Highlights: In Russia, January 21, 2024 is a day almost like any other. If around 600 statues of Lenin still populate the territory, the anniversary of his death excites neither the crowds nor the Kremlin. A recent poll showed that if Lenin remains viewed positively by more than half of Russians, it is especially among those over 50 that he remains significant and popular. A majority of Russians - even the deputies of the Duma - are also in favor of his burial, so that he can finally rest in peace.

In Russia, January 21, 2024 is a day almost like any other. If around 600 statues of Lenin still populate the territory, the anniversary of his death excites neither the crowds nor the Kremlin. 

Russia: no official or popular tribute for the centenary of the death of Lenin, father of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

In Russia, January 21, 2024 is a day almost like any other.

If around 600 statues of Lenin still populate the territory, the anniversary of his death excites neither the crowds nor the Kremlin.

Large statue in honor of the leader of Red Russia.

This large bust of Lenin, former dictator of Red Russia, was unveiled in one of the main squares of Moscow on January 21, five years after Lenin's death.

Getty/Bettmann

By: RFI Follow

Except, undoubtedly, the Communist Party which will salute his memory across the Russian regions, no national tribute to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, is on the program.

And this is undoubtedly due to the ambivalent and contrasting character that the figure of the revolutionary leader now takes on in today's Russia.

Also readVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin: the man behind the legend

The man remains omnipresent with a statue, a square, a street named after him in almost every town in the country.

Thousands of Russians still visit his embalmed remains every week, visible in his mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.

But, paradoxically, the aura of the legendary Bolshevik leader is also fading.

An interesting recent poll showed that if Lenin remains viewed positively by more than half of Russians, it is especially among those over 50 that he remains significant and popular.

A majority of Russians - even the deputies of the Duma - are also in favor of his burial, so that he can finally rest in peace.

The Kremlin wall, with Lenin's mausoleum in the foreground and the yellow-ochre buildings of the presidential administration behind.

RFI/Anastasia Becchio

Critics of Vladimir Putin

And in the context of a Russia at war, it was Vladimir Putin himself who

cast a veil of suspicion over the figure of Lenin

We remember his speech of February 22, 2022, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which he half-heartedly criticized Lenin for having given too much land to the Ukrainians, even speaking of Ukraine as of a “creation” by Vladimir Ilyich.

Also read: Ukraine: Vladimir Putin's obsession

Among the nationalist elites, Lenin is now seen as the one who showed too much leniency towards the people who would make up the USSR, to the detriment of the Russian nation.

And it is no coincidence that at the same time, it is now his brutal successor Joseph Stalin who benefits from a certain official rehabilitation in Russia.

Russia: no official or popular tribute for the centenary of the death of Lenin, father of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Russia: no official or popular tribute for the centenary of the death of Lenin, father of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917

Critics of Vladimir Putin

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