On January 21, 1924, Vladimir Lenin died at his estate in Gorki, setting off what remains one of history's most spectacular cases of posthumous real estate disputes—except the property in question was Lenin's own body.

Within days of his death, the Bolshevik leadership faced a dilemma that would have sent Freud reaching for his notebooks: what to do with the earthly remains of their revolutionary leader? Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, made her wishes abundantly clear—she wanted a simple burial, insisting that her husband would have found the alternative "repugnant to his character." She would lose this argument spectacularly.

The Central Committee, in its infinite wisdom, decided that what the Soviet Union really needed was a glass coffin shrine where citizens could queue for hours to gaze upon their preserved leader. This was, one might note, rather ironic for a movement that had spent considerable energy ridiculing religious relics and superstition.

Thus began one of the more morbid scientific endeavors of the twentieth century. Soviet scientists developed elaborate embalming techniques that required periodic "maintenance sessions" where Lenin's body would be re-soaked in special chemical baths. For nearly a century now, an entire team of specialists has dedicated their careers to keeping a corpse looking presentable—a job security situation that must make for interesting dinner party conversation.

The body remains on display in Red Square to this day, having outlasted the Soviet Union itself by more than three decades, making Lenin perhaps the only communist who successfully achieved permanent employment.

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