Russian Church Calls for Vladimir Lenin’s Body to Be Removed From Moscow’s Red Square

Russian soldiers clear snow from an area in front of former Russian communist leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's Mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square on Jan. 28 2005. Nearly a century after Lenin's death, his embalmed body lays in the mausoleum on the Red Square. YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images

It’s been nearly 100 years since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was carried out, placing a communist regime in power of a nation-state for the first time in human history.

While the first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, only ruled for about seven years until his death in January 1924, his legacy lasted much longer. After his death, Lenin’s body was embalmed before it was placed in a building in Moscow’s Red Square, known now as Lenin’s Mausoleum, or Lenin’s Tomb. The body has been a public fixture ever since.