Russian authorities are reopening investigations into a 1918 attempt to kill Vladimir Lenin amid suggestions the whole episode may have been a Bolshevik fabrication, a Russian newspaper said Saturday.
Generations of Soviet schoolchildren were taught that a fanatical Socialist Revolutionary, Fanny Kaplan, shot and wounded Lenin on Aug. 30, 1918, but failed to kill the revolutionary leader.Komsomolskaya Pravda said Russia's prosecutor general was now reopening the case.
"The very fact of an assassination attempt on the founder of the Land of Soviets has begun to evoke major doubts," the newspaper said.
Two bullets, spent cartridges and the Browning pistol that Kaplan was alleged to have used have been removed from the Lenin Museum near Red Square and are being examined by investigators, the report said.
It quoted an investigator from the Russian security ministry, Mikhail Perevozkin, as saying the official file on the alleged shooting was shoddily compiled and incomplete.
"When the case was handed over to us, it immediately became clear it was incomplete, drawn up very carelessly and full of mistakes. You can't tell whether it's even finished," he said.
Another paper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said it was important to clear up the mystery because Kaplan's alleged shots served as the immediate pretext for the shooting of several hundred political prisoners and the official proclamation six days later of a "Red Terror" against opponents of the 1917 revolution.