Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin died today, leaving behind a legacy of dubious democratization in Russia along with the still-unburied body of Communist visionary Vladimir Lenin. Yeltsin pushed to bury the embalmed body of Lenin during his last year in office, but to no avail. And so, though Yeltsin will be buried, his historical adversary -- the man who built Soviet Russia out of the ashes of the Czarist regimes -- remains on display for OG commies and tourists alike at the Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow. What this says about how Russians will remember history is unclear.
Strangely, Yeltsin and Lenin have one thing in common: they have both been the object of weird speculation from the world of science fiction. One of Lenin's greatest political opponents in the early days of Bolshevism was science fiction writer and scientist Alexander Bogdanov, whose writing influenced both Norbert Wiener (founder of information theory) and Kim Stanley Robinson (author of SF epic Red Mars). After leaving the Bolshevics in disguist over Lenin's policies, Bogdanov wrote a novel called Red Star about a Utopian society on Mars. But later he became obsessed with the idea that blood transfusions could foster longevity, and even revive the dead. After Lenin's death, the Soviet government asked Bogdanov to study Lenin's brain, and -- working with Lenin's sister -- he became convinced they could ressurrect the former leader. (Obviously they failed.)
Yeltsin has been immortalized in the time-slip fiction of John Barnes, who speculates in Kaleidoscope Century about a future where Yeltsin is murdered by anti-Soviet revolutionaries. Many Battlestar Galactica fans also think Colonel Tigh is supposed to be based on Yeltsin.
Boris Yeltsin is Dead [via NYT]
