Scientific American praises the embalming methods used to preserve the communist revolutionary thanks to generations of “Russian scientists that have spent almost a century fine-tuning preservation techniques that have managed to maintain the look, feel and flexibility of Lenin’s body.”

The job of maintaining Lenin’s corpse belongs to an institute known in post-Soviet times as the Center for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies in Moscow. A core group of five to six anatomists, biochemists and surgeons, known as the “Mausoleum group,” have primary responsibility for maintaining Lenin’s remains.

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