Lenin’s daisy-fresh 145-year-old body on public display (photos)

90 years following the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, his corpse is open to the public for the first time at a Mausoleum erected in his honor at the Red Square in Moscow. His embalmed body shows no signs of wearing and looks as though he died yesterday.

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.