HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 218

first secretary of the Leningrad City Committee.
In the course of 1949 almost all the leading fig-
ures in the central bureaucracy with links to the
Leningrad region disappeared from public sight.
The most prominent were N. A. Voznesensky,
president of the Gosplan and member of the
Politburo, M. I. Rodionov, chairman of the
Council of Ministers of the RSFSR; A. A. Kuz-
netsov, secretary of the Central Committee and
member of the Orgburo, the Organizational
Bureau of the Central Committee. Little was said
at the time about their fate, although most of the
arrested were ritually accused of Titoist sympa-
thies, the Communist deviation of the moment.
News began to leak out in the mid-1950s when
KHRUSHCHEV accused MALENKOV and BERIA of
directing the purge. The true motive seems to
have been Malenkov's desire to rid the organiza-
tion of followers of his rival A. A. ZHDANOV , who
had died in 1948, allegedly of natural causes.
Although the death penalty had been abolished
at the time of the arrests, it was reintroduced in
time for the execution, apparently in September
1950, of Voznesensky, Kuznetsov, Popkov, Rodi-
onov, and close to 200 others connected in some
capacity to the Leningrad political establishment.
One rising star with Leningrad roots who man-
aged to avoid arrest was Aleksei KOSYGIN , future
prime minister of the Soviet Union in the 1960s,
even though he lost his Politburo seat.

day with marble, granite, and porphyry. Lenin's
body was removed from the mausoleum during
World War II and evacuated beyond the Ural
Mountains until April 1945, when it was
returned to Red Square. Through the remainder
of the Soviet era, the mausoleum served as the
architectural focus of Red Square, the site for the
ceremonial changing of the guard of honor, and
a place of touristic pilgrimage for close to 2 mil-
lion yearly visitors who stood in long lines wait-
ing to catch a quick glimpse of the deceased
leader. The roof of the mausoleum served as the
reviewing stand from which the Soviet elite
viewed important demonstrations such as the
May Day parade. From 1953 to 1961, the mau-
soleum was renamed the Lenin-Stalin Mau-
soleum while STALIN 's body was interred there. In
October 1961, Stalin's remains were moved to
the Kremlin wall next to those of other promi-
nent Soviet figures. Since the fall of the Soviet
Union, the issue of a proper burial for Lenin has
resurfaced with some frequency, but all proposals
have run into determined opposition from Com-
munists who consider it the final line in the sand
in the dismantling of the Soviet legacy.

Lenin Prizes
A set of prizes, first established in June 1925,
designed to honor achievements in the areas of
science and letters. Initially the prizes were
awarded solely in the fields of science and the
social sciences. Among the initial honorees was D.
B. Riazanov in 1927 for his work on revolution-
ary history and his contributions to the first edited
volumes of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, and N. Ia. Marr in 1928 for his work in
linguistics. Between 1935 and 1956, Stalin Prizes
took the place of Lenin Prizes. A Central Commit-
tee resolution from September 1956 reinstituted
the Lenin Prizes for science and technology and
introduced a new category in literature and the
arts. In 1960, a third category in journalism and
publishing was added to the other two. The prizes
were awarded yearly on the date of LENIN 's birth-
day (April 22) and provided the recipients with a

Lenin Mausoleum
A monument, first built on Moscow's RED SQUARE
in 1924, to house the sarcophagus containing the
embalmed body of Vladimir LENIN . By the time of
Lenin's burial on January 27, 1924, a temporary
wooden mausoleum had been built according to
a design developed by the architect Aleksei
SHCHUSEV . This structure was rebuilt and enlarged
in May 1924, at which time Lenin's embalmed
body was brought into the building. The mau-
soleum was remodeled again in 1929-30, follow-
ing another design by Shchusev. Its size was
increased considerably from 1,300 to about 5,800
square meters, attaining the look it has to this