16.11.2018

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov: We stand for each other and we honour our history

The deputy of the Leningrad Region’s Legislative Assembly Vladimir Petrov proposed that the Russian authorities remove the body of Vladimir Lenin from the Mausoleum. For that, he was criticized severely by the communists. Calls for burial of the remains of a revolutionary have not abated for the past 30 years. The first president of Russia Boris Yeltsin categorically forbade the dust of Ilyich to be disturbed, believing that "the time has not yet come."

Back in 2005, Kirsan Nikolaevich Ilyumzhinov, the then head of Kalmykia, said that he was ready to allocate a million dollars in order to transport the body of Vladimir Lenin from Moscow to Elista (Kalmykia). “I officially declared to the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov that if the question of the reburial of Lenin’s body arises, we are ready to allocate one million dollars to transport the body to Elista,” said Kirsan Ilyumzhinov at a press conference in Moscow.
“This is our countryman, and we do not forget our countrymen, we honour our history,” Ilyumzhinov added. According to him, at the beginning of the 20th century, our country witnessed a curious confrontation between Lenin, whose grandmother was Kalmyk, and Commander-in-Chief of the White Army Lavr Kornilov, whose father was Kalmyk.
“Lenin’s grandmother on the paternal side, Anna Smirnova, is a Kalmyk. By the way, Vladimir Ilyich was fond of chess; he is shown sitting at a chessboard on many paintings and photographs. Therefore, when some incomprehensible discussion began in the Russian State Duma about taking the body of Lenin out of the mausoleum, I proposed to rebury the leader in Elista.
I didn’t really mean it, but then there were reports in the press that some Kalmyk businessman was about to charge five dollars per person for entering the new mausoleum. Representatives of the Communist Party of Russia immediately came out with a protest. They said, they would not allow encroaching on our holy sites. But I received a letter of thanks from the Union of Communists of Switzerland in which they promised full support,” Ilyumzhinov noted.