evidence: But that response was only 10 percentage points lower than one to the same question a decade earlier, suggesting Lenin remains important. Lenin’s hold on Russia’s heart is still strong enough that three years ago, the Union of Russian Architects succumbed to a public outcry and canceled a competition soliciting suggestions for how the Red Square mausoleum could be repurposed. That competition did not even specifically call for the removal of Lenin’s body. Lenin died on Jan. 21, 1924, at age 53, severely weakened by three strokes. His widow, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wanted him to be buried in a conventional grave. Lenin’s close associates had feared his death for months. Artist Yuri Annenkov, summoned to do his portrait at the dacha where he was convalescing, said he had "the helpless, twisted, infantile smile of a man who had fallen into childhood." Amid those concerns, Josef Stalin told a Politburo meeting of a proposal by "some comrades" to preserve Lenin’s body for centuries, according to a history by Russian news agency Tass.