MOSCOW, October 3 (RIA Novosti) - Oscar-winning Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov called Monday for the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet State, to be finally buried.
Mikhalkov's remarks came following the reburial of Anton Denikin, a White Guards general and Lenin's arch rival, who had fled into exile after the Civil War and died in the United States in 1947.
Speaking to reporters after the reburial ceremony for Denikin and the Russian emigre philosopher Ivan Ilyin in the 16th-century Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, Mikhalkov said Lenin, whose embalmed body has been on public display in a mausoleum on Red Square since his death in 1924, was "one of the greatest figures in world history." Despite his controversial legacy, the man should finally be laid to rest beside his mother, in keeping with his last will, Mikhailov said.
Asked about the possibility of repatriating and reburying the remains of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Mikhalkov said Russia should be the final resting place for the famous pianist and composer, who had spent much of his life in exile in the United States.
