Lenin's body on display for another 100 years

Moscow, Feb 16 (UNI) The body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin can be preserved for another 100 years, if no decision was taken to remove it from the Lenin Mausoleum in the Red Square.

Yuri Denisov-Nikolsky, who looks after the body, told Russian news agencies that if the body received proper care, it could remain in the Mausoleum for another 100 years.

Lenin's body has been on display in the Mausoleum just outside the Kremlin since 1924. In 2001, President Vladimir Putin said he opposed the removal of body from its marble tomb because it might disturb civil peace in the country.

Recently, high-ranking allies of Putin have floated the idea of burying Lenin to which the President said he would support a solution that would lead to the ''reconciliation and unity of the nation, not a schism.'' Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin -- a far more vocal critic of the Communists and the Soviet- era -- strongly pushed for removing Lenin's body from the Mausoleum, but was stopped by vigorous opposition from the Communist Party and others.

Lenin Mausoleum is closed every year-and-a-half for restoration work, which last for about six weeks.

This year, the work would be carried out betweeb February 18 and April 15.

Presidential candidate and ultranationalist LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky recently said Lenin should be buried within one year.

Communist Party leader and presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov has repeatedly opposed calls to rebury the remains of Lenin and Stalin and remove the names of Soviet leaders from cities, streets, and other facilities, saying it was ''a provocation against our Soviet history.'' UNI XC SYU RN1836