his closet door at night.
After that chamber, the way out went quickly. Before I knew it I was in the open air, with the sunlight on me again, relieved. I have never been in a place like that before. For the past 80 years, people have come to visit that place, many visitors being devout Communists. That place was a pagan temple, and if I had realized before, perhaps I would have seriously contemplated whether or not I should go.
Brian was reflecting afterwards on the tomb and he said it’s interesting that such an outspoken atheist has been enshrined in his mortality for the past 80 years, and his body is now falling apart. There’s debate about how much longer they can keep the body on display. “There’s a sermon illustration in there somewhere.”
Russia has such a rich and conflicted history. On the one hand, there’s the desire for mysticism and God. On the other is stoicism and pessimism and atheism. On the one is the rejection of the West and materialism, in favor of the common welfare, and on the other is a wholesale embrace of Western vanity. Heroics and betrayal. Success and Failure. These things are visual here in Moscow, most definitely in Red Square.
Marx and Lenin hanging out near Red Square. 
