Lenin still pulling crowds at 139

Communist activist Irina Khanutina lost count of the times she went through its doors. Every Friday her modest group is by one of the Lenin monuments in Moscow raising funds to maintain his tomb. "Going to the Mausoleum allows me to pay my tribute to a great genius," Khanutina believes.

Times have changed, and what used to be a solemn site and the rostrum for numerous leaders is now simply a stopping point along the tourist trail. "It's a good question why did I decide to look at a dead body. I guess because it is a big tourist attraction and a part of Russia's history. So I felt that if you come to Moscow, it's something you have to see," US tourist Zsofia Budai says.

It's no longer about ideology for the majority of people who come to stare at Lenin in the mausoleum. Rather, it is curiosity. Many prefer to look at the iconic site sipping their coffee from one of the most expensive department stores in Moscow.

Just as it was decades ago, Lenin's tomb still faces GUM shopping centre across Red Square - although these days Russia's most famous shopping mall houses western designer brands - a testament to capitalism the father of communism no doubt would have disapproved of.

"Look, we are standing in Red Square and what we have is a cross on the cathedral, the two-headed eagle on the museum and the red stars of the Kremlin towers. These are the centuries of our history. If we tear down the mausoleum it's like ripping out a page of our history. It's a kind of vandalism," Abramov says.

Not everybody is as understanding. Debates over whether to bury Lenin or not are as furious as debates over to honour him as a hero or to curse him as a tyrant. So far the chance of him getting buried seems a long shot.