Science: God Under Glass

Long since turned to dust in a London cemetery, Karl Marx lives on in the turgid periods of Das Kapital and in the reverent thoughts of all right-minded Communists. That other god of the Soviet Olympus, Nikolai Lenin, remains visible in Moscow where science has kept the Russian Dictator’s corpse intact for eleven years. Last week the Lenin tomb was closed to the public while Soviet workers busily installed air-conditioning equipment with a view to preserving the sacred remains for at least a century more.

When frail, tired “N. Lenin” (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) died in 1924, the Bolshevist high command decided upon a strictly non-Christian apotheosis. A conference of scientists was called to find means of preserving the body. Biochemist Boris Ilyich Zbarsky and Anatomist Vladimir Petrovich Vorobev offered to try, worked four months on the cadaver, which subsequently appeared under glass in a temporary tomb in the Red Square. When plans for the permanent tomb had finally been agreed on, the corpse vanished for 18 months into the recesses of the Kremlin. At last in 1930 the new mausoleum was completed. It was a terraced pyramid of sleek red & black granite. From a single 50-ton block over the bronze doors flared in red porphyry the word LENIN.

Thereafter, day after day for months and years, long queues of worshipful believers in Communism and curious infidels moved slowly through the doorway, flanked by two immobile guards, down a narrow passage to an underground room, through heavy air that muffled footfalls, discouraged talk. In that uneasy silence the body, clad in the uniform of a Red Commander with a shroud over the legs, lay on a block of black granite, beneath a tent-shaped enclosure of glass. The bald, Slavic head with scrubby, rufous beard and mustache rested on a silk pillow. From the ridge of the glass enclosure shielded lights glowed on the waxy features of the man who proclaimed the World Revolution of the World Proletariat. Other light there was none. Through that gloom, by last week, more than 8,000,000 persons had passed. Last year Scientists Zbarsky & Vorobev, permanent caretakers of the corpse, were awarded the Order of Lenin, highest Soviet honor.

Meanwhile ugly rumors were sprouting. Was Lenin’s body shrinking? Was it decaying? Had the face caved in, been repaired? Was the image the actual corpse of Lenin? Last week Comrade Zbarsky indignantly answered such calumnies: “All the legends circulated abroad concerning a decaying condition of the body are false. On the contrary, we are now more than ever certain of the infallibility of our method.” Thereupon it was announced that by October the Lenin tomb would be air-conditioned. Zbarsky had been fearful lest on warm days currents of air set in motion by throngs of pilgrims prove “injurious” to the body. After the conditioning equipment is installed it was thought that Lenin could safely be viewed all day and all night in any weather.

Last year Scientists Zbarsky & Vorobev were reported to be writing a book revealing how they accomplished the preservation. It was rumored that they would make the disclosure at last month’s International Physiological Congress in Moscow. Last week they said they would keep the secret a dozen or so years longer. Among U. S. physiologists, medical men and embalmers, however, there was scant belief that the secret, when finally bared, would be startling, or that anything had been done with Lenin that could not be duplicated by careful, skilful employment of well-known methods.*

Most U. S. scientists suppose that Comrades Zbarsky & Vorobev forced the blood, which decomposes easily, from Lenin by pumping into an artery carbolic acid, glycerin, alcohol, formaldehyde—or perhaps some other chemical concoction which may be their secret. These preservatives pervade all the organs and blood vessels, even the capillaries, complete the same circuit as the blood. When a corpse is to be kept for a long time for scientific purposes, additional glycerin is pumped in at intervals to prevent shrinkage. Near-natural color could have been obtained by adding an aniline dye to the embalming fluid. The American Academy of Embalming last week declared that a corpse embalmed in 1889 is still undiminished in size and intact except for loss of weight and a deep tan color.

For longtime preservation, removal of the vital organs is not necessary. Carbolic acid, however, dissolves gas in the body and the abdomen is then likely to collapse. This can be corrected by packing the abdominal cavity with cotton. Whether or not Lenin’s viscera have been tampered with, his brain was removed, dissected into thousands of pieces, some of which were sent to Paris and Berlin. The Lenin brain cells, it appeared, were much larger than normal.

*The embalmed body of Enrico Caruso, who died in 1921, lies in a mausoleum near Naples in a glass-covered casket wrapped in a U. S. flag and a green billiard cloth. Friends (including Tenor Tito Schipa) change the clothing every three years. Visitors report a steady discoloration of the tenor’s face.