Explosions, stones, pistols: how they attempted to kill the dead Lenin in the Mausoleum

45 years ago, 1 September 1973, the explosion exploded in Lenin's mausoleum. The remaining unidentified man triggered a death belt. Two more died and five were injured. Mummy, protected by bullet-proof glass, was not injured. Information about the incident, the authorities have hidden, writes BBC Russian Service.

Фото: Depositphotos

Despite the cult of Lenin that prevailed in the USSR, and perhaps for this very reason, the body of the leader in the Soviet era was attempted in various ways at least eight times. But the 1973 attack of the year was the most dramatic in terms of the number of casualties, and it stood out how to treat Lenin with its cruelty and cynicism.

Tragedy on the Day of Knowledge

The attacker chose to implement his plan on September 1, when Moscow schoolchildren were crowded into the mausoleum. The guards took him for a teacher who came with another group of children. He looked decent, did not cause suspicion.

Delayed in the mausoleum was not allowed. Visitors continued to move slowly from the entrance to the exit.

The man hid an explosive device under his clothes and, having reached the sarcophagus, connected the wires.

The married couple from Astrakhan who was following behind them was killed. Four schoolchildren were seriously injured. The soldier of the Kremlin regiment hit the wall hard by a blast wave.

From the terrorist survived arm and part of the head.

Chairman of the KGB Yuri Andropov and his first deputy Georgy Tsinev immediately arrived at the scene of the incident. But the investigation that had begun quickly reached an impasse, and so far nothing has been learned about the identity of the assailant, as well as his motives.

For Holodomor

The first attempt on a dead Lenin, which happened 10 years after his death, 19 March 1934, is documented in most detail.

Mitrofan Nikitin, a 46-year-old worker at the Progress state farm near Moscow, approached the sarcophagus and took out a revolver. The guards rushed towards him. Nikitin, in a hurry and without aiming, shot twice at the body (at that time it was still covered with ordinary glass), missed, and fired the third bullet into his heart.

In his pocket they found a letter in which were the words: “There is poverty, hunger, slavery, brutality, dejection all around. People have perverted themselves in lies, they are afraid of each other, they are afraid to say too much, knowing that the GPU, torture, death are behind them. People fall from exhaustion and hunger and die like flies. Many more millions will die from communism, from this chimera, this absurdity. I, Nikitin Mitrofan Mikhailovich, joyfully die for the people.”

The report of the Kremlin guard Karl Pauker to Stalin, transmitted through the personal secretary of leader Alexander Poskrebyshev, with a copy of the above letter attached, has been preserved.

The investigation found out that Nikitin was born in a village in the Bryansk region, worked with 13 years, in 1932, he was a witness of the Holodomor in Ukraine. On the day of the assassination I arrived on a commuter train from Kurkin and went straight to the mausoleum.

It is known that Nikitin's suicide letter made a strong impression on Khrushchev.

Фото: Depositphotos

Stones and Heels

In November, 1957, a Muscovite A. Romanov, threw a bottle of ink into the mausoleum.

20 March 1959, the visitor of the Mausoleum hit the glass of the sarcophagus with a hammer. The glass cracked. The citizen was detained. There is no information about his personality and further fate.

14 July 1960 of the year in 14: 30 resident of Frunze (now Bishkek) K. Minibayev jumped on the sarcophagus and smashed the glass with his foot.

Many fragments woke up on the face and hands of the embalmed body. In particular, an inch-long incision was formed above Lenin’s right eyebrow.

While the experts of the special biochemical laboratory made up the damage, the mausoleum remained closed for three months.

It was after this incident that it was decided to replace conventional glass with bulletproof.

During interrogation, Minibaev stated that he had dreamed of destroying a mummy from 1949, and had come specifically for this from Central Asia. By the way, he had a choice: at that moment Stalin was still resting next to Lenin in the mausoleum.

The fate of Minibaev is unknown.

In 1961, a certain L. Smirnova spat on the sarcophagus and unsuccessfully tried to break the glass with an abandoned stone, adding to this an unprintable battle.

24 April 1962, a retired accountant from Pavlovsky Posad, Moscow Region, A. Lyutikov, threw a stone into the glass, but did not smash it. Before that, he had sent critical letters to the newspaper offices for two years.

In 1966, the visiting from the Krasnodar Territory G. Vatintsev threw a sledgehammer into the tomb, also without consequences.

Smirnov, Lyutikova and Vatintseva were declared irresponsible.

Фото: Depositphotos

First blast

In September 1967, a resident of Kaunas Krysanov died, having blown up the suicide belt near the entrance to the mausoleum. There is no other information about him in public access. Why he did not reach the sarcophagus is also unknown.

Information about the victims is also fragmentary. Some sources speak of the death of several people, others - only of seriously wounded people. It is known that the leg of an Italian tourist was torn off.

An accidental witness, photographer from Zaporozhye Burbovsky, recalled: “Everyone was dumbfounded. Then the audience ran away screaming. When the flow of people subsided, I looked: a guy walked past me, lifted his trousers - blood was flowing down his legs. A military man is carrying a girl - her leg is almost torn off and dangling. In front of the entrance to the mausoleum lay a man with his intestines turned out onto the pavement, and next to him was a second guy, over whom several people were bending.”

Instead of the politburo

15 March 2010 at about 11: 40 33-year-old resident of the Istra district of Moscow region, before repeatedly convicted Sergei Karpets tried to climb on the podium of the mausoleum, where in the old days, watching the November and May Day demonstration of the Soviet leaders, and loudly called to rebury Lenin, and during detention shot a cop from a traumatic pistol.

“I drew attention to such a problem as the demolition of the mausoleum. I am not satisfied with the mausoleum because it contains the mummy of the Antichrist. I consider my action conscious and adequate,” he said after his arrest.

“Get up and go!”

They say tragedies tend to be repeated in the form of a farce.

27 November 2010, a man threw a roll of toilet paper at the mausoleum.

On the day of Epiphany, January 19, 2015, two activists of the Blue Horseman art group sprinkled the mausoleum with holy water and shouted: “Get up and go!” According to the Gospel, with these words Jesus turned to the bedridden patient he had healed. Lenin did not leave.

The embalmed body of the leader was exhibited for farewell on the seventh day after his death, January 27, 1924 - at first temporarily, but in March the Politburo decided to leave it in this form forever.

It is possible that, along with the obvious desire to create a new cult, the idea was suggested by an archaeological sensation of that time: A year earlier, the expedition of Howard Carter discovered the mummy of Tutankhamen, which had not decayed over three thousand years.

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