RUSSIA-OKHLOBYSTIN-LENIN-INTERMENT

Moscow, August 21 (Interfax) – An actor and politician who is also a Russian Orthodox priest with his clerical status suspended at his own request insisted on Tuesday on putting a proposal for interring the embalmed body of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which lies in a granite mausoleum on Moscow’s Red Square, back on the agenda.

“We believe that we must think about burying the body of Vladimir Ilyich,” Ivan Okhlobystin, who was recently elected as leader of the Right Cause party, told a news conference at the Interfax headquarters in Moscow.

“While [Lenin's body] was an object of worship we, as idealists, couldn’t show that degree of disrespect for the Communists. But these days American tourists pay to go [to the mausoleum] to have a look,” he said.

Lenin was baptized, and it is “within the competence of the Christian church” to make arrangements for his burial, the actor said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the leader of the nationalist party Russkiye (Russians), Dmitry Dyomushkin, said he planned to seek support for the organizing committee for Lenin’s interment from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill.

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20:51:53 EET-2