Russia's Communist Party leader left flowers at the tomb of Vladimir Lenin on the Soviet founder's 139th birthday Wednesday and pledged to resist any plans to remove Lenin's embalmed body from Moscow's Red Square.
Gennady Zyuganov led hundreds of supporters of the dwindling Communist Party in a procession on the square to commemorate the man they still call a great reformer.
The small gathering sharply contrasted with the massive Soviet-era cult of Lenin.
Zyuganov praised Lenin's role in "changing the history of mankind" and said implementation of Lenin's principles in politics and economy could have prevented the ongoing economic crisis.
Zyuganov said anyone intending to remove Lenin from the mausoleum will face a "proper rebuff." Polls say two thirds of Russians would like Lenin to be buried.
Lenin's body was embalmed and placed in the mausoleum just outside the Kremlin days after his death in 1924 _ despite the protests of his family.
The Orthodox Church denounces the public display of his body and says it needs a "traditional" burial.
In 2001, then-President Vladimir Putin said he opposed the removal of Lenin's body because it might disturb civil peace. Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, strongly pushed for the removal, but was stopped by vigorous opposition from the Communist Party.
During Wednesday's procession, Zyuganov called on the government to allocate more funds to Russia's poor instead of supporting big corporations.
"Authorities still stuff money into banks that gambled their assets away at stock exchanges," he told reporters standing outside the mausoleum under a red Communist flag.
After the Soviet collapse, the Communist Party remained a significant force in Russian politics, and Zyuganov came within a hairsbreadth of being elected president in 1996. In 1999, the party held a quarter of the seats in the Russian parliament; now it has just 12 percent.
