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Lenin's Birthday Celebrated in Moscow
Several thousand Russian Communists rallied on Red Square Sunday to celebrate the 131st anniversary of Lenin's birth as opinion polls indicated that a majority of Russians continued to hold the leader of the Bolsheviks in high esteem.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov headed a group of comrades whoplaced carnations on the steps of the mausoleum where Lenin has spent most of his posthumous existence.
Lenin died in 1924, aged 53, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage and his mummified body was treated as an icon by the Communist movement during the Soviet era.
"More and more people in Russia and in the world as a whole believe that Lenin helped found a powerful state in which civil rights were guaranteed," Zyuganov told Moscow Echo radio.
The party leader again dismissed the idea that the leader of the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917 could be removed from his place on Red Square, a proposal that has been regularly mooted since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
"The decision was taken by our predecessors and we should respect it," the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted him as saying.
Russian police quoted by Moscow Echo radio said that by midday up to 3,000 people had visited the mausoleum to pay tribute to Lenin.
Two out of three Russians think highly of Lenin, according to an opinion poll published to coincide with the anniversary, but they are more evenly divided over the question of whether he should stay where he is or be finally buried.
Some 66.7 percent of those questioned by the ROMIR-Gallup research center said they believed Lenin had played a positive role in Russian history, with only 22.1 percent demurring.
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