“Show us our butts! Mucawana tribe – Angola. In Soba village, the Muhacaona (Mucawana) tribe, perhaps the best place i have visited. They use cow dung and fat to make this so nice haircut, and love the beads. They asked me to make pictures of their backs... and butts to see on the camera screen if everything was perfect!”. (Photo and comments by Eric Lafforgue)

Photo: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 – 1924) lying in state in the Kremlin. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1924

Important! For the same article in Russian language click here.

Something quite intriguing is happening within Russian-speaking internet during the last few – should you type a fully academic inquiry (at least, according to Russian academic requirements) in national search engines for "Lenin's mausoleum" – the first thing you get (even in top 10 searches) is website pages talking about black magic and occult. Website authors view this construction differently, but unconditionally agree on one thing: the mausoleum of the "leader of the world proletariat” – the essence of a magical artifact, a sort of “energy vampire”. It was built with a certain purpose: to drain the energy out of miserable Soviet citizens on one hand; and to poison the anthroposphere of one-sixth part of the earth with its vibes (the exact territory that was occupied by the former Soviet Union), depriving the Russian people of will to resist on the other hand. Complete nonsense? No doubt. Nevertheless, an intriguing one. Well, probably because some oddities do exist in mausoleum's history. These oddities are the thing we are going to discuss this time. First, let me refresh you memory on the subject.

A Sri Lankan elephant, accompanied by his mahout, browse through a roadside fruit stall in Colombo on January 19, 2015. The Sri Lankan elephant is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as the population has declined by at least 50 percent over the last three generations, with the species threatened by habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

Young revelers take part in a parade called "La Calabiuza" on November 1, 2015, on the eve of the Day of the Dead in Tonacatepeque, 20 kms (13 miles) north of San Salvador. During the celebration, the residents of Tonacatepeque, originally an indigenous community, recall the characters from the mythology of Cuscatlan – pre-Columbian west and central regions of El Salvador – and their dead relatives. (Photo by Marvin Recinos/AFP Photo)

A woman wearing a burqa begs on a street in Mazar-i-Sharif on December 22, 2021. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

Afghan children enjoy their time on Nadir Khan hill during the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, April 21, 2023. (Photo by Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo)

Buddhist monks take shelter under a tarpaulin sheet to protect themselves from the rain as they attend the birthday celebrations of the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (unseen) at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Mundgod, in the southern state of Karnataka, India, July 6, 2016. (Photo by Abhishek N. Chinnappa/Reuters)

“The advent of digital cameras and smartphones killed the traditional mall portrait studio, but 3-D printing has sparked a new trend. Overloaded with digital photos, statues may be moving in to fulfill our desire for portraits that stand out”. – Peter Svensson via The Associated Press. (Photo by Julie Jacobson/AP Photo)