When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain (11 page)

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BOOK II

When Lenin Lost His Brain

 

Contents

Part I: When Lenin Lost His Brain

1.
When Lenin Lost His Brain

2.
Into the Monkey House

3.
The Human Freak Show

Part II: Just Bad Luck

4.
Freak Wave

5.
Japan's Deadly Balloon Bomb

6.
Never Go to Sea

Part III: Not Quite Normal

7.
Eiffel's Rival

8.
Emperor of the United States

9.
The Man Who Bought His Wife

Part IV: Mein Führer

10.
Hitler's Final Hours

11.
Seizing Eichmann

12.
The Celebrity Executioner

Part V: Get Me Out of Here!

13.
Trapped on an Iceberg

14.
Volcano of Death

15.
The Female Robinson Crusoe

Part VI: O What a Lovely War!

16.
The Last Post

17.
To Hell and Back

18.
Let's Talk Gibberish

Part VII: Dial M for Murder

19.
Good Ship
Zong

20.
The Suspicions of Inspector Dew

21.
Dead as a Dodo

Part VIII: The Great Escape

22.
A Sting in the Tale

23.
And Then There Were None

24.
Edwin Darling's Nightmare

Part IX: A Painful End

25.
Never Go to Bed with a Knife

Further Reading

 

PART I

When Lenin Lost His Brain

Now exhibiting at No. 225 Piccadilly, near the Top of the Haymarket, from twelve 'till four o'clock, Admittance 2s. each, THE HOTTENTOT VENUS, Just arrived from the Interior of Africa, The Greatest Phoenomenon ever Exhibited in this Country, whose stay in the metropolis will be but short.

ADVERTISEMENT FOR SARAH BAARTMAN, ‘THE HOTTENTOT VENUS', CIRCA 1810

 

1

When Lenin Lost His Brain

The mould is regularly wiped from his face and his body is occasionally bathed in glycerol to prevent it from rotting. But despite being on display for almost nine decades, Vladimir Lenin's preserved corpse is in remarkable condition. He looks as if he has drifted into a deep sleep.

But Lenin is hiding a secret, one that is almost invisible to the naked eye. Before being embalmed, scientists sliced open his head and carefully removed his brain in order that it could be studied in microscopic detail. The Soviet regime wanted to know the exact nature of Lenin's genius.

It was an investigation that appalled Lenin's widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya. When her husband died on 21 January 1924, she begged for him to be buried in the plot next to his beloved mother. ‘Do not put up buildings or monuments in his name,' she said.

But Lenin's Politburo colleagues strongly disagreed. Indeed, they wanted his corpse to become a permanent monument to the revolution. Felix Dzerzhinsky, chairman of the Lenin Funeral Committee, said: ‘If science permits, Lenin's body must be preserved'.

This posed a real problem. There were many known techniques for embalming a body in the manner of the ancient Egyptians but none that could be guaranteed to preserve Lenin's likeness.

When the distinguished Soviet pathologist Aleksei Abrikosov was asked if it was possible, he replied that ‘science today has no such means'. Others disagreed. Vladimir Vorobiev, a professor of anatomy at Kharkov University, argued that ‘many anatomical compounds can be preserved for decades; this means we can try and apply them to an entire body'.

The most important organ to be safeguarded was Lenin's brain. It was removed intact from his skull and placed in formaldehyde. For two years, no one dared touch it. But in 1926, the German neurologist Oskar Vogt was invited to try to unlock the key to Lenin's supposed genius. Professor Vogt established the Brain Institute in Moscow, with Lenin's organ as the focus of its studies.

The body had meanwhile been placed in the capable hands of Professor Vorobiev, who was given the weighty responsibility of saving Lenin's flesh from ruin. He was aided in his work by another expert, Boris Zbarsky; both men knew they would be executed if they failed.

Lenin's blood, bodily fluids and internal organs were removed shortly after the brain, as part of the initial embalming process. (The whereabouts of his heart remains a mystery to this day; it seems to have been lost shortly afterwards.)

Once the internal organs had been removed, the corpse was immersed for many weeks in a special solution that contained glycerol and acetate. The dark, mould-like spots that had started to appear on the body were later removed with acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide.

It was essential to keep the eye sockets from collapsing: artificial eyes were inserted into the holes as replacements for the originals. It was also important that the face looked as lifelike as possible. Lenin's eyebrows, moustache and goatee were therefore left untouched. His genitals, too, were left in situ (although it goes without saying that they're not on display).

While the body underwent a lengthy embalming process, the brain was given a detailed examination. Professor Vogt had long argued that there was a direct link between brain structure and intelligence. If correct in this assumption, there was no reason why he couldn't map the origins of Lenin's supposed genius.