Мавзолей В.И. Ленина на Красной площади

This guide to Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow returns to March 1924, when Vladimir Lenin's body, on display in a hastily built wooden structure, began visibly decaying before the public. You'll hear how chemist Boris Zbarsky and pathologist Vladimir Vorobyov proposed an untested method to preserve it indefinitely, working in secret through the spring under a government that did not forgive failure. The guide follows their formula of glycerol and potassium acetate, and the summer the mausoleum reopened to see whether it had worked.