The film is obviously ridiculous and absurd, peddling conspiracy theories and historical falsehoods about Lenin, communism, and ancient civilizations. The documentary's narrative is an attempt to cast anything outside of a narrow, pious “Russian cultural tradition” as dangerous and satanic.
Despite its fringe perspective, "The Mummy" has been widely discussed in Russian media, propelled into the national conversation by state-controlled outlets. The film aligns with current government propaganda, even quoting President Vladimir Putin's assertion that Lenin planted a "bomb under Russian statehood" and that Soviet-era borders are a direct cause of the current conflict in Ukraine.
This documentary represents another attempt to reframe the history and significance of the socialist revolution in Russia. However, for millions of Russians, Lenin remains a symbol of struggle for a brighter, more equitable future, free from oppression and exploitation. His mausoleum, a potent symbol of a different possible future, continues to be a thorn in the side of Russia's current capitalist regime. It stands as a reminder of the potential for human progress and emancipation over misery and brutality of capitalism. And because of this, the bourgeoisie will continue to see it as a threat. Promoting through mass media a film made by religious fanatics is a way of dealing with it.
Lenin In Disgrace & Lenin In Demand
During the counter-revolution process in USSR in 1980s-1990s, the reactionary elements that were widely emerging from within the Communist party of the Soviet Union and freshly forming bourgeoisie began falsifying and defaming the history of the Great October Socialist Revolution and the struggle of the working people of USSR for building and defending socialism. The narratives of those elements included a wide variety of lies about prominent revolutionary figures, especially Vladimir Lenin. He was and is today called a German spy, a member of the Masonic fraternity, a hater of Russian people and other ridiculous nonsense. This massive anticommunist propaganda never idled in Russia, but it was not sufficient to overcome a great respect towards Lenin among Russian people. For this reason, thousands of monuments of Vladimir Ilyich across Russia are still preserved and protected by law. When crowds of right-wing youngsters were destroying Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine, calling for cleansing of Russians at the same time, it made Lenin even more popular as an image in Russia. However, that is only an image, with no common, educated definition of what exactly Lenin means for all peoples. But that was enough to make serious attempts by the ruling class in Russia to officially demonize Lenin nonconsensually among the population of the country, hard to approach. Nevertheless, this impossible task of reaction – to defeat the Great revolutionary, physically long dead, but as a teacher of the Proletariat stronger than ever, was never abandoned. And today Russian government, with all the resources and institutions under its control, is building grounds for the de-legalization of Lenin in Russia.
One of the major cornerstones that could demonstrate a significant success in the process of washing away the popularity of Lenin would be a reburial of his body, which has rested in the Mausoleum on the Red Square for a century now. Talks about this step have not calmed down ever since the destruction of the Soviet Union. Due to a popular rejection of such a “solution”, the ruling class has never dared to make this move, though possibly, only until now.
Through mass media the bourgeoisie has been constantly forcing this topic to keep influencing and at the same time following the change of the public opinion. They had been manufacturing one wave of reconsideration of the subject after another. But until recently, most prominent figures in power have intentionally kept their distance from this discussion. We would like to draw a retrospective of this discussion for you, using quotes of public officials and politicians against the background of the respective periods of time, so you could see the change of narrative, ranks involved and approaches of the reactionaries to Lenin’s heritage.
Yeltsin
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| Yeltsin and Nemtsov |
“We need to bury him, as he willed, beside his mother in Saint Petersburg. And the patriarch was telling me, that he is buried not with Christian customs, is not given to earth. It’s not Christian, but Jewish custom. And there are less people visiting Mausoleum. When I withdrew the Post #1, there was no reaction, I was surprised.
And besides, we need to free Red Square from this memorialization. So that the people could just walk there
Maybe not move [him] right now. Maybe before the end of the year, or the end of the century. We need to run a survey and find out the opinion of the people.”
As we all know, neither until the end of 1997, nor until the end of 20th century, Lenin’s body was not moved from the Mausoleum. Right before the end of 1999, however, Yeltsin himself was permanently displaced from the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin – Yeltsin’s protege, who represented and still represents the growing Russian monopolies, took the presidency.
Nemtsov
Already in December of 2000 there was an attempt to test the willingness of the new head of the state to deal with the communist past: the parliamentary faction of the SPS political block (SPS translates from Russian as Union of Right Forces), presented a draft of an appeal to the president for vote in the State Duma. The document asked Putin to form a commission to consider reburial of Lenin’s body, and turning the Mausoleum into a museum in memory of “victims of all political shocks in Russia of 20th century”. Boris Nemtsov – who was the First Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation in the period 1997-1998 during the “Russian flu”, and in 2000 was the leader of the SPS faction in State Duma, gave an interview on the subject to the Ekho Moskvy radio. Here are the most interesting arguments he presented there:
“...And finally, we believe that it’s time to draw the line under the 20th century and the millennium as a whole. It was a very dramatic century for Russia. It was a century of achievements and shocks. But still, when a symbol of one, quite defined ideology, which goes away into the past, continues to lay unburied, first, it’s not Christian, not Orthodox, second, it absolutely doesn’t respond to our modern situation. It is written in our constitution, article 13, that not a single ideology has a right to become state-ideology. Which means in Russia there is supposed to be democracy and freedom of thought. On the other hand, the symbol of a defined ideology, just bolshevik religion, I would say, is still not buried.
[ ... ]
Our position about the burial [of Lenin’s body] has not changed for many years. I think, that now a majority of sane people are supporting this position, and, at the end of the day, if we will not solve this problem, the country will have a lot of problems. Maybe it sounds mystical, but I think, that until that moment, until Lenin is buried, we will constantly have problems in the country: social, wars, mockery, iniquity, arbitrariness. To one degree or another, it will be connected with the solution of this question.
[ ... ]
Russia – is a European country, at least it wants to be considered as such. In a European country barbarity [communism – clarification of the RKSM(b) editor] cannot take roots for a long time. [Our state – clarification of the RKSM(b) editor] used to be a barbarity, let’s, after all, go into the 21st century renewed.”
And again. The body of Vladimir Lenin was not reburied and still lays in the Mausoleum. Boris Nemtsov, on the other hand, after a considerably long period of an unsuccessful political career in the liberal opposition, was shot dead not far away from Red Square in 2015. However, his opinion on Lenin’s reburial, with some minor alternations, is even more intensively reproduced today by many prominent figures in official Russian politics and mass media. Especially the ridiculous notion that social, economic and other problems in Russia cannot be resolved without moving the body of Vladimir Ilyich out of Red Square.
Putin, at last
Responding to his interlocutor he also added:
“To manipulate the flow of thought – is right, but it’s only important that that thought leads to the right results, not like with Vladimir Ilyich. At the end of the day that thought lead to the destruction of the Soviet Union, that’s where. There were many such thoughts: autonomization and so on...”
In this expression of his opinion, Vladimir Putin was referring to the policies of the young Union of Soviet Socialist Republics towards the right of nations on self-determination. And by this statement he blamed Lenin, the most celebrated leader of the Bolshevik Party, for the destruction of the Soviet Union, the very thing that was possible only with the policies and struggle of Bolsheviks and the proletariat they led.
It would be interesting to note that back then, the preparation of the 19th World Festival Of Youth and Students in Russia was only at its starting stage. The General Council meeting of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Moscow, in the beginning of February 2016, was greeted by militants of RKSM(b), who were wearing shirts stating that: “Lenin is the founder of USSR, not a destroyer!”.
Approximately in the same period, forming of Marxist clubs or circles among Russian youth became a long lasting trend. All over the country students, workers and intellectuals, were gathering on a regular basis to learn and discuss Marxist literature, including works of Vladimir Lenin. The demand on such literature was growing. In 2020, one of the largest publishing companies “AST” reissued most popular books of Lenin, Marx and Engels, responding to the demand. People of different age started to appear in public transport and public places with newly printed “State and Revolution” or “Imperialism as a highest stage of capitalism”. This new wave was demonstrating that the popularity of Vladimir Lenin and other Marxist revolutionaries in Russia is transforming its quality from nostalgia to a desire of youth for consistent theoretical and political education.
Big change
The year 2022 in Russia – was the year of statements of the president Vladimir Putin that most of the people attentively listened to. And those statements, apart from announcements of the decisions that seriously affected the lives of people, contained political messages, which manifest a serious shift in the propaganda and policies of the ruling class in Russia.
Declaring recognition of independence of Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics on February 21st, 2022, president, in his speech, made an extensive historical excursion with the following statements:
“Let me start by saying that modern Ukraine was entirely and completely created by Russia, or rather, by Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began almost immediately after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a rather harsh manner towards Russia itself – by detaching, severing parts of its own historical territories. Of course, nobody asked millions of people living there about anything.
[ ... ]
Immediately, many questions arise. And the first one, in fact the most important, is: why did it have to be, from a position of power, that any and all endlessly growing nationalist ambitions on the outskirts of the former empire were to be satisfied? Why transfer vast territories, often completely unrelated to them, into newly formed, and often arbitrarily created, administrative units – the union republics? I repeat, transfer them along with the population of historical Russia.
[ ... ]
I’m not accusing anyone of anything now; the situation in the country at that time, and after the Civil War, on the eve of it, was incredibly complex and critical. Today, I only want to say that it was exactly like this. This is a historical fact. As I’ve already mentioned, it was as a result of Bolshevik policies that Soviet Ukraine emerged, which even today can be fully and justifiably called 'Ukraine in the name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.' He is its author and architect. This is entirely and fully supported by archival documents, including the harsh Leninist directives on Donbass, which was literally shoved into Ukraine’s composition. And now, the 'grateful descendants' have torn down Lenin monuments in Ukraine. They call it 'decommunization.'
Do you want decommunization? Well, that suits us just fine. But there’s no need to stop halfway, as they say. We’re ready to show you what true decommunization means for Ukraine.”
By this statement, just a few days before the beginning of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, Putin indirectly placed responsibility for the crisis on Bolsheviks and Lenin himself. As we see it, it was done to antagonize Lenin and communists, blaming them for what was coming. And, as also we see it, with that speech the campaign of demonization of Vladimir Lenin was started by Russian ruling class.
This turn was not just limited to antagonizing communists, there is also a parallel tendency to whitewash fascists. In September of the same year, in his speech where he declared that LPR, DPR, Herson and Zaporozhye oblasts are accepted into the Russian federation, president Putin quoted fascist philosopher Ivan Ilyin:
And I want to conclude my intervention with words of a true patriot Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin: “If I consider Russia to be my Motherland, then it means, that I love the Russian way, contemplate and think the Russian way, sing and speak the Russian way; that I believe in the spiritual strength of the Russian people and accept their historical destiny with my instinct and my will. Its spirit is my spirit; its destiny is my destiny; its suffering is my sorrow; its flourishing is my joy”.
With these words – a great spiritual choice, which was followed many generations of our ancestors for more than thousand yours of Russian statehood. We make this choice today, citizens of the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, population of Zaporizhia and Herson oblasts made this choice. They made a choice to be with their people, to be with the Motherland, to live with her destiny, to win together with her.
In the previous bulletin #9, in the “In Depth” section we mentioned the case of the Ufa Marxist club, members of which were arrested in 2022. In the context of this article, it worth mentioning again, that the prosecution involved “experts” to evaluate the contents of the discussions of the club and of the literature they were discussing. One of the “experts”, by evaluating Lenin’s major works such as State and Revolution, along with policies of Bolsheviks during Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917, made conclusions, including the following:
“The historical experience of its practical implementation suggests the forcible change of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation, obstruction of the lawful activities of state bodies, violation of the rights, freedoms, and legitimate interests of individuals and citizens, or the threat of such actions.”
The criminal case of Ufa Marxist club is not over yet. It may become a precedent of criminalization of Marxist-Leninist theory in Russia.
Today
The release of the film “Mummy” by Spas TV, with all the ridiculous conspiracy theories and lies, could be just another blunt and isolated instance of attacks of the media affiliated with the Orthodox Christian Church on the communism and history of revolution and socialism in Russia. Within the context of intensifying trend of anticommunism, now openly promoted by the state officials of top level, it has to be considered an element of the systematic offensive of the ruling monopolies in Russia against the scientific theory of working-class struggle. The attempts to stimulate the public consent on removing Lenin’s body from Red Square is not just a rush for symbolic achievement. It is an attempt to open the Overton window for criminalization of Marxism and advance of fascism in our country.
NEWS BULLETIN #10
International Department of the RKSM(b)
