Moscow, 2nd Site: Red square and the Kremlin.

The first time we saw Red Square we were not allowed to enter it. We had to look on it from afar. The government was using it. No visitors allowed. Red Square has always been used by the government of the day. My dominant image of the Square is the way it was used by the Soviets. They would use it to stage their parades and funerals. Party officials together on Lenin’s tomb with Sovietologists trying to figure out who's up and who's down based on where they stood on the podium.

The Square doesn't see events like that anymore. On this date it was being used as the starting place for the Moscow marathon being run across the city. It is not the solemn place once was.  Today it is jammed with tourists, jostling for angles for their pictures of themselves in front of the squares many iconic façades. If that is not enough for you, you can add a ‘Boyar’, or Lenin, Brezhnev, Sponge Bob, Shreck - your choice, to any snapshot for just a few hundred rubles.

The centerpiece of the square is Lenin’s mausoleum. When Lenin died in 1924 he was displayed in Red Square for what was supposed to be a limited time. Stalin recognize the value of Lenin as a symbol, however, as a result he could never bear to remove him from the people’s sight.
So there he is, surviving even the fall of the Soviet union.

Visiting his crypt is an involved process. There is the first line, which acts as the meter for the security check which rivals any thing I ever experienced at an airport. It seems geared to be sure that no one has a camera. They really don't want you taking pictures, so all phones get checked as well. Once you pass security you file past the luminaries of the Soviet era marked with statues and buried behind Lenin. All of the leaders (except Khrushchev) are there, in their glory, as if nothing had changed. All of the graves are decorated with red plastic carnations. On this day only three of the graves had fresh flowers; Dzerzhinski, founder of the Cheka, killer of thousands; Sverdlov, an old Bolshevik; Stalin, ‘nough said. It is kind of a surprise any of them have flowers but I would have never guessed those three. I have read Stalin does have a following, folks who missed the stability and order. It was like a walk back in time.

After you pass the Soviet leaders you enter the mausoleum itself. Along to walk you are monitored by special Kremlin security police, a different uniform than the Moscow city police. Now their presence becomes more intense. At the entrance you are greeted by an officer with his finger to his mouth, shhh! The hall is polished black marble, not particularly well lit, you descend. At every turn there is another guard. Finally you turn and enter the crypt itself. Lenin is there in a crystal case, bathed in white light, a setting more fitting for sleeping beauty it seems.

But there he was, perfectly preserved looking as good as the day he died - a miracle of Soviet science. You walk 270° around his coffin and his guards and then back into the daylight of Red Square. If you're like me, you wonder why.  Why he's still there and why anybody, including me, still cares. But there, I have done it. I have seen one of the world's great curiosities - now where's that bearded lady?