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Should you go and see Lenin’s tomb? When he was first interred there (after much deliberation as to exactly how you preserve a body permanently for day-to-day viewing), the Soviets thought that Lenin would be a kind of pilgrimage for communists worldwide, who would queue for hours to see the godfather of modern communism.

When we arrived, the queue was certainly four deep and twenty long (at least), but I doubt there was a single communist there. Seeing Lenin is a bizarre mix of carry-on-communism, with the shushing guards and busts of other dead Soviet leaders outside, and the simple mawkish desire to see a dead famous person.

It’s free to get in, but you should forget about taking a camera or a bag. For my money, I think the Lenin on display in Red Square (named, in fact, for the red bricks that make up its surroundings, not communism) is a fake. His ears are too small, his skin too waxy. I thought about trying to get a closer look, but even in these free and easy days in Russia, the soldiers are not people with whom to mess.

What I really wanted from the tomb, I suppose, was babushkas wiping quiet tears from their eyes while crackly loudspeakers played old Soviet anthems. Without those, the Tomb is a kind of ultra-bizarre Madame Tussaud’s. You should go, though, if for merely being able to say you did if nothing else.