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Moscow, Jan 21 (ANI): Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has said the body of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician, could be replaced from its Red Square mausoleum.

The Telegraph quoted Gorbachev as saying that the Russians would finally decide when to remove the Bolsheviks leader from his glass display case.

“I think that we will come to this point at some stage. But I do not think that we should be forcing things. Society will know on its own when the time comes to move Lenin’s body,” the country’s last communist leader said.

His remarks came as Russia engaged in its latest round of annual debates about one of history’s most contentious figures. Friday marks the 87th anniversary of the Soviet founder’s death, the paper said.

Lenin’s body has been on display in the mausoleum since the early Soviet era and calls for his removal were most strident as independent Russia tested its post-communist freedoms in the 1990s.

On Thursday, the ruling United Russia party reaffirmed its support for a bill that would force Lenin’s burial in Saint Petersburg, where his mother’s body is placed.

“All the experts agree that what is buried there is not Lenin’s real body - only about 10 per cent of it is left. The rest of it has been removed and replaced (with fake body parts) a long time ago,” Deputy Vladimir Medinsky said.

Gorbachev launched the 1980s perestroika reform movement that was aimed at saving the Soviet Union from its deep economic crisis. However, his effort and its accompanying press liberalisation led to a cultural revolution that saw Lenin’s busts removed from many of the country’s most prominent squares. (ANI)