LOCAL

MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - The mausoleum at Red Square, where the embalmed corpse of Vladimir Lenin is housed, will be closed for two months for maintenance works.

Lenin's mausoleum, a major tourist attraction in the heart of Moscow, closes periodically to give Lenin a bath in a special embalming compound and change his clothes. The mausoleum last closed on February 18 last year.

Regular checks are carried out of Lenin's body and the cost of preserving the body is several million roubles a year. Russian scientists say he could be preserved for another 100 years.

"We have retained our unique methods and know-how," said Valery Bykov, the director of the Scientific Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Herbs. "The West has only temporary embalmment."

The body of the Russian communist leader has been on public display in a glass case since his death in 1924, although his organs, including his brain, were removed during the autopsy.

An opinion poll has shown that two-thirds of Russians believe that the embalmed body of the Russian communist leader should be removed from its mausoleum on Red Square and buried.

According to the poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), some 38 per cent of those who said Lenin should be buried at a cemetery urged the move be made as soon as possible. Another 28 per cent said he could be buried after the Lenin generation has died.

The poll said 41 per cent of Russians believe keeping Lenin's boy in the mausoleum is "wrong and unnatural." Meanwhile, 37 per cent of respondents said they saw "nothing bad" in the fact that the mausoleum has become "an ordinary tourist attraction like other countries'."

Only 15 per cent of Russians said "the body of the people's leader had the right to stay in the mausoleum on the country's main square."

Demands to transfer the body of the architect of the 1917 Russian Revolution to a regular cemetery have consistently been countered by Russian communists, who insist that the tomb on Red Square remain the Soviet leader's final resting place.

Lenin died at the age of 53. He said he wanted to be buried in Russia's second-largest city, now called St. Petersburg.

The opinion poll was conducted on November 8-9, 2008 in a total of 140 Russian cities and towns in 42 regions, and involved a sample of 1,600 respondents.

On January 21, the 85th anniversary of Lenin's death, Moscow riot police detained some 30 people dressed as mummies, who attempted to gather on Red Square calling for his burial.