A WEIRD EXPERIENCE

One of the weirdest experiences of my life was the day I went to see Lenin's mummified corpse at the Lenin Mausoleum at Red Square in Moscow. Picture a big brown box and a long queue of people waiting in front of it; most of them Russians, but also tourists. In small groups we were directed towards the entrance of the brown box by grim looking soldiers. Then, we were allowed in and in the middle of the dark room is a large glass box in full light with a weird looking body lying in it. It remains a mysterious place, the more because people are not allowed to take pictures.

Next Monday is the last day that I will go to Leiden University for my Russian-Studies course. The main objective of this course is to illustrate that the main leaders Russia has had over the years (Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Nicholas II, Lenin, Gorbatsjov, Yeltsin, Putin and all the others) all are leaders with a typical Russian characteristic: the welfare of the ruler and his "surroundings" is supreme and the people are expected to adapt for the prospect of national glory. The concept of property is relatively new to Russia and the people still have to get used to it; the ruling elite has control of the resources.

At first I considered it rather adventurous to bring all these very different people under one common denominator; are Ivan the Terrible and Yeltsin, Stalin and Peter the Great comparable? But in the end they all used their power with manipulation, discharging parliaments, assassinating critical journalists or opponents and other tricks of the trade to stay in power. Most of the mentioned rulers might not have been that much fun to live or work with (maybe after a few wodka in case of Yeltsin), but they are without doubt very fascinating.

Over the years I read a few books on Lenin and biographies of Stalin and Chroestsjov (I wrote about that before) and today I even saw the history of the Russian Revolution as a comic in a shop window downtown (had no money on me to buy it though). Reading all these books and knowing the history of Russia and the Soviet-Union made seeing Lenin in Moscow so weird. This is actually the person that had such an impact on the history of the world and you can almost touch him. And although weird, he still looks lifelike as if he would be asleep like Cinderella.

(The most striking thing was that he is actually very small; somehow you expect a person of his importance to be more impressive)

For rounding off my Russian course I have downloaded some footage of several leaders of Russia; thank god for subtitles. Anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b-Cfe7fPok
CORONATION OF TSAR NICHOLAS II (footage of 1896 !!)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzf3FRSbEUk
SPEECH LENIN - 1919



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLqplbwD644
SPEECH STALIN - 1937