Lenin buried at Mausoleum according to 'all Orthodox traditions' - Russian Communist Party member
MOSCOW. April 20 (Interfax) - The idea of reburying Vladimir Lenin set out in a new bill submitted to the Russian State Duma will not gain popular support, Russian Communist Party Central Committee's First Deputy Chairman and Duma First Deputy Chairman Ivan Melnikov said.
"This initiative was not much of a surprise to me. This usually happens twice a year: just before Lenin's birthday and the day of his death. The rest of the time Lenin is of no interest to initiators of this topic," Melnikov told journalists on Thursday.
"The Russian Communist Party gives regular commentaries, and the party's position remains unchanged," Melnikov said.
"Lenin is a pride of global and national history, buried according to all [Christian] Orthodox traditions. There is and will be no popular support behind this 'bureau of ritual services' because Lenin is not just our national legacy, such as Great Victory or Gagarin, but he is the founder of a policy that put Russia's history into a new orbit. And for the initiators of reburial, Lenin is just a pretext for self-publicity," Melnikov said.
A bill submitted to the State Duma on Thursday proposes a legal mechanism for reburying the remains of Vladimir Lenin, one of the bill's authors, Vladimir Sysoyev (Liberal Democratic Party), told Interfax.