OCTOBER 31, 1961: Josef Stalin’s embalmed body was moved from lying beside Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin’s publicly displayed corpse and buried on this day in 1961.



Taking the brutal dictator’s remains from the mausoleum in Moscow’s Red Square would have been unthinkable at the time of his death eight years earlier.



He was revered for industrialising the country, leading it to a hard-won victory over Nazi Germany and turning the USSR into a superpower during his 29-year rule.



A British Pathé newsreel marking his death in 1953 shows the dictator watching parades of adoring workers and explains how he used terror to maintain supremacy.



But a wave of criticism – over Stalin’s purges and economic policies that had killed millions - followed his denunciation by successor Nikita Khrushchev in 1956.



The new Communist Party boss first took a swipe at Stalin’s personality cult, which he claimed had reached “monstrous size” and transformed him into a “godhead”.



Aside from the legions of statues erected in his honour, there could be no better example of his “dissolute” glorification than preserving his body for posterity.



The Soviets had perfected the art of embalming – removing organs and using chemicals to prevent corpses from rotting – following Lenin’s death.



And Stalin demanded that his body lie beside the leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, who thanks to charity remains on public display in now capitalist Russia.



Around 1.5million people visit the tomb each year, although since communism collapsed in 1991 there have been calls to bury Lenin.

View photos

View photos

View photos

Story continues