MOSCOW, April 8 (RIA Novosti) - A senior...

"The recent blast at the Lenin statue in St. Petersburg led to, as you know, protests. Just imagine for a minute what would happen if we were to try to move Lenin's body," Vladimir Kozhin, head of the Kremlin property management department, told the Tribuna paper.

A St. Petersburg monument to the communist leader was badly damaged last week by an explosion that caused a large hole in the statue. The 10-meter high bronze monument was subsequently taken down for repair work.

Lenin's embalmed body has been on public display in a glass case in a mausoleum in Red Square since his death following a series of strokes in 1924. His continuing presence in the heart of Moscow has been an ongoing source of controversy since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

However, the Kremlin property chief said that he saw no reason why the body of the father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution should be moved.

"This is our history, however it worked out," he said,

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