MOSCOW — A Russian history institute and its parent organization have apparently split over whether Vladimir Lenin's corpse should remain on display in Red Square — a dispute that reflects nationwide ambivalence over the Soviet founder's historic role.
Lenin's body has been on display in the mausoleum just outside the Kremlin since 1924. President Vladimir Putin said in 2001 he opposed the removal of Lenin's body because it might disturb civil peace.
Recently, high-ranking allies of Putin have floated the idea of burying Lenin, and the president said in an interview earlier this year he would support a solution that would lead to the "reconciliation and unity of the nation," not a schism.
Vladimir Lavrov, the deputy director of the Institute of Russian History, wrote in a letter to a memorial fund for victims of communist-era repression that the bodies of Lenin, dictator Josef Stalin and other communist luminaries should be removed from Red Square, the Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers reported Friday. In the letter, he reportedly said the bodies should be given either to their families or to the Communist Party.
Stalin and the other dignitaries are buried behind the mausoleum.
"The activity of Lenin and Stalin sent the country into a social-political and spiritual dead-end, slowed its development and isolated it from civilized humanity," Lavrov wrote, according to Vedomosti. "The government should not spend taxpayers' money on the maintenance, exhibition and restoration of the body of the leader of the Communist Party."
But Yuri Osipov, the head of the institute's parent organization, the Russian Academy of Sciences, opposed removing the corpse, saying it was unacceptable to "burn out" history, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
"If every generation is to settle accounts with the previous one, nothing good will come of it," Osipov was quoted as saying.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov called the proposal to remove the mausoleum as a "provocation against our Soviet history," the Interfax news agency reported.
Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin strongly pushed for removing Lenin's body, but was stopped by vigorous opposition from the Communist Party and others.