I Don’t Need Nazis In My Germany

< World War II - Turning Point (3) >

Moscow, in the Red Square, Lenin's Mausoleum

Vladimir Lenin lay as if in a peaceful slumber, his body preserved and uncorrupted.

Lenin's last will, to be buried beside his mother in Leningrad, had been utterly ignored in the face of his political symbolism as a hero of Communism and the father of the Soviet Union.

Joseph Stalin silently gazed down at him.

At a glance, he looked so perfectly intact that he seemed to be merely alive and sleeping.

Lenin’s wife had been quite a nuisance, squawking in opposition to the preservation, but now that it was done, wasn't it for the best?

He would be remembered forever as a glorious pioneer. As long as the Soviet Union endured, and perhaps even if it fell.

But Stalin’s moment of quiet mourning for his former superior was interrupted.